by Mark Long
In the heyday of women’s wrestling, matches were filled with exciting action, but the top stars were either women with good looks and only passable wrestling skills or rough and tumble performers who were not that much to look at. Until Penny Banner. Banner brought a mixture of sound technical wrestling prowess and the persona of a Hollywood bombshell. A tremendous athlete and natural show woman, she is remembered by many as one of the top female wrestlers in the history of the sport.
Wolfe was impressed with her and after only two weeks, he put her in her first match on July 29, 1954, a tag team victory with Gloria Barattini over Mae Young and Olga Zepeda at the Cloverleaf Sports Arena in Valley View, Ohio. (Other narratives say that her first match was against Kathy Branch using boots borrowed from Ella Waldek). After just a few more matches, she was told that she would be given an opportunity to wrestle for the NWA Women’s World Title against June Byers. Byers was a 10 year veteran, but the newcomer was able to hold her own and last ten minutes against the champion in the match held on October 2, at the Memorial Auditorium in Canton, Ohio.
After a few years of paying Wolfe 40% of her earnings, Banner left his group and moved to Tennessee to work for promoter Nick Gulas. In addition to catching the eye of wrestling fans, she attracted the attention of a famous area celebrity as well – singer Elvis Presley. A mutual friend offered Penny a ticket to see the star on January 1, 1956 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. The tickets were in the nosebleed section forcing Banner to buy a pair of binoculars, but her disappointment disappeared when a group of police officers escorted her from her seat to watch the rest of the concert backstage. After the show, Banner says that she went with Elvis to his hotel, spending the night “necking” with him. Over the next three years, Elvis came to see her wrestle several times and the two went on five dates, including a night at his Graceland mansion. Their romance was unable to overcome his enlistment into the U.S. Army and the two never saw one another again. As she explained in an interview with wrestling journalist Mike Mooneyham “I do not think either of us were serious about having any kind of relationship. Hell, I never even thought of having a picture taken with him. To me, he was just a guy and I was just a girl.”
She found her first real success wrestling for Stu Hart in his Calgary Stampede promotion in Calgary, Alberta. She teamed with Bonnie Watson, and after a successful run, Hart decided to make them the Canadian Women’s tag team champions in 1957, Banner’s first title victory. During this period of career she would specialize in tag team wrestling, holding the NWA Women’s World Tag Team Championship on three occasions, first teaming with Bonnie Watson on August 15, 1956 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, next with Betty Jo Hawkins in 1957 and Lorraine Johnson in 1958. In one of her tag matches (in October 1958), Banner, Lorraine Johnson, Kay Noble, and Laura Martinez fought their way outside of the ring and were charged by police for inciting a riot (all four pled not guilty and their fines were paid by the promoters because of the publicity it provided).
After several years in the business, she began dating Johnny Weaver, a former referee who debuted as a wrestler in 1957. The two were married in St. Louis in 1959, with their reception at the Claridge Hotel, where wrestling promoter Sam Muchnick had an office. Later that year the couple welcomed a daughter named Wendi.
She held the belt until she vacated it on January 1, 1963. She and her husband had moved to Charlotte, North Carolina in 1962 and he decided that they were going to settle down there. Thus, in the midst of the most important run in her career, she was forced to give up her title. Although she defeated Nell Stewart for the NWA Texas Women’s Championship again in 1963, the rest of her career was spent in the vicinity of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Florida, thus limiting her opportunities. Nonetheless, she was still a very popular performer and was able to gain title shots against Moolah, who now reigned over women’s wrestling. The two met 15 times from 1963 through 1973 with the matches ending without a decision twelve times, with Penny winning one non-title match and with Moolah winning twice. Banner claimed that on both occasions Moolah had “cheated” to win by holding the ropes.
Banner had more to complain about with Moolah besides her in-ring tricks. She resented not only Moolah’s stranglehold on the Women’s title belt, but also on the careers of the women who trained under and wrestled for her. Penny stated that Moolah demanded exorbitant fees from the wrestlers and accused her of forcing the women to engage in salacious behavior in order to get bookings.
In a blog post she said that Moolah “sent women to promoters who demanded sex, either with the promoter or his wrestlers… It’s wrong to speak bad of the dead, but the comments in the mainstream press and even A.P. wires come dangerously close to making Moolah seem like some kind of saint, and from a pro wrestling point of view as some kind of legendary tough shooter. That’s utter bullsh*t.”
Penny, known for having a positive and bubbly personality, had other reasons to be upset. For years she had hidden the secret of her failing marriage with Weaver. She said that Weaver was unfaithful for years, sleeping with “ring rats” throughout their marriage. She also implied that he was abusive with her during the marriage, a charge that was whispered in locker rooms across the country. He even affected her wrestling career by insisting that they stay in the Carolinas and that she wrestle as a babyface after years as an established and successful run as a heel. Her predicament wasn’t unique however, as she witnessed many of her fellow female wrestlers suffer abuse at the hands of their wrestler husbands. Her best friend and former tag teammate Betty Jo Hawkins was in an abusive relationship with her husband, wrestler Brute Bernard. Banner recalled to Mooneyham an incident that occurred on the road. “Brute and I once had a big fight at the Avery Hotel in Boston. He slapped Betty Jo, and I jumped his back like a monkey. After that I would only go see Betty Jo when he wasn’t home.”
Her frustration with the various parts of the wrestling industry made her decision to retire from the sport in 1977 an easy one. In a 2004 interview with G.L.O.R.Y. Wrestling, Banner explained that: “There just were no girls to wrestle, and Moolah’s school by that time was blooming, and finally her girls were being sent off to different territories, and I simply had no one to wrestle. I was only wrestling one time a month for several months, and that was not enough. Actually, that is how you can get really hurt, only wrestling once in a while. So I made the decision to retire, and I did. They say you should retire while you are on top, and I did. Billy Wolfe had passed away in ’63, and there was no other school of wrestling, and Moolah didn’t want to book her school of girls against me, because she got no commission from me, only from her girls.”
With women’s wrestling still dear to her heart, she became the commissioner of the Professional Girl Wrestling Association in 1992 and began attending wrestler reunions, reacquainting with old friends and meeting new female wrestlers who admired her career. In 2005, after years of struggling with the ups and downs of her career and personal life, she wrote her autobiography, entitled Banner Days. She claimed that over the last 20 years of her career to have never been pinned clean in the ring, and only to have been pinned at all twice: once by Belle Starr and once by The Fabulous Moolah, both of whom used the ropes for leverage.”
Despite working with PGWA, she was less than impressed with lady wrestlers of the day. Continuing her interview with G.L.O.R.Y. Wrestling, she told Joe Rules that “Today’s exhibition is NOT wrestling. They are comic book scripts, and I do not watch them and their predetermined matches and moves. Granted, they have learned to take bumps, and I did too. They learned the wrestling holds, and I did too. But then we went out and wrestled, and today, the business goes out and “acts”. I really feel for the girls who want to break in the business and have to do what is going on today, instead of really showing their skills at wrestling.” She also was dismayed about the changing role of women in the sport. As women in the 1990’s and beyond were used as eye candy more than as athletes, she recalled to Mooneyham that in her era that she and the other female wrestlers went to great length to sew elastic in their wrestling gear to ensure that the cheeks of their rear ends didn’t hang out. “Now, anything can hang out,” she said with a laugh.
Following a long period of poor health, Penny Banner died on May 12, 2008 in Charlotte, North Carolina at the age of 73.
Sources:
- Mike Mooneyham: Penny Banner Was An Original Diva
- Keep It In The Family Productions: Penny Banner – Icons of Wrestling
- G.L.O.R.Y Wrestling: The Hardest Working Women In Professional Wrestling – Ring legend Penny Banner