Exhibition Dates: August 3-August 29, 2013
Location: Pasadena Central Library (North Entrance Display Cases)
Address: 285 E. Walnut Street, Pasadena California
Information: (626) 791-7647 or terymar@earthlink.net
The Pasadena Central Library is hosting two exhibits, “Long Road to Glory: The Harlem Globetrotters” and “No Holds Barred: The Golden Age of Pro Wrestling,” in its North Entrance display cases between August 3-August 29, 2013. The exhibits have been curated by Terry Cannon, Staff Assistant at the Allendale Branch Library, and are open to viewing by the public during regular library hours at 285 E. Walnut Street, Pasadena, California.
“Long Road to Glory: The Harlem Globetrotters” utilizes a variety of historic photographs, programs, and memorabilia to examine the legacy of the Harlem Globetrotters, an African American basketball team which has combined athleticism, theater, and comedy for over eight decades. The Globetrotters revolutionized basketball and spread the game around the world, having played more than 20,000 games in over one hundred countries, before millions of fans. Among the Globetrotter greats featured in the exhibit are Goose Tatum, Meadowlark Lemon, Wilt Chamberlain, and founder Abe Saperstein. Also included is Lynette Woodard, a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympic gold medal-winning women’s basketball team, who became the first female to play for the Globetrotters when she signed a contract in 1985.
Of their formative years during and after the Great Depression, historian Ben Green wrote, “The Harlem Globetrotters were not just a great barnstorming team; they were a sociology class on wheels, bringing black hoops and black culture to a hundred midwestern towns that had seen neither, and in the process transforming Dr. James Naismith’s stodgy, wearisome game – which was still sometimes played in chicken-wire cages by roughneck immigrants with flailing elbows and bloodied skulls, a sport more resembling rugby – into an orchestration of speed, fluidity, motion, dazzling skill, and, most improbably, inspired comedy.”
“No Holds Barred: The Golden Age of Pro Wrestling” highlights the highly popular form of entertainment which drew huge crowds in Los Angeles from the 1950s through the 1970s. Wednesday night television broadcasts from the Olympic Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, with Dick Lane handling the announcing and locker room interviews, featured a variety of heroes and villains including Gorgeous George, Mr. Moto, Bobo Brazil, Mil Mascaras, Bruno Sammartino, Haystacks Calhoun, John “The Golden Greek” Tolos, and “Classy” Freddie Blassie.
The exhibit incorporates photographs, fliers, and assorted ephemera to recall the spectacle of wrestling during its golden era, when arch villains and masked marauders masterfully combined sport, theater, dance, comic entertainment, and tragic drama. The display includes a special feature on women’s pro wrestling, and a selection of photographs taken by Theo Ehret, the Olympic Auditorium’s boxing and wrestling photographer through the 1960s and ’70s. “His subjects were the larger-than-life physical freaks who alternately delighted and vexed their enormous fan-base,” writes David Davis in the signage accompanying the exhibit. “Ehret also covered wrestling’s promotional oddities: cage matches, midget wrestling, tag-team skirmishes, and the 20-man Battle Royals that inaugurated each season at the Olympic.”
Library hours for the two exhibits are Monday-Thursday, 9:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; and Sunday, 1:00-5:00 p.m.
For further information, phone (626) 791-7647 or e-mail terymar@earthlink.net.
