Capt'n Lou

Lou Albano, famed wrestling manager, music video svengali, part time actor and apparently cartoon voice has passed away. While I enjoyed his forays into early music videos with Cyndi Lauper and with the wrestling spectacles that became big business in the 80s, I remember his earlier work.

As a youth on Saturday afternoons in the 70s in Pittsburgh, I used watch something called "Studio Wrestling" which was like the current WWE in attitude but had less in the way of money so it was mainlygymnastic jumps and kicks and boots in the face/groin, interviews, and the occasional folding chair and "foreign object." I thought it was a local Pittsburgh production - hosted by Bill Cardille (Chilly Billy from WIIC's Chiller Theater and bit part in the original "Night of the Living Dead") with commercial pitches for sponsor American Lumber from former Pgh Pirate and Hall of Famer Pie Traynor ("Who can? Ameri-Can!"). I thought Lou was Pittsburgher (he'd of fit in on my street) but he wasn't.

Captain Lou was mainly a manager of bad guys who, in the way of wrestling, would often wade into the festivities himself. He went out of his way to get the audience and even for wrestling was over the top and went for being dirty and gross. I recall he managed a tag-team of barely human hill people called "the Moondogs"-The shtick was that he treated them like animals- when they did something good in the ring, he's let them lick a big turkey leg or something- very gross. Another time Lou was in a neck brace and a cast on his arm and looked poorly, no doubt from the previous week's activities and in the middle of either a match or an interview, Lazarus-like he flung off his bandages and began beating on his opponent with his now-removed arm cast. I had just had my own cast off for a broken arm and knew how grimy and smelly an old cast could be and Lou's looked like that even on a 13 inch Black and White TV. That and the gum bands (Pgh for rubber band) in his straggly beard. Eww.