December 7, 2021 • 40 mins
The modern Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders launch in 1972 and rocket to national fame. For episode transcripts and bonus content related to the show, visit texasmonthly.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Okay, we are going on an adventure.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Okay, I'm excited. Good.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The woman next to me made history, but you probably
don't know her. We met up recently in a Starbucks
parking lot in Dallas, and we're going to drive to
the site of Texas Stadium.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
And is it depressive? That's what somebody said it might be.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You know what we'll find out? Okay, basically, you know,
we'll go back in time together. Okay, I'm ready to
take this adventure with you.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Okay, this is exciting.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
For a long time, I didn't know this woman either,
but I grew up staring at her on playing cards
and calendars and TV screens alongside other women in various
shades of gorgeous. And I apologize for not having any
music in the car.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I wanted to play What was that song you auditioned to?
Nothing from Nothing? But just say you know I was
thinking of.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Not being from Texas Stadium was a longtime home with
the Dallas Cowboys. It was actually torn down eleven years ago.
These days it looks more like a landfill. The roads
leading there aren't much to look at. I once heard
a theory about Dallas that an absence of any natural beauty.
(01:42):
It was the women who gave people something to see.
Will you tell me who you are in your association
with the Dallas Cowboys.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Yes, my name is Voss sil Baker, and I'm one
of the original seven professional Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
It's hard to imagine looking out at this wasteland. Now
Texas Stadium was unlike any that had come before it.
This is where the Cowboys became America's team.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
So you can imagine how we feel.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
It's been nearly fifty years since Fontile first visited this place.
I was worried about her getting muddies, so I told
her to wear sneakers, but Fancilee isn't a sneaker person.
She came in a crisp white suit and white jazz shoes.
We unfold a couple of chairs and take a seat
facing the blasted out terrain. And so when you look
(02:41):
around at this spot, what do you think about?
Speaker 4 (02:47):
I can feel that I'm at the stadium. I can
feel it. The first time we walked down that tunnel,
all of a sudden we heard noise from the hands.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
And stuff, and we were going like, what's going on?
Speaker 4 (03:02):
What's going on and they're pointing at us and stuff,
and we didn't know that we had introduced something new
to football.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And what they introduced would change how we look at sports.
It would change how we see women on television, and
it would change countless childhoods of boys and girls like me.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I just saw, I saw a deal. I just saw
a funny.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders became America's sweethearts, a very Texas
hybrid pageant beauty, good girl etiquette, and come hither slink.
They brought sex and glamour into the gladiator arena of
modern sports. They launched a wave of imitations across the NFL.
Dallas became synonymous with their look, the big hair, the razzle, dazzle.
(04:02):
It's a blueprint for beauty that's practically branded on my brain.
The chances are it's branded on yours too, whether you
know it or not. But despite their fifty years as
a global phenomenon, despite being endlessly photographed, televised, commercialized, what's
always been missing from the story of the Dallas Cowboys
cheerleaders is the voices of the cheerleaders themselves. It's about
(04:25):
time we change that.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
What the Cowboys gave me.
Speaker 6 (04:30):
Nothing in my life will ever compare to that time.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
Nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So then where does the uniform come from?
Speaker 7 (04:36):
Well, it really came from my imagination.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
What words come to mind when you think of the cheerleaders.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Boobs, skin, flesh, sex, hair, big hair.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
It's not just about being beautiful or just about having
a rock hard body.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It's about, you know, being smart.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And so I went on a search to understand this
legacy and all all its complications. I saw their story
as part of an ongoing battle over women's bodies, over
women's behavior, over who and what determines our value.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
It bothered me that I was supposed to sexualize myself
on game days and not allowed to any other days.
Speaker 8 (05:19):
There was an awkwardness because I'm seeing my friends in
Playboy magazine.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
They're both major lawsuits for the Cowboys, and they change
the culture of being a cheerleader.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Whatever you're doing, you're multitasking.
Speaker 8 (05:31):
You have so many things to do, and then they're
asking you to do this five nights a week and
not pay you for it.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Over the course of this series, you'll hear those voices
as they navigate all that came after that first time
they burst onto the field. This is a saga of
high kicks and scandal and cleavage and controversy. I'm Sarah
Heppola from Texas Monthly. This is America's Girls, Episode one,
(06:01):
the Rise to Fame. I was five when I fell
in love with the cheerleaders. The Dallas of my youth
was plastered with their pin ups, and over the years,
I've wondered how those images shaped me, how they warped me. Today,
the flashy spectacle they pioneered is changing as sports franchises
(06:25):
get more modest costumes and add men to their squads
or fold their cheerleaders entirely. But the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders
haven't just survived, They've expanded their reach with a hit
reality show whose fans around the world may never even
watch a football game. The cheerleaders have been around so long,
they've been part of the culture for as long as
(06:46):
most of us can remember. It's easy to forget there
was a time when they didn't exist, But of course
there was a time. In their early seventies, Dallas, Texas
was a swinging place.
Speaker 9 (07:00):
Dallas became the most glamorous city between either coasts since Chicago.
In the early twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
This is Joe Nick Patowski, a Texas writer whose book
about the Cowboys was so good I couldn't put it down.
And I don't even like football. The book brought the
contradictions of Dallas to life in a way I'd never
seen them before.
Speaker 9 (07:21):
It's pretty much a southern city, very upright. Was one
of the last segregated cities in the United States, and
yet there's always been this underbelly.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
This is a place of churches and strip clubs. The
country's first porn star, a stripper named Candy Bar, made
her name in Dallas. But it also has some of
the largest Baptist churches in America. There's a thick evangelical streak,
but also an outlaws spirit. And by the early seventies,
the Bible belt was loosening up in Dallas, and.
Speaker 9 (07:54):
You know, it was things like the Garden Apartment. There
were dozens of these new plays apartments where young singles
could live and not only live, but party and have
a good time.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
The city had just legalized selling liquor by the drink.
People flocked to these new bars like TGI Fridays, which
was actually a really cool place back then. This wasn't
too long after Kennedy was shot in Dallas, but there
was a new energy in the town, trying to shake
its reputation as the city of hate. There were steward
As colleges for American and brannaff Airlines filled with young, ambitious,
(08:30):
beautiful women. And then the upstart Southwest Airlines whose flight
attendants hit the skies in nineteen seventy one, and orange
hot pants and Go Go boots.
Speaker 9 (08:41):
And that's where all of a sudden, it was post assassination.
People are talking about Dallas in a very different way,
and especially for the south of the Midwest, no city
was comparable. Of course, no city had the Dallas Cowboys.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
The Dallas Cowboys gave the city a new identity, glamorous
team and by the early seventies, a winning team, and
a lot of that was thanks to their general manager,
a guy named Tex Shram.
Speaker 9 (09:10):
Tech Shram was a visionary, and part of it was
that he came to the Cowboys direct from television.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Tech Shram had worked at CBS Sports and he was
always looking for ways to innovate, to make the game
more of a show. Instant replay, a referee with a microphone,
that was all tech Shram.
Speaker 9 (09:29):
It was little nuances like that, and of course these
were things that obsessed this guy, and.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
No one else was doing.
Speaker 9 (09:36):
This in sports. So it's very important to acknowledge that
this gentleman saw the future of professional sports on television,
and specifically the future of the National Football League on television.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
There was one big problem with turning a football game
into a television show. Every action patch play was followed
by long stretches where nothing happened. What were the fans
supposed to watch during all that downtime?
Speaker 9 (10:04):
When the Cowboys came into being in nineteen sixty, cheerleading
was kind of a quaint little linee from the sideline
that was borrowed from colleges.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
The Baltimore Colts had the first professional cheer squad in
nineteen fifty four, but it was a straight laced collegiate type.
For the first decade the Cowboys were around, they had
something similar, local high schoolers and pleated skirts and button
downs trying to lead the crowd and cheers.
Speaker 9 (10:31):
You know, it was nice, it gave the high school
kids something to do, but this was a second thought,
an afterthought, and frankly, nobody gave a shit about it.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
But in nineteen seventy two, right on the heels of
winning a Super Bowl, and after they move into their
new stadium, the cheerleaders introduce a bold new book.
Speaker 9 (10:52):
And gone are the pleated skirts and the sweaters that
we identify with cheerleaders, and instead the outfit for the
Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are haltertops, No one's halter tops, white
hot pants, and go go boots. That's what walked out
(11:13):
on the field in nineteen seventy two, A whole new
kind of cheerleader, and it was electric.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Vontiale Baker, who I met in that Starbucks parking lot,
was the first cheerleader to ever try on that uniform.
She was raised by a single mother in South Dallas
who started the city's first licensed black daycare. Vontelle shared
a bedroom with her sister, and some days she'd sneak
out to the park to practice dancing.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
What songs would you owe dance to when you were
growing up?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
A lot of Jays Brown and a lot of Rolling Stones.
I love Mick Jagger at one time I wanted his lips.
Not anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
But she tried out for cheerleader at her all black
high school but didn't make it. Why do you think
you didn't make cheerleader in high school?
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Well, I'm going to tell you what was told to me.
That I was too skinny and just not attractive enough.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
She went to Texas Lutheran University, where she tried out again,
and this time she made the team. She was the
first black cheerleader in the school's history. And then, at
twenty years old, back in Dallas and studying at Fashion College,
she hears a radio spot for an audition for the
Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
All we knew was to come there with a two
minute routine. That's all they told us.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
She and a hundred other hopefuls crowd into the Cowboys
headquarters off Dallas's Central Expressway. Many of these girls have
pageant backgrounds and ballet experience and years of dancing on
drill teams. Vonceille has none of that.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
So I just put some of my little Jane Brown
steps in it and just and I'll never forget.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
I saw TEXTI over there, and she just.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Laugh She's talking about Texi Waterman, the choreographer for the cheerleaders,
who's running those auditions with the cheerleaders director d Brock.
They're looking for talent and beauty, but also a certain spark.
Fonzille left thinking she didn't make it, but then she
gets a letter marked special delivery.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Yes, came to the house, and you know, I was
scared to open it, and my brother said I'll open it,
and I thought it was gonna say thank you for
trying out.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
But instead it says she made it. The squad von
Seale made was something of an experiment. The idea was
that these cheerleaders wouldn't actually cheer, they'd be dancers, and
nothing announced the change like their new uniform. Vonzille saw
it for the first time when she went in for
her fitting. Can you tell me about the day that
(13:55):
you went and tried that on for the first time.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Oh, then that's a moment I will never forget in
my life.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
A few weeks before their debut, Vonziale takes a bus
to a clothing store called Lester Melnick. She's so worried
about being late, she shows up three hours early, well
before anyone else, and that's when she sees it. The
royal blue halter top that ties at the ribcage, the
white fringed vest with blue stars, the white hot pants.
(14:24):
This is when she steps into history. She becomes the
first cheerleader to ever put it on. And what did
you think when you saw it?
Speaker 5 (14:33):
I just went, where is the stuff? Go?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Go in there?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Those uniforms would become legendary and also a lot smaller.
But at the time Vanzille doesn't see it as a
big deal. She figures it's kind of like a bikini.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
It just felt so good, and I was walking up
clouding that all day when I went home.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
And like that, she's off. There were seven of them
on the squad that year, Carrie O'Brien, Dixie Smith, Anna Carpenter,
Dina Void, Nichols, Dolores Makaida and Rosie Hall, whose sister
Jerry Hall would become an eighties supermodel. And from the
moment they run onto the field on August fifth, nineteen
(15:19):
seventy two, Dallas fans are paying.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Attention because it was something nobody had seen. The Texas
Stadium held sixty five thousand people, and I would say
at least we saw about twenty thousands. Hey, stand up
and go what is that?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
The stark contrast of all that female flesh against the
backdrop of men in helmets and shoulder pads. It was
hard to miss out on the field, got these players
smashing into each other. And over here seven women in
crop tops and bear midriffs dancing to the stripper. They
actually danced to this song at their first game.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Actually, we didn't see ourselves as sexy. Out of the
seven of us, I've never heard anybody talk about being sexy.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
We didn't know any of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
This year, in nineteen seventy two is a moment when
feminism and the sexual revolution are pulling women in different directions.
It's the year Title nine opens the door for girls
in sports. It's the year Deep Throat introduces porn to
the American mainstream.
Speaker 8 (16:30):
Roe v.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Wade, which also began in Dallas, was being argued before
the Supreme Court. And into this moment arrived seven scantily
clad cheerleaders with big smiles. And if the cheerleaders didn't
see themselves as hot and sexy, maybe that's not so surprising.
Hot and sexy weren't words thrown around by young women
back then. The cheerleaders would be part of what changed
(16:54):
that more after this. In these early years, it wasn't
so glamorous. The dressing room was so cramped. They put
on makeup at home. They were hearsed after work in
a hot studio without air conditioning, and there were rules
(17:16):
no dating players, no chewing gum, no smoking on the
football field. But von Siel says she would have done
it for free. And she almost did. You want to
tell you want to tell me how much you made
per game?
Speaker 4 (17:31):
We made fifteen dollars a game. It was fourteen to
twelve at the taxes.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
What did you think of that? At the time, I
didn't even think about it.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
I just went, well, that'll give me back then, it'll
fill up my tank, you know, and buy me a slurpee.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
That's all I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
The whole enterprise was designed as a hobby. The cheerleaders
were expected to have jobs or be enrolled in college.
That was the deal. But they became so popular fans
started to complaining they didn't get enough of them.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
There's a whole stadium, there's sixty five thousand people, and
they're going like, we want them to dance in front
of us too.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
We need them on this side.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
So the squad grew the next year fifteen, the year
after that, twenty one, eventually rising to thirty six. And
when I look at these early photos of the squad.
What strikes me are the fresh faces and natural afros
and baretts, more of a casual sweetness than the gloss
and polish that would come to define the look. Later,
(18:34):
they'd have regular weigh ins and even stricter codes of conduct.
These are the pre glam years. This was not yet
a well oiled machine. These were amateur dancers, and the
high kicks were a little messy. But out on the
field innovation was happening. The cheerleaders introduced a free wheeling
(18:55):
style that hadn't been seen in professional sports, and that
was thanks to one woman in particular, who developed their routines.
Speaker 7 (19:03):
All right, girls, now, as all of you know the rules.
Speaker 10 (19:06):
You cannot miss a rehearsal unless there is a very
very good excuse.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Texi Waterman. She was pretty much the musical theater and
jazz teacher in Dallas. We're so accustomed to grand spectacle
in a stadium that it's easy to forget it didn't
exist once someone had to invent them. Texi died in
nineteen ninety six, but here she is in a nineteen
seventy nine documentary about the cheerleaders called a Great Bunch
(19:35):
of Girls.
Speaker 10 (19:36):
People have told me that I have a distinctive style
in dancing. Actually my style is more of your New
York jazz dancer, you know.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I see a few clear influences on what the cheerleaders
were doing. The Rockets brought kick lines to Radio City
in nineteen twenty five, and the Kilgore Rangeretts the drill
team in East Texas. They brought precision high kicks to
sports in nineteen forty. But it was Taxi who brought
theatrical dance moves into the stadium. When the Cowboys first
(20:06):
approached her for the gig, she told them they were crazy.
You can't dance like that on a football field. There's
no illusion stage lighting. But she went for it anyway
and brought Broadway to the AstroTurf. Here's Tammy Barber, one
of the cheerleaders from those early years, and she.
Speaker 6 (20:25):
Was so innovative in our choreography and picture somebody who
has the vision of what thirty six girls are going
to look like on a football field, but yet she's
putting together a Broadway show.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Texi was like a character off of Broadway too, and
she brought that Bob Fosse energy to her studio in
East Dallas. Here's one seal again.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Texi Waterman is an angel dancing on air. I don't
know any other way.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
To put it.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
The first time I saw this red hair, I'm the
red hair in this unbelievable little body. She could smoke, talk, smoke,
dance and yeah, okay, girls, I'm ready for y'all five six, seven,
eight of me.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
It was hilarious.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Vancilla loved watching Texi dance so much she'd trick her
into showing off.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
We will sit there, and when she would show us
what to do, she say, I'm just mocking it, so
y'all can catch y'all and we'll say, Texi, we're not
really getting it, just to get a little dance for us.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Texi was the daughter of a Dallas dance instructor. She
followed her dreamed in New York in her twenties, where
she had gigs at lavish nightclubs like the Versailles and
the Copacabana. She danced on Sid Caesar's TV variety show
in the fifties, but by the early seventies she'd let
go of that dream and was back in Dallas working
with her mom in that dance studio. But she brought
(21:57):
a little razzle dazzle back with her her. Texi made
everything big, big steps, enormous pom poms the size of
shaggy dogs. Today, cheerleading has become such a slick operation,
all that hair flicking to stadium anthems, But the early
songs the cheerleaders danced to were often much slower Delta
(22:20):
Dawn and Son of a Preacher Man.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Because she wanted you to see the movement, not so
much as just bump bump, grind and stuff. She wanted
the feet, the arms, She wanted the whole picture.
Speaker 10 (22:35):
Oh one, two, three, four, kickball, tang, pivot and tang.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
But most people never got to see that whole picture
because there was this other innovation happening at the same time,
Monday Night Football. It launched in nineteen seventy and transformed
how Americans experienced sports. The TV cameras took Texi's grand
vision and shrank it down for a small screen with
close ups that were unimaginable from stadium bleachers. And there's
(23:07):
this one particular broadcast that rockets the cheerleaders to fame,
but also changes the way they're scene. According to the
Cowboys' own history. This is the moment when the country
discovered the cheerleaders. They say it happened the nineteen seventy
six Super Bowl, and this version of the story has stuck.
I've read it in so many newspapers and magazines and
(23:30):
websites about the cheerleaders. But it's actually a few months earlier,
at a Monday night game against the Kansas City Chiefs
on November tenth, nineteen seventy five. And the Cowboys cheerleaders
have become a big part of the show. Remember, nobody
else in the NFL has cheerleaders like this.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
The cameraman were more on us on the field, but
they followed us, I mean, like doing breaks and stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Vonzille says she never paid much attention to the cameraman.
But then there's this moment near the end of the
third quarter. The camera settles on this one cheerleader, a
beauty pageant girl next door type named Gwenda swearingin.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Gwendolen yes, Gwendolu with the blue eye shallow that yes,
I remember.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
She was so cute. She had the Pharaoh Fawcett hair.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
You know, it's her second year on squad. She's shaking
her palm palms, overhead, hair cascading down those shoulders when
she looks into the camera and winks. The commentators, Howard
Cosell and Frank Gifford don't miss it.
Speaker 11 (24:43):
The third A clean dog game. I think she was
doing that to you, O fright? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Did you like that, Frank?
Speaker 9 (24:52):
I did like that little week.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
KOI but flirtatious, the perfect tease. One beautiful woman shining
her light on every viewer and their living room recliner.
Here's how the Cowboys tell this story. Quote it probably
never occurred to her that she was on national television,
and American viewers, they said, didn't take their eyes off
(25:18):
what they saw. According to this version of history, the
Cowboys phone started ringing off the hook overnight. Everyone wanted
a piece of the cheerleaders. They call this moment the wink,
and it's an amazing story to explain the cheerleaders meteoric
rise over the next few years. But like a lot
(25:41):
of amazing stories, something about it isn't quite right. I've
watched that game on YouTube, and what strikes me more
than the wink moment is how the commentators talk about
the cheerleaders like your awkward uncle at a teenage pool party.
Announcer Alex Karis, he's a cheerleader taking a drink on
the sidelines and says, do.
Speaker 8 (26:01):
You like that?
Speaker 10 (26:02):
Popful girl?
Speaker 12 (26:04):
Pearson will probably come back and have a word.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
With Roger because it's too easy to judge the past
by present standards. But I want to stay here for
a moment because these sorts of cutaways of the cheerleaders,
which many of the women likely never saw. By the way,
since there's no Internet, no vhs at the time, they
introduced a chummy and guilt free voyeurism into the American
home that I grew up with and never really questioned.
(26:29):
Near the end of the game, you see Gwenda yet again,
shaking her palm pomps. Even the commentators are getting exasperated
by the frequent cutaways. Frank Gifford asked to get her
off the.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Screen man every camera we have in the stadium, as.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
If she was the one seeking out that camera and
not the other way around. I talked with another cheerleader,
Shannon Baker Worthman, about this game. She wasn't there that day.
She joined the squad the following year, but she remembers
what it was like to square off with those cameramen.
Speaker 8 (27:04):
Oh could I see them?
Speaker 5 (27:07):
You know?
Speaker 8 (27:07):
And then they in your face, in your everything else
and coming up and saying we're getting ready to go
to break, can't Can you give me one of these
pom poms and say I love you? No, I can't.
Oh yeah, they were. They were very bold and in
(27:29):
your face.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
And that makes me wonder if Gwendolen was told to
do that.
Speaker 8 (27:34):
Wink, probably, Oh, I would say ninety nine point nine percent.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yes, I wasn't the only one who found the wink
myth a bit suspicious.
Speaker 11 (27:46):
This is sort of portrayed in cowboys lore as this
sort of this improvised moment where swearing just so happened,
the wink of the cameras.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
This is Frank Andre Garriddy, a professor of history in
African American Studies at Columbia University, who wrote about this
moment in his book The Sports Revolution about how Texas
sports changed American culture.
Speaker 11 (28:07):
But then when you start looking deeper into the history
of televised sports, you know that that whole moment was
orchestrated by ABC Sports, and they were accustomed by the
nineteen seventies to orchestrate in what was called the honey shot.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Honey shots. That's a term coined by Andy Sedaris, one
of the producers for Monday Night Football, who took credit
for this idea in a nineteen seventy six documentary called
Seconds to Play.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
How'd you get the idea for honeyshoks?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
I got the idea for honey shots because I.
Speaker 12 (28:37):
Have a dirty old man.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
In this video, he's standing in a control room puffing
on a cigarette, remembering his college days when he'd watch
the women at smu Okay.
Speaker 9 (28:46):
Because I turned seventeen, I remember I was terrifying.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Every time I look at a girl, I just tumble.
Speaker 7 (28:52):
And I thought, if I like that, maybe other people
are like that.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
And you know what they are for sure as they are.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
But whether it's the America falling in love with the cheerleaders,
or male viewers ogling the girls who scared them in
high school, or both of these at once, this massive
exposure ramps up the cheerleader's profile. In nineteen seventy six,
the cheerleaders hold their tryouts at Texas Stadium. They bring
in local radio and news to make it an event.
Speaker 13 (29:21):
This is the first year of the Cowboys have held
open cheerleader tryouts. The girls will only be paid fifteen
dollars per game, but they don't appear interested in the money.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
I love to dance, and Jefferan, I love football mostly.
Speaker 13 (29:34):
And just what does it take to become a cheerleader?
The Cowboys director of choreography explains.
Speaker 7 (29:39):
We're looking for an all American sexy girl.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
This is Texi Waterman again, and I love the way
she leans into that word sexy, a word you didn't
hear Texas women say that much in nineteen seventy six.
But I can't help noticing the tight rope of that phrase,
to be wholesome but also sexy, to be old fashioned
and liberated at once.
Speaker 7 (30:04):
The one that has a very good background, a nice proportion, baddie,
one that has a very good personality as far as
representing the Cowboys and Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 10 (30:15):
Really.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
One of those hopefuls was Shannon Baker Worthman. She once
danced with the Bolshoi Ballet as a little girl, but
she was headed to SMU in the fall. She remembers
being told to show up in hot pants and a
crop top.
Speaker 8 (30:29):
They asked me what my name was, and I wrote
Helen Shannon Baker, and they go Helen and I said, well,
I go by Shannon, and they said that's better. Like
I was being tested on the image of my name.
Speaker 7 (30:43):
Right away, two.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Hundred and fifty women apply to be part of the squad.
The next year, more than six hundred. Suddenly, this little
experiment has exploded into something nobody could anticipate. Of course,
not everyone loved the cheerleaders. Coach Tom Landry was a
devout Christian and was not a fan, nor was his wife,
(31:04):
Alicia Lawrence Herkimer, who cheered at SMU and is remembered
as the father of modern cheerleading, the guy who invented
the Herkuy jump and the pom pom. He called them
a t and a squad. Some newspapers that printed photos
of the cheerleaders got complaints and landers. The advice columnist
called the cheerleaders the last gasps of a dying civilization.
(31:28):
It's a debate that gets repeated and repeated over the decades.
Were those pretty dancing girls elevating the sport or ruining it?
Were they powerful performers or degraded sex objects? But dances sexual,
There's no way around it. It's one of the reasons
dance gets banned in conservative places. You know, the town
(31:49):
that inspired the movie Footloose is a couple hours north
of Dallas, and I think this is part of what
TEXI was pushing back against with some of those body
or numbers like Dance to the Stripper in their first season.
She was trying to loosen the corset and a part
of the Bible belt where it was pretty tight. That's
what I always hear about Texi. She was fun loving
and she wanted other people to take everything a little
(32:11):
less seriously. But whatever hip swiveling moves these women performed
could be too easily reduced to words like sex object,
vulgar offensive. Here's Texi again in that nineteen seventy nine documentary.
Speaker 10 (32:26):
We have had very bad press at times as far
as the bumps and grind.
Speaker 7 (32:31):
Well, actually, there's.
Speaker 10 (32:32):
Not one bump, not one grind in anything that we do.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
There's this incredible moment I heard about in nineteen seventy seven.
The owner and coaches wives Anne Murkison and Alicia Landry,
have an idea to put the genie back in the bottle.
At this one game, the cheerleaders run onto the field
wearing modesty shields, basically a triangle of fabric that covers
up their cleavage. The crowd booze, and the shields are
(32:59):
gone by halftime. By now, people are in love with
the cheerleaders and what they've introduced can't be walked back.
In October nineteen seventy seven, the cheerleaders land their first
cover story in Esquire magazine. The headline says, the Dallas
Cowgirls the best thing about the Dallas Cowboys. Okay, so
(33:22):
they got the name of the squad wrong, but the
point is the cheerleaders are becoming more popular than the
football team. The photographer who shot that Esquire magazine spread
is a guy named Bob Shaw, who had a studio
in Dallas. The photos turn out so well tech Shram
asks them to do another shoot, this time for the
(33:42):
Cowboys to sell. Here's Bob, I'd lost you.
Speaker 12 (33:48):
Let me come up with an idea.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Tex wants a pin up like the picture of Farah
Fawcett in a red swimsuit. It was on its way
to becoming the best selling poster of all time.
Speaker 12 (33:59):
He asked, could you do that? And I said, set
me loose.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
So Bob sketches a backdrop with a neon shooting star,
and in his cramp studio he sets up Christmas lights
and a smoke machine. It's a fantasy skate with glamazons
emerging from the fog, borrowing a little inspiration from the
big movie of the summer, George Licas.
Speaker 12 (34:22):
George Lucas had just released Star Wars, and I gave
the cowboys atmosphere and lightsabers.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
They spent hours taking different shots, and the one that
hits is a triangle formation of five cheerleaders with a
sultry eyed brunette Susie Holo front and center with a
right leg cacked to the sun.
Speaker 12 (34:44):
The temperature rose. It was and it wasn't from anything
other than okay, you know, we're getting ready to shoot, ladies,
look here, look into the camera, and you know at
one point Susie moved her foot and did that foot thing,
and the result of it was Tex shram leaning over
that transparency saying, damn, I is that ain't to come hither?
Speaker 5 (35:08):
Or look I say that?
Speaker 12 (35:11):
Yeah, I think she'd say that, missus same.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
The poster sells about a million copies. It becomes a
top seller of nineteen seventy seven and turns the Dallas
Cowboys cheerleaders into the country's hottest new pinups. By the
fall of nineteen seventy eight, twenty two teams in the
NFL have added sexy sideline dancers. That year, Sports Illustrated
(35:36):
runs a story on what it calls the Great Cheerleading War.
The writer Bruce Newman says, the only thing anybody talks
about anymore is s X and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
Speaker 6 (35:49):
All of a sudden, you know, the television appearance has started,
and people came to us to film things.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Tammy had grown up in a small town in Nebraska,
and now she's part of this whole other world.
Speaker 6 (36:03):
We did Jared Lewis telethons in Las Vegas, and I
got to see Johnny Carson and Frank Sinatra and Dion Warwick.
I mean, I was the fan at that point.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Ready for Johnny.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
All these appearances are being coordinated by the cheerleader's new director,
a woman named Suzanne.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Mitchells, and the cheerleaders who.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Pulls them off the sidelines and brings them into center stage.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Let's start the Dallas.
Speaker 6 (36:32):
Cowboys Family bed Special.
Speaker 13 (36:36):
We Dallas Cheerleaders are telling our brands about super rich
Baberge Ergantic shampoo, who cheerweeds are.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Oil and honey.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Meanwhile, the Cowboys merchandising arm starts cranking playing cards, calendars,
more posters, blanketing childhood bedrooms and lockers. In May nineteen
seventy eight, the cheerleaders land their first big non sports
television moment on the Osmond's Variety show.
Speaker 13 (37:02):
Dot Bob Hope, Crystal Gail, Andy Gibb, Jimmy Walker, and
the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
That September, they kick off the fall football season with
their own ABC special. It's called the thirty six Most
Beautiful Girls in Texas. It's a series of fantasy sequences
about how amazing it is to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
You see them riding a roller coaster and swimming like
mermaids in a pool. Nineteen seventy eight is also the
(37:34):
year a show about a scheming oil man named j R.
Ewing Lands and the Zeitgeist. Jo Nick Potowski says in
his book that the show's creator, David Jacobs, had never
been to Dallas when he came up with the idea.
He only knew the Cowboys and the Dallas The Cowboys cheerleaders.
(37:56):
The cheerleaders had created a Hollywood fairy tale smack dab
in north central Texas, a new formula for status and prestige,
where a girl from any small town could step into
the spotlight and who knows where it might take her.
This was the world I grew up in and where
I first fell in love with those cheerleaders. Back then,
(38:16):
you used to hear people say every girl wants to
grow up and be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. It was
my fantasy too, But no fantasy comes without shadow sides.
And over the decades, as I wrestled with my own body,
I wondered about the lessons I have sorbed about image
and worth and who gets to perform, and the reality
(38:41):
of being of a loved Dallas Cowboys cheerleader wouldn't come
without its shadow side either. They'd shot to the top,
but dealing with this overnight celebrity that would be another
battle entirely. Next time, on America's Girls.
Speaker 6 (38:59):
We were running for our lives because these people were
grabbing at us. And it was a transition of oh
my gosh, this is so cool. I really love it,
and I love everything we're doing too, What's happening? What
is really happening?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
I just saw a I I just saw funny.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You can read more about the stories in this episode
than Joe nick Kotowski's book on the Cowboys, The Dallas Cowboys,
The Outrageous History of the Biggest, loudest, most hated, best
Loved football team in America, and Frank Andre Griddy's book
The Sports Revolution, How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics.
Thanks to the UCLA Film and Television Archive. For audio
(39:52):
from the documentary A Great Bunch of Girls, directed by
Maryann Braback and Tracy Tinny. For a transcript of this episode,
visit Texasmonthly dot com slash America's Girls. America's Girls is
a Texas Monthly production. I'm your host, writer and reporter
Sarah Heffalo. Executive producer is Megan Kriiche, produced and edited
(40:13):
by Patrick Michaels and edited by JK. Nichol, Produced and
engineered by Brian Standford, who also wrote the music. Additional
research and audio editing by podcast intern Harpercarlton. America's Girls
art is by Emily Kimbrow and Victoria Milner, and marketing
by Tory mohe. Our theme song is Enough by the
bra Letts. If you like the show, please subscribe and
(40:37):
visit our page at Apple Podcasts and rate the show there.
See you next week.
Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Okay, we are going on an adventure.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Okay, I'm excited. Good.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The woman next to me made history, but you probably
don't know her. We met up recently in a Starbucks
parking lot in Dallas, and we're going to drive to
the site of Texas Stadium.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
And is it depressive? That's what somebody said it might be.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You know what we'll find out? Okay, basically, you know,
we'll go back in time together. Okay, I'm ready to
take this adventure with you.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Okay, this is exciting.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
For a long time, I didn't know this woman either,
but I grew up staring at her on playing cards
and calendars and TV screens alongside other women in various
shades of gorgeous. And I apologize for not having any
music in the car.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I wanted to play What was that song you auditioned to?
Nothing from Nothing? But just say you know I was
thinking of.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Not being from Texas Stadium was a longtime home with
the Dallas Cowboys. It was actually torn down eleven years ago.
These days it looks more like a landfill. The roads
leading there aren't much to look at. I once heard
a theory about Dallas that an absence of any natural beauty.
(01:42):
It was the women who gave people something to see.
Will you tell me who you are in your association
with the Dallas Cowboys.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Yes, my name is Voss sil Baker, and I'm one
of the original seven professional Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
It's hard to imagine looking out at this wasteland. Now
Texas Stadium was unlike any that had come before it.
This is where the Cowboys became America's team.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
So you can imagine how we feel.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
It's been nearly fifty years since Fontile first visited this place.
I was worried about her getting muddies, so I told
her to wear sneakers, but Fancilee isn't a sneaker person.
She came in a crisp white suit and white jazz shoes.
We unfold a couple of chairs and take a seat
facing the blasted out terrain. And so when you look
(02:41):
around at this spot, what do you think about?
Speaker 4 (02:47):
I can feel that I'm at the stadium. I can
feel it. The first time we walked down that tunnel,
all of a sudden we heard noise from the hands.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
And stuff, and we were going like, what's going on?
Speaker 4 (03:02):
What's going on and they're pointing at us and stuff,
and we didn't know that we had introduced something new
to football.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And what they introduced would change how we look at sports.
It would change how we see women on television, and
it would change countless childhoods of boys and girls like me.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I just saw, I saw a deal. I just saw
a funny.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders became America's sweethearts, a very Texas
hybrid pageant beauty, good girl etiquette, and come hither slink.
They brought sex and glamour into the gladiator arena of
modern sports. They launched a wave of imitations across the NFL.
Dallas became synonymous with their look, the big hair, the razzle, dazzle.
(04:02):
It's a blueprint for beauty that's practically branded on my brain.
The chances are it's branded on yours too, whether you
know it or not. But despite their fifty years as
a global phenomenon, despite being endlessly photographed, televised, commercialized, what's
always been missing from the story of the Dallas Cowboys
cheerleaders is the voices of the cheerleaders themselves. It's about
(04:25):
time we change that.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
What the Cowboys gave me.
Speaker 6 (04:30):
Nothing in my life will ever compare to that time.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
Nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So then where does the uniform come from?
Speaker 7 (04:36):
Well, it really came from my imagination.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
What words come to mind when you think of the cheerleaders.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Boobs, skin, flesh, sex, hair, big hair.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
It's not just about being beautiful or just about having
a rock hard body.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It's about, you know, being smart.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And so I went on a search to understand this
legacy and all all its complications. I saw their story
as part of an ongoing battle over women's bodies, over
women's behavior, over who and what determines our value.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
It bothered me that I was supposed to sexualize myself
on game days and not allowed to any other days.
Speaker 8 (05:19):
There was an awkwardness because I'm seeing my friends in
Playboy magazine.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
They're both major lawsuits for the Cowboys, and they change
the culture of being a cheerleader.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Whatever you're doing, you're multitasking.
Speaker 8 (05:31):
You have so many things to do, and then they're
asking you to do this five nights a week and
not pay you for it.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Over the course of this series, you'll hear those voices
as they navigate all that came after that first time
they burst onto the field. This is a saga of
high kicks and scandal and cleavage and controversy. I'm Sarah
Heppola from Texas Monthly. This is America's Girls, Episode one,
(06:01):
the Rise to Fame. I was five when I fell
in love with the cheerleaders. The Dallas of my youth
was plastered with their pin ups, and over the years,
I've wondered how those images shaped me, how they warped me. Today,
the flashy spectacle they pioneered is changing as sports franchises
(06:25):
get more modest costumes and add men to their squads
or fold their cheerleaders entirely. But the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders
haven't just survived, They've expanded their reach with a hit
reality show whose fans around the world may never even
watch a football game. The cheerleaders have been around so long,
they've been part of the culture for as long as
(06:46):
most of us can remember. It's easy to forget there
was a time when they didn't exist, But of course
there was a time. In their early seventies, Dallas, Texas
was a swinging place.
Speaker 9 (07:00):
Dallas became the most glamorous city between either coasts since Chicago.
In the early twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
This is Joe Nick Patowski, a Texas writer whose book
about the Cowboys was so good I couldn't put it down.
And I don't even like football. The book brought the
contradictions of Dallas to life in a way I'd never
seen them before.
Speaker 9 (07:21):
It's pretty much a southern city, very upright. Was one
of the last segregated cities in the United States, and
yet there's always been this underbelly.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
This is a place of churches and strip clubs. The
country's first porn star, a stripper named Candy Bar, made
her name in Dallas. But it also has some of
the largest Baptist churches in America. There's a thick evangelical streak,
but also an outlaws spirit. And by the early seventies,
the Bible belt was loosening up in Dallas, and.
Speaker 9 (07:54):
You know, it was things like the Garden Apartment. There
were dozens of these new plays apartments where young singles
could live and not only live, but party and have
a good time.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
The city had just legalized selling liquor by the drink.
People flocked to these new bars like TGI Fridays, which
was actually a really cool place back then. This wasn't
too long after Kennedy was shot in Dallas, but there
was a new energy in the town, trying to shake
its reputation as the city of hate. There were steward
As colleges for American and brannaff Airlines filled with young, ambitious,
(08:30):
beautiful women. And then the upstart Southwest Airlines whose flight
attendants hit the skies in nineteen seventy one, and orange
hot pants and Go Go boots.
Speaker 9 (08:41):
And that's where all of a sudden, it was post assassination.
People are talking about Dallas in a very different way,
and especially for the south of the Midwest, no city
was comparable. Of course, no city had the Dallas Cowboys.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
The Dallas Cowboys gave the city a new identity, glamorous
team and by the early seventies, a winning team, and
a lot of that was thanks to their general manager,
a guy named Tex Shram.
Speaker 9 (09:10):
Tech Shram was a visionary, and part of it was
that he came to the Cowboys direct from television.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Tech Shram had worked at CBS Sports and he was
always looking for ways to innovate, to make the game
more of a show. Instant replay, a referee with a microphone,
that was all tech Shram.
Speaker 9 (09:29):
It was little nuances like that, and of course these
were things that obsessed this guy, and.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
No one else was doing.
Speaker 9 (09:36):
This in sports. So it's very important to acknowledge that
this gentleman saw the future of professional sports on television,
and specifically the future of the National Football League on television.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
There was one big problem with turning a football game
into a television show. Every action patch play was followed
by long stretches where nothing happened. What were the fans
supposed to watch during all that downtime?
Speaker 9 (10:04):
When the Cowboys came into being in nineteen sixty, cheerleading
was kind of a quaint little linee from the sideline
that was borrowed from colleges.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
The Baltimore Colts had the first professional cheer squad in
nineteen fifty four, but it was a straight laced collegiate type.
For the first decade the Cowboys were around, they had
something similar, local high schoolers and pleated skirts and button
downs trying to lead the crowd and cheers.
Speaker 9 (10:31):
You know, it was nice, it gave the high school
kids something to do, but this was a second thought,
an afterthought, and frankly, nobody gave a shit about it.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
But in nineteen seventy two, right on the heels of
winning a Super Bowl, and after they move into their
new stadium, the cheerleaders introduce a bold new book.
Speaker 9 (10:52):
And gone are the pleated skirts and the sweaters that
we identify with cheerleaders, and instead the outfit for the
Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are haltertops, No one's halter tops, white
hot pants, and go go boots. That's what walked out
(11:13):
on the field in nineteen seventy two, A whole new
kind of cheerleader, and it was electric.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Vontiale Baker, who I met in that Starbucks parking lot,
was the first cheerleader to ever try on that uniform.
She was raised by a single mother in South Dallas
who started the city's first licensed black daycare. Vontelle shared
a bedroom with her sister, and some days she'd sneak
out to the park to practice dancing.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
What songs would you owe dance to when you were
growing up?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
A lot of Jays Brown and a lot of Rolling Stones.
I love Mick Jagger at one time I wanted his lips.
Not anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
But she tried out for cheerleader at her all black
high school but didn't make it. Why do you think
you didn't make cheerleader in high school?
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Well, I'm going to tell you what was told to me.
That I was too skinny and just not attractive enough.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
She went to Texas Lutheran University, where she tried out again,
and this time she made the team. She was the
first black cheerleader in the school's history. And then, at
twenty years old, back in Dallas and studying at Fashion College,
she hears a radio spot for an audition for the
Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
All we knew was to come there with a two
minute routine. That's all they told us.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
She and a hundred other hopefuls crowd into the Cowboys
headquarters off Dallas's Central Expressway. Many of these girls have
pageant backgrounds and ballet experience and years of dancing on
drill teams. Vonceille has none of that.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
So I just put some of my little Jane Brown
steps in it and just and I'll never forget.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
I saw TEXTI over there, and she just.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Laugh She's talking about Texi Waterman, the choreographer for the cheerleaders,
who's running those auditions with the cheerleaders director d Brock.
They're looking for talent and beauty, but also a certain spark.
Fonzille left thinking she didn't make it, but then she
gets a letter marked special delivery.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Yes, came to the house, and you know, I was
scared to open it, and my brother said I'll open it,
and I thought it was gonna say thank you for
trying out.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
But instead it says she made it. The squad von
Seale made was something of an experiment. The idea was
that these cheerleaders wouldn't actually cheer, they'd be dancers, and
nothing announced the change like their new uniform. Vonzille saw
it for the first time when she went in for
her fitting. Can you tell me about the day that
(13:55):
you went and tried that on for the first time.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Oh, then that's a moment I will never forget in
my life.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
A few weeks before their debut, Vonziale takes a bus
to a clothing store called Lester Melnick. She's so worried
about being late, she shows up three hours early, well
before anyone else, and that's when she sees it. The
royal blue halter top that ties at the ribcage, the
white fringed vest with blue stars, the white hot pants.
(14:24):
This is when she steps into history. She becomes the
first cheerleader to ever put it on. And what did
you think when you saw it?
Speaker 5 (14:33):
I just went, where is the stuff? Go?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Go in there?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Those uniforms would become legendary and also a lot smaller.
But at the time Vanzille doesn't see it as a
big deal. She figures it's kind of like a bikini.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
It just felt so good, and I was walking up
clouding that all day when I went home.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
And like that, she's off. There were seven of them
on the squad that year, Carrie O'Brien, Dixie Smith, Anna Carpenter,
Dina Void, Nichols, Dolores Makaida and Rosie Hall, whose sister
Jerry Hall would become an eighties supermodel. And from the
moment they run onto the field on August fifth, nineteen
(15:19):
seventy two, Dallas fans are paying.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Attention because it was something nobody had seen. The Texas
Stadium held sixty five thousand people, and I would say
at least we saw about twenty thousands. Hey, stand up
and go what is that?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
The stark contrast of all that female flesh against the
backdrop of men in helmets and shoulder pads. It was
hard to miss out on the field, got these players
smashing into each other. And over here seven women in
crop tops and bear midriffs dancing to the stripper. They
actually danced to this song at their first game.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Actually, we didn't see ourselves as sexy. Out of the
seven of us, I've never heard anybody talk about being sexy.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
We didn't know any of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
This year, in nineteen seventy two is a moment when
feminism and the sexual revolution are pulling women in different directions.
It's the year Title nine opens the door for girls
in sports. It's the year Deep Throat introduces porn to
the American mainstream.
Speaker 8 (16:30):
Roe v.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Wade, which also began in Dallas, was being argued before
the Supreme Court. And into this moment arrived seven scantily
clad cheerleaders with big smiles. And if the cheerleaders didn't
see themselves as hot and sexy, maybe that's not so surprising.
Hot and sexy weren't words thrown around by young women
back then. The cheerleaders would be part of what changed
(16:54):
that more after this. In these early years, it wasn't
so glamorous. The dressing room was so cramped. They put
on makeup at home. They were hearsed after work in
a hot studio without air conditioning, and there were rules
(17:16):
no dating players, no chewing gum, no smoking on the
football field. But von Siel says she would have done
it for free. And she almost did. You want to
tell you want to tell me how much you made
per game?
Speaker 4 (17:31):
We made fifteen dollars a game. It was fourteen to
twelve at the taxes.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
What did you think of that? At the time, I
didn't even think about it.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
I just went, well, that'll give me back then, it'll
fill up my tank, you know, and buy me a slurpee.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
That's all I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
The whole enterprise was designed as a hobby. The cheerleaders
were expected to have jobs or be enrolled in college.
That was the deal. But they became so popular fans
started to complaining they didn't get enough of them.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
There's a whole stadium, there's sixty five thousand people, and
they're going like, we want them to dance in front
of us too.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
We need them on this side.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
So the squad grew the next year fifteen, the year
after that, twenty one, eventually rising to thirty six. And
when I look at these early photos of the squad.
What strikes me are the fresh faces and natural afros
and baretts, more of a casual sweetness than the gloss
and polish that would come to define the look. Later,
(18:34):
they'd have regular weigh ins and even stricter codes of conduct.
These are the pre glam years. This was not yet
a well oiled machine. These were amateur dancers, and the
high kicks were a little messy. But out on the
field innovation was happening. The cheerleaders introduced a free wheeling
(18:55):
style that hadn't been seen in professional sports, and that
was thanks to one woman in particular, who developed their routines.
Speaker 7 (19:03):
All right, girls, now, as all of you know the rules.
Speaker 10 (19:06):
You cannot miss a rehearsal unless there is a very
very good excuse.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Texi Waterman. She was pretty much the musical theater and
jazz teacher in Dallas. We're so accustomed to grand spectacle
in a stadium that it's easy to forget it didn't
exist once someone had to invent them. Texi died in
nineteen ninety six, but here she is in a nineteen
seventy nine documentary about the cheerleaders called a Great Bunch
(19:35):
of Girls.
Speaker 10 (19:36):
People have told me that I have a distinctive style
in dancing. Actually my style is more of your New
York jazz dancer, you know.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I see a few clear influences on what the cheerleaders
were doing. The Rockets brought kick lines to Radio City
in nineteen twenty five, and the Kilgore Rangeretts the drill
team in East Texas. They brought precision high kicks to
sports in nineteen forty. But it was Taxi who brought
theatrical dance moves into the stadium. When the Cowboys first
(20:06):
approached her for the gig, she told them they were crazy.
You can't dance like that on a football field. There's
no illusion stage lighting. But she went for it anyway
and brought Broadway to the AstroTurf. Here's Tammy Barber, one
of the cheerleaders from those early years, and she.
Speaker 6 (20:25):
Was so innovative in our choreography and picture somebody who
has the vision of what thirty six girls are going
to look like on a football field, but yet she's
putting together a Broadway show.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Texi was like a character off of Broadway too, and
she brought that Bob Fosse energy to her studio in
East Dallas. Here's one seal again.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Texi Waterman is an angel dancing on air. I don't
know any other way.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
To put it.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
The first time I saw this red hair, I'm the
red hair in this unbelievable little body. She could smoke, talk, smoke,
dance and yeah, okay, girls, I'm ready for y'all five six, seven,
eight of me.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
It was hilarious.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Vancilla loved watching Texi dance so much she'd trick her
into showing off.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
We will sit there, and when she would show us
what to do, she say, I'm just mocking it, so
y'all can catch y'all and we'll say, Texi, we're not
really getting it, just to get a little dance for us.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Texi was the daughter of a Dallas dance instructor. She
followed her dreamed in New York in her twenties, where
she had gigs at lavish nightclubs like the Versailles and
the Copacabana. She danced on Sid Caesar's TV variety show
in the fifties, but by the early seventies she'd let
go of that dream and was back in Dallas working
with her mom in that dance studio. But she brought
(21:57):
a little razzle dazzle back with her her. Texi made
everything big, big steps, enormous pom poms the size of
shaggy dogs. Today, cheerleading has become such a slick operation,
all that hair flicking to stadium anthems, But the early
songs the cheerleaders danced to were often much slower Delta
(22:20):
Dawn and Son of a Preacher Man.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Because she wanted you to see the movement, not so
much as just bump bump, grind and stuff. She wanted
the feet, the arms, She wanted the whole picture.
Speaker 10 (22:35):
Oh one, two, three, four, kickball, tang, pivot and tang.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
But most people never got to see that whole picture
because there was this other innovation happening at the same time,
Monday Night Football. It launched in nineteen seventy and transformed
how Americans experienced sports. The TV cameras took Texi's grand
vision and shrank it down for a small screen with
close ups that were unimaginable from stadium bleachers. And there's
(23:07):
this one particular broadcast that rockets the cheerleaders to fame,
but also changes the way they're scene. According to the
Cowboys' own history. This is the moment when the country
discovered the cheerleaders. They say it happened the nineteen seventy
six Super Bowl, and this version of the story has stuck.
I've read it in so many newspapers and magazines and
(23:30):
websites about the cheerleaders. But it's actually a few months earlier,
at a Monday night game against the Kansas City Chiefs
on November tenth, nineteen seventy five. And the Cowboys cheerleaders
have become a big part of the show. Remember, nobody
else in the NFL has cheerleaders like this.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
The cameraman were more on us on the field, but
they followed us, I mean, like doing breaks and stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Vonzille says she never paid much attention to the cameraman.
But then there's this moment near the end of the
third quarter. The camera settles on this one cheerleader, a
beauty pageant girl next door type named Gwenda swearingin.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Gwendolen yes, Gwendolu with the blue eye shallow that yes,
I remember.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
She was so cute. She had the Pharaoh Fawcett hair.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
You know, it's her second year on squad. She's shaking
her palm palms, overhead, hair cascading down those shoulders when
she looks into the camera and winks. The commentators, Howard
Cosell and Frank Gifford don't miss it.
Speaker 11 (24:43):
The third A clean dog game. I think she was
doing that to you, O fright? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Did you like that, Frank?
Speaker 9 (24:52):
I did like that little week.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
KOI but flirtatious, the perfect tease. One beautiful woman shining
her light on every viewer and their living room recliner.
Here's how the Cowboys tell this story. Quote it probably
never occurred to her that she was on national television,
and American viewers, they said, didn't take their eyes off
(25:18):
what they saw. According to this version of history, the
Cowboys phone started ringing off the hook overnight. Everyone wanted
a piece of the cheerleaders. They call this moment the wink,
and it's an amazing story to explain the cheerleaders meteoric
rise over the next few years. But like a lot
(25:41):
of amazing stories, something about it isn't quite right. I've
watched that game on YouTube, and what strikes me more
than the wink moment is how the commentators talk about
the cheerleaders like your awkward uncle at a teenage pool party.
Announcer Alex Karis, he's a cheerleader taking a drink on
the sidelines and says, do.
Speaker 8 (26:01):
You like that?
Speaker 10 (26:02):
Popful girl?
Speaker 12 (26:04):
Pearson will probably come back and have a word.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
With Roger because it's too easy to judge the past
by present standards. But I want to stay here for
a moment because these sorts of cutaways of the cheerleaders,
which many of the women likely never saw. By the way,
since there's no Internet, no vhs at the time, they
introduced a chummy and guilt free voyeurism into the American
home that I grew up with and never really questioned.
(26:29):
Near the end of the game, you see Gwenda yet again,
shaking her palm pomps. Even the commentators are getting exasperated
by the frequent cutaways. Frank Gifford asked to get her
off the.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Screen man every camera we have in the stadium, as.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
If she was the one seeking out that camera and
not the other way around. I talked with another cheerleader,
Shannon Baker Worthman, about this game. She wasn't there that day.
She joined the squad the following year, but she remembers
what it was like to square off with those cameramen.
Speaker 8 (27:04):
Oh could I see them?
Speaker 5 (27:07):
You know?
Speaker 8 (27:07):
And then they in your face, in your everything else
and coming up and saying we're getting ready to go
to break, can't Can you give me one of these
pom poms and say I love you? No, I can't.
Oh yeah, they were. They were very bold and in
(27:29):
your face.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
And that makes me wonder if Gwendolen was told to
do that.
Speaker 8 (27:34):
Wink, probably, Oh, I would say ninety nine point nine percent.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yes, I wasn't the only one who found the wink
myth a bit suspicious.
Speaker 11 (27:46):
This is sort of portrayed in cowboys lore as this
sort of this improvised moment where swearing just so happened,
the wink of the cameras.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
This is Frank Andre Garriddy, a professor of history in
African American Studies at Columbia University, who wrote about this
moment in his book The Sports Revolution about how Texas
sports changed American culture.
Speaker 11 (28:07):
But then when you start looking deeper into the history
of televised sports, you know that that whole moment was
orchestrated by ABC Sports, and they were accustomed by the
nineteen seventies to orchestrate in what was called the honey shot.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Honey shots. That's a term coined by Andy Sedaris, one
of the producers for Monday Night Football, who took credit
for this idea in a nineteen seventy six documentary called
Seconds to Play.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
How'd you get the idea for honeyshoks?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
I got the idea for honey shots because I.
Speaker 12 (28:37):
Have a dirty old man.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
In this video, he's standing in a control room puffing
on a cigarette, remembering his college days when he'd watch
the women at smu Okay.
Speaker 9 (28:46):
Because I turned seventeen, I remember I was terrifying.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Every time I look at a girl, I just tumble.
Speaker 7 (28:52):
And I thought, if I like that, maybe other people
are like that.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
And you know what they are for sure as they are.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
But whether it's the America falling in love with the cheerleaders,
or male viewers ogling the girls who scared them in
high school, or both of these at once, this massive
exposure ramps up the cheerleader's profile. In nineteen seventy six,
the cheerleaders hold their tryouts at Texas Stadium. They bring
in local radio and news to make it an event.
Speaker 13 (29:21):
This is the first year of the Cowboys have held
open cheerleader tryouts. The girls will only be paid fifteen
dollars per game, but they don't appear interested in the money.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
I love to dance, and Jefferan, I love football mostly.
Speaker 13 (29:34):
And just what does it take to become a cheerleader?
The Cowboys director of choreography explains.
Speaker 7 (29:39):
We're looking for an all American sexy girl.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
This is Texi Waterman again, and I love the way
she leans into that word sexy, a word you didn't
hear Texas women say that much in nineteen seventy six.
But I can't help noticing the tight rope of that phrase,
to be wholesome but also sexy, to be old fashioned
and liberated at once.
Speaker 7 (30:04):
The one that has a very good background, a nice proportion, baddie,
one that has a very good personality as far as
representing the Cowboys and Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 10 (30:15):
Really.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
One of those hopefuls was Shannon Baker Worthman. She once
danced with the Bolshoi Ballet as a little girl, but
she was headed to SMU in the fall. She remembers
being told to show up in hot pants and a
crop top.
Speaker 8 (30:29):
They asked me what my name was, and I wrote
Helen Shannon Baker, and they go Helen and I said, well,
I go by Shannon, and they said that's better. Like
I was being tested on the image of my name.
Speaker 7 (30:43):
Right away, two.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Hundred and fifty women apply to be part of the squad.
The next year, more than six hundred. Suddenly, this little
experiment has exploded into something nobody could anticipate. Of course,
not everyone loved the cheerleaders. Coach Tom Landry was a
devout Christian and was not a fan, nor was his wife,
(31:04):
Alicia Lawrence Herkimer, who cheered at SMU and is remembered
as the father of modern cheerleading, the guy who invented
the Herkuy jump and the pom pom. He called them
a t and a squad. Some newspapers that printed photos
of the cheerleaders got complaints and landers. The advice columnist
called the cheerleaders the last gasps of a dying civilization.
(31:28):
It's a debate that gets repeated and repeated over the decades.
Were those pretty dancing girls elevating the sport or ruining it?
Were they powerful performers or degraded sex objects? But dances sexual,
There's no way around it. It's one of the reasons
dance gets banned in conservative places. You know, the town
(31:49):
that inspired the movie Footloose is a couple hours north
of Dallas, and I think this is part of what
TEXI was pushing back against with some of those body
or numbers like Dance to the Stripper in their first season.
She was trying to loosen the corset and a part
of the Bible belt where it was pretty tight. That's
what I always hear about Texi. She was fun loving
and she wanted other people to take everything a little
(32:11):
less seriously. But whatever hip swiveling moves these women performed
could be too easily reduced to words like sex object,
vulgar offensive. Here's Texi again in that nineteen seventy nine documentary.
Speaker 10 (32:26):
We have had very bad press at times as far
as the bumps and grind.
Speaker 7 (32:31):
Well, actually, there's.
Speaker 10 (32:32):
Not one bump, not one grind in anything that we do.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
There's this incredible moment I heard about in nineteen seventy seven.
The owner and coaches wives Anne Murkison and Alicia Landry,
have an idea to put the genie back in the bottle.
At this one game, the cheerleaders run onto the field
wearing modesty shields, basically a triangle of fabric that covers
up their cleavage. The crowd booze, and the shields are
(32:59):
gone by halftime. By now, people are in love with
the cheerleaders and what they've introduced can't be walked back.
In October nineteen seventy seven, the cheerleaders land their first
cover story in Esquire magazine. The headline says, the Dallas
Cowgirls the best thing about the Dallas Cowboys. Okay, so
(33:22):
they got the name of the squad wrong, but the
point is the cheerleaders are becoming more popular than the
football team. The photographer who shot that Esquire magazine spread
is a guy named Bob Shaw, who had a studio
in Dallas. The photos turn out so well tech Shram
asks them to do another shoot, this time for the
(33:42):
Cowboys to sell. Here's Bob, I'd lost you.
Speaker 12 (33:48):
Let me come up with an idea.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Tex wants a pin up like the picture of Farah
Fawcett in a red swimsuit. It was on its way
to becoming the best selling poster of all time.
Speaker 12 (33:59):
He asked, could you do that? And I said, set
me loose.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
So Bob sketches a backdrop with a neon shooting star,
and in his cramp studio he sets up Christmas lights
and a smoke machine. It's a fantasy skate with glamazons
emerging from the fog, borrowing a little inspiration from the
big movie of the summer, George Licas.
Speaker 12 (34:22):
George Lucas had just released Star Wars, and I gave
the cowboys atmosphere and lightsabers.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
They spent hours taking different shots, and the one that
hits is a triangle formation of five cheerleaders with a
sultry eyed brunette Susie Holo front and center with a
right leg cacked to the sun.
Speaker 12 (34:44):
The temperature rose. It was and it wasn't from anything
other than okay, you know, we're getting ready to shoot, ladies,
look here, look into the camera, and you know at
one point Susie moved her foot and did that foot thing,
and the result of it was Tex shram leaning over
that transparency saying, damn, I is that ain't to come hither?
Speaker 5 (35:08):
Or look I say that?
Speaker 12 (35:11):
Yeah, I think she'd say that, missus same.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
The poster sells about a million copies. It becomes a
top seller of nineteen seventy seven and turns the Dallas
Cowboys cheerleaders into the country's hottest new pinups. By the
fall of nineteen seventy eight, twenty two teams in the
NFL have added sexy sideline dancers. That year, Sports Illustrated
(35:36):
runs a story on what it calls the Great Cheerleading War.
The writer Bruce Newman says, the only thing anybody talks
about anymore is s X and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
Speaker 6 (35:49):
All of a sudden, you know, the television appearance has started,
and people came to us to film things.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Tammy had grown up in a small town in Nebraska,
and now she's part of this whole other world.
Speaker 6 (36:03):
We did Jared Lewis telethons in Las Vegas, and I
got to see Johnny Carson and Frank Sinatra and Dion Warwick.
I mean, I was the fan at that point.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Ready for Johnny.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
All these appearances are being coordinated by the cheerleader's new director,
a woman named Suzanne.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Mitchells, and the cheerleaders who.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Pulls them off the sidelines and brings them into center stage.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Let's start the Dallas.
Speaker 6 (36:32):
Cowboys Family bed Special.
Speaker 13 (36:36):
We Dallas Cheerleaders are telling our brands about super rich
Baberge Ergantic shampoo, who cheerweeds are.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Oil and honey.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Meanwhile, the Cowboys merchandising arm starts cranking playing cards, calendars,
more posters, blanketing childhood bedrooms and lockers. In May nineteen
seventy eight, the cheerleaders land their first big non sports
television moment on the Osmond's Variety show.
Speaker 13 (37:02):
Dot Bob Hope, Crystal Gail, Andy Gibb, Jimmy Walker, and
the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
That September, they kick off the fall football season with
their own ABC special. It's called the thirty six Most
Beautiful Girls in Texas. It's a series of fantasy sequences
about how amazing it is to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
You see them riding a roller coaster and swimming like
mermaids in a pool. Nineteen seventy eight is also the
(37:34):
year a show about a scheming oil man named j R.
Ewing Lands and the Zeitgeist. Jo Nick Potowski says in
his book that the show's creator, David Jacobs, had never
been to Dallas when he came up with the idea.
He only knew the Cowboys and the Dallas The Cowboys cheerleaders.
(37:56):
The cheerleaders had created a Hollywood fairy tale smack dab
in north central Texas, a new formula for status and prestige,
where a girl from any small town could step into
the spotlight and who knows where it might take her.
This was the world I grew up in and where
I first fell in love with those cheerleaders. Back then,
(38:16):
you used to hear people say every girl wants to
grow up and be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. It was
my fantasy too, But no fantasy comes without shadow sides.
And over the decades, as I wrestled with my own body,
I wondered about the lessons I have sorbed about image
and worth and who gets to perform, and the reality
(38:41):
of being of a loved Dallas Cowboys cheerleader wouldn't come
without its shadow side either. They'd shot to the top,
but dealing with this overnight celebrity that would be another
battle entirely. Next time, on America's Girls.
Speaker 6 (38:59):
We were running for our lives because these people were
grabbing at us. And it was a transition of oh
my gosh, this is so cool. I really love it,
and I love everything we're doing too, What's happening? What
is really happening?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
I just saw a I I just saw funny.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You can read more about the stories in this episode
than Joe nick Kotowski's book on the Cowboys, The Dallas Cowboys,
The Outrageous History of the Biggest, loudest, most hated, best
Loved football team in America, and Frank Andre Griddy's book
The Sports Revolution, How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics.
Thanks to the UCLA Film and Television Archive. For audio
(39:52):
from the documentary A Great Bunch of Girls, directed by
Maryann Braback and Tracy Tinny. For a transcript of this episode,
visit Texasmonthly dot com slash America's Girls. America's Girls is
a Texas Monthly production. I'm your host, writer and reporter
Sarah Heffalo. Executive producer is Megan Kriiche, produced and edited
(40:13):
by Patrick Michaels and edited by JK. Nichol, Produced and
engineered by Brian Standford, who also wrote the music. Additional
research and audio editing by podcast intern Harpercarlton. America's Girls
art is by Emily Kimbrow and Victoria Milner, and marketing
by Tory mohe. Our theme song is Enough by the
bra Letts. If you like the show, please subscribe and
(40:37):
visit our page at Apple Podcasts and rate the show there.
See you next week.
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