Jerry Seltzer, a second-generation showman who used television to revive enthusiasm for roller derby, the contact sport played on wheels that his father invented in the 1930s, died on July 1 at his home in Sonoma, Calif. When Mr. Seltzer took over the roller derby business in 1959 from his father, Leo, it was still the ferocious blue-collar game it had long been, with two teams of five helmeted players muscling, elbowing, kicking, shoving and tossing each other while circling a banked track counterclockwise. The game had reached its peak soon after World War II, when arenas and armories filled with fans to see the brawling contests. Television viewing soared as well, on CBS and later on ABC, which carried as many as three roller derby matches a week in 1951 to fill its schedule. The TV critic Jack Gould of The New York Times wrote in 1949 that roller derby “represents television at its most narcotic.”

Source: International New York Times July 16, 2019 17:03 UTC