You once said in American Weekly,
You said: "Women, they're an necessary nuisance."
You said, "American women have
to learn to accept a man's domination."
Did I say that?
Who was the boss of your family?
Absolutely my husband.
What is a husband? A husband Is the guy who's
is in charge and should be all of the time.
And this thing about saying let's talk it all over
this baloney, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't work because talking it over, only...
Is a kind of a relentless insidious and it's about a woman.
Do you hear me?
I really don't know what women are asking for.
Now, suppose I wanted to give it to them.
Listen, you may as well relax because whatever
it is they're asking for, honey, it's not for you.
It was 1967 in Dallas, Texas.
Four years after the Kennedy assassination, the
Cowboys were hosting the Falcons at the Cotton Bowl.
The cheerleaders were there but they were
high school kids, boy and girl couples who tried
to lead cheers at the football stadium but
they never captured the fans' imagination.
And then at half-time, a woman walks down the aisle on the home team side.
She was an exotic dancer a topless Dancer
or call it what you want, but Dallas knew her as Bubbles Cash.
Bubbles Cash.
Do you remember that?
Bubbles Cash.
She was a stripper. Well, yeah.
And this woman had big hair and she had a short mini skirt
and she carried in each hand cotton candy but just like pompoms.
People turned around, the players on the field, the coaches, the referees.
She was such a sex bomb, you could not miss Bubbles Cash.
And this is the moment when general manager Tex Schramm has a vision that would
change the game of football in America forever.
These are the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
Fans sometimes spend as much time watching
them as they do watching the Cowboys.
In 1972, when we walked out there
on that field, people went crazy in the stadium.
The next day, it was on all the news.
It was in the newspaper.
Everybody's going: "Did you see what they
had on or what they didn't have on?"
They didn't look like all-American
college kids anymore or high school kids.
They were the most sexed up cheerleaders anywhere.
Midriff, hot pants, the boots, men would be howling.
You know, you could see a wife nudge went up and stuff like that.
This is not two, four, six, eight, who do you appreciate?
This is Broadway coming to your sideline.
This is a show.
They perform.
It was just this whole new way of thinking of it.
It's like putting a sparkle on the sidelines to glitter and glam.
No one's thinking like this.
Tex Schramm sees the future of the NFL on TV when no one does.
You are in the entertainment business as well
as being in the sports business or the two are synonymous,
and we think that it adds color and a little bit of
excitement at our games and for the television camera.
I mean you tune in CBS with that great voice of Pat Summerall.
I'm Pat Summerall. This is Tom Brookshier.
You'd see Landry in a suit and tie and a goofy little hat
and here comes Staubach leading the team onto the field,
throwing his pass to Drew Pearson who would constantly just get
flipped head over heels and yet somehow hang on to the ball.
Dorset would take off on a long touchdown run.
And then CBS would cut away to Dana Presley.
I've seen all I need to see.
My life's over now.
But Dallas is a place where the sacred and the profane exist
simultaneously, sometimes right across the street from one another.
It's fundamental religion and hellraisers, and so you had a
lot of pushback early on and the pushback was led by the coach's wife.
Alicia Landry, Tom's wife, didn't like us.
She did not like that there was too much...
boob showing.
So, at one game, we had these little pieces of blue fabric that
snapped into our uniform top and they were called modesty shields.
That experiment lasted one-half.
The outcry was so bad, they came down
to our dressing room and said: "Get those off. They're terrible."
There's always people in our society who want to
tell other people what they should and should not enjoy.
And what I find refreshing, and there's not nearly enough of it anymore,
is a guy like Tex Schramm who says that: "I hear your criticism.
I just don't care.
I know this sells.
I know this works."
Go, Cowboy, go! Go, Cowboy, go!
It was in 1976.
It was the bicentennial.
The cheerleaders were well known in Dallas, but at that
Super Bowl they suddenly became a national phenomenon.
You ask anybody what one of the biggest games
in NFL history was, and Super Bowl X
between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys
is going to make that list invariably.
Touchdown Drew Pearson The Cowboys take the lead.
CBS was figuring out how we're going to televise
the Super Bowl, talked about a lot of things,
but one consensus agreement was they were going to
key in on the Cowboys Cheerleaders.
How'd you get the idea for Honey Shot then?
I got the idea for Honey Shots because
I am a dirty old man, okay, because I turned, uh, 17.
I remember I was terrified.
Every time I looked at a girl, I just crumbled, and I thought:
"If I'm like that, maybe other people are like that."
And you know what? They are.
The notoriety and fame, it seems so silly
now to think that that totally came from a wink.
It was the right game, right place, right time.
And when one of those cheerleaders winked at the camera,
the nation forgot there was a football game going on.
This is really the wink that launched the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.
The wink.
Oh, the wink changed everything.
One of the cheerleaders, Gwenda Swearingen, who obviously
was a beautiful child and she had no idea what she was doing.
Oh, the Gwendolyn Wink.
It was just pure magic right out of a Hollywood script.
And everybody thought in America
that that wink was just for them.
After the wink, it seemed like all hell broke loose.
I mean, there were calls from Hollywood, William Morris Agency,
marketing companies wanting us to do unbelievable things.
And Tex Schramm had a very strong television
media background and he saw the potential for it.
The first time I walked into Tex Schramm's office, I had
no idea who he was and I really didn't care about the Cowboys.
His really big question to me was what I wanted to do in
five years with the Cowboys, and I just looked at him and said:
"Your chair is pretty comfortable." And he thought that was
hysterical, so he banged on the desk and said: "You're hired."
Now, understand at the time I was doing
all his personal financial work.
I was doing all the player contract work, all the NFL work,
then came Super Bowl X in Miami, and that's why he called me
into his office and said: "Somebody's got to handle this,
so you do it in your spare time." And I just said: "Okeydokey."
Suzanne Mitchell was probably the perfect
hire to be in charge of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
This is a strong woman.
I think I was more afraid of upsetting
Suzanne Mitchell than I've ever been of upsetting
any coach or owner or general manager in any sport.
She was kind of scary at times.
Suzanne, that was our mama bear.
She would take you on.
I crossed her one time when I was in her office and I was just kind of
browsing through this big box she had on the corner of her desk.
I didn't think it was any big deal.
She let me know it was a big deal.
I didn't browse around on Suzanne Mitchell's desk ever again.
She was a tough cookie but she
had to be, and if she had not been as tough as she was,
I think things would have gotten way out of control.
You're asking about my private life?
There was no private life. There was none.
I mean, literally, I worked seven days a week, 18 hours a day.
I truly did.
The first year we had like 250 auditions.
The second year, I had 4,000 applications.
The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
have been called the most select line up
of women west of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.
You're dealing with Miss this, Miss that, Homecoming Queen,
cheerleader, all thought they were hotsy-totsy, wonderful:
"I'm the best one here and I'm the cutest one."
But they're in a room full of people thinking exactly the same thing.
I remember my aunt in San Diego telling me
to never be a cheerleader because they're exploiting themselves on TV.
I was like: "Oh, I'll never be a cheerleader." Mm.
Well, my father was a cheerleader at Rice.
I was actually 17 when I auditioned.
I was supposed to be 18. I never told anybody that.
I was raised in Collinsville, Texas, population 800.
No dancing in school because it was sinful and corrupt.
I hold peanuts.
I hold cotton.
And so I was always a loner, so, I tried out for
cheerleader without telling anyone.
Growing up, I was climbing trees.
My sister was playing Barbie dolls.
I was a tomboy.
My whole life I wanted to be a quarterback
of a professional football team.
I never made the high school squad because
I wasn't good enough, I guess, or they didn't like my look, but when I went to
college, I was the first African-American cheerleader
they ever had at Texas Lutheran and then I came back and tried out for Dallas.
I auditioned the first time in 1981. I was in college. I was married.
I mentioned it one night at dinner with my then husband and
He said: "There's no way you'd make it." So it started out
as just a dare, but once I met those 250 other girls at
semi-finals, it became: "I must do this or I will die."
We're looking for an all-American, sexy girl, one that has a very
good background, a very good personality as far as
representing the Cowboys and Dallas, Texas.
I'm a writer, I'm a journalist and I was asked to write a book
about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
And so I spent nine months with Suzanne Mitchell and the cheerleaders.
The cheerleading tryouts were... it blew me away.
Everyone has got the make-up, and the clothes, and the cleavage and, you know,
the bathrooms are full of everyone's blowing their hair and curling it.
It's very much of a performance-type feeling.
Suzanne came across very intimidating.
She got a pair of readers on top of her head
and a pair of readers across the bridge of her nose.
She's got her legs crossed and she's tapping a pencil and looking
at you and you're like: "Am I doing good? Is... you know, is she liking this?"
Toni was 18 years old and I wondered why the hell she was
even there because she couldn't dance her way out of a paper bag.
My routine was from Billy Preston, Nothing from Nothing Gets Nothing,
and I had a big pompom hairdo
and it was more of a comedy routine.
I wore a black outfit and I wanted to be like,
look like a girl paladin, you know, "have gun, will travel".
When I got up on the stage,
I shot at all the judges
And then I did a twirl, and I blew on the gun, and then I walked off.
The process took about two months.
Finally got to the finals and then I suddenly realized:
"I want this more than I've ever wanted anything else."
They were desperate.
They would go sob in the bathroom
afterwards because they had messed up.
When we were sitting down in the pickup truck eating
our baloney sandwiches and drinking our sweet tea,
there was an announcement on the radio and
Ron Chapman says: "I'm going to announce the
36 girls who made the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Squad."
And my dad goes: "What the heck,
there are no professional cheerleaders, are there?"
The winners are, number 14, Vonciel Baker.
Number 50, Shannon Baker.
They called out Sherrie McCorkle
and when they did, my dad like fell out of the truck
and my sisters were ecstatic
and my life has never been the same since.
My mother was not thrilled.
She was very baptist and said: "Oh, my god.
You're going to be out in front of God
and everybody showing your navel?"
I had no idea I would make it out of 3,000 girls.
So when my name was called, I was ecstatic.
Ladies and gentleman, your new Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
My boyfriend was not as excited.
In fact, he said: "You're gonna have to pick between being a
Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, or dating me."
I said: "Well, gotta go. See ya."
Suzanne once told me that she had these images in
her mind that she thought the Cowboys' fans would love.
And if you noticed, over the years, she was always
looking for girls to fit into those images.
There was the redhead. There was Tami with the pigtails.
There was the blond. There is the brunette.
Blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians. It just kind of lull you in.
The diversity of the cheerleaders, was important to Suzanne.
She wanted to pick a different variety
of girls so that the people on the stands or on the
television, could have somebody they could relate to.
The Dallas Cowboys were probably one of the single
most important factors of integration in the city of Dallas.
Black people went to black churches, white people went to white churches.
Black people went to black schools and
white people went to white schools.
Everybody went to Texas Stadium on Sunday.
We had some very articulate, well-educated girls,
and then we had some off the turnip truck.
Suzanne had a natural promoter's instinct in her. I mean, it was in her blood.
As it was described to me, I wasn't one of the pretty ones
And so the whole thing with the pigtails came from: "We need a gimmick."
I didn't realize it would grow into what it would be.
I mean, the pigtails became like their own entity.
She knew what the public wanted.
They were Bible Belt good girls, you know,
but they were selling sex, come on.
They weren't putting flat-chested girls
in those uniforms, but they were abusing
the dichotomy of look, but don't touch
which is always so much sexier.
The thing that I've always tried to figure out
is how the Dallas Cowboys did pull this off.
You had the cheerleaders in hot pants and halter tops,
the boots, and the big blond hair, and there's no question
they were selling the sex appeal of these young women,
and yet at the same time, they were like the girl next door.
I don't know where that next door would be.
I mean, none of them have ever lived next door to me.
We got a lot of criticism in the beginning.
Basically, it was, I was a madame.
I was a procurer of young women
and that I was not representative of the quote "Bible Belt."
There are two religions in the State of Texas.
There is Christianity and football.
At times, the football has been more
dominant than Christianity in this State.
The pastors were definitely into football and they knew.
They would come and say: "Okay, we've got every...
Go home and cheer for the Cowboys."
I was raised from a very small child in the Pentecostal Faith.
It was a very emotional faith.
There were people who spoke in tongues.
There were people who danced in the aisles
in the spirit, and my dad was the preacher.
I grew up a Baptist so my dad
didn't let me date until I was 20 years of age.
He was very, very strict and actually didn't speak
to me for three years after the calendar came out.
I went home to get a teaching job
after I quit cheerleading and
they wouldn't hire me because they said I was not ready for Collinsville.
What they meant to say was that because I had
been a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader and my image
have been tarnished doing that, that I shouldn't
be a teacher of any of their children.
One nation under God indivisible...
Probably one of the biggest dichotomies is the
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders came out in 1972, the new ones.
And then, like, what was it, a year later?
We have this amazing Supreme Court decision
that we're still fighting about today.
There is a tremendous irony that Roe V. Wade
happened in the State of Texas
and in the City of Dallas and I think there is an
even greater irony that it actually succeeded.
Good evening. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions.
The majority in cases from Texas and Georgia
said that the decision to end a pregnancy
during the first three months belongs to the
woman and her doctor, not the government.
The sexual revolution was in full swing by
the mid-70s and we became a little more independent.
Things got kind of fun and wild and funky and people say now:
"If you remember the '70s, you weren't there."
Free love had gone mainstream.
Husbands and wives were having key parties, there
were orgies, aids had not appeared yet.
Dallas was pretty wild back then.
There was a place downtown at a club where people
were going and partying till all hours of the night
and drugs were being used.
You could see some of the cheerleaders
out with some of the players at some clubs.
Some of the players, married.
Those guys are running rampant. I mean, they're coke heads.
They're weed heads. They're pill poppers, drunks.
There were a lot of things going on that I was not supposed to write about.
They needed direction. They needed discipline.
They needed to understand the part they were
gonna play in this enormous production.
And I knew that it was my leadership that was
gonna make or break it, because that was it.
Suzanne told us on the very first day we got there:
"I can be your best friend or I can be your worst enemy."
I almost felt at some times, at some points,
that there was a military-like approach to what she did.
We went to the club in our uniform and, uh, it did not go over well at all.
No. That's when Suzanne started with the rules and regulations.
Oh, gosh.
We had lots of rules.
Oh, my God.
Do I remember the rules?
Suzanne had this massive rule book. It was typed out.
It was in a blue binder and you had to memorize it.
The things that we were forbidden to do.
We could not talk to a Dallas Cowboy football player.
We knew we couldn't date them.
We were not allowed to talk to them.
One night, I am at the bar trying to get the bartender's
Attention and I heard this voice that said: "Hey, little one.
Do you need a drink?" Looking down at me was Ed "Too Tall" Jones.
I was like: "I'm not allowed to talk to you."
You don't have too much to drink.
You don't wear your cheerleader uniform out and about.
The uniform made you.
You didn't make the uniform.
You became an overnight celebrity,
so you had an image to live up to.
If you go into a bar, you maybe have a little too
much to drink and you get up on the bar and you're dancing.
You have to understand that they don't see you.
"She's a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader.
I guess they're all like that."
We weren't allowed to swear.
We weren't allowed to wear jeans, blue jeans in public.
You could never go out in hair rollers or smoke cigarettes.
You never, ever, ever chew gum, ever.
If she caught you chewing gum in a Tom Thumb
grocery store, you could be put on probation.
They felt I knew everything, I knew
everything they did 24 hours a day which I didn't.
I just made them believe I did, so that they'd watch their own behavior.
We will look for her some time and she'll
be in one spot and you turn around, she's gone.
Suzanne had spies.
Some young girl that looked like one of us,
You know, patting their face
and fixing their makeup and listening to every word we said.
Every time there was a party, every time
somebody thought: "Oh, I'm gonna date somebody
and I'm gonna get away with it. "Okay, good
luck with that." It didn't work out for you.
They took some photographs of me
with that Miller Lite cup in my hand.
And Suzanne called me into her office and she said: "Look at these pictures."
She told me and she said: "You may not make it back next year."
Fear had a lot to do with my direction, I think.
If it's a minor infraction, you get a warning, but if it's
something that's really obvious that
you went outside the line, you're out.
That's it.
You don't come back.
Wow. Just don't cut that uniform.
That uniform has been through tougher times than this.
Vintage 1976.
The girls, when they first put on the uniform,
and they'd just be shaking almost.
I can hear someone's: "Suzanne, are you looking at me?
I have the uniform on. "Suzanne, do you see me? I have it on.
I did it." It was an element of:
"My God, this is actually happening.
It's happening and it's happening to me."
I'll tell you a secret. I still have one of mine.
And I'm the only one that has their uniform.
Not only do I have one, I have two.
How many had two?
I had five uniforms when I retired.
I was there for four years and I had
five different uniforms when I retired.
And I turned in three, and Suzanne said: "Presley, I know
you have one more." And I said: "Aww, man, you caught me."
The day I had to turn it in, which I did,
thank you very much to those of you that kept yours.
I didn't know I could do that and get away with it.
This is the first cheerleader uniform ever cut.
It's one of the original and you could see that
this is a knot that Suzanne used to personally,
personally tie that knot right there so everything
would stay where it's supposed to be in place.
She was meticulous.
You never saw her really resting.
You never saw her stopping or sleeping.
She would probably sleep for two or four hours
and she'd get right back up and start again.
We had to control that classy image so that
it didn't take a life of its own in just a sexy way.
So, I put my foot down in terms of how they would be presented.
I walked off of a set of Love Boat
because the camera was on
the ground looking up at the girls, and I just went: "Whoa."
One of the strict rules was the camera was not to be shooting
up at the girls, especially when they were in a kick line.
This was the '70s and Suzanne was a woman and it was Hollywood.
So, everything was agreed upon and then they did what they wanted, right?
So Suzanne didn't even say anything. She was done talking.
She walked over and she kicked the camera in the pool.
And I took the girls and we left, and the producers come to me
And they say: "What's the deal?" And I said: "You know what the deal is.
We signed. This is what was said we would do and we would not do."
And they presented the girls with a lot of roses and a lot of apologies.
And the next day, new cameras.
They were up.
We're good to go.
Hey, did you see that? Did you? She winked at me.
Yeah.
It was going to be our way or the highway.
Have you noticed how often you're surrounded by glass these days?
You're living in the golden age of girl watching.
In the 1970s, sex and
sex appeal was used to sell everything.
These companies are selling the idea
that women need to look this way
and if you buy this product, you will look like this
and it's absolutely impossible.
If you look as broad as this
and you'd rather look as slim as this, try the Ayds reducing plan.
Delicious tasting Ayds candy contains vitamins and minerals, no drugs.
This was the late '70s, the early '80s.
Everyone was taking diet pills.
Doctors were handing them out.
It was a totally different time.
We were not talking about anorexia.
We're not talking about bulimia.
We only wanted the pretty surface.
We wanted to see the thin girls.
It was very unhealthy, but nobody knew that.
We were in the public eye.
We had to learn... Look a certain way.
The very first practice that we had,
Texie says: "The camera will make you look
heavier and it wouldn't hurt one of you in here to lose another seven pounds!"
And I thought to myself: "Seven pounds?"
Thank golly, I lost seven pounds. I did too.
It was a solid year for sure.
I would wrap my waist in Saran wrap and I would go and run five or six miles
and my waist would be about 26 inches. So I always loved that.
Some of us had... I call them trash pants and you would wear them
to help sweat and Suzanne turned the heater on to help us sweat more.
She had her scale on the floor and you weighed in.
She kinda poke on our legs and she goes: "Well, I guess that's your bone there.
You can't lose that."
She had this list she would post on the wall.
"If you had a tummy, or if you had... your calves were too big or...
"As if you could shrink your calves, right?
She put pictures of me that were taken
at games where I would have a little jelly roll
on the side and she would circle it with an arrow saying:
"Lose this." That was demeaning.
It was really cruel. It hurt.
Maintaining the weight, was all determined by the uniform.
That uniform is this big.
The uniform doesn't hide anything, but it covers everything,
but there's elements of the shorts that if you have
anything hanging over there, it don't belong.
Oh, my God, and they would starve themselves
and the diuretics and stuff that they did.
The weight regimen was extremely strict.
Unfortunately, for me, it created anorexia.
You put the girl in the shorts
and you sit them in front of the mirror
And you say: "Tell me what's wrong with this picture?"
Have them critique themselves.
"I get it, Suzanne. I'll have it off. I promise."
The self-image never ends.
I will always see the fat girl in the mirror.
Prior to cheerleading, I never thought about my body image.
I'd walk around in string bikinis, but after
cheerleading, I had definitely had a weight problem.
For some of us, it was a little too harsh especially for as young as we were
and impressionable, because I did look up to her.
I think from their perspective,
I was too hard for them a lot.
From my perspective, it was necessary.
Did you ever see the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders?
Who hasn't? They're everywhere.
Did I detect a note of quasi-intellectual disapproval?
Quasi-intellectual?
They happen to be the hottest thing in the country.
They've hit some kind of nerve.
Women from coast to coast are looking up to them.
I thought at the time: "This is a fun ride and it's not really gonna
probably go anywhere," and then it kept
going and it kept going and it kept going.
They are more than cheerleaders.
They are an institution unto themselves.
They're bigger than the football team, which makes the
double standard that they're living under all the crazier.
Let me introduce, the one, the only,
the original, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
We've got Bob Hope, Crystal Gale, Andy Gibb, Jimmy Walker,
and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.
Did you say Dallas Cheerleaders?
I saw them on the Donnie Osmond Telethon.
I saw them on the Country Music Awards.
We're gonna go do a show with Oak Ridge Boys.
We're gonna go do a show with Bob Hope.
I told your friends
about Faberge organic shampoo.
And we told two friends and so on and so on.
Make them feel like they're my daughters, the Cheerleaders.
Then Esquire poses the question
On their cover: "What is the best thing about the Dallas cowboys?
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Everybody knows that.
They call the cheerleaders and they said: "Klif radio wants a cheerleader
to do an ice skating event with an armadillo. I said: "Oh, that's me."
We were constantly being asked to do appearances.
We were in Florida one week, Tennessee the next.
At the end of the month, we're doing a benefit in Garland
for the little boy that was mauled by the lion
to raise money for his family.
I was in Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Movie,
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Movie 2.
The idea of made-for-TV movies was fairly new,
but that was immediately the highest rated made-for-TV show ever.
Boy, everyone is just dying to be a cheerleader In Dallas.
Obviously, I was Bond girl.
I would say at the time of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders,
they were bigger than Bond girls.
In 1981, when I was approached to write this book,
the cheerleaders were now something bigger than life.
They pop up on magazine covers. They sell out the magazines.
The cheerleaders' posters outselling the Farrah Fawcett posters
and everybody had the Farrah Fawcett poster.
It was beautifully done.
It's the most beautiful poster ever, ever, ever made.
The smoke, the girls, the looks, the sex.
We got everybody's attention, obviously,
but we had a backlash from it.
The Playboy, former cheerleaders, did it
exactly the same way we did, topless.
What are you gonna do?
We caught a lot of flak about
"Oh my goodness, were you in Playboy?" No.
No. No.
These were not current girls.
They were former cheerleaders who did the poster.
I remember how devastating that was and I also remember thinking,
"I wonder why they didn't want me," but I'm really glad they didn't because...
They've been deleted from the database.
I told them at the time:
"I told you a long time ago, we become the choices we make."
Okay, now, who's going to try a real high carry? Okay?
Whoop, there we go. Whoa!
I like very much Mary Calderone's comment in a recent Playboy interview
in which she said, you know, she's less
interested in women's rights than human rights.
So, I think that is...
I certainly would. The role that you have
selected for women is degrading to women because
you choose to see women as sex objects, not as full human beings.
Well, obviously, you're degrading... Hold on now.
The day that you...
I haven't finished. The day that you are willing to come out here
with a cottontail attached to your rear end...
Well, you can't make a political point altogether politely.
We were the angry women
And the men were the product of their time.
The idea that a woman wanted her own
self-fulfillment, was really revolutionary.
The women's liberation movement who really
are, sort of, pressing for equality for women and so on.
You don't agree with that? Equal with the man?
Yeah.
No, that's against nature.
A woman you know, automatically looks up to a man.
If I would say, right now if this theater
caught on fire and we saw no outlets, it would
be nature for them to look to us to find a way out
before we look to them to get us out.
I mean, like, you never... I mean, I don't look like to see a woman
walking down the street this tall and the husband that tall.
Women by nature look up to men in every way.
In the 1970s, with the feminist movement really going against the patriarchy
and fighting for equal rights, at some point it turned,
women started going after each other.
Women did go after other women but, you know,
that's the history of, of radical politics.
The discourse has always been anti-this, anti-that, attacking this one,
attacking this one to make your own point.
And Somewhere along the way,
the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders became a target.
We went to Fresno State University.
We performed at their halftime.
We were there to help the women's athletic
department build a new fieldhouse.
When we got there, there were protests from all the women athletes.
They literally held up posters that read:
"Hearts and minds, not bumps and grinds." And they were
All yelling: "Dallas cowboys cheerleaders, go home."
Huge signs out their dormitory window.
We raised, I think, $200,000 for the department
and yet they didn't want us there.
A lot of women didn't like us back then.
If you are a feminist, you probably do not think
women should be doing this sort of thing, turning themselves into sex objects.
If someone were to say to you,
"Suzanne, you're selling sex here.
You're really exploiting these women."
It's ridiculous. I've had several women's lib groups tell me that sort of a thing
and the girls answer it in the same way that I would.
Uh, this is a voluntary thing.
Many women, feminists,
say that you... That you all are being exploited.
They say you are a sex objects.
How do you respond to that? Vanessa?
When you're exploited, you're forced to do something
that you really don't want to do and we all want to be out there.
We had that option and we chose to be out there
So we're not being exploited at all.
The feminists really were looking
at the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders as being
anti-brain, anti-intelligent, pro-sex,
pro-flaunting and pro-selling your goods.
I remember getting a phone call from
a reporter from one of the northeastern periodicals who
couldn't understand why I didn't feel like I was just
totally being thrown out to the wolves as a sex symbol.
And I tried to explain to her it wasn't that way
and she was going: "Oh, it can't be.
You must be. You're out there exposing yourself."
Remember year ago when the women
from the National Organization for Women
were picketing the tryouts for the cheerleaders,
and they were upset that you were being exploited and used as sex objects
and stuff like that? Let me hear some feedback about that argument.
My feeling is: "How dare they?" I think that they
are exhibiting the worst kind of chauvinism against women
by implying that the girls who tried out to be cheerleaders were
incapable of making a decision, that we were so stupid or so foolish.
I remember getting mad sometimes:
"Why do they just see me as a sex symbol? Why are they writing that?
Or why are they saying that?" I thought: "Open your eyes girl,
look at what you're portraying, now educate them.
Let them know you're not just some dumb blonde."
They said we were just nothing, but a bunch of Barbie dolls
out there dancing around, bopping around and I guarantee you
there're no Barbie dolls in that group.
You had to either work, be married or be in school,
therefore you're not consumed with just being a cheerleader.
If they said we were just sex objects, Suzanne could shoot that down so fast.
I think Suzanne Mitchell was a feminist and I would
argue with anyone who said that she was exploiting women.
She was working on her own, she was paying her mortgage,
she was taking care of herself.
I mean how much more of a feminist can that be? You know.
I didn't feel like I was part of
a movement even though I was really the only
executive female in the cowboy organization,
but I didn't look at it as feminism.
I looked at it as though obviously I was
the best person at that moment for the job.
The culture at the time was entirely confusing and conflicting.
We had these really strong powerful women in pop culture.
The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, Princess Lea.
By the 1970s the ideas of feminism had
certainly had its effect on mainstream television.
And then you've got these icons telling you
that you can be the CEO and be powerful.
They aren't privilege demands at all,
we just want what men have had all these years.
You can be somebody's wife, you can be somebody's mother, you can be somebody's lover,
you can be somebody's anything, but you can't be somebody.
And then at the other end, there was cosmopolitan.
How to catch a man, or what to do with him when you catch him.
The classic was called, Sex and the Single Girl.
She now of course is editor of Cosmopolitan and here is...
Helen Gurley Brown.
Wear beautiful sexy clothes
and have those candle light dinners.
And try to go on a trip with this man.
You have to take the initiative to make some of that happen.
I came to Dallas from the Colombia school of journalism,
and when I moved to Texas, I realized that there was a lot of more male
pleasing going on than I had been raised to do.
Women here took great pride in their appearance.
They worried about their figures, they worried about
their face, they worried about plastic surgery.
And I'll never forget one of the girls' mothers telling me:
"Honey, I get up at five in the morning and put my makeup on
because I really don't want my husband to see me without makeup."
But as I got into the story and got to know each one of these girls
and got to see how much they wanted this
and why they wanted this and the backgrounds they came from,
I almost thought that the feminists at the time were being
kind of armchair snobs, intellectual snobs and judgmental.
I know that I had friends who, kind of, were sneering at me
for even writing the book like:
"Why are you doing that? Oh, my God what's wrong with you?
You've gone to Texas, you've gone crazy."
I can understand why the feminist had a problem with
the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders that I think it was misguided.
We were making a choice as young women to do
what we wanted to do and for the feminist
movement to tell us we can't do that,
is contradictory to their belief system.
We were the modern women.
We were doing exactly what we wanted to do.
We were mothers, we were doctors, nurses, receptionists, sales people.
We had our day job, we had our family
and then we danced because we love to dance.
It wasn't just on Sundays, you weren't just
on the field as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader.
It was life changing.
It was 24/7.
I would get up in the morning, go to work
at my office job at eight o'clock, get off at five.
And then I'd go across town to our old studio,
our old dance studio and I would drink a diet Coke
and eat an apple in the car in traffic while changing
clothes in my car on the way to the rehearsal studio.
Sherry Worthington, she drove all the way from Oklahoma.
And then I had things to do for work the next day.
Go to bed, get back up in like four hours.
Get ready to go to work
And do it all again.
Even though it said practice is over at ten o'clock,
that doesn't mean practice is over at 10 o'clock.
It means practice is over when she's done
and feels like everybody's done a good job.
Oh, Cindy. Oh.
How hard did we train? I don't know.
I didn't give them water.
I turned off the air conditioning.
You had to do what you had to do to prepare them
and that first game was tough.
It was a 110 on the field, it was in August.
I'll never forget unbuttoning the sleeve of my blue blouse
and my arm was completely white with salt.
All the hours we did volunteer work.
When we went to visit the children's homes and the VA hospitals,
We did those on weekends where the games were out of town.
We were still working.
And they were doing all of this for $15 a game.
14-12 after taxes.
That did not include practicing
five nights a week for four to five hours.
That didn't really even cover our gas money.
That's why we rode together to, to practices.
Didn't even pay for the pantyhose.
As it turns out we became million dollar showgirls, who made 15$ a game.
I do think that the Cowboys were
exploiting these girls financially.
Not their bodies, I mean, they would have done it anyhow.
They probably would have been models or something, but why not
pay them more? Why not give them a little bit more of the cut?
Of course, who doesn't wanna make money? We were broke.
We were living paycheck to paycheck.
But I was a 20-year old girl who was experiencing fame.
And I was from a small town, and my parents were proud of me.
I was somebody and that really is all that mattered.
But it is not always awesome to be in the spotlight.
You can work, and work and work, and build your reputation,
and build your name and it can be brought down so fast.
These are America's sweethearts.
They're bigger than the football team.
Everybody's trying to get a piece of the cheerleaders,
and all of sudden, here comes Debbie does Dallas.
Debbie does Dallas.
D and Debbie and Dallas it rhymed.
It's like every time I'd turned around I had
to go after somebody who's trying to make a buck off these girls.
This is at a time when porn all of a sudden just
works its way in to pop your imagination through a film
called Deep Throat, which all of a sudden it's supposedly
safe and wholesome for couples to watch a film like this.
The MovieDebbie does Dallas,
supposedly traces the adventure of some high school
aged women who aspired to move to Texas
and become Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
Tex brought Tom Landry into his office and showed him part of the film,
and Tom nearly fell down on the floor when he saw it.
I watched the movie, it was stupid.
But, uhm, I felt like I had to research it.
There is no plot.
Is there area for a plot to a pornography movie?
But, see, they were using our uniform.
Greenfield!
Greenfield I'm here, dressed as you wanted me.
Debbie, this is Mr. Greenfield.
Please lock the doors and come up to the mezzanine level.
Uh-huh.
You know, the girls that, for goodness sake,
were named Debbie on the squad, they had it tough.
There were three Debbies on the squad that year, which I was one of them.
And so we got lots of flak.
Hey, Debbie does Dallas, Tammy does Tulsa.
Shannon does San Antonio.
It's not something you just let go lightly, and Suzanne went after it.
With the vengeance.
(Reporter The first showing of Debbie Does Dallas drew
three members of the law firm representing the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
It created quite a mess for the Cowboys.
And I had had bodyguards and...
because we were dealing with the mafia.
Suzanne was in New York for several weeks and she had death threats.
At one point, somebody was tasting her food
for fear of her being poisoned.
Now that was Carmine Galante, his gang and it was his
right-hand man Michael Zaffarano, who was in Federal Court with me
and he jumped in the elevator, and I was there alone, and for some reason
a bodyguard wasn't there and he pulled out a knife from his boot,
and stuck it, not in my neck, but right like he was going to.
And I hit his arm.
He didn't drop the knife totally, he just let his hand
go down, he started laughing and the door opened.
But that was enough for me.
She was formidable and could get very
angry about things that she didn't think were fair.
It had to be fair and it had to be right,
but she's the one that got to define right.
I'm sure she drove the lawyers crazy.
It cost the Cowboys million dollars
to prove to them that the girls on the squad
named Debbie were not the Debbie Does Dallas in the movie,
We had to protect what was ours.
15 minutes of fame comes very quickly and can get very creepy very quick.
You're constantly under the spotlight.
You are in a fishbowl and you feel like your private life
is taken away from you, and it's very hard to process.
The girls were receiving a lot of fan mail,
all of a sudden were feeling more like celebrities.
After the games the girls would go to
the wall and shake hands and do autographs.
So, all of that became part of this:
"I want to know these girls better."
When I think of how people assumed
that I wanted them in my face, or we wanted
them chasing us, and that they were entitled to that,
that's when it would get frightening.
Well, I've had a problem, several problems...
A lot of problems in my life with stalkers.
Back then you could get your phone book
and find out where somebody lived.
This guy showed up at my house and he started banging on my door.
So I went in the bedroom and I thought I'm just not going to
answer the door and he'll go away, he never went away.
One night, I turn off the lights,
I get in bed and my phone rings.
I said: "Hello", and this very deep husky
Voice said: "Goodnight, Tammy," and hung up.
He climbed up on my roof and started yelling into the chimney.
"Carrie, this is Phillip, I want to meet you.
I know we're a perfect match."
Three nights in a row when I decided I'm
done with this, I'm going to bed with the lights on.
I went to bed with every light in my apartment on,
Phone rang: "Goodnight Tami." I moved that weekend.
We had a cheerleader named Michelin,
she had long gorgeous blonde hair
and somebody reached in with scissors
trying to cut Michelin's hair off.
Suzanne caught it at the last second and knocked
the scissors out of the person's hand.
I mean Suzanne was a super hero.
We were constantly being bombarded with people trying to harm us,
tarnish the name, tarnish the uniform, ruin our image.
It's amazing that one woman could do what she did, she protected us.
They were what I was here for.
I never thought about marriage,
I had a lot of children.
And I felt so deeply about them that they became
totally and completely why God had put me here.
And I believed in it so strongly that it was easy for me
to give every ounce of energy I had to it.
Suzanne was always, always on guard for us.
She would intercept letters that may have disturbing information in them.
There was one guy, my gosh, he sent me cartoons
and stuff that he drew up of me hanging the girls on the walls.
I was dressed in black leather with whips
in my hand, and I was whipping the girls.
Well, I got the FBI involved with that, and they found him upstate Minnesota
at an outpatient clinic living with his mother.
And I think there was another instance to where
we received a huge package of knives.
Well, first I opened them up and I thought
my husband sent me a big thing of new knives.
And then I opened them up, and they're in a manila envelope,
and they were wrapped in a Pittsburgh Steeler newspaper.
And as I start reading it, it said: "Dear Billie, my goddess of love."
I mean I shake just thinking about it, and it just went on from there.
So I hired a private detective to watch her house.
There's really nothing you
can tell me about Suzanne Mitchell in terms
of being this tough woman that's going to fix
your problem. That's gonna surprise me.
The women on her squad, that she looked at like they were her daughters.
And if I was a guy dating one of Suzanne's cheerleaders, I'd be
real careful about making a mistake with that young woman.
When I became a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader I was married to someone else.
He was 12 years older than me and he was a very successful Elvis Presley impersonator.
The marriage was unraveling.
He was basically having an affair with the yellow pages.
I went to Suzanne Mitchell and told her that I needed to get a divorce.
I was terrified to tell her, but she was fabulous.
She not only was supportive, she said that the Cowboys would help me.
And she helped me find a roommate with one of the girls within the squad.
I had to do some bad stuff to her husband at the time.
She came in with bruises once too often.
I mean, it's nice when you have contacts.
We can get them taken care of.
I just figured out that I would make a phone call
to some people that I knew,
and we would be able to take him out in the desert
and tell him not to do that anymore.
Suzanne Mitchell has been referred to by
many people as the Iron Butterfly because she was.
She could be ridiculously demanding, incredibly hard.
And Yet, she had this compassion for her cheerleading
group that would almost surprise some people.
She put her heart and soul in it, her heart and her soul. And she loved us.
She loved us, and not just as a group, but she loved us individually.
Suzanne had the knowledge to know what you needed.
I was able to have empathy for what
was going on inside of their heart and head.
I was raped twice.
I was 19 and 26.
At the time, I didn't have anyone, which made me know
all the more how much people needed someone they could trust.
Usually, they could never tell their family,
but for some reason, they could always tell me.
And I think mainly what they needed was...
to cry,
to talk about it, to relive it, and to understand they were
still here, they were still whole, and they
were in a safe place that would always protect them.
It will never stop you, is what I always tried to tell the girls.
It doesn't have anything to do with your growth,
with your ability to become who you are supposed to become.
We could all learn something from it.
We're all here to teach.
We got a call from the Pentagon, General John Wickham,
and he asked Tex: "We would like the girls to come
and entertain the troops over Christmas." Because they had, had
a lot of suicides in Korea during that period of time.
And Tex's immediate answer was: "That's playoff. No way.
We need the girls here." But the General insisted
and Tex finally called me into his office and said:
"Suzanne, what do you think?" And my immediate answer
From the bottom of my heart was: "You bet ya."
It was the Cheer Group Squad that would go on the USO tours.
They left their family for the whole holidays over Christmas.
One of the girls at the time had a baby.
When I selected the girls to go
on tour, I did not select the prettiest.
I didn't select the best dancer.
I selected the ones I knew would walk up in a handshake and hug a soldier.
Jeff. Jeff, where you from?
It's nice meeting you.
Sometimes, we couldn't get to where we needed to go, and I would push my
weight around and call a general in Korea and say I need a helicopter.
And they'd get me a helicopter and we'd go see four guys on a radar site.
Four guys that nobody knew were there.
And the girls made them feel like somebody cared.
We were dancing on the USS Iowa
and it was rocking left and right.
I was like: " Oh, I'm going to fall in." Mrs. Anna said:
"If you fall in, do you know how many guys are going to be in that water
before you can even hit the water?
She said that's the least that you... go out there and dance.
Don't worry about that." She's always giving.
I'm thinking about my life, she's thinking
we'll die giving the best performance.
She didn't say that, but that's basically what she said.
I have landed on 12 aircraft carriers by cable.
I have catapulted off.
I have been hoisted out of helicopters onto submarines.
It was really fun to be in the Sinai and be in those helicopters.
There weren't seats.
There was just things and straps
and we were all just strapped in.
Swerving like this through all of the canyons
that we had to go through.
It was just...
Girls were screaming.
I know it sounds silly to say
professional cheerleading is dangerous,
but there were a lot of times we're in harm's way.
In Beirut, Lebanon we were shot at.
Diana was with me in my Jeep and we passed
the PLO - Israeli checkpoint and gunfire started going off
everywhere and my marine that was driving my jeep
hit me in back of the head and knocked me against the dash.
And I have a...
a dip in my head where that bullet...
If he had not done what he did, the bullet
would've gone right between my eyes.
I can't explain...
at that point all the girls jumped out of
their jeep, crawled on their bellies...
to get to me.
And I'm sure she got to her bed that night and I'm sure
it hit her what had happened, but she didn't say the show was canceled.
She didn't say we're going back to the States.
We got up the next day and went back and performed again.
And she probably did 10 more tours after that.
My name is Suzanne Mitchell and I'm the director of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.
This is my 12th year with the organization.
It's my 16th BOD USO tour.
This is really the only way that we have to save
our country, to be able to say...
Are you all listening to me?
Y'all don't want to be serious, but I'm going to be serious for a minute.
You all listen to me.
There is a lot of people that don't know
that you're even here and that difficult position that all of you are in
and they say that we're making a sacrifice
by being here, and we're not. We are not.
This is such a joy for us to be able to maybe bring a smile
and to help you all through the next few weeks or the few months.
All we're doing is to let you know we know you're here
and that we love you and appreciate so much.
And most of all that we know that everything we
have back home, we only have because of you.
Suzanne was proud of being
a mom to a whole lot of soldiers.
And they were just additional family.
She felt that close to the men and women in the service.
One young man came up to me on our first tour in Korea
at Christmas and put his unit crest on my jacket.
And from that point forward, every time I turned around, some guy
was coming up putting a pin on me, or handing me a patch.
Three years later in Erzurum, Turkey
a guy comes running down the field:
"Mom, mom, mom!"
Has his crest in his hand, he said: "This is my crest now.
That one was my crest in Korea."
My jacket weighs 14 pounds and I stayed up every night to saw the patches on.
It's the most beautiful thing in
the world to recognize that you are an American
and that's one of the most beautiful things that I was
able to give the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
And there are those still today say,
Suzanne, I wouldn't feel like I do about
being an American, if it hadn't been for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
Suzanne once told one of the girls, she said, when you
put on this costume, this is like wearing the American flag.
Now, maybe that would have been just a little too much,
you know, but I think Suzanne really believed that.
It was a time in America
where people were looking for something.
You go back to the early '70s and we were still
struggling with the end of the Vietnam War.
We had gas lines every place, you tried to fill up your car.
You had a president that was on his way to being impeached.
It was a hard time in America.
We just needed something to make us feel good about ourselves again.
The wonderful thing that sports can do
with a grieving nation, with a grieving city,
is to rally them.
The team itself offered something for the city to be proud of
instead of ashamed of what had happened in their city.
Here's the institution that has gotten the city
to forget the stain of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
It's no longer the city of hate.
It's been known around the country as the home of the Dallas Cowboys.
My pride honestly stems
from being a part of the era of Tex Schramm,
Tom Landry and players who for the most part lived up to
the image that the community expected of them.
But I think things change, life changes, society changes,
and change is hard for... me.
There's a stranger in town.
He rode into Texas from the bad lands of Arkansas with
a fistful of dollars and an itchy trigger finger.
He shot from the lip and laid down the law.
Now, everyone knows who the stranger is.
I think he's a jerk. He's got a lot of money and he's got a big mouth.
I think he stinks. He's obnoxious.
He's Jerry Jones, the oilman, from Rose City,
Arkansas who paid more than $100 million for the Dallas Cowboys.
Jerry Jones bought the team in February of 1989,
and I stayed for four months.
And, there were a lot of things that happened during those
four months that told me that this was not gonna work.
There was constant clash there, constant confrontation.
I would have to kick coaches out of our dance studio
because they would come down drunk...
and ogle and gawp the girls
and I would just kick them out of the studio.
In my opinion the respect for women was not there that had been in the past.
Jerry Jones and his friends wanted to be real familiar
with Cowboys Cheerleaders and there was a problem there for a long time.
I was asked to go on an appearance with...
In my uniform on an airplane
with Jerry Jones and his business associates.
I didn't feel that that was proper.
To me it was demeaning and it appeared that we were
being treated as bimbos, and I wasn't a bimbo.
I felt like we were just
bodies for his entertainment purposes.
You could just tell the way he ta... the way he talked about the women.
Now, you call them the pick of the litter.
Sam, our cheerleaders, 36 of them, are 36 girls chosen out
of some 900 girls that try out, so they're outstanding young women.
He decided to loosen up some of those stuffy old rules, they live by.
Let the cheerleaders date the players.
Let them do beer commercials and, oh yes, how about
if they wear outfits that are more revealing.
As If that were humanly possible.
I think Mr. Jones wanted to create his own era,
therefore he had to get rid of the other era.
And I was very much part of that other era.
You came to Dallas and you fired everybody in the Cowboys.
Particularly coach Landry.
I mean, here's a guy who had 20 consecutive winning seasons.
Took the team to the Superbowl five times,
won two of them and; Fop! Off with his head.
They were America's team.
And now?
They're Jerry Jones' team.
Jerry Jones started firing everybody.
Tex Schramm was humiliated by Mr. Jones.
He had given me everything I had at that moment, for 14 years.
And one thing that I am is a loyal human being.
So, May 8th 1989, I walked out the front door with Tex Schramm.
We were devoted to what we did because it was family.
And I saw my family being torn apart, and that hurts.
Suzanne Mitchell left
the team this spring after 14 years as
den mother of that other beloved institution,
the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
She regretted leaving her girls.
She felt like she abandoned them.
She realized she wasn't going to win, and the image was going to change.
And she couldn't compromise her integrity.
I don't think he thought he thought he was
going to have resistance, especially from the cheerleaders.
He thought, you know, we would listen like everybody else listens to him.
She had girls who had been there before and under the culture of Suzanne,
they just didn't feel it was right, so they made their decision to leave.
Well son, in Texas you can burn the flag,
but don't mess with the cheerleaders.
14 veteran cheerleaders have quit.
I had everything. I was in the calendar.
I was the centerfold of the, you know, the Gameday Magazine
with Troy Aikman on the cover.
I walked away from all of it.
The girls who left the squad, the 14, were ones
that truly understood what the whole image of DCC was.
What had been fought for all these years
in court, in the public eye.
And when they were faced with the fighting, they knew they could do it.
That's one of the biggest testaments to Suzanne that there is.
That we didn't just follow along and that we stood up for ourselves
and what she had built.
One of those paradoxes I guess again,
that we rebelled against the rules at first in the 70's.
And then when this came around beginning of the 90's, we wanted those rules.
People didn't think that we could do it, and people thought we'd go away.
But we never went away.
We still haven't gone away.
You still hear somebody say: "She was a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader."
It's not just about being a cheerleader,
it's about a life set skill.
You learn that positive energy: "I can do it."
I can do it.
I have raised a daughter and I've got two granddaughters now.
And I hope that if they want to be a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader,
no one's going to say: "Oh, you're a dumb cheerleader"
or if they want to be a doctor,
no one's going to say: "Oh, you
shouldn't do that." I think you should just
be allowed to be what you want to be and not be judgmental about it.
Suzanne taught us, not just
to be girls, but to grow up to be women.
The sisterhood will never die.
Not ever.
She changed my life.
So, uhm... Excuse me.
She taught me to believe in myself
and she gave me an opportunity to make a difference in my life.
God bless you.
The DCC critical information.
You do not receive any free tickets to the game.
You must go to the ticket office like everyone else.
You are not special.
No, that last part was just my add-on.
Number three, make negative experiences work for you.
Example, if you are made an alternate,
use that as incentive to work harder.
Don't pout.
Oh, we had to know the Star Spangled Banner.
Wow.
Number nine, do not take anything for granted.
Allow callouses on our feet to remain.
It will be easier to dance.
Otherwise, you will have tender feet all year.
Do not compare yourself to anyone.
If you feel you must compete, do so with yourself.
Everything must be approved by Suzanne Mitchell.
I think we all have a destiny.
My contribution to pass on was solely and completely
who these ladies would become when the music stopped,
So that your children look back and say: "You see what my mom did.
You see what she gave the world.
And I'm so proud of her." That's what you want your children to say.
That's it.