If the concept of beautiful, salty-tongued women pounding the hell out of each other were at all uplifting, Ruth Leitman's entertaining documentary Lipstick & Dynamite could be packaged as a shadow version of A League Of Their Own. Like League, Lipstick champions the unsung female athletes who filled a sporting void while the men went off to war, and it also ends in a bittersweet reunion of the now-elderly legends of the game. But Leitman's film deals with the hair-yanking, bone-crunching world of female wrestling, where ruthless promoters netted a 50 percent take, unruly crowds were sometimes separated from the ring by chicken wire, and fighters harbored grudges that continue to this day. There's no room for sentimentality here, not even decades after the "first ladies of wrestling" retired from the ring, and their colorful stories are a testament to either their toughness and resiliency, or their desperation and lunacy, depending on viewers' perspectives.
Though at least two of Leitman's subjects would climb back in the ring if necessary—as they're shown doing on a recent World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) special—she relies on the usual talking heads and archival footage, but gets startling material from both sources. When one wrestler recalls a chilling signature move called the "Byers slap," involving a straight-armed clothesline between the throat and chest, Leitman shows footage of former champ June Byers pulverizing an opponent against the corner post. Poverty and abuse are the common thread connecting most of these women, many of whom survived a rough childhood only to be raped in their teens or beaten by the men in their lives. Though some got their start on the carnival circuit, many later turned to Billy Wolfe, a lecherous promoter who held his performers in a kind of indentured servitude, making "girlfriends" of them and pocketing half the draw.
Among the former competitors, who by and large haven't lost their tenacity, a few particularly fascinating figures emerge: Gladys "Killem" Gillem, whose exploits include lion taming and wrestling alligators; Ella Waldek, whom singer Neko Case recently discovered was her great-aunt; and The Fabulous Moolah, a former star turned pioneering promoter who still appears to have old scores to settle. Since Lipstick & Dynamite leans heavily on individual anecdotes, it's hard to parse out a complete picture of how female wrestling evolved (and devolved) over time, save for a few contemptuous references to the sorry state of the sport today. Yet Leitman gets some wonderful tall tales from her subjects, who open up like they've been waiting for years for someone to come along and ask, and she complements it with punishing footage of their exploits. In some parallel universe, they'd deserve their own wing in the Hall Of Fame.