By Graeme Cameron
Wrestling Heritage welcomes memories, further information and corrections.
Jake Dutch Zorra made a couple of visits to Britain in 1954 and again in the early sixties. He was a rough an tough out and out villain who engaged in a series of bouts with the popular Georges Gordienko. An unenviable matching against Josef Zaranoff at the Royal Albert Hall ended in an almost inevitable disqualification. There was much more this big man, and Graeme Cameron tells the story….
In 1954 and 1962, German-born American villain, Jake “Dutch” Zorra toured the UK. In fact, he was neither American nor German-born. He was in reality Dutchman Jacob Grobbe, with Jake “Dutch” Zorra being just one of many names he went by in a career that spanned 25 years, four continents and most of North America. He’s been a jungle boy, a mysterious masked man, a German villain and a devious, aristocratic British manager. But let’s start at the beginning.
Jacob Grobbe was born on January 10, 1926 in the university town of Leiden, near the Dutch capital of The Hague. During the World War II years he was a strapping, athletic teenager who found ingenious ways to avoid being captured and put to work by the Nazis, such as hiding in a room with the light on while soldiers searched a darkened one. In 1946, the now 20-year old Grobbe, fluent in 6 languages (including perfect, unaccented English), took a job on a US military base in Germany where he “acquired” the papers of a soldier name Howlett, then boarded a plane bound for the USA. On arrival, Grobbe put those skilled gained in war time to use in order to avoid airport authorities and start a new life in America, albeit as an an illegal immigrant, something which had an impact on his life and career years later.
He settled in Tacoma, Washington where he was a police officer for six months (no background checks in those days), eventually marrying and fathering two children. He took up body building and built an impressive physique, packing nearly 20 stone onto his 6′ 4″ frame. He was soon finding success in body building competitions. He also clearly caught the attention of wrestlers who were training in the same gym and it wasn’t long before he was recruited for a career in the ring.
He made his debut in 1946 in his hometown of Tacoma under the name Dutch Howlett, continuing to exploit the name of the man whose identity he had used to start a new life. Like many wrestlers, he started as a blue-eye before switching to become a villain. Apart from a one month stint in Florida, he spent the next few years working around the Great Lakes region of North America, going through Minnesota, Illinois and Ohio before moving on to Western New York, then Ontario and Quebec in Canada
It was May,1951 in Western New York where his multiple personality disorder first manifested itself. He remained Dutch Hewlett to the people of the town of Binghampton but was masked blue-eye French Zorra in Syracuse. He was also briefly French Zorra in Buffalo but there also introduced another masked blue-eye character, Tarzan Zorra. Meanwhile, in Rochester he was both British blue-eye Hedley Howlett and masked villain The Great Zorra
He moved on to Ontario in June,1951 where he stayed for 10 months, He again used mutiple identities, working as The Great Zorra in Toronto and Niagra Falls, French Zorra in Hamilton and Dundas and Tarzan Zorra in Oshawa . He returned to Ohio for a month as Dutch Hewlett, workng out the rest of the year in Boston, Quebec and Nova Scotia as Tarzan Zorra, the latter as a villain (Are you all keeping up with this?)
In January, 1953, he headed south to Indiana and Tennesee, again under a mask as Tarzan Zorra in the former and The Great Zorra in the latter, eventually being unmasked as Dutch Hewlett in Tennesee. He returned to Quebec as Tarzan Zorra for a few months, finishing out the year in Tennesee where he sometimes worked unmasked as The Great Zorra, even though his identity had been revealed months earlier. Jacob Grobbe had by this time established himself as an entertaining mid-card and sometime main event performer, the latter usually as the foil for a bigger drawcard.
It was all going so well, then sometime in late 1953/early 1954 he did or said something that upset his wife so much that she reported him to the immigration authorities (hell hath no fury). He was offered two choices, be permanently deported back to The Netherlands (in which case he could never return) or to leave voluntarily and apply for entry legally, which would take about two years. He chose the latter and that is how he came to grace UK shores. He spent the first 9 months of his exile as Jake “Dutch” Zorra in the UK and Dutch Zorro in Germany. He spent the remainder of the two years working in Australia and New Zealand as a villain, The Great Zorro. In Australia, he was the tag team partner of Gorgeous George for a few matches. His papers finally came through and he resumed his American career in Hawaii in December, 1956, continuing to use The Great Zorro name. He worked there until, May, 1957 before moving on to assume a great many names in a great many places.
Jacob Grobbe died on 19th December, 2010, age 84, after a battle with cancer of the mouth.
2273
Wrestling Heritage 