Leavitt, Frank Simmons: Difference between revisions

|middle=Simmons

'''Frank Simmons Leavitt''' (30 June 1891 – 29 May 1953), known as '''Man Mountain Dean''', was a professional wrestler and Camp Ritchie hand-to-hand combat instructor who trained Ritchie Boys before overseas deployment.

Frank Simmons Leavitt was born on 30 June 1891 in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, the son of John McKenney Leavitt and Henrietta N. (Decker) Leavitt. Exceptionally large and strong from childhood, he lied about his age to join the U.S. Army at about fourteen—early age records are cloudy—and served multiple hitches under Gen. John J. Pershing, including duty on the Mexican border and combat in France during World War I. He began wrestling in 1914 as "Soldier Leavitt."

After the war Leavitt played guard and center for the New York Brickley Giants of the National Football League in 1921, but he concentrated on professional wrestling, performing as "Hell's Kitchen Bill-Bill," a name suggested by Damon Runyon, and later as "Stone Mountain." After an injury he joined the Miami Beach police in 1925 and the next year became a Miami traffic officer, a fixture at East Flagler Street and 2nd Avenue whom the city sent on summer publicity tours; there he met his wife and manager, Doris Dean Cooper. He was dismissed from the force in 1930 for visiting Al Capone's home on Palm Island. In 1932, at his wife's suggestion, he became "Man Mountain Dean," a bearded, 300-pound-plus figure who wrestled 504 professional bouts for fees of up to $1,500. A tour of Germany led to work as Charles Laughton's stunt double in ''The Private Life of Henry VIII'', the first of thirteen films, five of them playing himself, among them the 1938 Joe E. Brown comedy ''The Gladiator''. He briefly ran for the Georgia House of Representatives in 1938 and retired from the ring in 1940 to a farm near Norcross, Georgia.

In World War II Leavitt returned to the Army despite his age and served as first sergeant of the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, where he taught hand-to-hand combat. Ritchie Boys remembered the shorn, 320-pound celebrity teaching close combat and American slang before overseas deployment. On a December 1944 broadcast of the radio program ''It Pays to Be Ignorant'' he gave his weight as 280 pounds. He retired as a master sergeant and afterward studied journalism at the University of Georgia.

 

Leavitt died of a heart attack at his home in Norcross, Georgia, on 29 May 1953, aged 61, and was buried in Marietta National Cemetery under a military marker bearing his birth name and the birth year 1889, probably the date he gave when he first enlisted.