High Flying in Detroit with Leaping Larry Chene

Arguably the most popular wrestler in the Detroit, Michigan area in the early 1960s was Leaping Larry Chene--born Arthur Lawrence Beauchene on June 22, 1924 on Detroit's Eastside. He attended St. Bernard Catholic School where he played team sports. In the early 1940s, he took naval pre-flight training at the University of Iowa and the University of Michigan. Chene wrestled competitively in college before enlisting to fight in World War II. 

After the war, Beauchene started a trucking business which involved long hours and marginal profits. In 1951, Detroit wrestling promoter Bert Ruby needed someone to fill in for one of his injured wrestlers and approached Beauchene knowing he had a wrestling background. Ruby offered him $27.50 for wrestling a thirty-minute bout. He wrestled under a shortened, Americanized version of his real name--Larry Chene. Years later, he was quoted as saying, "This was the easiest money I ever made."

Shortly after, Chene shut down his struggling trucking business and learned the secrets of the squared circle. Chene wrestled in small, local venues five or six times a week for different small promotions while he developed his craft. Then in 1953, he signed a six-week contract to wrestle in Texas. He liked the steady work and the money. Chene had a growing family to provide for, so he stayed for several years developing his high-flying, Leaping Larry Chene persona.

Chene was a spectacular aerial performer whose signature move was the flying head scissors. He was a likeable "good guy" who fans related to when he took a beating at the hands of an assortment of uncouth villains. Unlike his opponents, Chene was personable and bantered with the referees and the crowd. He was always quick with a smile and an autograph when he met the public.

John Squires remembers back in the early 1960's "Dearborn High had a wrestling night in the gym. Larry, the Sheik, Bobo, all were there. Larry got thrown out of the ring and while he was laying in front of us, he borrowed my friend's penny loafer (shoe) and stuck it in the back of his tights. Chene jumped back in the ring and hit the Sheik in the forehead with it and the Sheik started bleeding. Not sure if it was fake or not, but it sure looked good."

Wrestling Promoter Bert Ruby

Chene returned to Detroit in 1960 a seasoned professional wrestler. He signed a contract with old friend Bert Ruby, who was looking for a star to headline his new Motor City Wrestling (MCW) television program which aired Saturday afternoons on WXYZ-TV Channel 7. Chene was featured and quickly became a fan favorite. The television show was essentially an advertisement for Ruby's growing wrestling promotions which were now happening at larger venues like the Olympia arena and Detroit's new Cobo Hall Convention Center. Big money was being made.

During a live Saturday afternoon match on August 26, 1961 to promote an Olympia event, Chene wrestled La Bestia (The Beast)--The Sicilian Sheep Herder. The Beast caught Chene from behind with a bear hug and shook him up and down while squeezing. Chene uncharacteristicly cried out and The Beast dropped him on the mat. The referee stopped the match and the program cut to a commercial break.

The MCW doctor on hand called an ambulance and transported the injured wrestler to Riverside Hospital in Trenton, Michigan where he was diagnosed with a torn stomach muscle requiring surgery and a lengthy period of recuperation. To keep his name in the wrestling public's mind, Chene did the color commentary for MCW until his abodmen healed. Meanwhile, a grudge match with The Beast was heavily promoted for a month before it was scheduled.

 

In those days, the matches were three falls. The Beast won the first fall and Chene won the second. In a rage, The Beast threw Chene out of the ring. The Beast's manager, Martino Angelo, promptly attacked Chene on the concrete floor. When the referee wasn't able to restore order, he handed the split decision to Chene after disqualifying The Beast.

During his career, Chene won more matches than he lost, and he held many championship titles and belts during his thirteen-year tenure delighting fans. Early in the morning on October 2, 1964, Chene was returning home from a match in Davenport, Iowa when his car went off the shoulder of Interstate 80 and flipped over near Ottawa, Illinois. Initial reports indicated Chene's car hit a telephone pole but that was found to be false. Illinois State Police reported finding a speeding ticket for traveling 92 mph issued to Chene five hours before he was found dead in his car. He was almost forty years old.

On Tuesday, October 6, 1964, services were held for Arthur Lawrence Beauchene at St. David's Roman Catholic Church on E. Outer Drive in Detroit. Beauchene lived in Harper Woods with his wife Mary and their six children. His body is interred in Mt. Olivet Cemetery. Edward George Farhat, the original Sheik, paid for the funeral.

Leaping Larry Chene match with post match interview

Edythe Fern Melrose--The Lady of Charm

The Lady of Charm

Edythe Fern (Culp) Melrose was born in rural Illinois in 1897, but she was raised on a farm in West Mansfield, Ohio. She grew up a farmer's daughter doing chores like milking cows and gathering eggs. "My parents had four daughters and we all did boy's work and household chores." Edythe went to a little country school until her father moved the family to Chicago, so his daughters could get a better education.

At first, Edythe was insecure about being a "country hick" or a "hayseed" at the Bush Conservatory of Music and Performing Arts. To avoid being labeled a "dunce," she became an overachiever and pushed herself to get the highest grades in her class. She learned about charm, personality, diction, poise, and proper speech habits--the standard expectations for young, educated women of that era. Unbeknowst to Edythe, these traits became the focus of her future career.

She graduated with honors from the Bush Conservatory and entered Columbia College in Chicago--a private, nonprofit college specializing in visual and performing arts, liberal arts, and business degrees. There, she graduated from the "School of Media Arts" where she learned about radio broadcasting and business management.

In 1929, Edythe became one of the first women in America to manage a radio station--WJAY in Cleveland. From 1933 until 1941, she emceed her own women's program which was popular locally. Edythe moved her program in 1941 to WXYZ-Radio in Detroit and renamed it "The Lady of Charm." By 1943, she created House of Charm Radio Productions and syndicated her program throughout Michigan, building her Lady of Charm brand. She had a pleasant radio voice, an infectious chuckle, and a wealth of common sense for women that she would sprinkle throughout her program. Her tag line was "A women's charm depends on the way she looks and the way she cooks."

Early television pioneers

Edythe's public image was motherhood and apple pie, but behind the scenes, she was a consummate business woman active in Detroit's professional business organizations. As the Lady of Charm, Edythe Fern Melrose was a much sought-after speaker in the Detroit area. Seven years later, she made the leap to television and became a television pioneer. Her program on WXYZ-TV Channel 7 ran from 1948 until 1960. She was always fashionably dressed and looked like she just left the beauty parlor.

Edythe was one of the first television personalities to utilize product placement, and she doubled-down by shrewdly mentioning the brand names of the appliances used on her studio set which endeared her to sponsors like Frigidaire, Hotpoint, and General Electric. 

Her recommendations were much sought-after by advertisers. She had a fully-functional replica of her home kitchen constructed in the studio at the Maccabees Building and later at WXYZ's Broadcast House in Southfield. Every year, kitchen appliance styles would change, and the Lady of Charm got whatever she asked for free of charge. Her studio kitchen always had the latest appliances and was an advertisement in itself. 

 

When Edythe did a cooking segment, everything was premeasured for her to save precious air-time. Every dish was prepared in two stages: one with ingredients for preparation on-air to be shoved in the oven and another already baked to take out of the oven. She would choose an invited guest or someone from the station to sit down at the end of her show and share the dish while seated at a tablecloth-covered, fully decked-out table with silverware and crystal service. After taping her show, Edythe's assistant finished cooking or baking the extra dish for Edyth's camera crew. Soupy Sales remembered, "We were the best-fed station in town."

WXYZ did not renew Edythe's contract in 1960 after twelve years on Detroit television. She revived her production company producing commercials and syndicated segments titled "The Charm Kitchen" and "House of Fashion" for other Detroit stations including CKLW in Windsor, Ontario. In addition to producing and appearing in ads, she wrote advertising copy for her high-dollar, corporate clientele. To produce her segments, she rented studio time and production facilities from WXYZ Broadcast House in Southfield.

During a studio taping for the Pontiac Motor Car Company on February 27, 1968, one of the station's directors asked Edythe to go backstage and attach a microphone to her bra. It was dark behind the curtain where she tripped over a cable and severely twisted her leg dislocating her knee. She was rushed to the hospital for surgery where her knee cap was removed confining her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

She and her husband (Forest U. Webster) filed a lawsuit charging WXYZ with neglect for not providing a proper passageway backstage for her. The station dragged the lawsuit through two appeals taking eight years to work through the Macomb County Court and the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Just fifteen days after she and her husband were awarded a settlement of $952,000 for damages including back interest, Edythe Fern (Melrose) Webster died at the age of seventy-seven at her home on May 19, 1976. Services were held in Grosse Point Woods at A.H. Peters Funeral Home, and she was buried in Grayling, Michigan.

Edythe was a product of her times as much as a trendsetter for women of her day. Her friends and colleagues remembered Edythe as active in public affairs and concerned about her television viewers. Longtime friend Diane Edgecomb told The Detroit Free Press that "Edythe was a classic, a real television pioneer. She was a genteel women's libber all her life." Business associate and friend Marion Ryan said, "Edythe had a very charming personality and a nice way of putting people at ease. She will be missed." 

Lady of Charm Brings Home the Bacon