History of roller derby
[5][6] Though the inquest that resulted from Cohen's death led to a recommendation for a law prohibiting roller skating activities exceeding four hours in length, a second six-day race was announced in May 1885.
[9][10] Although tripping and pushing may not have been allowed at certain events, popular speed and endurance races continued to be held on both flat and banked tracks in the century's first three decades.
[17][18][19] In 1929, as the Great Depression began, struggling film publicist Leo Seltzer (1903–1978) observed that cash prize-awarding dance marathons among out-of-work contestants and spectators were undermining attendance at his Oregon cinema chain, so he sought ways to capitalize on the trend.
[citation needed] While discussing the article with regular patrons at Ricketts, a restaurant in Chicago's Near North Side, Seltzer was challenged to invent a sport incorporating roller skating.
[24] Skaters in these races only had to skate 8 hours nightly,[24] but were encouraged to engage in "jams"[23] and, at specific times, 5-minute sprints referred to in event programs as "open house".
[24] Appearances at the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles, California attracted celebrities such as W.C. Fields, Mickey Rooney, Eddie Cantor, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Cary Grant and Eleanor Powell.
In 1936, 1937, or 1938 (sources vary), after seeing a match in Miami and realizing this was an exciting element of the sport, sportswriter Damon Runyon encouraged Seltzer to tweak the game to maximize physical contact between the skaters, including elbowing, "whipping", and slamming each other into the track's outer rail,[21] as well as exaggerating hits and falls.
On March 24, 1937, 21 members of a touring group of Roller Derby skaters and support personnel were killed when their chartered bus blew a tire while going 40 mph down a hill on U.S. Route 50, collided with a bridge abutment, rolled onto its side and burst into flames, trapping passengers inside.
Matches were held in fifty cities in 1940, for more than five million spectators, some of whom formed fan clubs and newsletters like Roller Derby News (later renamed RolleRage).
[41] The entry of the United States into World War II at the end of 1941 interrupted the sport's ascent; many skaters enlisted in the armed forces, crowds dwindled, and the fledgling league was reduced to one team skating mainly for the entertainment of soldiers.
[29] After the war's end in 1945, Seltzer successfully resumed growing the sport, although a 1946 attempt to bring it to New York's Polo Grounds failed due to twelve straight days of rain.
The first televised matches were between teams representing New York and Brooklyn, and took place at the 69th Regiment Armory[44] four nights a week,[45] which was actually a reduction from the troupe's usual touring schedule that included a performance every day, sometimes with two on Sundays.
The fledgling medium allowed underwhelming audience sizes to be made to look like they had packed venues to capacity, leading spectators to turn out in droves for subsequent matches.
[48][56] The NRDL consisted of six teams: the New York Chiefs, the Brooklyn Red Devils, the Jersey Jolters, the Philadelphia Panthers, the Washington-Baltimore Jets, and the Chicago Westerners.
[45] The players wanted to skate "phony" during this time period, but Seltzer believed the public would soon tire of exaggerated hits and falls, so he embarked on a campaign to legitimize the sport.
He started a program encouraging the formation of junior Roller Derby leagues for children (although it's not clear whether any actually formed), he sought to add more teams nationwide (although it didn't happen until 1954), and he got the players to agree to a "no railing" rule.
The deal fell through when, according to Seltzer, General Motors, fuming over an NCAA decision preventing them from sponsoring the broadcast of University of Notre Dame football games, lost interest in televising any sports at all.
[65][66] Madison Square Garden no longer wanted to host matches, fan clubs disbanded, and Seltzer returned to pursuing real estate interests.
In July 1953, citing the effects of the Korean War and a dearth of venues, Leo Seltzer moved the Derby from New York to Los Angeles and created the L.A. Braves for their debut at the Rose Bowl.
A separate organization, International Roller Speedway, known in some countries as Roller-Catch, formed in 1937 and toured Europe, where they played at the Harringay Arena in London, and the Philippines.
[66] Jerry soon struck a deal with independent Oakland TV station KTVU to broadcast Roller Derby matches kinescoped in a deserted garage.
[69] One of Roller Derby's sponsors, a San Francisco auto dealer, got a Portland, Oregon TV station to broadcast an unedited tape of a match, in an attempt to advertise the dealership's new lot in the area.
[70] Realizing he had stumbled onto a promotional formula, he began syndicating videotapes of games to more independent TV stations, and followed up broadcasts with personal appearances of the Derby in each city.
[70] Several years later, UHF TV stations, mostly independent and desperate to compete with older, network-dominated VHF counterparts, snatched up broadcasting rights for their areas.
[72][73] 1961 or so also saw the advent of a short-lived New York City area rival league, the American Skating Derby (ASD), promoted by Joe Morehouse and Mike O'Hara.
[75][76] In 1962, Jerry, in partnership with his uncle Oscar Seltzer (who had founded the Roller Derby Skate Corporation in 1936), created the Dixie Devils, a "home" team for the Southern United States cities of Nashville, Atlanta, Jacksonville and Orlando.
American Skating Derby, promoting the game as Rollerjam!, formed in 1987 and played a spring season with two teams, the San Francisco Slammers and the Los Angeles Turbos.
Composed of inactive Roller Derby and IRSL skaters, the 1987 ASD was formed primarily as a means to keep the game alive, and the two teams (with the Slammers being essentially replaced by the Bay City Bombers) skated around Northern California communities for high school charities.
In 2000, Daniel Eduardo "Devil Dan" Policarpo, then an Austin, Texas musician, recruited women to skate in what he envisioned would be a raucous, rockabilly, circus-like roller derby spectacle.
[99] A handful of leagues, mostly mixed-gender, have origins in earlier incarnations of the sport and heavily promote themselves as professional due to their history, management, membership, style of play and marketing considerations.
