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"He used to come to the matches in Memphis every Monday night," Ellison says. "He was a really sweet kid, a momma's boy. But you could tell something was different about him.
"After we'd get through wrestling, he'd ask us to come see him play at the little honkytonks around Memphis," Ellison continues. "He thought it would make him look bigger having a bunch of lady wrestlers in the audience. And we would always go because we loved him to death. We really enjoyed his singing. I think he wanted to be a wrestler. But after Tom Parker met him and showed him all the money he could get from singing, he was gone."
Moolah also befriended the infamous Jerry Lee Lewis in Memphis. "He was sweet and nice, but also a wild man," she says. "He reminded me a lot of Elvis. We'd be eating at a restaurant and all of a sudden music would start playing and he'd jump on the table and start singing and dancing."
Before meeting Elvis and Jerry Lee, Ellison had gotten serious about another music legend. Early in her career, while on the road wrestling in Oklahoma, Ellison and a group of friends went to a performance by Hank Williams.
"I had grown up on country music, and Hank Williams was my favorite," Ellison says. "I was really excited about seeing him."
She was even more excited when she was invited backstage after the show.
"He had just gotten divorced from Audrey, and we started dating. But after about a year I could tell it wouldn't work out. He was on the road seven days a week and under a lot of stress. It was hard on him. When he would get to drinking and mix it with other stuff, he would get really. . .demanding. What broke us up was, he said, "Lilly, when you become Mrs. Hank Williams, you can forget about this damn wrestling.' I said, "I beg your pardon.' It was over after that. A lot of times I feel sorry that happened, but it was for the best.
"I was really married to wrestling from my first match," Ellison continued. "When I met somebody, unless they were a promoter or somebody big in wrestling, I would forget about them in five minutes. They weren't going to make my living. I could see myself in the cotton fields again, and I didn't want to be there."
The life of a professional female wrestler wasn't an easy one during Ellison's era, even for a champion. She spent decades traveling the road in a grueling succession of one-night stands and hard knocks.
"Women wrestlers [in the early days] were like the novelty acts," she says. "You couldn't really make any money. We might drive from Columbia to Washington, DC, for a match, and the payoff would be $25. Then we'd have to turn around and drive back that same night because we wouldn't have any money for a hotel. It was tough, but I loved it."
Despite her sultry image, Ellison was strictly about the wrestling. "I ate, slept and breathed wrestling. There was no drinking, no smoking, and no partying. I'm an old-fashioned girl; I conducted myself like a lady, and wouldn't put up with any nonsense."
Golden Years, Cindi Lauper, & The Comeback
Ellison's career took another turn when she married Buddy Lee, a wrestler with many business connections throughout the South, and the pair started Girl Wrestling Enterprises (GWE) in the 60s. The timing was right, as promoter Billy Wolfe had died in 1962, leaving women's wrestling in disarray. Penny Banner, another wrestling legend who has lived in Charlotte for around three decades, was considered the women's champion by the American Wrestling Association, while Moolah held the WWF title. Both organizations were in rough shape. In stepped Ellison and Lee -- their GWE turned into a booking and training machine specifically run for women wrestlers. GWE survived Ellison's divorce from Lee, and by the late 60s, the organization boasted the largest group of women wrestlers in the US. During the 70s and much of the 80s, GWE was, in effect, one of the foundations of pro women's wrestling. Consequently, Ellison, or The Fabulous Moolah, was generally recognized as the queen of women's wrestling. This was in spite of, or perhaps because of, her ring image as a "heel"; unlike her predecessor champs, Mildred Burke and June Byers, Moolah riled the crowd with ring tactics that included stomping, choking, hair pulling, using foreign objects, you name it. She wasn't one of the fans' darlings, but she was the one they would always pay to see in case someone could beat her. For a long time, no one ever could.
