6/21/07

Especially seeing the pictures, I love Mitch Hartsey’s idea about doing an item on venues for wrestling in St. Louis. Any of you who are from the St. Louis area probably have a memory attached with a certain location. Even if you aren’t from the area, you likely have heard of places like The Chase Hotel or Kiel Auditorium and know they are

to wrestling like Fenway Park or Wrigley Field to baseball.

The Chase Hotel obviously was the reason for the title of the television show Wrestling at the Chase. When the golden era began in 1959, the Khorassan Room of the gorgeous Chase was the site for action telecast on KPLR-TV, Channel 11. The Chase was a gathering spot, a code word for the elite and special. Putting wrestling in that venue made the sport itself something remarkable.

As you can see from Mitch’s photos, the unique and fancy chandeliers that one could spot way back in 1959 are still bright in 2007. The hotel itself went through hard times, was even closed, but has been renovated in recent years and gleams like fancy diamond today. Check out the dvd St. Louis Wrestling Classics, Volume II, and there is action from The Chase in 1962. While you watch Johnny Valentine, Pat O’Connor, Lorenzo Parente, and Joe Garagiola, you’ll be able to note those chandeliers. Go by The Chase today, perhaps for a movie or lunch, and peek into the Khorassan Room. The site is almost exactly the same.

Look at the big flat wall where the stage is. Behind that wall is what had been the control room for KPLR. And next to the control room is where the studio is that was also home to Wrestling at the Chase. Or stroll north on York Street from Lindell Boulevard and you’ll right next to that studio.

While the Khorassan Room for several early years gave the show a special look, when date conflicts and production stress caused the move to the studio, the program still looked good thanks to the production expertise of KPLR. In addition, unlike most studio television wrestling shows which had few fans, in St. Louis somehow over 300 folks were crammed with a shoehorn into that space whenever we taped.

Now the big question. Before the move to the studio, when the Khorassan Room was unavailable due to banquets or whatever, from where did the show emanate?

It was a spot called The Chase Club. This location was just perhaps twenty yards down the hallway toward the lobby from the Khorassan Room. Where the Khorassan could hold 900 or so people, The Chase Club allowed maybe 400 in.

The Chase Club was a tight room, with pillars to watch around. Normally, it was an intimate spot for meetings or dinners with a singer or trio performing music. Somehow a ring and cameras fit inside the facility. This maybe happened twice a year but I can remember going there as a high school student and thinking, “How can they do wrestling from here?” But it worked. Today this same spot is exactly where the movie theaters are at The Chase.

The funniest unknown fact was where the wrestlers dressed for the Khorassan Room. It was a room about the size of your living room with a bathroom, shower and tub. Plug twenty burly grapplers into a space that size! Talk about being forced to get along.

At the studio, the guys used a conference room on the second floor to dress and walked down a hallway to shower. More than once an unsuspecting female intern or news aides would come in early to find a naked wrestler scurrying from the shower to the conference room – he was caught by surprise not expecting anyone in on Sunday, the day we video taped the shows.

What are your memories of wrestling in the studio? Or at The Chase? (somebody HAS to be as old or older than me and remember…I went to the shows while I was in high school.)

Kiel Auditorium is the one for me. It was like going to heaven. What atmosphere. What an intimate building. I can recall watching Pat O’Connor and Gene Kiniski battle in 1961 while I was in the first row of the front balcony. It was like hanging just above the ring apron.

And I was there to see the Hawks basketball team too! Bob Pettit, Cliff Hagan, Clyde Lovellette, Slater Martin…Buddy Blattner at the KMOX Radio microphone. With the Hawks and wrestling, I could have been happy a long time…oh, that’s right. I was! LOL

Once I began working for Sam Muchnick, I too walked in through the stage door entrance on 15^{th Street. What a feeling! It was emphasized even more when I was asked for my first autograph and hesitated, “Who? Me? Why?” But I was on television and some folks were impressed. Many a crowd was packed around that door both before and after cards. Today some of the ashes from Lou Thesz are scattered at that very door.}

Inside was a spider web of halls, tunnels, and staircases. Until you knew your way around, it was easy to get lost and end up in the Opera House or the basement Exposition Hall…or worse yet the 15th Street side of the building when you were aiming for the 14th Street side.

Don’t laugh. Even today, when I have a nightmare, it inevitably includes a thought that I’m lost in the hallways in the bowels of Kiel and cannot find my way to the ring so I can help announce the start of the card! Hey, it was spooky when I was a young guy finding my way.

Inside the Convention Hall where wrestling took place was hallowed ground. Smoky, the bright ring lights, the clock spinning slowly above the ring. Darn near every seat was a dandy from upper balcony, to stage, to mezzanine, to ringside.

When the business changed in the early days, I was working for Vince McMahon Jr. and the WWF when we put a closed-circuit show of WrestleMania into the Convention Hall. Must have been 1985. Maybe 1986. Before the doors opened, I sat in a loge seat right in front of the mezzanine and looked around that old empty building and listened for the ghosts. That’s when I realized wrestling was never to be the same again.

When most of Kiel was being destroyed for what is now Scott Trade Center, I’d drive by on Highway 40 and be able to look inside – as any of you locally could – to the seats in that horseshoe. Felt like my gut was being torn out and saw all the ghosts being chased away.

What happened to you at Kiel? Or by the stage door waiting for wrestlers?

Mitch had a lot of work to do but he finally came up with shots of The Coliseum, the home of wrestling from early in the 1900s. The Coliseum, located on the southwest corner of Jefferson and Washington where Jefferson Bank and Trust held forth into the 1980s, was in use into the 1930s. It was noted, of course, for the classic battles between Strangler Lewis and Joe Stecher, one of which lasted over two hours.

Amazingly, my father Ed who is now 93 can recall being at the Lewis and Stecher duel on Feb. 20, 1928 when Strangler became the heavyweight champion. He was 14 at the time and can remember that the card lasted until the early morning hours and his mother had a fit when he and his father didn’t get home until something like 3 a.m.!

I bet many of you, if not all, have a story or a memory of a parent or family member who followed wrestling and perhaps sparked your interest in the sport. Or admitted once you started liking wrestling that he or she used to follow it as well.

At any rate, The Coliseum was also home to political conventions as well. Sadly, much of its history was disappearing even by the time I began working fulltime for Sam Muchnick in 1971. If you know someone with memories of The Coliseum, trust me – that’s a loyal, longtime fan!

Finally, of course, was The Arena which was named The Checkerdome when it and the Blues hockey team were owned by Ralston Purina. Loads of history here to, as my dad would tell me about Jim Londos and Hans Kampfer in 1937 and Sam would tell me about Lou Thesz and Buddy Rogers a decade or so later.

So there was atmosphere at The Arena as well as at Kiel.

One advantage to The Arena over Kiel. It was a circle underneath the stands. If you were unsure where you were, just keep going forward and sooner or later you’d go past the Arena Club, dressing rooms and either hit the back entrance where talent came in or the front entrance where elevators took you the offices in The Arena towers. No nightmares, just a long walk!

The building also held approximately 8000 more fans than Kiel. Thus, a couple times a year, it made sense to take a really big showdown to The Arena. Nonetheless, The Arena/Checkerdome was like a summer home and Kiel was where we slept.

The Checkerdome was also where I ran opposition in 1983. Lots of sweat and pressure there, but most of all a feeling of great achievement because I knew we came within a hair of making wrestling history. Just that big ole elephant in the East was waiting to flatten us all. But, for me certainly, some special moments in that venue as well.

One picture is from what is on that site on Oakland Avenue now. When Mich and I spread a few more of Thesz’ ashes, we found a spot that as best I could figure would have been the floor of The Arena, possibly even where the ring sat. There are trees and a little green space there now. Seemed like a nice spot for Lou.

Who has memories from The Checkerdome? Or The Arena, when it had that name? Since we often drew over 14,000 fans, someone had to be there.

Now Mitch is on a crusade for two things. One he’ll do fairly easily and that’s a shot of the St. Louis House at Jefferson and 44, where wrestling was televised from on Channel 5 in the early 1950s and also played host to shows until 1959.

But his tricky one will be finding Federal League Field, where Joe Stecher dethroned Stanislaus Zbyszko in 1920. Find that one, Mitch, and I guarantee you a standing ovation! Maybe one of our visitors has an idea where Federal League Field was.

But what you have is a masterpiece and all of us will enjoy the memories it stirs.

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