Ron Historyo Delves Into The Archives
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Belle Vue 1938 – 39
1938 opens and I love it when I capture the opening night and last show of the season. The shows are numbered and I know then, that I have them. A short season as per 1937 then no wrestling scheduled for six months.
You have to wonder if the short seasons are the best to sustain the excitement and story lines. Could it be that you just can’t keep this standard up every week of the year?
Or the other angle is, maybe The Kings Hall had other things to do.
It looks like week one is farewell to George Boganski, seems to have been eliminated by Mike Brendel in a series to find a number one contender to Jack Sherry’s World Title, or should I say Belle Vue’s World Title?
Garnon as well makes just the first show, and also Half Nelson Keyes.
Somehow Dave Armstrong sneaks into the third round. And very strange, neither Mansfield nor Mustapha progress. Are we supposed to not notice these anomalies? Or maybe there had been late changes that we don’t know about.
Kwariani was a handful, but he drops out and you can see the semi’s . Kalmikoff/Muir and Peltonin/Reginski. This is great, we don’t even need the results because we know from the next bill what happened.
And so Kalmikoff loses to Karl Reginski in the final.
The support tries Belle Vue out with the seven feet Ghoul, which was almost certainly the six seven Carver Doone (Jack Baltus.) It all adds a bit of colour. Nobody does it better than Miss Look.
I am going to be sensational now and suggest that it cost that much money to bring in Jack Sherry for the final, that the support cast had to be got in cheap. For once the international flavour was diluted with Englishmen as near as Leigh, Wigan and Manchester.
They say that the Kings Hall, built in 1910 could hold 7,000. That is a perplexing figure if like me you went there, I can’t picture where the extra people would stand or sit. I have an advert here where Miss Look boasts of 5,500 Tip Up Seats. These were wood. I don’t remember any standing. You could maybe stand on the back gangway.
Kathleen Look had good communication skills and here is a program note where it is stated that Atholl Oakeley is her Technical Expert.
Also a report that went into the papers at the time of the shows above.
The year end shows for 1938 had a particular problem for me in that I could not get into the newspapers of September and October.
I have managed to look at other sources and am able to layout what I think the shows were.
The next nine months would see the conclusion of the building of Wrestling at the Kings Hall. Kathleen Look’s tenure was pretty much five years. She had promoted at a few other venues as well.
How much Oakeley fitted into this, one has to suspect was significant. Was he wanted? For sure he was kept out of the press.
The way the advertising was sensationalised smacked of Oakeley, but perhaps Miss Look was creative as well.
September and October don’t look massive in terms of budget except that Jacky Sherry is there in October with George Gregory who he beats and Reginsky. It has taken all these years for a local man, Lew Faulkner to get his breakthrough and be Vic Hessle here. Other British wrestlers are now in.
I don’t really know if Oakeley had been a prickly customer but William Bankier was taken to court by Garnon and Sherry for a slur against their title claims made by Oakeley. Bankier lost a lot of money. Crazy really when you consider all the wrestlers who laid claim to being World Champion.
Doug Clark had for many years distanced himself from anything Oakeley.
He had been quite capable of handling his own persona. His own belt and title for two bouts against Gerstmans in front of big crowds at Leeds and Huddersfield. And his two tours of Australia as a wrestler in 36/37.
I am going to put a bit of opinion into the last six months to come. It is just my opinion and a slant, if you like, as to what may have gone on.
You can see the November schedule and I believe Sherry is costing big money. The match of all matches would be Clark v Sherry.
Now for me Clark, in his later 40’s had been wrestling, Meeske, Atkins, Pencheff and Lurich in Australia and some tricks over there had taken the possibilities to another level.
For example, when Kendo Nagasaki went to Stampede, he came back with Ladder Matches and Lumberjack matches.
Well Doug worked a series with Lurich where there were DQ’s, but they got more sensational, with DQ’s fighting outside the ring, even the police intervening. Not sure if there was blood as well. And in the end on Australian soil, the Empire belt is dropped to Lurich.
What does Doug get out of it, A Fantastic Pay day,at the end of his career.
Now if you were in Clark’s position, what would you be saying to Kathleen Look and Oakeley. I would be saying, pay me the same as Sherry up front and I will let you put over Sherry as Top Man.
Their first meeting in November Sherry won.
The rest of that November was just good quality wrestling. I feel sure Wild Tarzan and Boratti are based here, Tarzan, I suspect is in the Wigan, Bolton, St Helens area, he must have been mates with Lew Faulkner, they worked together so often.
The final show of 1938 Clark and Sherry go again. But there was one other big expenditure of cash the week before with the one off visit of Dick Shikat. The bill does not tell you, but he fights Modrich. At a billed six three and nineteen stones he looks an impressive grappler.
Open again for one show in February 1939 there was more to come.
But I come back to my opinion again.
If you were Doug Clark, would you go in the ring with Sherry four times if the bouts were as real as they were being portrayed. It makes sense that actually Doug and Jack could work together. If Sherry was hard to work with, why would you bother.
Doug has seen the world and had progressed into the creative world of a master crafts man. I have not seen all the reports of the four matches, that very much went in Sherry’s favour as far as I know. Certainly Oakeley’s Blue Blood on the Mat, Kayfabe’s Sherry into someone that nobody can handle.
Well fair enough, Oakeley can have his version, those who want to believe it was real can have theirs as well.
But for me, some of the best work ever done in a wrestling ring brought the fans in again and again. It’s telling a story.
The Bout, The Return, The Grudge, The fight to a Finish. It’s a script, seldom going beyond a fourth fight, that has survived many years.
While doing this research, I found at times Kath Look would advertise three separate and consecutive days with a different artwork. She saw the value of it. I don’t think she had to spend so much, but it was a big hall to fill, the largest outside London, I have read.
Jack Pye sneaks in the lower card in March as does George DeRelwyskow jr. Kalmikoff must have been good value, maybe the King Kong Kirk of his day. Him and Clark would have been good.
As with all the 1930’s it was Friday nights as the main night all the way through. And check through, there had been no real inflation affecting the prices. In fact at some point the price of 9d was introduced. 1934 I think.
So maybe that was another smart move of Kathleen Look.
By the end of the 1930’s the top price of 5s 9d was still the same as it had been in 1931.
This must have helped tremendously to get the game going.
Notice it now says “Seats for 6000”
Jack Atherton is sneaking in now. Jack Alker the boy from Ince near Wigan was certainly spotted and retained for regular use.
The season finishes in May with Sherry doing two bouts, closing with his fourth battle with Doug Clark,
My opinion, Doug in his twilight sold for him and for the money.
And as the season closed Jack Pye is there and Dick the Dormouse.
The outbreak of War brought an end to Wrestling in 1939 at the Kings Hall, and the end of Miss Look
Even in 1940 there was some wrestling, but this flamboyant advertising had gone and the schedules were simple and cheap in the newspaper column similar to The Ardwick Blood Tub.
I have not researched the four bouts of Clark V Sherry and would love to know how the scripts went.
But I don’t want Oakeley’s version
They never did get them all together, Sherry, Shikat, Strangler Lewis, Krauser. If you look hard you will find them on Youtube.
Go in on John Listers Channel and Belle Vue Wrestling and you will find Jack Sherry v Kola Kwariani.
Hard looking bout and lots of Punching, it takes you back to these times.
I have talked through a complete collection of 1930’s bills. Probably missed very few.
It’s one version of history.
All those Champions. Nothing Official about them.
They are one Promoter and their view at a showcase Venue.
You can get carried away and believe this is the main history of the 1930’s.
It was the most colourful and professional attempt to expand the Industry of Professional Wrestling in Britain but it would be many more years before there were other efforts to form a Central Body.
It’s fair to say they never completely made it.
Finally I offer some pictures of some of the wrestlers.
No particular order and very random in choice.
But where, for some, the careers have been long, these are genuine 1930’s pictures.
Ron Historyo Time Cop, 2024
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