Frank Simmons Leavitt was an American wrestler and actor. He also played with the New York Brickley Giants of the National Football League from 1919–1920.
Background
Frank Simmons Leavitt, best known as Man Mountain Dean, was born in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York City, the son of William McKinley and Henrietta Decker Leavitt. His father was a stage manager for George M. Cohan at a New York theater.
Education
He entered the University of Georgia after World War II and studied journalism, but never graduated.
Career
Leavitt left home at the age of fourteen to join the army, paying a "Bowery bum" to sign up for him. He served in Texas under General John J. Pershing during the Mexican Campaign of 1916-1917 and, during the two world wars, under General George Patton, Jr.
Leavitt had begun wrestling in New York in 1906. After winning the Armed Forces Championship during World War I he wrestled professionally under the name "Soldier Leavitt, " mainly in the New York area, and played football for Fordham University--although he never attended classes. He played professional football during the 1919-1920 season for Charley Brinkley's New York Giants. In addition, he sparred with Jack Dempsey before Dempsey won the heavyweight championship in 1919.
Around 1931, while on a European wrestling tour, Leavitt changed his name to Stone Mountain Dean (combining his wife's last name with a Georgia tourist attraction, Stone Mountain) because he feared a German anti-Semitic reaction to his name. (He himself was a Baptist. )
Seeking work on his return to America, he grew a beard and sent pictures of himself to wrestling promoters. A Boston promoter, approving of the beard, signed him. Originally advertised as a Georgia hillbilly, he changed his name for the last time to Man Mountain Dean because his New York accent was incompatible with his hillbilly pose. Dean's thick beard and tattered gray robe were among the first gaudy trademarks of the new high-pressure wrestling promotion coming into vogue during the Great Depression. He moved to Hollywood, California, in 1933 and, under the tutelage of the wrestling entrepreneur Toots Mondt, quickly became the top local ring villain. His arch rival was the Hollywood favorite, Vincent Lopez, whom Dean wrestled in a series of well-publicized matches, including one in the bull ring in Mexico City.
He reached the pinnacle of his career in 1934, when he unsuccessfully challenged Jim Londos for the world championship in Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, before approximately 39, 000 fans. His winning tactics usually involved a leap from the ropes onto a prostrate opponent for the pin. (His normal wrestling weight was over 300 pounds. ) Although in the ring he acted the role of the villain, outside it Leavitt was shy and gentle, liked by his fellow wrestlers.
In 1937 he was temporarily suspended by the California Athletic Commission after his flying leap had broken the back of several opponents, and he then left the Los Angeles area permanently. Leavitt was able to transfer his athletic notoriety into a minor film career, playing bit parts in thirty-four movies; he was also Charles Laughton's double in The Private Life of Henry VIII. After leaving the ring he retired to his wife's family farm in Norcross, Georgia, and thereafter wrestled only occasionally.
In 1938 he ran for the Georgia legislature, but his campaign was hindered by his absence to promote The Gladiators, a film he had made with Joe E. Brown, and he was defeated. He died at Norcross, Georgia, and was buried in a specially enlarged coffin. The apogee of Man Mountain Dean's popularity coincided with the Great Depression, when wrestling audiences turned to the staged melodramas of Dean and others for entertainment and diversion from the economic reality at hand. Unlike other businesses, the wrestling spectacle prospered during the Depression, and Man Mountain Dean rode the crest of a trend that emphasized brutality and melodrama.
Achievements
Connections
Leavitt married Dorris Dean, a hosiery model from Atlanta, Georgia, on October 19, 1928. They had no children. She became the first woman wrestling manager in America and played a major role in the successful development of his career.