hold off inside the locker room of the Pioneer Memorial Stadium , The Des Moines Registerreporter Walter Shotwell retrieve he had obtain aclever wayto disrepute a visiting professional matman named Hans Schmidt . Just a few days prior , on August 1 , 1953 , Schmidt had been take in on national television bark into a mike using a thick German accent . Hedismissedthe concept of sportsmanship and vowed to “ bring home the bacon ze title and take it back to Germany vere it belongs . ”
In the class come World War II , a German nationalist was not potential to be cheered on anywhere in the United States , but the vitriol Schmidt advance was unlike anything pro hand-to-hand struggle had ever seen . Schmidt had fan much frothing at the mouth , jab him with hairpins , waving cigaret lighters in his face , and vandalizing his car . Fearing for his safety , constabulary would often have to see him through angry mobs . It did n’t really seem to weigh whether Schmidt was truly anti - American or just toy a role . Either one seemed egregious .
Shotwell suspected the latter . During his interview with Schmidt , he turn over him a newspaper publisher clipping and asked him to read it out loudly in German . Schmidt decline , tell that Shotwell would n’t sympathise him . Looking at it closely , Schmidt could see it quoted house physician of Munich , where he claim to hail from , who read they had never discover of any Hans Schmidt .
Shotwell pushed it a little further , until Schmidt made it clear-cut he was n’t hold up to continue to play along . Had he admitted the truth — that he was not an genuine Nazi , but a French - Canadian named Guy Larose — then he likely would have missed out on a career that would finally make him one of the highest - paid and most vituperate jock in the world .
If pretend to be an opposition of the state was his destiny , then Larose was born at the right time . He was 24 in 1949 , the class he decided to become a pro wrestler ; his dream of unite the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had end while he was still in grooming after the police force and several RCMP students render to impose an alcohol ban on a nearby Native community and had their vehicles pummeled with baseball bats .
Eager to tap his six - pes - four , 240 - pound figure , Larose turned to wrestling . In Michigan and across Canada , he was able-bodied to book competition but found that neither his persona nor his existent name was drawing a crowd .
Arriving in Boston in 1951 , Larose met wrestling promoter Paul Bowser , who take on one look at the austere - face wrestler and declare that he should dramatize a Nazi character . Larose would n’t be the first — Kurt Von Poppenheim had already organise a similar gimmick — but he ’d have an chance to do it on television .
At the time , gang sport like boxing and wrestling were ideal for the burgeon medium . Cheap to produce , they could well fill programming schedules on meshing like the DuMont Television connection , a onetime competitor to CBS , NBC , and a burgeoning ABC that air contend contests from Chicago . Although Larose — now Schmidt — had been invoke up attending prior , it was his August 1953 visual aspect and interview with Chicago Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse that draw more disdain than usual .
After declaring “ Germany has been good to me ” and claiming that he believe there was no place for sportsmanship in grappling , Schmidt was cut off by Brickhouse . With the emotional injury of World War II still impudent , his appearance had mint a nerve . DuMont , Brickhouse would later recall , received more than 5000 angry letter from viewers who were disgusted by Schmidt . At least one viewer recommend he be acquit .
Larose , however , exercised some simpleness . The word “ Nazi ” was seldom tossed around , and he never goosestepped or sway a Hakenkreuz with him . The implication of his fealty seemed to be more than enough to evoke the crew into a fury , peculiarly when he wouldremain seatedduring the National Anthem or turn his back at the sight of the American flag . He had been a motorcycle dispatcher during the state of war , he secernate journalists , and was once shot down while in a plane .
Although those details were n’t truthful , on many night Larose may have matte as though hewasin a state of war zona . Walking to the ring , he ’d often be jabbed by woman using their hairpins , or by humankind trying to singe him with their cigarettes . During matches , his “ cheating”—using chairs to brain opponents , or kicking them in the mole — would soak up crew toward the ring in an cause to start a riot . At one engagement in Milwaukee , the ensue chaos led to a brief Bachelor of Arts in Nursing on pro grapple in the arena .
When the journalist Shotwell ask him what kind of car he drove , he hesitated . “ A Lincoln , ” he say . “ I do n’t want to describe it any more than that . I do n’t want it bust up . ” He often come out of stadium to find water ice picks in his tire .
Whatever argument existed about the good taste of Larose ’s execution , there was no doubtfulness it was moneymaking . hoi polloi who wish to see him get beaten in broadcast against the likes of Verne Gagne or Lou Thesz occupy arenas . Once , particular guest reviewer Joe Louis decked him in a staged climax . There was some kind of catharsis in watch Larose get pommel .
According to pro wrestling diarist Dave Meltzer , who inducted the Schmidt character into theWrestling ObserverHall of Fame in 2012 , Larose made roughly $ 1 million in his 20 - year vocation , which wind to a close in the mid-1970s . Other “ foreign menaces ” like Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik were coming in , diversifyingwrestling ’s villain culture .
The kind of odium he had drawn from the crowd remain rarified in wrestling , which hates its dog but usually does n’t attempt to dig them or burn them with fire . It was n’t until Sergeant Slaughter turn away from his patriotism and became an Iraqi well-wisher in the early ' 90s that emotions got a bit too heated for entertainment ’s rice beer . The WWE ( then WWF ) was forced toassign securityto Slaughter ’s family until the act was drop .
By that peak , Larose had long been out of the public eye , having returned home to Quebec . He died in 2012 at the eld of 87 , his condition as one of the most infamous performers of the 20th century having been largely forgotten . Never once did he allow in during his prime that he was from Canada .
“ Of of course I ’m from Germany , ” he told Shotwell . “ Do you intend I ’d go on television and say thing that were n’t genuine ? ”
Additional Sources : harebrained hotdog , Midgets , and Screw Jobs : The Untold Story of How Montreal shape Wrestling;The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame : The Heels .
Unless otherwise credit , all photos ( degree centigrade ) Dave Drason Burzynski from the bookThis Saturday Night : Return to the Cobo , available atWrestleprints.com . Used with permission .
