Johnny Rougeau bio worth catching
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Johnny Rougeau puts the sleeper on Eddie Creatchman in 1969. Courtesy of The Creatchman Family.
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By GREG OLIVER -- SLAM! Wrestling
Tonight, the French station Canal D in Québec is airing a
biography of Jean (Johnny) Rougeau at 9 p.m. It's worth catching even if your
grasp of French isn't up to par.
With fascinating photos and video footage of Rougeau and his family
(including his brother Jacques Sr., and nephew Raymond), the biography
explains what Rougeau meant to Québec during his heyday in the 1960s, and
into the 1970s.
Besides being an accomplished wrestler, Rougeau was also at various times a
wrestling promoter, politician, owner of the Mocambo night club, president
of the Québec Major Junior Hockey League, owner of a hair cutting salon, and
bodyguard to Rene Levesque.
It's little wonder that the people interviewed during
Jean Rougeau
throw out words like charming, hero and celebrity with ease.
Interviewed for the biography are:
- Jacques Rougeau Sr., Johnny's brother and main resource for the show
- Raymond Rougeau, Johnny's nephew
- Paul Leduc, wrestler and friend of the Rougeau family
- Edouard Carpentier, former World champ from France who was brought to
Québec by Johnny Rougeau
- Michele Richard, a French singer who performed at the Mocambo
- Fernand Daoust, a union leader who talks about Rougeau's organizing of
Coca-Cola employees in his youth
- Bernard Arcand, an anthropologist, who explains what wrestling is to
society, and how it works
- Pierre Godin, biographer of Rene Levesque
- Marc Lachapelle, a journalist who addresses Rougeau's involvement in
junior hockey
Ginette Langlois did the research, scriptwriting, and the interviews for
Jean Rougeau, for Communications Claude Heroux in Montreal. She said
that the biography was intended as a "portrait" of Johnny Rougeau, and that
he "was many things in his life."
The biography was two months in the works, and is narrated by Guy Nadon. Luc
Harvey and Jean-Pierre Maher were co-directors of the project.
Besides the actual recounting of Rougeau's life, which ended because of
cancer in 1983, wrestling fans will enjoy the old footage and photos,
including some fun shots in black and white of a young
Abdullah the Butcher.
In the end, it's an excellent companion piece to
Johnny Rougeau (Les
Editions Quebecor, 1982), the autobiography that Rougeau wrote while he was
in the hospital during the final stages of the cancer that would eventually
kill him.
