Man Mountain Dean

Famed wrestler Man Mountain Dean was born Frank Simmons Leavitt in New York City in 1891. Oversize almost from birth, he was able to lie about his age--and get away with it--to join the army at 14 years of age. He was posted to the US-Mexcian border, where he served in the unit commanded by Gen. John J. Pershing, and was later transferred to Europe during World War I and saw combat duty in France. After the war he tried a career as a professional football player--he had played, and excelled in, a number of sports during his high-school years--and played with the New York Giants team. He didn't meet with any particular success as a football player, and while recuperating from an injury in Florida he met and married Doris Dean. He left football to embark on a career as a professional wrestler, with his wife as his manager. She booked him on an exhibition tour of Germany, which met with great success. He made another successful tour, this time in England, and while there he was hired as a double for star Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). Upon his return to the US he was offered more work in pictures--he appeared in roughly 30 of them altogether--and became a favorite of the Hollywood crowd. He was able to command salaries of up to $1500 for a match--a substantial sum in the professional wrestling world--and used his enormous girth (300+ pounds) and his long, full beard as his trademarks. After a successful wrestling career, he retired to his farm near Norcross, Georgia, in 1937. He got involved in local politics, and eventually studied journalism at the University of Georgia in Atlanta. He died at his farm on May 29, 1953.