From wrestling ring to red carpet
HE WAS the original bad boy of wrestling’s golden age, an outrageous cross-dressing crowd-baiter who became known to grapple fans as the man they loved to hate.
And now a long-awaited film about the incredible life of Adrian Street is to get its cinema premiere in the star’s Valleys hometown this week.
You May Be Pretty, But I Am Beautiful: The Adrian Street Story will open on Thursday, charting the wrestler’s rise from working-class Valleys boy to one of the most flamboyant and infamous sporting stars on either side of the Atlantic.
A labour of love for its director – Newport’s Joann Randles – the film tells of how Street broke family tradition by refusing to follow his pitworker father down the mines, heading off instead to make his fortune as a big personality in the wrestling ring, despite only being 5ft 6in.
After a shaky start – and with an eyecatching penchant for dayglo face paint and peroxide pigtails – he started earning himself as many championship belts as he had feather boas.
A cultural icon who transcended the mere “man in tights” image, his look is said to have accidentally helped give birth to glam rock – Marc Bolan credited Street as a sartorial influence – as well as ushering in this country’s transition from hub of heavy industry to a significant player in the entertainment age.
Indeed, Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller has long cited a 1973 photo of Street, dressed in full outlandish regalia, standing next to his coal dust-caked dad and his fellow miners at Blaenau Gwent colliery, as the precise moment that seismic shift occurred.
Deller dubbed it the “most important post-war picture ever taken”.
Street, who now lives in Cwmbran, has also written numerous autobiographies and even recorded an album of songs with arch titles such as Sweet Transvestite With A Broken Nose.
He also proudly recalls having once beaten reviled paedophile DJ Jimmy Savile senseless during one early bout in a gimmicky 1971 showdown which Savile’s cronies insisted should end in a draw.
Street, however, didn’t agree. “I kicked his legs from underneath him so he hit the deck,” he recalls.
“Then I picked him up by his hair, held him upside down and dropped him on his skull.”
Now 78, retired and living back in Wales after decades in the US spotlight, Street will be guest of honour on the red carpet at Thursday’s event in his Brynmawr hometown’s Market Hall Cinema, along with WWE’s Flash Morgan Webster, Eddie Dennis, Mark Andrews, Wild Boar and original World of Sport and British wrestling legend Tony Scarlo.