December 7, 2021 • 35 mins
The cheerleaders enjoy the glamor of sudden fame, while grappling with low pay and the dangers of celebrity. For episode transcripts and bonus content related to the show, visit texasmonthly.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I was talking to this one cheerleader you heard in
the last episode who joined the squad just as they
were getting famous.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Okay, Tammy Barber nineteen seventy seven through nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Wow, it was mid February, right when we had that
awful winter storm here in Texas. She was in Louisiana
where a storm was just hitting. We were talking on
zoom and I was getting kind of worried. Wait, can
you hear me? Because you're paused on my end. I
don't want you to be on the interview when they
do the tornado warning.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Only sitting here and my things will just blow by.
Oh no, I'll just sit talk some old lady, some
old lady on a bicycle with a dog in the basket,
goes by. Let me know. Okay, I'll let you know.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
And as this intense weather is closing in, she tells
me this story about the moment when the glamour and
celebrity of being a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader starts to change,
the moment things get a little dark. It happens at
a college football game in Wichita, Kansas. The cheerleaders have
come to dance in a halftime show. They've just finished
and they're sitting in the stands just watching the rest
(01:25):
of the game. But then something shifts. The ones who
see it first are the cheerleaders director Susanne Mitchell and
their choreographer Texi Waterman.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And Texi and Suzanne come up and say, girls, we're
getting up. Gather your things. We're going to the bus now.
And we look around and it's just like people are swarming.
They're coming towards us in the stands. So we all
just pick up our things and we start walking.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I'm picturing this thing where everyone's trying to act casual
but also just trying to get.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Out, and a couple of girls started running. Then we
started running, and then the crowd was running, and I
mean it was our Beatles moment where we were running
for our lives because these people were grabbing at us.
Susan's back there like trying to get these people to
(02:25):
stand back, stand back, And we get in the bus
and they close the door and people are just pounding,
pounding on the side of the bus.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
And as the bus pulls away through this horde, she
kind of can't believe what just happened.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
My heart was beating so fast, and it was the
first time I thought, why are people crazy? We're just us.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
This was November nineteen seventy seven, right as their poster
was becoming a best seller, and for Tammy, the game
was the first time this burst of fame seemed to
come with a shadow side. How to come to this?
Where was this wild ride going? And was anyone really
in control?
Speaker 3 (03:08):
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 is really happening? And it
touched something in my head that said, it's time to
start being really careful, really really careful.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
I just saw, I.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Saw.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I'm Sarah Happola from Texas Monthly. This is America's Girl,
Episode two, All the Glitters. The woman in charge of
(03:58):
the cheerleaders during this topsy turvy time was Suzanne Mitchell.
She was the one holding back those crowds in Wichita.
Suzanne was in her early thirties when the Cowboys general
manager Tech Shram hired her as a secretary. She was
back in Dallas after spending time in a New York
publishing house. As the story goes, she was interviewing for
(04:20):
a job. When tech Shram asked where she wanted to
be in a few years, and she said his chair
looked really comfortable, he hired her on the spot. She
did payroll contracts, the endless work of an assistant, but
shortly after she came on in nineteen seventy six, as
the cheerleader's profile began to rise, Tech Shram asked her
(04:40):
to run the squad in her limited spare time.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
She was young and doing a heck of a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
This is former cheerleader she Annon Baker Worthman.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
I felt how brave she was to enter into the
bro world of football, to stand up to Miss Shram,
who was on this pedestal, to be able to joke
around with him.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Suzanne became one of the first female executives in the NFL.
There was no roadmap for what she was doing, and
she was bold in her attitude and often in the
way she dressed.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Now she had the body of a model, so she
could get by with the really low cut leather vest
and throw a jacket over it and look really good.
I thought she would be wearing a three piece suit
her heels. She could play that part too, but that
wasn't her authentic self, but.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
She was also a deeply traditional person. She was the
daughter of a military man and introduced a boot camp
mentality that was a real jolt. Following Texi Waterman's laid
back approach, doctor Scale showed up in the studio. Practices
ramped up, sometimes as many as five a week. There'd
always been rules, but now there were so many more.
(06:01):
Blue jeans were banned, nails had to be manicured, and
cheerleaders couldn't be seen in uniform around alcohol. Texi taught
the cheerleaders how to perform, but Suzanne made them a machine.
Here's von sieale Baker, who was on the squad when
she took over. Tell me about Suzanne. Do have three days?
(06:24):
Suzanne died in twenty sixteen, and she was a complicated
figure who commanded great respect but also great fear.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I liked it.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
Because it's so funny, but I've had my mamas were
I wasn't sweating from dancing, I was sweating from talking
to her.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
More than anyone. Suzanne was the person responsible for their
rise to fame, and she was very protective of them
once they got there.
Speaker 6 (06:48):
She was very it's real den mother.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
That's Tracy Tynan, who's documentary A Great Bunch of Girls
followed the cheerleaders during the nineteen seventy eight tryouts. That year,
more than a thousand women competed for thirty six spots.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
She was very protective of them and kind of like
an old fashioned chaperone, you know. She made sure that
you adhere to all the rules and regulations and if
you didn't, you were going to be tossed off the squad,
and that was made very clear.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Mary and Braback, her partner on that documentary, says, Suzanne
ran the cheerleaders like a football team.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I looked at her as the person that is the scout.
Speaker 7 (07:29):
She she oversees the draft.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
She's the coach, and she's the general manager.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And Suzanne was doing this in addition to her full
time job protect sham. The cheerleaders I spoke with said
she hung back in the first year, not really asserting herself,
but once she did, she was all in on crafting
the culture and image of that squad. Here's a clip
from that documentary.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
They have to be developed for our purposes in that
they have to represent us a certain way.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Suzanne was a shrewd marketer. She made sure the cheerleaders
appealed to a wide range of fans.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
There's the little bitty girl in pigtails, there's the tiny
little Barbie doll.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Look, there's a miss athletic.
Speaker 5 (08:13):
We want a little of everything.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
It was a bit like seventy Spice Girls. A sultry redhead,
a perky brunette, an approachable tomboy. And while it might
be over selling it to call the squad diverse, it's
worth noting that in nineteen seventy eight there were six
black women on the squad out of thirty six. That's
more black women than the team had for much of
(08:37):
the next four decades. The dig on the cheerleaders is
that they were appealing to male fantasy, but they were
also appealing to women and little girls who were eager
to see themselves reflected in the macho world of men's
professional sports.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
If I wanted to do any any physical makeup or
hair changes for you, would you have any objections? Thanks
be Anny the dis the magnet look vitter.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Many of the women I spoke with talked about how
Suzanne pushed them toward their better cells, made them something
they didn't know they could be. Along with the rules,
Suzanne instilled a sense of service on the squad that
included goodwill missions to nursing homes and children's hospitals. There
was no doubt Suzanne could be an inspirational figure, but
(09:23):
at times she could also be pretty harsh. Tammy remembers
the day Suzanne told her she was getting a new look.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Suzanne called me into Texi's office and Suzanne said, TEXI
and I have decided that you're going to wear your
hair up in pigtails from now on for the games
and for anything we do. And I was like, Okay,
why And then what she said to me, I will
(09:55):
ever ever forget because I was what nineteen twenty years old,
and she said, you're not pretty enough and you need
a gimmick.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Tammy was in shock. She'd never been around this kind
of cutthroat atmosphere. She'd grown up in Nebraska, an only
child with two parents who always supported her. But Tammy
didn't push back. She wore the pigtails, played the part
she'd been given at every appearance. What else could she do?
She had to try out again each year to stay
(10:30):
on the squad, and every year she was up against
more than a thousand girls who wanted her spot Suzanne
liked to remind everyone you can be replaced in a second.
She had certain lines they all knew by heart. Another
one they heard all the time, it's the uniform that
makes you. You don't make the uniform.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
So I hated the pigtails at first. I took her
words so deeply to heart that it shattered me for
a while. And then it was almost as if the
universe decided to turn it around and make me feel
better by making the pigtails as big as life.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Suzanne's makeover made Tammy one of the most recognizable cheerleaders
of the seventies. The look catapulted her into the spotlight,
and she was featured on posters and merchandise along with
her best friend on the squad, Shannon Baker Worthman.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I was a cheerleader from nineteen seventy six to nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
This is Shannon.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I just remember my dad saying, why don't you do this?
Maybe we can get some free tickets if you go
and try out for this thing.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
She'd hoped to become a ballet dancer, but her petite
bucks and body wasn't a fit for that world. But
she was a perfect fit for the cheerleaders. Shannon had
that fair faucet hair and kill her high kicks. When
the Cowboys released a cheerleader doll, they called it Shannon.
Like the other cheerleaders, Shannon had a busy life off
(12:03):
the field. She was studying broadcast journalism at SMU and
she had rehearsals and appearances, and on top of that,
she had to write back to her fans. That was
another one of Suzanne's rules. You had to write back.
And Shannon got a lot of mail from girls who
wanted to be dancers and cheerleaders when they grew up,
(12:23):
and from boys who had her poster on their bedroom wall.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
And I probably wouldn't let much older than they were.
They're like twelve and I'm seventeen.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And then I had a gentleman that was from Mexico
that would send me a weekly sombrero.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Were the sombreros different? Oh?
Speaker 8 (12:43):
Very yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And they were the big sombreros, like big.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Shannon still has a lot of these letters. She read
me one from a boy named Russ who lived in Connecticut.
They corresponded for years.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Dear Shannon, Hi, thanks so much for writing back. I
never dreamed you would but here's the letter. I'm so excited.
Thursday I went down to the pharmacy where my mother
works and told her I received an A on my
math final exam. So see, it's so nice. They want
to share with us the details of their life.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And I won't play you the whole thing here. It's
really long, but pretty articulate for a fourteen year old boy.
And as I'm listening, I'm thinking about a time when
I wrote letters like this to my celebrity crushes, and
I have such affection for that kind of fandom for
a kid hoping to be more than one more anonymous
person in the stadium.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Shannon, I'm so happy you made this squad again this year.
I can't wait to see my favorite gorgeous Dallas cowboy cheerleader.
You did you know it was you? Thanks for the
schedule and decals. I love you, Rest Denham. My heart
was amazy and I appreciate I mean, I'm sure I
(14:00):
appreciated it then, but I appreciate it more now. Isn't
that the sweetest?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
And I couldn't help myself. There was someone I just
had to ask about this letter.
Speaker 9 (14:11):
Russell Henry Dunham, the fourth and I grew up in
Western Grading, Connecticut, fifty miles from New York City.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Russ was five or six when he became a Cowboys fan,
and that decision has stuck.
Speaker 9 (14:24):
That was who I was and still them to this day.
It's not another team that that would come close to
the love that I have for them.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
And I asked him what he remembers wanting to say
to Shannon at this point in his life, why he
chose her, What kind of a connection was he looking for?
Speaker 9 (14:41):
Not that there wasn't a crush, But I never thought
of like that I could be a boyfriend anything. I
don't think I ever thought that. It was just kind
of like, I want to be part of the Dallas
Cowboys and friends with the Cowboy cheerleaders, and I wanted
to be there every day, and my dream was to
work for the Dallas Cowboys.
Speaker 7 (14:58):
So so okay, so I want to read you this
letter now? Are you ready?
Speaker 10 (15:04):
Are?
Speaker 7 (15:04):
Oh?
Speaker 9 (15:07):
I've been nervous since I got your email the other night.
Speaker 7 (15:10):
Did you know that you sent two little pictures with it?
Two little emptomatic pictures. It's you and your Cowboys bedroom.
Speaker 9 (15:17):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Then I read Russ his own letter from forty plus
years ago, and I'll skip to the end.
Speaker 7 (15:23):
This summer, i'll be back in Miami visiting my brother Lewis.
I'll probably go to the beach a lot in search
of girls. Yes, sir, may say, don't be jealous. Oh
(15:45):
my goodness, I can't wait to see my favorite gorgeous
Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
Speaker 9 (15:51):
You did you know it was you?
Speaker 7 (15:53):
I'll see you on TV. By the way, Since you
can't send me an autographed photo, alright, how about one
of yourself just sitting at home in your bikini.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
Oh my god, Oh my goodness, gracious.
Speaker 7 (16:14):
I know, I know, I know it was Bold. I mean, listen,
you are a teen boy with like a dream and
a mission. It is amazing to bold boy.
Speaker 9 (16:25):
Yeah, step back from that, huh.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And I was curious what it felt like to be
Shannon getting these notes from people you don't know who
are looking for something from you.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
You know, I've had fans say you're like part of
our family, and they became like part of our you know,
my family, and it's just, I don't know, it's just
really really sweet.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Tammy got a lot of fan mail too. She was,
after all, the girl with the pigtails, but Tammy's fan
base was a different demographic.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yes, the majority of my fan was from little girls
who would send me a picture. They were in their
homemade uniforms, and they would tell me how they watched
the games, and they look for me, and they always
had pigtails in their hair. And then the one thing
(17:18):
that I got that I think about, if it were
to happen today, I could probably end up in prison.
Moms and grandmas would send me pictures of their grandsons
or their sons and do you remember under rus?
Speaker 7 (17:35):
Oh I do?
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Oh I do?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
In case you didn't know, under rus were very popular
in the late seventies, basically kids underwear with superheroes and
sports team logos.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
They would be in their cowboy under rus.
Speaker 11 (17:52):
They'd be standing in their cowboy under roofs with a
football in their hand. And then the letter would be
from grandma or mom saying you're our favorite cheerleader. And
it would be funny because you know, there'd be Shannon
sitting next to me and she'd have like this picture
(18:14):
of this really cute guy that wants to know if
she has a boyfriend and how much he loves her,
and she thinks she's so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
And then I got under Russ I'd be like, well
look at my new boyfriend. He's seven.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
More after this, being a cheerleader was such a random
assortment of surprises and opportunities. It was like your side
hustle was being a celebrity. They do these amazing things
then come home and live their regular lives. They took
a two week tour of Japan sponsored by Mitsubishi in
(18:55):
nineteen eighty. They even put out a record, It's a
little light in the lyrics department, has a lot of spirit, duntageous.
(19:16):
And then there were all those appearances on telethons and
the variety shows that flooded the airwaves. The one that
Shannon remembered most vividly was the Osmond Brothers special.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
You know, we've got Bob Hope, Crystal Gail, Andy Gibb,
Jimmy Walker and.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
The Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
Speaker 7 (19:33):
Right, are they really that neat?
Speaker 12 (19:38):
I mean in person?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And first of all, it was gorgeous. I mean, we're
in the mountains, we are treated like princesses, like royalty,
you know, with the limos and the we get there
and we have a large spread of food waiting for us,
and we got to go to Donnie Marie's home, which
was so cool to me. I thought that was really cool,
(20:02):
going in her bedroom and it was like light, pink
bedspread and her collection of dolls, and I mean she
was it was like, she's a girl, She's a girl
like us.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It's easy to forget how young the cheerleaders were. You
had to be eighteen to try out, but Shannon was seventeen.
She didn't want to wait, so she lied on her application.
A lot of the other cheerleaders were nineteen twenty, and
they still saw themselves as girls too, and they were
pulled into the orbit of all this fame.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
You'd look out over the beautiful mountains and see the
twinkling lights down in the city below, and I mean
it was just so cool, and you did have to
pinch yourself. I mean that was dream like to me.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
The run continued, award shows, The Love Boat a hit
TV movie, But for a lot of cheerleaders, these moments
on the pedestal could be hard to square with the
mess see financial realities. Sometimes the most important thing about
these appearances was just a chance to make some money,
because they got paid extra for special events, usually between
(21:11):
three hundred and five hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
We were poor. We were all very poor. It was
there's so much time spent with the cowboys that it
was hard to keep a full time job.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
This is Tammy Barber again.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
And truthfully, appearances to me meant, oh, thank goodness, extra money.
I'm going to get to pay a bill. That's all
it really was in my head is oh, I need
an appearance. I really need an appearance because that is
good money.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
And among the thirty six cheerleaders there was this inner
circle of women Suzanne would hand pick for these appearances,
and the competition could be intense. The hobby that the
cowboys created had become more like a full time job.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
All the all the playing cards, everything, the movies, everything.
They made millions. And the funny part is is that
other people thought I was making money. A guy that
went to high school with became a stockbroker, and he
was always sending me stuff I'm wanting to know if
I would invest. I never told him that I made
(22:22):
fourteen dollars and twelve cents after taxes on a game.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Shannon was living rent free with her family during these years,
but other women weren't so lucky.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
There were so many broke cheerleaders at that time that
weren't able to pay their rent. It was all fine
and good at the beginning, but then when you can't
pay your rent for multiple months and you're working so
hard and you're falling asleep at your desk at work
because you've been working all night at rehearsal, and you're
seeing all of this wonderful publicity coming around you, and
(22:55):
you think, for sure, I have a place in this
mix monetarily. Know that we're making all this money for
the team.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
But where is it for the Cowboys. It was actually
a point of pride that these women worked so hard
for the team for almost nothing, Like, look how much
they love this.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Team, And that was pounded into our heads. If you're
doing it for the money, you need to get out
because you're not gonna last very long.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Suzan gave everything she had to the Cowboys, and she
expected that same level of sacrifice from the cheerleaders too.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I know personally I would fall asleep at work. I
was exhausted. If you're working nine to five and then
you have to be at practice at six Claire Cross, Dallas,
you're eating junk in the car, You got home at
two in the morning, you got back up at six,
you went to work. You repeated it, you know, five
days a week, six days a week, and then there
(23:54):
was the day of the game. I mean it was.
It was constant. Even though it's like, wow, I can't
believe I'm here, I can't believe I'm on the sidelines
of Texas Stadium. It was a hobby. You weren't going
to make money doing it. This was a hobby and
an honor. And after a while you're like, honor this.
(24:14):
I broke.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
On top of the constant hustle, there was a vulnerability
that came along with the spotlight. Tammy lived alone in
an apartment in Irving while she kept this exhausting schedule.
And one night, after she's finally home, she shuts off
the lights, climbs into bed.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
And my phone rang and a man's voice said good night, Tammy.
I don't remember if I immediately hung up, or I
might have said who is this?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
A few days later, same thing. Tammy gets home, climbs
into bed and the phone rings. She picks it up
and she hears good night Tammy. After that, she starts
going to sleep with the lights on.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
And even though my lights were on, as soon as
I climbed in bed, my phone rang and the same
voice said good night, Tammy.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Within days she moved to a new apartment.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I was scared to leave my apartment, and I was
scared to be in my apartment. And I have no
idea who it was. No one ever came to my door.
How he knew when I was getting in bed, I
don't know. Even with lights on.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
It terrified her, but she never told anyone.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Girls were sent I mean prisoners. Oh my gosh. The
fan mail from prisoners was unbelievable. And then the crazy
people who would say, you're not writing back to me,
what is wrong with you? You need to write back
to me. Then we found out that Suzanne was not
giving us the hate mail. All our mailes started coming
(25:55):
already opened. They were screening our fan mail.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Suzanne saw herself as a protector behind the scenes. She
was known to take cheerleaders under her wing. She counseled
them over abusive boyfriends. She paid for their divorces. Those
strict rules weren't just designed to maintain the image, but
also to maintain their safety. Here she is again in
that nineteen seventy nine documentary.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Don't ever give anybody your home phone number ever, or
your home address. You were fined probably by mid season,
if not before. You'll have to have an unlisted phone number.
And don't give out any information about any other cheerleader.
It's for your own protection.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
After multiple mob scenes like the one in Wichita, the
cheerleaders got security guards at every public event. But outside
those events there were elements Suzanne couldn't.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Control because many girls had stalkers. It wasn't just me
that had to move because somebody found out where I lived.
There were several people, several girls who had to do that.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
I talked to another cheerleader today. She goes by Billy Mitchell.
Speaker 10 (27:05):
And as a cheerleader, I was Billy Gosden and I
am an alumni of nineteen seventy nine and eighty.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
And in her one season with the cheerleaders, she had
multiple threats from strangers.
Speaker 10 (27:18):
Where was Actually? When I was still cheering, I had
butcher knives sent to me, a big set of butcher
knives in a Manila envelope with a letter, and it
was a sick, crazy, typewritten letter from Pittsburgh. It was
wrapped up in Pittsburgh Steeler not newspaper, which that was
one of our big rivals back then.
Speaker 6 (27:37):
And I thought my.
Speaker 10 (27:38):
Husband bought me butcher knives or something at first, and
then I started reading it.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
The letter was like Billy my goddess of love, and
it was just sick.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
And then another night, she comes home from a movie
with her husband and her daughter, and her husband lays
down on the couch and Billy goes alone to her
bedroom and lays down on their waterbed and she's lying
there in the dark, and she can feel somebody watching her.
Speaker 10 (28:06):
And that police said that I threw him off because
I jumped up thinking something was wrong.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
For an instant, she thinks maybe her husband, Steve, has
come in from the other room.
Speaker 10 (28:15):
Steve had a robe on and I he had on
like swayed. I felt swite, so subconsciously I knew it
wasn't Steve, but I kept talking to him like it was.
I kept going, what do you want?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
And this stranger he just turns and starts walking away,
and Billy fallows right behind him.
Speaker 10 (28:31):
And it wasn't until he got to the kitchen where
the light, the Levin light was on, I saw his
face and then I just started trying to scream and
nothing came out, and he had already had his way
to go out the door. And that was just my
first year.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And so she ended up moving too.
Speaker 10 (28:47):
And I didn't sleep at night probably for twenty years.
I mean, I would go to sleep as soon as
dawn hit. I mean, it just messed up my head
and I went to counseling for it and stuff, but
it was just it was ale for me.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
And that wasn't even the last of it. A little later,
she's just come home from the hospital with her second daughter.
Speaker 10 (29:08):
And the neighbors came over and said, there's somebody standing
outside your window. So we moved right after that.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Billy left cheerleading after a year. It just wasn't worth
the stress. And maybe it's worth asking why anyone would
put up with this, the rules, the low pei, the
creepy stalkers, there's no one reason why so many women
wanted to be a part of this. For some like Shannon,
it was a chance to have a dance career, one
(29:39):
much closer to home than New York or LA. And
for everyone I spoke to, there was the extraordinary experience
of game day.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
It was the biggest thing I'd ever seen in my life.
There's something about an NFL field that for me, I
feel really tiny and I'm in this dome of amazement.
WHOA takes my breath away. Literally when I am on
the field in a performance, my heart is just like huge.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
And during the late seventies, when young women didn't have
so many ways to make it in a world run
by men, being a cheerleader came with a rare status.
Tammy's father was a devoted Cowboys fan, and it amazed
him that she became a part of the game. This
was a chance to be somebody. Even when she cheers
on the field for alumni events, that feeling returns.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
I remember one of the years that I went back,
I literally could not breathe. I was so overwhelmed with emotion.
The tears were just shooting out of my eyes, and
I couldn't take a breath because I was back on
the field and my brain went back to that time.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
What do you think you were feeling?
Speaker 3 (31:03):
I was back to time where you know, I thought
I was a grown up, but I wasn't. I was
a little girl who had made her dad's dream come
true with the Dallas cowboys and I have made the
best friends of my life and they still are today.
Speaker 10 (31:24):
I mean, it was home.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I was home, the bonds of friendship, the foxhole mentality
of being united by or against Suzanne. It shaped them
at such an impressionable time in their lives. The twenty
eighteen documentary Daughters of the Sexual Revolution follows the cheerleaders
during Suzanne's era, and it's a dynamic portrait of their influence.
(31:48):
It's director, Dana Shapiro, told me he was moved by
how deep this experience had been.
Speaker 8 (31:55):
At the end of the day, it really was kind
of this family story. When you speak to these women
and after interviewing, you know, they would speak about their
own mothers, and then they would speak about Susanne in
similar tones. You know that she guided them, she showed
them what was important. And they say, you know, it
might sound silly because it seems so frivolous cheerleading, but
(32:17):
this is where I found purpose and meaning. I mean,
that's really what we're all looking for. I mean, I
think you go through life looking for something like that
purpose meaning.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
These are no small things. We're all looking for ways
to feel connected to something greater than ourselves. And this
sideline experiment had become a transformative institution. But I also
can't help noticing how well this arrangement served the cowboys
bottom line. They were asked to be starving artists in
(32:49):
the context of this multi million dollar institution. The way
I see it, that's just one of the tensions that
was baked into the experiment. They were told they were
special and also instantly replaceable. They had to be good
girl brand ambassadors and also sexy pin ups. And as
the world came at the cheerleaders, the Cowboys had to
(33:12):
keep those young women safe and at the same time
perpetuate the male fantasy that made them famous. The Cowboys
had to control this wildfire at the same time they
fanned the flames. They were all these tensions, and by
the end of nineteen seventy eight, they were about to explode.
Speaker 12 (33:35):
Next time on America's Girls, we were the first Dallas
Cowboy cheerleaders to ever show our breast to the world,
And that one thing.
Speaker 6 (33:47):
I think caused so many problems.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
I just saw, I saw, I saw.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Thanks to the UCLA Film and Television Archive for audio
from the documentary A Great Bunch of Girls, directed by
Maryann Braback and Tracy Tynan. 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
(34:23):
Sarah Heppelo. Executive producer is Megan krit Produced and edited
by Patrick Michaels and edited by JK.
Speaker 12 (34:30):
Nichol.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Produced and engineered by Brian Standifer, who also wrote the music.
Additional research and audio editing by podcast intern Harper Carlton.
America's Girls art is by Emily Kimbrow and Victoria Milner
and marketing by Torri Mo. Our theme song is Enough
by the bra Lets. If you like the show, please
subscribe and visit our page at Apple Podcasts and rate
(34:54):
the show there. See you next week.
Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I was talking to this one cheerleader you heard in
the last episode who joined the squad just as they
were getting famous.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Okay, Tammy Barber nineteen seventy seven through nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Wow, it was mid February, right when we had that
awful winter storm here in Texas. She was in Louisiana
where a storm was just hitting. We were talking on
zoom and I was getting kind of worried. Wait, can
you hear me? Because you're paused on my end. I
don't want you to be on the interview when they
do the tornado warning.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Only sitting here and my things will just blow by.
Oh no, I'll just sit talk some old lady, some
old lady on a bicycle with a dog in the basket,
goes by. Let me know. Okay, I'll let you know.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
And as this intense weather is closing in, she tells
me this story about the moment when the glamour and
celebrity of being a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader starts to change,
the moment things get a little dark. It happens at
a college football game in Wichita, Kansas. The cheerleaders have
come to dance in a halftime show. They've just finished
and they're sitting in the stands just watching the rest
(01:25):
of the game. But then something shifts. The ones who
see it first are the cheerleaders director Susanne Mitchell and
their choreographer Texi Waterman.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And Texi and Suzanne come up and say, girls, we're
getting up. Gather your things. We're going to the bus now.
And we look around and it's just like people are swarming.
They're coming towards us in the stands. So we all
just pick up our things and we start walking.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I'm picturing this thing where everyone's trying to act casual
but also just trying to get.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Out, and a couple of girls started running. Then we
started running, and then the crowd was running, and I
mean it was our Beatles moment where we were running
for our lives because these people were grabbing at us.
Susan's back there like trying to get these people to
(02:25):
stand back, stand back, And we get in the bus
and they close the door and people are just pounding,
pounding on the side of the bus.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
And as the bus pulls away through this horde, she
kind of can't believe what just happened.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
My heart was beating so fast, and it was the
first time I thought, why are people crazy? We're just us.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
This was November nineteen seventy seven, right as their poster
was becoming a best seller, and for Tammy, the game
was the first time this burst of fame seemed to
come with a shadow side. How to come to this?
Where was this wild ride going? And was anyone really
in control?
Speaker 3 (03:08):
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 is really happening? And it
touched something in my head that said, it's time to
start being really careful, really really careful.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
I just saw, I.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Saw.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I'm Sarah Happola from Texas Monthly. This is America's Girl,
Episode two, All the Glitters. The woman in charge of
(03:58):
the cheerleaders during this topsy turvy time was Suzanne Mitchell.
She was the one holding back those crowds in Wichita.
Suzanne was in her early thirties when the Cowboys general
manager Tech Shram hired her as a secretary. She was
back in Dallas after spending time in a New York
publishing house. As the story goes, she was interviewing for
(04:20):
a job. When tech Shram asked where she wanted to
be in a few years, and she said his chair
looked really comfortable, he hired her on the spot. She
did payroll contracts, the endless work of an assistant, but
shortly after she came on in nineteen seventy six, as
the cheerleader's profile began to rise, Tech Shram asked her
(04:40):
to run the squad in her limited spare time.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
She was young and doing a heck of a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
This is former cheerleader she Annon Baker Worthman.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
I felt how brave she was to enter into the
bro world of football, to stand up to Miss Shram,
who was on this pedestal, to be able to joke
around with him.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Suzanne became one of the first female executives in the NFL.
There was no roadmap for what she was doing, and
she was bold in her attitude and often in the
way she dressed.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Now she had the body of a model, so she
could get by with the really low cut leather vest
and throw a jacket over it and look really good.
I thought she would be wearing a three piece suit
her heels. She could play that part too, but that
wasn't her authentic self, but.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
She was also a deeply traditional person. She was the
daughter of a military man and introduced a boot camp
mentality that was a real jolt. Following Texi Waterman's laid
back approach, doctor Scale showed up in the studio. Practices
ramped up, sometimes as many as five a week. There'd
always been rules, but now there were so many more.
(06:01):
Blue jeans were banned, nails had to be manicured, and
cheerleaders couldn't be seen in uniform around alcohol. Texi taught
the cheerleaders how to perform, but Suzanne made them a machine.
Here's von sieale Baker, who was on the squad when
she took over. Tell me about Suzanne. Do have three days?
(06:24):
Suzanne died in twenty sixteen, and she was a complicated
figure who commanded great respect but also great fear.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I liked it.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
Because it's so funny, but I've had my mamas were
I wasn't sweating from dancing, I was sweating from talking
to her.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
More than anyone. Suzanne was the person responsible for their
rise to fame, and she was very protective of them
once they got there.
Speaker 6 (06:48):
She was very it's real den mother.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
That's Tracy Tynan, who's documentary A Great Bunch of Girls
followed the cheerleaders during the nineteen seventy eight tryouts. That year,
more than a thousand women competed for thirty six spots.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
She was very protective of them and kind of like
an old fashioned chaperone, you know. She made sure that
you adhere to all the rules and regulations and if
you didn't, you were going to be tossed off the squad,
and that was made very clear.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Mary and Braback, her partner on that documentary, says, Suzanne
ran the cheerleaders like a football team.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I looked at her as the person that is the scout.
Speaker 7 (07:29):
She she oversees the draft.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
She's the coach, and she's the general manager.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And Suzanne was doing this in addition to her full
time job protect sham. The cheerleaders I spoke with said
she hung back in the first year, not really asserting herself,
but once she did, she was all in on crafting
the culture and image of that squad. Here's a clip
from that documentary.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
They have to be developed for our purposes in that
they have to represent us a certain way.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Suzanne was a shrewd marketer. She made sure the cheerleaders
appealed to a wide range of fans.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
There's the little bitty girl in pigtails, there's the tiny
little Barbie doll.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Look, there's a miss athletic.
Speaker 5 (08:13):
We want a little of everything.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
It was a bit like seventy Spice Girls. A sultry redhead,
a perky brunette, an approachable tomboy. And while it might
be over selling it to call the squad diverse, it's
worth noting that in nineteen seventy eight there were six
black women on the squad out of thirty six. That's
more black women than the team had for much of
(08:37):
the next four decades. The dig on the cheerleaders is
that they were appealing to male fantasy, but they were
also appealing to women and little girls who were eager
to see themselves reflected in the macho world of men's
professional sports.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
If I wanted to do any any physical makeup or
hair changes for you, would you have any objections? Thanks
be Anny the dis the magnet look vitter.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Many of the women I spoke with talked about how
Suzanne pushed them toward their better cells, made them something
they didn't know they could be. Along with the rules,
Suzanne instilled a sense of service on the squad that
included goodwill missions to nursing homes and children's hospitals. There
was no doubt Suzanne could be an inspirational figure, but
(09:23):
at times she could also be pretty harsh. Tammy remembers
the day Suzanne told her she was getting a new look.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Suzanne called me into Texi's office and Suzanne said, TEXI
and I have decided that you're going to wear your
hair up in pigtails from now on for the games
and for anything we do. And I was like, Okay,
why And then what she said to me, I will
(09:55):
ever ever forget because I was what nineteen twenty years old,
and she said, you're not pretty enough and you need
a gimmick.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Tammy was in shock. She'd never been around this kind
of cutthroat atmosphere. She'd grown up in Nebraska, an only
child with two parents who always supported her. But Tammy
didn't push back. She wore the pigtails, played the part
she'd been given at every appearance. What else could she do?
She had to try out again each year to stay
(10:30):
on the squad, and every year she was up against
more than a thousand girls who wanted her spot Suzanne
liked to remind everyone you can be replaced in a second.
She had certain lines they all knew by heart. Another
one they heard all the time, it's the uniform that
makes you. You don't make the uniform.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
So I hated the pigtails at first. I took her
words so deeply to heart that it shattered me for
a while. And then it was almost as if the
universe decided to turn it around and make me feel
better by making the pigtails as big as life.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Suzanne's makeover made Tammy one of the most recognizable cheerleaders
of the seventies. The look catapulted her into the spotlight,
and she was featured on posters and merchandise along with
her best friend on the squad, Shannon Baker Worthman.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I was a cheerleader from nineteen seventy six to nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
This is Shannon.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I just remember my dad saying, why don't you do this?
Maybe we can get some free tickets if you go
and try out for this thing.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
She'd hoped to become a ballet dancer, but her petite
bucks and body wasn't a fit for that world. But
she was a perfect fit for the cheerleaders. Shannon had
that fair faucet hair and kill her high kicks. When
the Cowboys released a cheerleader doll, they called it Shannon.
Like the other cheerleaders, Shannon had a busy life off
(12:03):
the field. She was studying broadcast journalism at SMU and
she had rehearsals and appearances, and on top of that,
she had to write back to her fans. That was
another one of Suzanne's rules. You had to write back.
And Shannon got a lot of mail from girls who
wanted to be dancers and cheerleaders when they grew up,
(12:23):
and from boys who had her poster on their bedroom wall.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
And I probably wouldn't let much older than they were.
They're like twelve and I'm seventeen.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And then I had a gentleman that was from Mexico
that would send me a weekly sombrero.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Were the sombreros different? Oh?
Speaker 8 (12:43):
Very yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And they were the big sombreros, like big.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Shannon still has a lot of these letters. She read
me one from a boy named Russ who lived in Connecticut.
They corresponded for years.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Dear Shannon, Hi, thanks so much for writing back. I
never dreamed you would but here's the letter. I'm so excited.
Thursday I went down to the pharmacy where my mother
works and told her I received an A on my
math final exam. So see, it's so nice. They want
to share with us the details of their life.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And I won't play you the whole thing here. It's
really long, but pretty articulate for a fourteen year old boy.
And as I'm listening, I'm thinking about a time when
I wrote letters like this to my celebrity crushes, and
I have such affection for that kind of fandom for
a kid hoping to be more than one more anonymous
person in the stadium.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Shannon, I'm so happy you made this squad again this year.
I can't wait to see my favorite gorgeous Dallas cowboy cheerleader.
You did you know it was you? Thanks for the
schedule and decals. I love you, Rest Denham. My heart
was amazy and I appreciate I mean, I'm sure I
(14:00):
appreciated it then, but I appreciate it more now. Isn't
that the sweetest?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
And I couldn't help myself. There was someone I just
had to ask about this letter.
Speaker 9 (14:11):
Russell Henry Dunham, the fourth and I grew up in
Western Grading, Connecticut, fifty miles from New York City.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Russ was five or six when he became a Cowboys fan,
and that decision has stuck.
Speaker 9 (14:24):
That was who I was and still them to this day.
It's not another team that that would come close to
the love that I have for them.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
And I asked him what he remembers wanting to say
to Shannon at this point in his life, why he
chose her, What kind of a connection was he looking for?
Speaker 9 (14:41):
Not that there wasn't a crush, But I never thought
of like that I could be a boyfriend anything. I
don't think I ever thought that. It was just kind
of like, I want to be part of the Dallas
Cowboys and friends with the Cowboy cheerleaders, and I wanted
to be there every day, and my dream was to
work for the Dallas Cowboys.
Speaker 7 (14:58):
So so okay, so I want to read you this
letter now? Are you ready?
Speaker 10 (15:04):
Are?
Speaker 7 (15:04):
Oh?
Speaker 9 (15:07):
I've been nervous since I got your email the other night.
Speaker 7 (15:10):
Did you know that you sent two little pictures with it?
Two little emptomatic pictures. It's you and your Cowboys bedroom.
Speaker 9 (15:17):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Then I read Russ his own letter from forty plus
years ago, and I'll skip to the end.
Speaker 7 (15:23):
This summer, i'll be back in Miami visiting my brother Lewis.
I'll probably go to the beach a lot in search
of girls. Yes, sir, may say, don't be jealous. Oh
(15:45):
my goodness, I can't wait to see my favorite gorgeous
Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
Speaker 9 (15:51):
You did you know it was you?
Speaker 7 (15:53):
I'll see you on TV. By the way, Since you
can't send me an autographed photo, alright, how about one
of yourself just sitting at home in your bikini.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
Oh my god, Oh my goodness, gracious.
Speaker 7 (16:14):
I know, I know, I know it was Bold. I mean, listen,
you are a teen boy with like a dream and
a mission. It is amazing to bold boy.
Speaker 9 (16:25):
Yeah, step back from that, huh.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And I was curious what it felt like to be
Shannon getting these notes from people you don't know who
are looking for something from you.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
You know, I've had fans say you're like part of
our family, and they became like part of our you know,
my family, and it's just, I don't know, it's just
really really sweet.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Tammy got a lot of fan mail too. She was,
after all, the girl with the pigtails, but Tammy's fan
base was a different demographic.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yes, the majority of my fan was from little girls
who would send me a picture. They were in their
homemade uniforms, and they would tell me how they watched
the games, and they look for me, and they always
had pigtails in their hair. And then the one thing
(17:18):
that I got that I think about, if it were
to happen today, I could probably end up in prison.
Moms and grandmas would send me pictures of their grandsons
or their sons and do you remember under rus?
Speaker 7 (17:35):
Oh I do?
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Oh I do?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
In case you didn't know, under rus were very popular
in the late seventies, basically kids underwear with superheroes and
sports team logos.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
They would be in their cowboy under rus.
Speaker 11 (17:52):
They'd be standing in their cowboy under roofs with a
football in their hand. And then the letter would be
from grandma or mom saying you're our favorite cheerleader. And
it would be funny because you know, there'd be Shannon
sitting next to me and she'd have like this picture
(18:14):
of this really cute guy that wants to know if
she has a boyfriend and how much he loves her,
and she thinks she's so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
And then I got under Russ I'd be like, well
look at my new boyfriend. He's seven.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
More after this, being a cheerleader was such a random
assortment of surprises and opportunities. It was like your side
hustle was being a celebrity. They do these amazing things
then come home and live their regular lives. They took
a two week tour of Japan sponsored by Mitsubishi in
(18:55):
nineteen eighty. They even put out a record, It's a
little light in the lyrics department, has a lot of spirit, duntageous.
(19:16):
And then there were all those appearances on telethons and
the variety shows that flooded the airwaves. The one that
Shannon remembered most vividly was the Osmond Brothers special.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
You know, we've got Bob Hope, Crystal Gail, Andy Gibb,
Jimmy Walker and.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
The Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
Speaker 7 (19:33):
Right, are they really that neat?
Speaker 12 (19:38):
I mean in person?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And first of all, it was gorgeous. I mean, we're
in the mountains, we are treated like princesses, like royalty,
you know, with the limos and the we get there
and we have a large spread of food waiting for us,
and we got to go to Donnie Marie's home, which
was so cool to me. I thought that was really cool,
(20:02):
going in her bedroom and it was like light, pink
bedspread and her collection of dolls, and I mean she
was it was like, she's a girl, She's a girl
like us.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It's easy to forget how young the cheerleaders were. You
had to be eighteen to try out, but Shannon was seventeen.
She didn't want to wait, so she lied on her application.
A lot of the other cheerleaders were nineteen twenty, and
they still saw themselves as girls too, and they were
pulled into the orbit of all this fame.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
You'd look out over the beautiful mountains and see the
twinkling lights down in the city below, and I mean
it was just so cool, and you did have to
pinch yourself. I mean that was dream like to me.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
The run continued, award shows, The Love Boat a hit
TV movie, But for a lot of cheerleaders, these moments
on the pedestal could be hard to square with the
mess see financial realities. Sometimes the most important thing about
these appearances was just a chance to make some money,
because they got paid extra for special events, usually between
(21:11):
three hundred and five hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
We were poor. We were all very poor. It was
there's so much time spent with the cowboys that it
was hard to keep a full time job.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
This is Tammy Barber again.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
And truthfully, appearances to me meant, oh, thank goodness, extra money.
I'm going to get to pay a bill. That's all
it really was in my head is oh, I need
an appearance. I really need an appearance because that is
good money.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
And among the thirty six cheerleaders there was this inner
circle of women Suzanne would hand pick for these appearances,
and the competition could be intense. The hobby that the
cowboys created had become more like a full time job.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
All the all the playing cards, everything, the movies, everything.
They made millions. And the funny part is is that
other people thought I was making money. A guy that
went to high school with became a stockbroker, and he
was always sending me stuff I'm wanting to know if
I would invest. I never told him that I made
(22:22):
fourteen dollars and twelve cents after taxes on a game.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Shannon was living rent free with her family during these years,
but other women weren't so lucky.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
There were so many broke cheerleaders at that time that
weren't able to pay their rent. It was all fine
and good at the beginning, but then when you can't
pay your rent for multiple months and you're working so
hard and you're falling asleep at your desk at work
because you've been working all night at rehearsal, and you're
seeing all of this wonderful publicity coming around you, and
(22:55):
you think, for sure, I have a place in this
mix monetarily. Know that we're making all this money for
the team.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
But where is it for the Cowboys. It was actually
a point of pride that these women worked so hard
for the team for almost nothing, Like, look how much
they love this.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Team, And that was pounded into our heads. If you're
doing it for the money, you need to get out
because you're not gonna last very long.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Suzan gave everything she had to the Cowboys, and she
expected that same level of sacrifice from the cheerleaders too.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I know personally I would fall asleep at work. I
was exhausted. If you're working nine to five and then
you have to be at practice at six Claire Cross, Dallas,
you're eating junk in the car, You got home at
two in the morning, you got back up at six,
you went to work. You repeated it, you know, five
days a week, six days a week, and then there
(23:54):
was the day of the game. I mean it was.
It was constant. Even though it's like, wow, I can't
believe I'm here, I can't believe I'm on the sidelines
of Texas Stadium. It was a hobby. You weren't going
to make money doing it. This was a hobby and
an honor. And after a while you're like, honor this.
(24:14):
I broke.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
On top of the constant hustle, there was a vulnerability
that came along with the spotlight. Tammy lived alone in
an apartment in Irving while she kept this exhausting schedule.
And one night, after she's finally home, she shuts off
the lights, climbs into bed.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
And my phone rang and a man's voice said good night, Tammy.
I don't remember if I immediately hung up, or I
might have said who is this?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
A few days later, same thing. Tammy gets home, climbs
into bed and the phone rings. She picks it up
and she hears good night Tammy. After that, she starts
going to sleep with the lights on.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
And even though my lights were on, as soon as
I climbed in bed, my phone rang and the same
voice said good night, Tammy.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Within days she moved to a new apartment.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I was scared to leave my apartment, and I was
scared to be in my apartment. And I have no
idea who it was. No one ever came to my door.
How he knew when I was getting in bed, I
don't know. Even with lights on.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
It terrified her, but she never told anyone.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Girls were sent I mean prisoners. Oh my gosh. The
fan mail from prisoners was unbelievable. And then the crazy
people who would say, you're not writing back to me,
what is wrong with you? You need to write back
to me. Then we found out that Suzanne was not
giving us the hate mail. All our mailes started coming
(25:55):
already opened. They were screening our fan mail.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Suzanne saw herself as a protector behind the scenes. She
was known to take cheerleaders under her wing. She counseled
them over abusive boyfriends. She paid for their divorces. Those
strict rules weren't just designed to maintain the image, but
also to maintain their safety. Here she is again in
that nineteen seventy nine documentary.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Don't ever give anybody your home phone number ever, or
your home address. You were fined probably by mid season,
if not before. You'll have to have an unlisted phone number.
And don't give out any information about any other cheerleader.
It's for your own protection.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
After multiple mob scenes like the one in Wichita, the
cheerleaders got security guards at every public event. But outside
those events there were elements Suzanne couldn't.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Control because many girls had stalkers. It wasn't just me
that had to move because somebody found out where I lived.
There were several people, several girls who had to do that.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
I talked to another cheerleader today. She goes by Billy Mitchell.
Speaker 10 (27:05):
And as a cheerleader, I was Billy Gosden and I
am an alumni of nineteen seventy nine and eighty.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
And in her one season with the cheerleaders, she had
multiple threats from strangers.
Speaker 10 (27:18):
Where was Actually? When I was still cheering, I had
butcher knives sent to me, a big set of butcher
knives in a Manila envelope with a letter, and it
was a sick, crazy, typewritten letter from Pittsburgh. It was
wrapped up in Pittsburgh Steeler not newspaper, which that was
one of our big rivals back then.
Speaker 6 (27:37):
And I thought my.
Speaker 10 (27:38):
Husband bought me butcher knives or something at first, and
then I started reading it.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
The letter was like Billy my goddess of love, and
it was just sick.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
And then another night, she comes home from a movie
with her husband and her daughter, and her husband lays
down on the couch and Billy goes alone to her
bedroom and lays down on their waterbed and she's lying
there in the dark, and she can feel somebody watching her.
Speaker 10 (28:06):
And that police said that I threw him off because
I jumped up thinking something was wrong.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
For an instant, she thinks maybe her husband, Steve, has
come in from the other room.
Speaker 10 (28:15):
Steve had a robe on and I he had on
like swayed. I felt swite, so subconsciously I knew it
wasn't Steve, but I kept talking to him like it was.
I kept going, what do you want?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
And this stranger he just turns and starts walking away,
and Billy fallows right behind him.
Speaker 10 (28:31):
And it wasn't until he got to the kitchen where
the light, the Levin light was on, I saw his
face and then I just started trying to scream and
nothing came out, and he had already had his way
to go out the door. And that was just my
first year.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And so she ended up moving too.
Speaker 10 (28:47):
And I didn't sleep at night probably for twenty years.
I mean, I would go to sleep as soon as
dawn hit. I mean, it just messed up my head
and I went to counseling for it and stuff, but
it was just it was ale for me.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
And that wasn't even the last of it. A little later,
she's just come home from the hospital with her second daughter.
Speaker 10 (29:08):
And the neighbors came over and said, there's somebody standing
outside your window. So we moved right after that.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Billy left cheerleading after a year. It just wasn't worth
the stress. And maybe it's worth asking why anyone would
put up with this, the rules, the low pei, the
creepy stalkers, there's no one reason why so many women
wanted to be a part of this. For some like Shannon,
it was a chance to have a dance career, one
(29:39):
much closer to home than New York or LA. And
for everyone I spoke to, there was the extraordinary experience
of game day.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
It was the biggest thing I'd ever seen in my life.
There's something about an NFL field that for me, I
feel really tiny and I'm in this dome of amazement.
WHOA takes my breath away. Literally when I am on
the field in a performance, my heart is just like huge.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
And during the late seventies, when young women didn't have
so many ways to make it in a world run
by men, being a cheerleader came with a rare status.
Tammy's father was a devoted Cowboys fan, and it amazed
him that she became a part of the game. This
was a chance to be somebody. Even when she cheers
on the field for alumni events, that feeling returns.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
I remember one of the years that I went back,
I literally could not breathe. I was so overwhelmed with emotion.
The tears were just shooting out of my eyes, and
I couldn't take a breath because I was back on
the field and my brain went back to that time.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
What do you think you were feeling?
Speaker 3 (31:03):
I was back to time where you know, I thought
I was a grown up, but I wasn't. I was
a little girl who had made her dad's dream come
true with the Dallas cowboys and I have made the
best friends of my life and they still are today.
Speaker 10 (31:24):
I mean, it was home.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I was home, the bonds of friendship, the foxhole mentality
of being united by or against Suzanne. It shaped them
at such an impressionable time in their lives. The twenty
eighteen documentary Daughters of the Sexual Revolution follows the cheerleaders
during Suzanne's era, and it's a dynamic portrait of their influence.
(31:48):
It's director, Dana Shapiro, told me he was moved by
how deep this experience had been.
Speaker 8 (31:55):
At the end of the day, it really was kind
of this family story. When you speak to these women
and after interviewing, you know, they would speak about their
own mothers, and then they would speak about Susanne in
similar tones. You know that she guided them, she showed
them what was important. And they say, you know, it
might sound silly because it seems so frivolous cheerleading, but
(32:17):
this is where I found purpose and meaning. I mean,
that's really what we're all looking for. I mean, I
think you go through life looking for something like that
purpose meaning.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
These are no small things. We're all looking for ways
to feel connected to something greater than ourselves. And this
sideline experiment had become a transformative institution. But I also
can't help noticing how well this arrangement served the cowboys
bottom line. They were asked to be starving artists in
(32:49):
the context of this multi million dollar institution. The way
I see it, that's just one of the tensions that
was baked into the experiment. They were told they were
special and also instantly replaceable. They had to be good
girl brand ambassadors and also sexy pin ups. And as
the world came at the cheerleaders, the Cowboys had to
(33:12):
keep those young women safe and at the same time
perpetuate the male fantasy that made them famous. The Cowboys
had to control this wildfire at the same time they
fanned the flames. They were all these tensions, and by
the end of nineteen seventy eight, they were about to explode.
Speaker 12 (33:35):
Next time on America's Girls, we were the first Dallas
Cowboy cheerleaders to ever show our breast to the world,
And that one thing.
Speaker 6 (33:47):
I think caused so many problems.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
I just saw, I saw, I saw.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Thanks to the UCLA Film and Television Archive for audio
from the documentary A Great Bunch of Girls, directed by
Maryann Braback and Tracy Tynan. 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
(34:23):
Sarah Heppelo. Executive producer is Megan krit Produced and edited
by Patrick Michaels and edited by JK.
Speaker 12 (34:30):
Nichol.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Produced and engineered by Brian Standifer, who also wrote the music.
Additional research and audio editing by podcast intern Harper Carlton.
America's Girls art is by Emily Kimbrow and Victoria Milner
and marketing by Torri Mo. Our theme song is Enough
by the bra Lets. If you like the show, please
subscribe and visit our page at Apple Podcasts and rate
(34:54):
the show there. See you next week.
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