Ballyhoo! : The Roughhousers, con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling / Jon Langmead.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Langmead, Jon, 1975- author.

Series:

Sports and American culture series.

Sports and American Culture Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wrestlers.

Wrestlers--United States.

Wrestling.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (317 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Columbia : University of Missouri, 2024.

Columbia, Missouri : University of Missouri Press, [2023]

Summary:

"Ballyhoo! is a history of professional wrestling's formative period in the U.S., from roughly 1874 to 1941, and the contested interplay of wrestlers and promoters who built the "sport" as we know it. During this period, the major conventions that would define wrestling to the present day were perfected and codified, as wrestling morphed from a rough sport practiced on farms and at town gatherings to melodramatic mass entertainment that reliably drew large crowds in cities across the nation"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Prologue: The Kingfish Takes a Powder

Part I. The Sporting Whirl (1874-1917)

1. The Glamour of the Streets and the Life That Seethed About Them

2. A Fake Verisimilitude

3. Americans Believe Him Next to Invincible

4. I Never Miked an Honest Man

5. When a Mayor Leaves Office He's an Ex-Mayor, Isn't He?

6. The Sodden Earth Never Closed Over a Deader One in the World

7. The Greatest Promotional Odyssey of Modern Times

8. Call Me Desdichado

9. The People Booed

They Thought Frank Was Faking

Part II. In this Way, the Hippodrome May be Continued Indefinitely (1918-1941)

10. The Knockers and Scandalmongers Will Be Chased to the Woods

11. Much That Is Undesirable and Unfair Has Crept into the Sport

12. The Crowd Seemed Bent on Inflicting Bodily Harm

13. With a Touch of Bronchitis

14. The Man Who Revolutionized Wrestling

15. I Know Where They Grow

16. The Golden Goose

17. If I Were to Tell You the Real Inside about Wrestling, I Probably Would Spend the Night in the Tombs Instead of at Home

18. Flipflops and Acrobatics and All That Fake Stuff

19. Teaching Atheism to Babies

20. The Upset of the Century

21. The Game Is on the Level

22. Such a Muddle

Epilogue: Paradigmatically Fake for Real

Acknowledgments.

Notes:

Title from eBook information screen..

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780826274953

0826274951