In 1960, Tex Schramm, the general manager of the Dallas Cowboys, was looking for ways to attract more spectators to the local games of this new National Football League (NFL) franchise. The crowds attending the games are small and, what does not help, the team loses all its matches. Dallas football fans are much more interested in cheering on football clubs from nearby colleges and universities.
Schramm, a Californian - born in 1920, died in 2003 - is a journalism graduate from the University of Texas who began his career as a sportswriter before becoming director of advertising for the Los Angeles Rams in 1947. He quickly rose through the ranks to become general manager of the team. Incidentally, he then hired a certain Pete Rozelle as the new advertising director of the Rams.
Rozelle later became the commissioner of the NFL for nearly 30 years (1960 to 1989) and he made giant strides in the circuit, until it was among the best professional sports leagues in the world.
After his time with the Rams, Schramm (above) landed an executive position at CBS Sports in 1957. His professional experience, both in football and on TV, will help him greatly to meet the challenge of the management of the new Dallas Cowboys. He is first and foremost an excellent salesman, thanks to his former job as an advertising director with the L.A. Rams. And through his training as a journalist, and his time at CBS, he knows the power of the media.
He will use all this baggage to become a marketing genius, an outstanding innovator, and a remarkable visionary who will contribute greatly to the improvement of the NFL, and make the Cowboys immensely popular, earning them the title of "America's team".
This huge success will pass, among other strokes of genius, by the creation of a new group of cheerleaders who will make a sensation and who will "stick" to the brand image of the Cowboys.
Already, in 1960-61, since his losing club did not offer a good show on the field, - performances capables of attracting big crowds -, Schramm thought of the creation of a squad of Pom Pom Girls that would offer at least one good show to the audience, along the sidelines. He hired Dee Brock, a high school teacher and part-time model, to found this quad of cheerleaders.
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| The « CowBelles and their Beaux » in 1966. |
At this time, the Cowboys boss already has the idea of making football not only the most popular sport but a great entertainment through a few innovations and using the power of the media.
He suggests that Dee Brock recruit pretty models to fill the role of cheerleaders. When he was working for CBS, Schramm noted that television programs where you see pretty girls attract a lot of viewers. Brock asked him how much he will pay for the models he wants her to recruit. Schramm replie : « zero ».
Dee Brock is adamant that a model will never agree to cheerleading for free. In addition, these young women, - and their makeup ! - would not last for three hours on the football field, where the scorching temperature can often reach more than 90° F.
So, Schramm and Brock will have to fall back on students from nearby high schools to compose their squad of Pom Pom Girls. Later, boys will join the group - called " CowBelles & their Beaux " - and Dee Brock (wearing a black shirt on the above 1968 picture) will have to really insist that Scramm accept black members into the squad.
Brock was very keen that her group of young cheerleaders reflect the diversity of the city of Dallas' population. But she struggled to get her will accepted because, at the time, segregation still existed in Texas and the USA.
Four about ten years, on the field, the "CowBelles and their Beaux" will practice traditional routines, that is to say : make small acrobatics and tricks as it is done in the cheerleading clubs of the schools ; shouting slogans through megaphones ; and waving their pompoms to entice spectators to cheer on their football team.
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| The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in 1971 |
The girls on the squad wear long pleated skirts - that got shorter with time - and modest white shirts. But at the end of the 60s, the american society is changing. It is liberalizing. New ideas, new fashions (the mini-skirt !), cultural changes, freer mores, take place. So, Dee Brock, in agreement with Tex Scramm, also believes that the time has come to renew their group of cheerleaders.
In 1969, the boys were eliminated from the squad, who was simply renamed the "Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders" (DCC). And in the early 70s they changed the costume of the Pom Pom Girls. They now wear a shorter skirt and a blue blouse in the colors of the football club. But Schramm and Dee Brock are not satisfied. The latter wants older cheerleaders, that is to say between 18 and 25 years old, and she also wants their routines to be more dance-oriented.
To fulfill their new mission, the cheerleaders will need rigorous physical training and they will have to learn to dance. This task was entrusted to the renowned choreographer Texie Waterman (photo), whim whom Dee Brock would have to share her salary. Tex Schramm had a reputation for holding the purse strings very tight !
Later, Melnick tells one of his friends, who is the boss of a local clothing factory called Lorch, about Schramm's uniform project. Fashion designer Paula Van Wagoner works at this factory. Her boss asks her if she would like to design a new uniform for the Cheerleaders of the Dallas Cowboys. Although she specializes mainly in children's clothing, Paula is used to filling these kinds of « extra » orders. She sees no problems in being able to meet this demand.
She goes to meet Tex Schramm and Dee Brock at the Cowboys' offices and she just asks them what kind of uniform they want. Schramm responds : « Number one, these are going to be dancing girls so they have to be able to move. Number two, it's got to be a western theme to go with a Cowboy's theme. Number three, it's got to be sexy, but then it's got to be in good taste. »
Inspired by the fashion of the moment, and the elements she knows of the cowboy culture of the American West, Paula Van Wagoner does not take much time to draw two sketches of uniforms (above) that she will present to Schramm and Dee Brock, only two days after their initial meeting. In the early 70s, hot pants and go-go boots were fashionable, so Van Wagoner integrated them into her uniform proposals for the Cowboys cheerleaders.
For the western aspect, she thinks of a blue shirt attached in front by a box knot, with over, a bolero jacket with short fringes, trimmed with blue stars, like the white belt that holds the shorts. The other design is less suitable to the sexy look Schramm asked for, since the blouse covers the entire upper body and the shorts are hidden behind long fringes. Schramm, obviously, opts for the sexier of the two proposals. But he wants to see what it looks like on a real person.
Paula Van Wagoner does not hesitate to put on the chosen version of the new uniform to accede to the request of the boss of the Cowboys. She was therefore the first to wear this famous uniform, which, she is far from suspecting at that time, will become an icon of the American popular culture...
In 1972, for her, this uniform order was simply part of her job at Lorch, as she explained later, in 2018, after 46 years of oblivion, when the very prestigious Smithsonian National Museum of American History, in Washington D.C., finally recognized her work and paid her a beautiful tribute.
At that distant time, she said about her creation of the iconic uniform, during this ceremony in her honor at the famous Museum of international reputation : « It wasn't any big deal, it was just another assignment. I thought it would probably be that year and then they'd come up with another design the next year. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would last this long ! »
When Paula Van Wagoner first saw her creation carried by the Cowboys' new cheerleaders, it was during the inaugural game of the 1972-73 season for the champion Dallas team, which had just won its first Super Bowl, earlier that year. A huge crowd of more than 80,000 spectators gathered at the new Texas Stadium to cheer on its champions.
Suddenly, while this excited audience eagerly awaits the entry of its formidable players on the field, in order to celebrate them, it is rather the new cheerleaders of the Cowboys who are ahead of them first on the grassy surface. The spectators remain speechless at the unexpected spectacle of these beautifully dressed young women, who run waving their pompoms. They have never seen anything like it. These girls are dazzling in their splendid costumes.
Paula Van Wagoner is happy. She can't even believe that these beauties wear this uniform that she created humbly. The success of this outfit, so beautiful and so original, is instantaneous, and soon, all the cheerleader troops want to have it or copy it. So much so, that Tex Schramm and the Cowboys hurry to ensure its exclusivity by making it a registered and protected trademark.
The football team will enjoy twenty years of success on the field, and, with a thunderous marketing team, it will make a gigantic promotion of the club through a clever use of the media and by putting on the market a multitude of derivative products.
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| 1972 DDC Squad Leader Carrie O'Brien-Sibley in a uniform resembling the "other" Van Wagoner's design |
In honoring Paula Van Wagoner, on February 26, 2018, the Smithsonian Museum recalled that cheerleading is an American invention (at Princeton, in 1877), and that in the 1930s and 1940s, thanks to physical education teacher Gussie Nell Davis, cheerleading was one of the first and only physical activities the girls could pratice.
By highlighting the great Van Wagoner's uniform design, the National Museum of American History has provoked research into this phenomeon of the 1972 DCC. This research, particularly that carried out by the news media, has helped to bring out of oblivion other women who have contributed to this historical recognition of the work of Mrs. Van Wagoner.
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| Leveta Crager, with DCC choreographer Judy Trammell, left |
Because, in addition to Tex Schramm, who received most of all the credit for having pushed to the maximum the fame of the cheerleaders of the Cowboys of 1972, we should not forget the important role played by Dee Brock ; by choreographer Texie Waterman ; by Suzanne Mitchell (Brock's successor at the head of the DCC troupe from 1976 through 1989) ; and by the seamstress Leveta Crager, who for 24 years, made the famous custom uniform for each cheerleader.
The work of Mrs. Crager, - who died in 2003 -, was not easy. Her granddaughter Shawna Smith remembers that there was a strict protocol for the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders uniforms. You had to buy a certain bra with a clasp at the rib cage. The shirt had to be tied around that clasp in a box knot, or things could get a bit loose. But the look was designed to be seamless.
About the shorts, they were actually two pairs of them sewn together. One acted as lining, to hug in a woman's curves without riding up. « You never saw a hemline in those shorts », Shawna said. « They were skimpy. But you never saw anything you weren't supposed to see. How she did it, I have no idea. »
On February 26, 2018, before leaving the ceremony and the people, including her family, who honored her at the Smithsonian, Paula Van Wagoner wanted to tell one last story. A really strange one :
« About 1970 my best friend and I gave each a trip to a fortune teller for our birthdays. Her name was Jessie and everyone talked about how wonderful she was. The only thing she knew about us was our first name and maybe our birth date. We went in and she talked about all these different things. I wrote everything down that I could remember she said. And then I stuck it in a box in my closet. About four years later, I was cleaning out my closet and I found that slip of paper. And what she said in 1970 was : "You will design a uniform that will be known all over the world". I have never forgotten that. »
Amazing !!!
The mission of the Smithsonian, at least one of them, is to use his resources across disciplines to explore what it means to be an American. If one could paint, on a huge mural, the history of the United States of America, among all the historical facts, and all the important figures who forged the American identity, there would probably be, on this large fresco, the small image of a cheerleader of the Dallas Cowboys, dressed in the wonderful costume designed by Paula Van Wagoner.
Some sources attribute this iconic uniform to Dallas fashion designer Jody Van Amburgh. Others give credit to Tex Schramm or Dee Brock. But Smithsonian historians are formal : they have in hand the original sketches of Paula Van Wagoner. There is no doubt, according to their impeccable expertise, that these drawings date from 1972 ; that they were made by Mrs. Van Wagoner ; and that one of these authentic sketches does represent the iconic uniform worn by the Cowboys' cheerleaders that same year.
The Cowboys organization has also given the Smithsonian several artifacts related to the extraordinary epic of its cheerleaders of 1972. Now, and forever, it is inscribed in the history and culture of the American people...
