Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Jan 11, 2015 17:32:49 GMT -6
Annis "Big Red" Jensen, one of the greatest female stars in the history of the original Roller Derby, passed away yesterday morning in Arizona at the age of 93. Jensen made every Roller Derby All-Star team from 1951 and 1969 and at one time or another captured every major award that genre had. She was the top woman's star and captain of the famous San Francisco Bay Bombers championship teams five straight years from 1960 to 1964. Most of the Derby records are gone unless you have the book "Five Strides on the Banked Track" by Frank Deford, which I don't have a copy of. She was one of the top women stars when Roller Derby was back on ABC TV in prime time as one of the highest rated television shows and was the predecessor in many ways to "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" (a really popular show that got so overexposed, ABC put it on three nights a week in prime time plus a weekend afternoon game because it was so big in ratings, but after about a year of that, you can figure what happened to the ratings). She was still around during its second major popularity run out of San Francisco in 1959. When the Bay Bombers formed in 1954, the first two stars were coach Russ "Rosie" Baker and wife Annis Jensen. They were not popular at all for the first few years, but after getting television on Ch. 2 in 1959, the popularity immediately exploded. Within a few years, the games were syndicated around the country and the Bombers were the national babyface team, at their peak drawing 2 million fans per year. She was known as "Big Red" from her network TV exposure, but I think she was actually relatively small, like maybe 5-foot-4 and 120 pounds. She remained the top female star on the Bombers until 1964, when she was in her early 40s, before she was replaced by Joanie Weston, which was a gigantic move at the time, but Weston, who had incredible crowd presence and became arguably the most popular female athlete in the country within a few years. Jensen had to turn heel. She was the oldest skater in the league for the next several years, and eventually competed against her daughter, Barbara Baker, who started in the late 60s. She retired in 1969, but made a brief comeback in 1974 when a Bay Bombers revival in Roller Games was built around the gimmick of Weston, Ann Calvello and Annis Jensen being together on the same team for the first time ever. In the movie "Kansas City Bomber," that came out in the 70s and starred Raquel Welch, many have said that the character of Jackie Burdette was based on Annis Jensen.
--Local newspaper story on Annis Jensen at
www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Roller-Derby-legend-Annis-Jensen-dies-at-93-6007358.php?cmpid=email-mobile (thanks to Darren Chan, Tom Wersderfer and many others)
--Local newspaper story on Annis Jensen at
www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Roller-Derby-legend-Annis-Jensen-dies-at-93-6007358.php?cmpid=email-mobile (thanks to Darren Chan, Tom Wersderfer and many others)