Spooks Run Wild (1941)

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On October 24, 1941, Monogram Pictures released Spooks Run Wild starring the East Side Kids and Bela Lugosi. At this point in his career, Bela Lugosi was relegated to “B” movies. He played in several films with the East Side Kids, which were all enjoyable if not exactly classic cinema. Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall and Bobby Jordan play the leaders

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Did Lewis Defeat Drunken Wrestler?

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Evan “Strangler” Lewis was a scary competitor.  Although he was not a large man at 5’09” and weighed 170 pounds, Lewis’ mastery of submissions made him an equal or better of most wrestlers of his era.  Jack Carkeek was a terrific wrestler but one match with Lewis almost caused him to retire. Lewis’ reputation was strongly related to his feared

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Zbyszko and Lewis Start Riot

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On April 7, 1914, 22-year-old Wladek Zbyszko met 22-year-old Ed “Strangler” Lewis would meet in the first of many matches between the two men.  They would cooperate in a number of worked or “prearranged” matches.  Lewis in fact dropped his American Heavyweight Wrestling Championship to Wladek Zbyszko in 1917.  In the early 1920s, Lewis would drop his World Heavyweight Wrestling

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Charley Olson Beats Russian

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Frank J. Quinn, a local St. Louis attorney, served as the manager for professional wrestlers George Baptise, Charley Olson and Fred Beell.  Originally an admirer of George Baptiste, who was a legend in the St. Louis neighborhood around Cook and Vandeventer Avenues.  Baptiste would employ Quinn as his manger and later attorney for his tent and awning company. During his

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British Intelligence (1940)

boris-karloff

On January 29, 1940, First National Pictures, the Warner Brothers “B” film company, released the spy thriller British Intelligence (1940). The film is set in Britain during World War I. Released almost two years before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the film showed that Hollywood and probably most of the countries sympathies were with Britain and the Allies. While British

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Masked Marvel To The Rescue

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Samuel Rachmann promoted the International Wrestling Tournament in New York during 1915.  Rachmann invited wrestlers from around the world to the tournament but his real intention was to establish European Greco-Roman Wrestling Champion Alex Aberg as the successor to the retired Frank Gotch as World Champion. Rachmann’s plan for establishing Aberg was going as planned after the tournament kicked off

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Burns Denies Association with Stecher

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In early 1916, Martin “Farmer” Burns, who trained and managed Frank Gotch to the World Heavyweight Championship, began denying that he developed current American Heavyweight Champion Joe Stecher.   The claim seemed odd because Burns had been working with Stecher for several years.  Burns helped prepare Stecher for his championship bout with Charlie Cutler in 1915. In a way, what Burns

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House of Frankenstein (1944)

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On December 1, 1944, Universal Pictures released the latest horror film in the Frankenstein series, House of Frankenstein, with an all-star cast. Boris Karloff, who originally played Frankenstein’s monster, returns to the series as the mad scientist Dr. Niemann. An earthquake releases him and his hunchbacked assistant Daniel from prison. Dr. Niemann intends to exact revenge on the men who

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Metropolis (1927)

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On January 10, 1927, Universum Film (UFA) released Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The German film company produced a science fiction class, which still holds up today. On the Internet Movie Database website (IMDB), users rate it 8.3 out of 10 stars. It is #104 on the Top 250. In a theme society has wrestled with since the beginning of the

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