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Last time we were with listeners, we of course were looking at the first Saturday Night's main event from nineteen eighty five, and we were really interested to see that in the credit role at the end that they identified the designer of the Saturday Night's Main Event logo, which as we know, is fairly iconic.
Totally, I mean, it's it's one of the most.
I mean they still basically used to this day a variation of the of the same logo today.
Right, and it's back on the table, of course, is
the WWET Saturday Night's Main Event going again. But you know, the thought process was, man, what what what would it be like to have, you know, worked for WWF in a graphic design capacity at this point because so much of the logos and things that were generated around this early boom period for the company still like the Saturday Night's Main Event logo and WrestleMania and other things that they they're still around today and pretty much substantially the
same form, and so you know, it's like, what what what can we know? What can we find out about what it was like to design it the point we saw that his name was Brian Penry, and yeah, we
got him like we do, like we do. We have found Brian Penry, the designer, as we'll get into, of so many iconic WWF logos that we all associate with the glory days of the company and the product and we're really pleased to welcome Brian Now onto the show for a special two part conversation about his life and times in the mid to late eighties with the World Wrestling Federation. Brian, it's really great to have you. Thanks for joining us.
Thanks guys, it's my pleasure.
Let's start right there with Saturday Night's main event. We'll get into a whole heck of a lot of the things that you've done for the WWF in the course of this two part conversation, but would like to start with that one, the Saturday Night's made event logo. It's back, you know, and in fact the show has a whole throwback theme to it the way they're structuring it these days. What about that piece of work to get us started here that you recall.
Well, you know, I was there from.
The mid.
Nineteen eighty four to mid nineteen eighty seven. It was a fear stretch and I had worked with Vincent Linda prior to that. But I got to tell you, in all honesty that that whole period was a hyper drive blury. And I don't just say this like, oh, I was working.
Like a dog.
Everybody everybody worked like a dog, and many of us were in there quite often seven days a week in the office at that point, various offices in Greenwich and Stanford, Connecticut. And it was I can come back to this later, but you know, they outgrew three offices. They were building office buildings because the staff grew so fast, and by the time each one was built, the staff had outgrown it.
It was. And the fourth time out, Vince just threw up his hands and rented office space on Summer Street in Stamford. And finally they wound up with the building off of exit nine off of Route ninety five, the big black, kind of big structure with now the you know, the WWE so called pirate flag. And but I mean, just through this whole period, to be perfectly honest, that logo and I'm I'm honored that it's become.
As I.
But I gotta tell you, it was just kind of like this was typical, okay with Dick et Brisol and NBC. We're doing this, we're doing that. We need the logo four days ago, right, I mean that are for the course. And so I if I sit here, I tell you, oh, you know, I went through these commotions and shenanigans and yeah, I was a process and I spoke to none of that. I just banged it out. I just banged it out, and it'd be perfectly honest with you. I wasn't crazy.
I thought it's okay, but I mean, I wasn't proud of it, and it was just one of fifty things on came across my desk or my drawing board more accurately daily, And I'm I'm you. You actually educated me to the fact that it's back right right, don't you know. I've worked on so many things since my tenure with the WWF that this was news to me. It's great, it's kind of cool, but it's one of the last
things I ever worked on. I would have thought I had a radioactive half life and would show up, you know, decades later.
So who knows radioactive half let it's good way to put it by you mentioned Dick Ebersoll and bosses. As the listeners know, we've spent a lot of time wondering what it was like, Yeah, to be around Dick Ebersol at a time when he had such massive influence over the direction Vince would take the WWF, and really is such a I think underdiscovered part of WWF history is Dick Eversoll's role in things. Brian, I know you're in
the room occasionally with Dick. Can you kind of give us a sense of what it was like to work in and around him as in nineteen eighty five as he takes a keen interest in pro wrestling in the WWF.
I just want to interject one thing too, especially because you were there before as well, Like, there's such a shift in I imagine a shift in dynamic between you know, working in eighty four and then all of a sudden in eighty five Dick Eversol comes in that too.
Was just I was curious about that.
Well, yeah, I mean honestly and truly, my relationship with with Vince Solenda goes back to the late seventies and there's a story right there. But just and I'd like to come back to that and flesh out how we of course we met and so on and so forth and everything evolved into that creative director role with them. But yeah, Dick, Dick, you know it was it was really kind of a funny deal we all, uh I
say we meaning the WWF staff. It's very interesting. Vince was insightful from the standpoint of recognizing that he's out now courting network brass at major companies TV networks, and this was this was the infancy of cable, never mind streaming that we have now, and he's speaking to very powerful executive types that are suit and tie dudes from the ground up, and he just I don't know if there was something that that a particular incident that inspired
this or something, but he put out an ed act pretty quickly around the office that he wanted everyone in suit and tie. Wow, it was wasn't I mean just a sports jacket or something at very least a tie. And he wanted the women that worked for the company to be, you know, nicely dressed, no jeans, you know, pants, suits whatever. He just he just wanted to exude professionalism and he wanted to you know, they were they were
dealing with big banks on their finances. He wanted a banker to walk in and I think you know it was a hippie enclave or something, or you know, guys dealing with wrestling. You know, you didn't want somebody to have a beer belly and walk by with a beer
can in their hand or something. That's an overstatement, but he wanted to project a very very professional image and in a very predictable way, you know, not nothing, just just he didn't want to look like a bunch of slabs, you know, and one could hardly call Dick ever saw a slab. But I mean he's he was this sort of cool guy. You know, he's he's a successful television exec. He really made his mark in sports with NBC. As you probably know, he was responsible for at least three
Olympics games. I mean, he put NBC on the map where sports are concerned, and that was that was really his home base, having built that part of the NBC television network. And I mean to that to this day that that is a huge part of his Uh how do how do I put it? You know, he he he made his mark, he could do what he wants.
Yeah, that kind of guy.
And so he shows up. I happened to be coming back in the office from an appointment somewhere, and this guy pulls in in this cherry red Porsche Targa that you know just you know, tricked out to the max and Dick gets a very tall guy and uh, you know, I think I think that first time, you know, he had some kind of funky loafers on it would be that or cowboy boots and and he always had a designer sweater, a bore, you know, hinos. He looked like like uh cash dude and successful TV executive and I
mean there was there was nothing to complain about. The guy was, you know, clean and slick, and that was that. So we've had this first production meeting where where Dick explaining what his vision is for putting shows together, and Vince is sort of meeting him at every other comment with with with his vision of how he sees the wrestlers being portrayed, et cetera, et cetera. And the meeting,
it's a very small meeting. I think Nelson Schregler was there, as I recall, who was head of TV programming for Vince and Vince. Nelson was old school, he was I think he had one sport jacket, this red bear navy blazer and you always wore this one blazer and gray trousers and we all joked he probably had a closet full of sixteen blue blazers and sixteen bears a gray slacks at all. And Nelson was a great guy, very mild battered, you know, quiet, sort of sense of humor,
easygoing guy. And I was there, and Steve Taylor, the WWF photographer who was quite often on the road. He spent his life on the road. Basically, he was on the in the office maybe a day a week, or sometimes a day or two every two weeks when he was going overseas and so forth with the boys. And it was a really small grouping, and it was a great meeting. And then just out of the blue, then says to Dick, Dick, you may have noticed that my staff is all in suit. Do this is because I
want to exude a very professional image. I'm sure you understand, and I don't want to have any of my people feel as though this is a constraint that I impose on them only. And he said, listen, I'm just going to ask you, would you mind if if you just the next time we meet, and whenever you come to our offices, you mind just at very least wearing a tie jacket. And Steve and I looked at each other and it was all we could do not to just burst out laughing, like, Okay, Vince is just busting this
guy's balls. This cannot be real. Here's this accomplished TV executive on top of the world. He's probably one of a handful of the most valuable people that NBC has in their ranks. And Vince is asking him to dress up when he comes to the office, and we're like, he could have kiddened me, and it did. Just he did one of those things where his mouth was sort of moving in slow motion but nothing was coming out, you know, like he's processing this, and then it sort
of sputtered a little bit. Well, Vince, so well, I know what should mean, and you could tell he was just frothing around and something like are you kidding me? So, But the long and the short of it is he didn't really answered the question. He just said, well, we have a lot on our players, so let's get you know, we'll be in touch by people with her people and all those things, and so Nelson was just Nelson didn't say a word. Nelson's walking down the hall, he's.
He's got that silly grin on his face and he's just shaking his head like I can't believe it's did that, and we're all hoping it didn't blow the deal, because why would you need to even bring something up like that?
You know, and but Steve and I we went down to the coffee room when we're just howling like, Wow, I can't I just I can't wait to see what Dick comes back. Right, So the next time he comes, he's in a full suit, wow, and no designer sweater. He's wearing it high and then he kind of softened it. And then from there it was like a sport code.
And then I think way down the road six eight months later, if he came for meeting and at that point people were going into New York more, that was sort of the that was that was the opening salvo when he came to see Vince. That was sort of like, you know, the mountain going to Mohammed. So it was interesting. But but he played the game. And you know, what we took away from the whole thing was wrestling and what Vince had to offer was so important and so
critical to their programming. He was willing to be, you know, politely, pushed around a little and told what to wear. That just blew our minds. That absolutely blew our minds. And that Vince had you know, the gall the Scandinos asks who's already accomplished to do something kind of weird like that, you know, but that was Vince and he called the shots and the guy did it. He dressed like he asked him to do, so, you know, his his own people wouldn't feel like they were being asked to dress
up for no good reason. It was a real interesting sort of character study on you know, pushing the boundaries with somebody to see what you can get away with. It was just crazy and Vince, I don't know people know this or not. I meant to say Dick. His wife is Susan Saint James, Uh, the actress, and she already had you know, she was a big deal in Hollywood. She was the star of the villain and wife with Rock Hudson. Uh. She was a star in her own right.
And you know, pretty almost immediately Vince and Linda and Susan and Dick were pals and you know, going out to dinner together and Vince it just sort of paved his way into essentially, you know, the television world, Hollywood society. Was just kind of fascinating to watch this happen in real time with people that you know and work with. It was it was just it was all very interesting.
So anyway, very good Well, that's a that's a great snapshot of the time period, and you have exactly as you're saying, you have a a dialogue going on about how to newly present these wrestlers with you know, Dick Eversol's experience in television being kind of layered on top of Vince's instincts, and Vince isn't afraid to uh to draw distinctions around his level of power in the deal
and that continued to be a relationship that flourished for years. Well, let's talk about how you first got in the door over there, Brian. How did you become the WWFS creative director.
Well, I started and it all started in probably the most unlikely place on earth. Kip cod.
Sure, that's where he was. That's where he started so many of his enterprises.
Well, it was really interesting. I'm I'm basically a graphic designer, illustrator, a copywriter guy. And I started in ad agencies in Boston when I was in my early twenties in the early seventies, and you know, I had built up a pretty decent clientele and worked my tail off and I had a I found one thing and another there was a printer I was doing a lot of work with based in Hyennas, and I found an apartment I liked in Yarmouth Port, this great little town on the on
the Bay side of the Cape. And for your listeners who grew up in I've lived around Boston. WBCN was probably one of the leading all rocks stations. Oh yeah, classic rock in the sixties, late sixties, early seventies right right through for some time after that. But I designed that WWF logo. I mean, it's not what am I saying, the WBCN logo. It's like a chrome kind of little treatment. And that was on bumper stickers for ten years or more.
But that was one of my designs. And Christmas Tree Shops logo, Boston Lobsters and Worldness was around, so I had a good footprint. I couldn't establish my designer. And I was this crazy, you know, twenty something guy running around having fun and working my tailoff, but having plenty of fun. And so one day I get this call. I'm in my studio in the Armouth Port and a woman named Linda McMahon calls and introduces herself. It's very professional and she and her husband, Vince had just bought
the Cape Cod Coliseum out of receivership. The place had struggled for years. It was about an eight thousand seat venue and it had had rough times and they bought it out cash, and she just told me a matter of factly what the deal was. And they needed a logo, and they'd found me in the Yellow Pages. You remember those things that kids sat on when they couldn't fit in their high chairs. Nobody used them for anything else
but that dad worked that I had in there. And so they made an appointment to come by and chat and see some of my works, all my portfolio, et cetera, et cetera. So the day they came the door to my it's sort of like Whener would come in the door on Seinfeld. The door to my studio is buying, and there's and and I'm just I just my jaw sort of drop because it's a big guy. But he's wearing a three piece pink plaid. Yes, I'm thinking, okay, but this isn't like pinky lead. This isn't some slapstick.
It's obviously, you know, an Italian cut, nicely made suit. It's a little bit loud, but you know, that's that's what Vin's like to wear. So it was just kind of crazy. And and you know on his heels is Linda, and she's dressed to the nines, you know, very very gracious, very elegant. And I mean you have to remember, you can't get on the Cape if you're not wearing boat shoes. And you know, you know, it's very casual polo shirt, you know, shorts, and I think I was in jeans
and a T shirt or something. That's just a way of life, you know. It's sort of like being somewhere on a beach in Florida or something, and they just they look like a million bucks, but they look like they belonged at some gala in Boston or New York. So it was it was just sort of out of context. It was funny, and they looked at my work, they liked my work. They hired me to do the logo,
and it was kind of nothing beyond that. And I remember this is back in the mid I'd say, this is like, I can't honestly recall I'm going to say seventy six, seventy seven, somewhere in there is when bos Gags was hot and his album Silk Degrees won a Grammy. I mean, this guy was hot. He was a big deal.
So what has Vin? He gets Boz gags at this at the cape Cod Coliseum, which has been you know, the Loserville Railroad forever, and he turns this place around instantly and gets the hottest guy you know in music playing there. You know, you must have had a tour date fall apart or something happened that was already booked and they got him at the last minute. But all of a sudden, he's got you know, a less bands and performers in the cape Cod Coliseum all of a sudden,
it's a legit place. So he had the golden touch. And I learned later that he actually had an interest in the Worcester Centrum, So I mean he knew his way around the event venue facility world, and I really didn't know much about the wrestling. And we became friends. We would go out for a drink and a cocktail, which is another you know institution on Cape Cod. He expected him morning, noon and night. No I'm kidding, but not really. But I the fun thing Vince Vince used
to he just made going out for cocktails. Really. He would call up and say it's time for a tall one. Yes, he's really tall. Tumblers full of you know, typically vodka, and we would just have a blast and he was he was a funny guy. Linda was great. We just had a great time and that was that. And you know, uh, Actually a few years went by and I heard brumblings about the wrestling and I didn't I really wasn't intimately
familiar with what all they were doing. And then I started getting calls from both Linda and Vince and they said, look, we're you know. The explained that Vince's dad had been in the business for years, and it made me recall when I was a kid. I actually was raised in California, and I remember watching shows that originated at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, and you know, the original Chic
and Haystack Calhoun. I mean, real old timers like that who I was watching when I was seven or eight, and it occurred to me, holy crap, Vince's dad put those shows together. So it was like this weird string of occurrences that had been going on forever that I just knew of in a certain perspective as a kid, and now I was realizing, wow, that this is becoming a bigger deal, and so he was. He had this vision for doing nationally broadcast shows where wrestling used to be.
Remember remember the old VHF in UHF TVF a schlumpy little world that TV existed in. It had nothing to do with what it's grown to or streaming or anything. And not that Vincent defined all that it could be. But he had this vision that it could be a lot more than it was, and it was really fascinating. And my biggest client was Infinity Broadcasting, which is a radio company. It was the home of Howard Stern and
I did Stearn's promotion. That was my big ticket. And I was doing that from the Cape, which was a bit of a feat but I loved it and I didn't feel I had to go anywhere. I had it made. As far as I was concerned, I had a great gig. I was my own boss. I'm on the Cape. I had a good client, several clients, but that was the big one. And they made these overtairs, We're going to start doing shows out of Madison Square Garden. I'm like God, and he said, listen, we wanted to be our creative director.
We wanted to you know, bring your vision for you know, the look and the feel of the whole thing. And it sounded fascinating. And at the same time, I'm thinking, yeah, and I'm gonna I'm gonna be down somewhere around New York. It's going to be more expensive, it's a little more formal. It's I'm processing all this stuff in my head. I mean,
it's not like I ever left the Cape. I used to go to New York City every two weeks on puddle jumper out of Hyenas Airport down to you know, La Guardia or one of the big three airports, depending on what was available. And I would I would take a taxi in town and had my meetings and come back to the Cape. I was perfectly satisfied. And so they're saying, yeah, well, this is a big deal, and we're gonna we can't we can't work you know, at arm's lengths. You're gonna have to be on premises. You're
gonna have to marry this thing. And like, I don't know, and I mean this this wasn't a matter of conversations in a matter of days or weeks. This one on for two years. Because they were planning and they were. They were starting to do shows out of out of Madison Square Gardens and so MSG had become their their base, but they hadn't built up a staff. They were they were lining people up. They were just trying to strategize how to do this thing and what to call it.
Titan Sports became the corporate name. And I mean before I even left the Cape, I had worked on a logo for Titan Sports, and I had done the original ww F logo, which looked nothing like it did with the you know, the the stacked w's with the F growing out the right. That evolved to that, and it was just a real but for literally two years, they would call me maybe every month or two. Have you thought about it? Have you thought about? Like? Ho? Come on?
And they kept upping the offer, and they thought, all right, it's going to get to a certain point where I got to be crazy not to do it. Because I knew this thing was going to amount to something. I just didn't know how big it was going to get around fast. And they finally hit a number and I thought, oh man, what am I doing? So I put my house on the market, and you know, it was my first house. I made a little bit of money. Okay, I moved. I moved down to uh Greenwich. I mean
that this is like culture shock. This is like living in a hut in Botswana and being transmitted to London.
You know.
But what and the craziest thing. I got down to Greenwich and it took I'm in a hotel. It took me two months to find an affordable apartment. It's a very expensive place. And you know, all all your corporate honchos, all your all your heads of the biggest stock exchanges and houses living places like Greenwich and neighboring suburbs in New York just over the state line. It's you really have to have some cake to play the game down there. And I remember the first time I picked up some
dry cleaning. I mean it was like a shirt and a pair of pants. It would have been like six bucks on the cape. And I went to the dry cleaner, I picked my stuff up. I said, I was just sort of shooting the breeze with the guy for a minute and I said, so what do I owe you? And he said thirty dollars and I just burst that. I really was laughing as that, you know, really what
a way owe you? And He just looked at me like I was some rube that had been under a rock for the last century, and he said thirty bucks, like a idiot. I'm like okay, and I paid him. And I remember like walking out with my clothes in one of those you know, Dray cleaner bags. I'm like, what did I just do? Oh my goodness, I think. I mean this was real culture shock and nothing to do with the wrestler. I mean, that's a whole other layer. You know, you're in this very hoity toity place where
people tend to be more dressed up. You know, people wear designer clothes. People are driving, you know, every other car is a land Rover Mercedes for you know, Ferrari the Lotus Way. You know.
He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and Carno and JP Sorrow. It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling Podcast.
Well, you touched on design of the original w W Flogobrian and I don't want to leave that unddressed because that's obviously a point of fascination for pro fans. The WWF logo that came into you know, general view during your time. It's just the north Star when it comes to like a look that everyone fell in love with. As regards the WWF, you had said, it didn't quite
look that way in the beginning. So can you take us through what it looked like at the very start and how it came to be this chrome, shiny thing that we all remember so well with the f off to the right, as you mentioned, well, and you've.
Got to realize this thing was such a process. I had no inkling how how big and bold and successful this thing was going to get so quickly, And it really wasn't designed And from the little input that I had got from Vince, this wasn't a logo that I envisioned was necessarily going to be on screen on television,
something for consider to be looking at it. It was a corporate logo, just some sort of signature to identify the fact that, you know, when they were doing business, correspondence back and forth to promoters, to you know, rent venues and so forth, that kind of thing. And so it was very simply a W, just just a right reading W. You're looking at the W and above it, let's say you're looking at a Let's say you're looking
at a compass. So the S the south is at the bottom, and there's a west east and an end for the north at the top. It was a W going in four directions.
I'm looking at it right now.
It is.
It's a fascinating logo. I've never seen this one before.
Where did you find it?
I just googled it. I did a quick google of it, and I did WWF logo. I just did nineteen seventies and then this one came up. It's like fluorescent green.
You've got to be kidding me, how come? Wow? Okay, so but now think about this. Think of MetLife, the insurance company, and they have an M that very similarly those or directions like that, and the bottoms it's like a in that instance, it's the the M is at the top where the where the end for north would be. So this, anyway, I never even thought about that when I designed the logo. I just thought it was sort of a fun graphic and it looked expansive, like it's
it's going in all directions at once. That was the idea. It had this energy to do a three sixty whatever that was. So Vince loves it. Okay, that's the logo. The prince that puts it on letterheads that business cards. That's about the of it. So he gets this letter from an attorney for MetLife.
Yes he does, and.
The attorney accuses him of ripping off their logo blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and Vince is just amused by the whole thing, and I'm in my naivete I'm in terror because I'm thinking, oh my god, they're going to sue me too, because I designed the frickate thing, and you know, I had no idea how these things worked at that point in my career, I've gotten a lot more sophisticated business wise, but at that point I was just struck terror in my heart.
And so I started doing some research on my own and looking for precedents legal presidents that I happened to have a friend who was a district attorney in Hyhennas and legal beagle in them. He said, don't sweat at me, and he gave me some legal finding. He found a bunch of precedents where when a company, first of all,
you have to be in the same product area. So so the WWF would have to be selling insurance for met Life to have any kind of case at all, which of course they weren't close to doing, and that life close to making big, sweaty guys jump around and beat each other up. So you know, there was no case. But the CEO this is this is the craziest thing. It turns out the CEO of MetLife, I can't even remember the guy's name, turned out to be a closet wrestling freak pro wrestling, so and that almost sort of
legitimized pro wrestling. And then Vince had a big smile because yeah, everybody loves this stuff, they just don't admit it. I mean, it was pretty cool. And what Vince did?
Were you, Brian, were you a fan when growing up? Did you watch wrestle?
Yeah, well that's what I was talking about. When I lived with the California as a kid, I watched wrestley shows coming out of the Cow Palace and which people may not if you're not familiar with the it's a huge venue. The Cow Palace is like, h it's it's a big deal and anyway, no, but what what what really struck me was Vince didn't even want to spend a dime on one of his attorneys. And believe me, he had some powerhouse attorneys. But he didn't want to
waste the money, you know, indulging this guy. He wrote a letter back to the chairman of MetLife on his letter head and it was just it was a it was a business lesson this this There should be a Harvard Business School course enshrined on how to belittle somebody in three paragraphs and bring them to their knees. And it started off and dear so, and so it was something to the effective as a fellow member of the world business community.
Yes, that's right.
So we're already on the same place. And he was basically saying, shut up and calm down and listen to me. And he said, I you don't actually have grounds for this. If you feel that our brand is somehow damaging yours and we happen not to be in product areas that have anything to do with each other, it's incumbent upon you to pay me to change my logo. I'm perfectly
happy to do it. But the cost, because it now is embedded in dozens of TV shows and hundreds of hours of programming, the cost to design the new logo and repro will be approximately one hundred thousand dollars so guess what, he gets a check from that lot for one hundred grand And did I get I got fifteen hundred bucks.
Counting that.
Back then, that was a lot of money.
To me, that was a lot of money.
That's not an enormous amount for logo design in the realm of things that I work at today, but you know, that was a big deal back then. So I was just happy as a clam. And you know, I and I just got thinking, like, what are we going to do differently here? And I started experimenting the w's and I realized how they could stack. Yes, And you know, you don't need to work too hard to put an
F next to it. You could just grow a couple of lines out and you've got the semblance of an F. And I and I started playing with it, and interestingly too, this this, you know, for that logo and for WrestleMania. This era that we live in now, you know, kids are learning how to do photoshop in school. It's a given. It's just another app. And you know, but back in that era, photoshop in its infancy wasn't around until the
mid nineties. Everything was done traditional airbrush. I'm not an illustrator, but I would. I would pencil my designs very very tightly.
I was.
I was absolutely a stickler about details, and I had some great airbrush artists that I would then sub contract to to do that end of it. And then I would do what it's called dry brush technique, which is detailing on top of the airbrush layer for highlights and so forth. And that's how these logos came to be. And you know, the basic ww IF logo just for
lighterhead and stuff was just a black image. But then when I when I realized the mag that you to, what this thing was becoming, and that it was going to be on screen, and that it had to be you know, hot and sexy and compete with everything else on TV, I'd thrown out the possibility to Benson Linda, that you know, hey, let's do this in full color, let's let's make it look rich, let's give it a metallic kind of really funky feel. And then you know,
the answer was then and always was do it. And that's how it got where it got.
Wow, that is such critical history to know because that logo just centers us. Like I said, and yeah, that original four points logo, I know, I've seen it on WWF television before I kind of associated with the time when they were like more of the seventies. But I suppose maybe it was just super imposed on footage from the seventies that they later released. But yeah, that's not a logo, Brian. That's completely unfamiliar to wrestling fans. It's harder to find, but it's out there, and wow, that's
how we got to the WWF logo. We all need just one more question on that logo before we move on. Is it supposed to evote kind of like a horizon in the desert or something. I was that middle line beneath kind of has like a brownish, almost like sand color in the top is like a sky blue. I've always wondered if I'm just seeing things when I look at the logo, if that's what you intended.
No, Actually, I'll tell you something funny. I I grew up loving hot rods. I mean, but when the kid done and I grew up, well, my folks flow up when I was barely a teenager and I came kicking and screaming back to these coast But the you know, I remember watching these insanely hot This is the era of big Daddy at Roth and you know, car magazines raised rein supreme with the you know, just just crazy
chroned mountains of it engines. And when you when you look at any kind of chrome typography, you know, like the or the logo for the Dodge Ram or a hubcap on a low rider, you quite often see earth tones or grays which are reflection of the asphalt of the road, and then you see a soft blue that's the sky. It's just that simple. You're reflecting whatever is around the chrome in the peripheral vision from from maybe you see a little hint of green. You're picking up
the bushes and the trees at the street level. It's just it's just a stylized reflection of whatever colors are picked up in reflection in the chrome, whether it's a bumper or a hubcap, whatever, and that's it. It was just simply a matter of making contrast to make it look interesting and too so when the high lights appear, they look even brighter, shinier. You know, there's not a
lot of science to it. It was just really just a stylization of you know, somebody went to a metal working shop and had that logo built in three d mounted on the side of a building and cars are going by, and you know there's a flower bed somewhere by. You're gonna see hints of brown from the dirt and the flower bed. Way. It's that simple that it's just how how chrome sort of abstractly reflects light and color around it.
So right, it's not a it's not necessarily depiction of a landscape. It's a reflection of something bouncing off the logo, like it in a chrome tailpipe or something.
Yeah, yeah, really cool. Going back to the WBCN logo that I originally did in the mid seventies, that that in part was my inspiration for the finish on the on the on the w w F logo and and and you know, the the the WrestleMania logo had some aspects of that. It was a little cleaner, a little brighter, and and the concept for that was that was going to be the big show. And so that it became even more almost you know, gold and diamond like, if
you will. It wanted to just be really you know, bright, showy.
Wow.
Well, let's pick up that thread there. I mean, you know, what are some of your more memorable moments with the w w F. I'd imagine the build up to WrestleMania was no small part of it.
Wow, well, I'll tell you are are you interested at all? And knowing how the the name WrestleMania came about?
Oh yeah, that's the perject of extensive lore And we all know how it. Ankle gets the credit in the the official WWF cannon as far as like the corporate history, but we also know that there's others that you can assign that credit to.
So please, well, I haven't heard anyone else's signed with it, and I knew how, and I really liked how he was. He was just one of those really authentic people. You know. He went out of his way, absolutely out of his way to be as nice as he could be to people. And there there were a few, say, in any office anywhere, there are a few people that you know, let their bad morning, grumpy day hang with them through the day. And they weren't, you know, they didn't know how to
keep a chin up around others. And how he was that kind of guy wherever he was, even if he weren't a great mood, he can go with, hey, how you doing, and you just light up a room when he came in. He was that kind of guy, and I don't honestly think and he claimed credit for it.
I think he was.
It was attributed to him. But what really happened, you know, based basically in the late fall of eighty four, Vince just put the feelers out the department as I was, I was head of you know, loosely creative and production, if you want to call it that, And there was a there was a very closely associated guy named Tom Emmanuel, a British guy who ran the publishing. Although I designed the w W magazine and oversaw the art end of it,
Tom was the publisher of it. So we all worked together in different capacities on some of the same things. And Vince maybe these rumbleys. He wanted to have a huge, huge event that would be pay per view, and even the ter everyone was like what and you know, this was like the infancy of what we now call on demand.
But Vince had been talking to people at ESPN and this is actually, you know, at least a year or so, I think a year and a half or more before Dick Eversol came into the fold, and Vince had been doing his homework on a technology that was loosely being called pay per view, and people were still trying to work out how the heck it was going to work,
et cetera, et cetera. But he decided that he wanted to just do this massive event, a big live event at MSG, but it would be broadcast via satellite and people who have the ability to get into their homes, which was next to nobody could watch it. But most people were going to sports bars or what have you to watch it on a big screen with a bunch of other people. And so he just wanted to start
kicking around names. So he called a couple of staff meetings with department heads so that that would be That would be Tom myself, promoters like Basil DeVito and Cohen Nelson Schwegler, who was head of TV. Steve I can't honestly remember Steve was in all the meeting. He was one of them because he was usually on the road, Steve Taylor, the photographer, and but but what we we'd have these meetings and it was like a typical meeting, and everybody's got an idea, it's bouncing all over the place.
And how many of us have been in a meeting or something actually got done right, you know, you mean, well, and everybody throws in their two cents, but you usually wind up needing to schedule another meeting or meetings upon meetings,
and yeah, that's why people hate meetings. So anyway, what was going going on was what was good about it was that it prompted everybody'd be walking around thinking, you know, was they're doing other things and they're sitting at their desks or you know, on the phone with somebody droning on about something. They're really thinking, Okay, what are we gonna call us thing? So it prompted everybody to have it, you know, in the forefront of their minds, to try
to come up with something. And there was this guy and I have tried desperately since we talked about doing this, uh this podcast. You know, this guy came to mind and a life of me cannot remember his last name. He wasn't with the WWF all that long. He had come in in the fall of eighty four. He was only there about a year and a half. Really a short guy. He looked a little like Bobby Riggs, the tennis pro that the Billy Jean King in that era.
He was he was kind of gruff. He was this chain spoken guy, and he seems the part of a character, kind of kind of crusty. I like the guy, and he was a funny little guy. And Steve and I were in the coffee room and Rex wandered in and he was musing to himself about something under his breath. He said, what do you guys, what do you think of WrestleMania? Wow? Wow? And I don't know if Steve recalls this or not, he may think I'm out of my mind, but I have a very distinct memory of this.
And we just looked at each other like yeah, and he just said, well, you know, it's basically the Beatlemania with wrestling. Its kind of beatle I mean, and it was so obvious, it was so perfect because when you think about it, what's really interesting to me, I was, I don't know, thirteen twelve thirteen, when the Beatles first came on the scene. I mean, that was that was epic. That was no one had ever ever heard anything like that, in the same way that prior to Elvis, no one
had ever heard anything like Elvis. You can't say that about even Belie, about Michael Jackson. There's there's been big icons that happened to be a songwriter, a musician that is, that is my passion and music, live and breathe music. I think about it all the time. And el Elvis was iconic in the in the sense that he did something no one had even imagined before. Now now, you know, obviously he emulated blues artists and and and you know bit players in the formation of R and B who
will never get the credit they're due. But and like kind, you know, the Beatles were influenced by R and B players, and you know they but they came about it in an entirely different way. And when they appear, beatle Mania was really the only thing you could call it. People people were showing up by the thousands of airports to greet them when they were on tour. Now, what's the last time that happened. Well, I'll tell you the last time. I know what happened. And you may not be that surprised.
When the WWF guys tour in Arabic nations, in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, places like that, people show up at the airport. Wow. And in Japan and not so much now, but I mean in the in the big blow up in the eighties. That is how hot this thing was. And I just thought how fitting that that just sort of grabs that energy and that describes that that chill you get up your back like whoa. And I think what happened was, you know, Rex was very kind of like under himself
kind of guy. He was involved in TV production. I think I think he had been at CNN prior to that. He was somewhere in the in the TV biz. And I've tried to google what his last name might have been, and I've various different Rexes, and there's Rex Jones, of course, and there's a couple of name name value wrestlers who for his name was Rex. This guy was not a wrestler, very diminutive guy, but very nice guy.
But it sounds to me, if I can interrupt Brian with the glasses and the diminutive and the Atlanta connections, it sounds like you're describing Jim Barnett. Oh okay, you know Jimmy.
Yeah, Jim was a crazy man. Oh my god.
Well, I hate to derail you, but we got to take a quick pit stop for jim Z. I mean the subject of endless fascination for wrestling fans. He came to work for Vincent eighty three and the ultimate mover and shaker. Can you quickly give us a memory on Jim Barnett That sounds like a yes.
Oh, Jim Barnett was an Elton John of his own era. This guy, well, you know he was, he was. He was just an institution. I don't even know how to really character Brian, Yes a moment. Yes, I mean, he was just such a character. Oh my gosh. It's just like he strode off a plantation with a mint julip in his hands. He said, the only thing that guy
drank was Don Peranelle. He had a refrigerator in his office and Linda would go down there every once in a while and you know, tip a glass with him and just shoot the breeze, and you know, there, she's a Southern bell. Jim was clearly from the South. Jim never left the South. He just brought the South with him. He had, Honest to god, what was he had? He had more silk ties than Liberaci and he was just
a character. I don't know where, but somewhere in Manhattan he had an apartment, and I think he had a place he stayed out in Connecticut when he was at the office. But but he was. He was an old school wrestling promoter who was had worked with Vince's dad way back, and and he oh my gosh, what a character. He was just one of the funniest people I've ever met.
That's awesome.
Well, somebody else that was in the company at the time to pick up your threat on who this Rex could have been. Do you remember Bob McMullen, who worked as VP of finance.
That's a boy. I was one of his favorite people. I used to bring bills you couldn't.
Imagine, So I guess you remember him perhaps from pleasant and unpleasant interactions as regards the bottom line.
Very pleasant, But I mean I was in charge of procuring all kinds of gear and and uh outfitting for for the wrestlers from time to time.
Oh wow.
Yeah. I found this equestrian shop that made saddles and stuff for you know, people who do dressage and you know, fancy horse racing. And I said, can you guys make wrestling belts? Can you can you make a gladiator outfit for one of our dresslers? And they were just having a stuff. So I would bring him bills from this equestrian shop, and what do we why do we feeding horses? I said, But but the craziest thing, the craziest thing.
One time I had ted d Biassi, the million dollar man in Virgil, come into the offices and they had a limo to shuttle them around and then take them back to the airport because they were this is like one stop off the road between gigs at you know, different venues, and the limo driver left. He didn't he didn't understand the itinerary or something, and they were kind
of stranded. But they needed to get fitted for costumes, and I wanted this equestrium shop to do some of the outfitting for for the million dollar man's you know, costuming for the ring and uh at the at the time, at the time, I had a little BMW convertible and it was a great car until that happened. And I got two guys that are just shy of eight hundred pounds between the two of them, and it's like I
got a low rider. I mean, it's just crazy. I said, do you guys want to put the top and you want me to put the top up, so you know, you're not like having a wave in every jimoke that comes along, and they I'll leave it down. It's great. It was a beautiful day. So we had to drive up to Westport, which is, yeah, you know, with with no traffic, twenty minutes but typically forty minutes from Greenwich.
And so we drive up to Westport and I did part of a ninety five and the back of my cars dragging, I mean, is just like you got to be kidding me, you know, we're just all laughing, but I'm thinking they're not going to believe this in the office when I hand him a bill, because my shocks are blown to shreds. So we did what we had to do at the equestrian shop, and we came back and they scheduled another limo, went to the airport and they're gone. But my car was just I was just groaning.
I could hear it out in the park. Who help me. I went down to McMullen's office and I said, oh, this is this is one for the books. I need new shocks. He said why you well, and you know paying for your repairing your car? He said, yeah, because a million dollar man in Virgil flattened it. Oh, and he just laughed and he said, just go get him fixed, get me a bill. I mean it was I always, I wasn't the only one. There were just so many
crazy things. And in this era before long before photoshop, the only way to electronically alter photographs and so forth. It's very expensive. It was a system called a cy Tex system, and it was like a roomful of mainframe computers, and it was cheap. It was one hundred and fifty bucks an hour. But Vincent insisted. At one point we had this great shot of Hulk, but his hair was stinning, and and you know, some of the guys very vain. They do hair plugs whatever, but you know, painful operations.
I think there's better solutions now, but that was the state of the art medically back then. The Vincent we don't have time. Just give him more hair. Oh my god, you're not gonna want to see the billy, so just do it. Wow, what Hulk's got all the hair in the world.
Because we always talk about O'Brian, you know, there seems to be like a message to shoot Hulk as far as camera angles and stuff, to always shoot him kind of down looking up, so you don't ever see really the top of his head. I mean, you don't see the top of wrestler's heads too much anyway, but it's very noticeable. I think when you when you come to learn that there was that sensitivity about him getting bald.
Well. I remember, I remember there was one time that Linda came in my office with a stack of bills in her hand. She said, what's side text. I said, it's a whole other money in, you know. I mean, it's that's the only way we could get certain things done. And it was crazy.
So I mentioned Bob McMullen just because there was a book that came out by friend of the show, Brad Blucian, called The six Pack last year, and he kind of, you know, finds all kinds of people from this era and interviews them about what the real formation of the boom period WWF was like. And he interviews Bob McMullen, and sure enough, Bob McMullen contends that it was in fact Rex Jones. He says, Jones, who was brought in a television guy. Linda brought us in Vince's office. We're
trying to think about how to do it. We're talking about mania. So Rex sits there and says it's got to be WrestleMania rhymes with Hulk of Mania. So is it Rex Jones. You seem to be not sure if it's Rex Jones, but Bob seems to think it is.
Well, I thought of Rex Jones that has something to do with wrestling online, and it didn't look remotely like the guy I remember whose first name was Rex.
Got it?
Okay, Yeah, I did a similar surgeon. I'm not sure that all the pictures that come up as actually the person that worked for WWF. I think there might be some confusion there too.
I don't doubt. I don't doubt that are Rex Jones. It just wasn't in the in the area of things that I worked on, and I don't recall it. But what I'm saying is the guy that I remember, I remember physically distinctly, and I found Rex Jones online because I remember you had mentioned that when we spoke before, and that was a totally different guy. They had dark hair, just different look whatsoever. But you didn't have the horn room glasses, and just Rex was was very distinctive right
the way. Just for the life of me, can't remember the guys last name.
That's that's fair. I just wanted to see if that that sharpened the memory at all. So you were you were on the track of saying that what you think happened is that The reason it's the square I ascribed to Howard is because perhaps Rex told Howard and then everyone heard it first from Howard after that.
That that was my feeling. Well, I mean, you know, basically, Howard was just sort of bouncing around the halls WrestleMania, WrestleMania, WrestleMania, and I felt like he had just gone in and said to them too, and he goes yeah, Vince goes, yeah, that's it. That's probably what happened, and everyone just said how must have thought that up, and and not to take away from how he won IOTA or anything. I just I honestly think the first utterance of it was
what Steve and I heard. However, that got communicated to to Howie or with an airshot of Howie, and how he lit up on it and wanted to share it with Vince, which is very typical of Howard. So it doesn't matter who came up with it. It was just a great name. But I just thought it was very interesting. However, it came about that was my reckoning of it, that's all.
And we do want to let everybody in the lapsed fan solar system know that Brian will be at gamer Con Connecticut coming up soon at the Mohican Sun Casino March fifteenth and sixteenth. He'll have his own booth an artist's alley at the show. He'll have signed and numbered prints of the WrestleMania logo, among other things he worked on available, So you really want to stop by if you're in the area and say hi to Brian because
he's a friend of the show now too. So just go online to ctgamercon dot com ct for Connecticut for more information on the venue and the event, and we
look forward to seeing listeners of the podcast at the event. Well, the table has been set wonderfully by former WWF creative director Brian Penry here in the first part of our conversation getting us acquainted with how he became acquainted with the McMahons and then later climbed the organization as it grew so fast, designing the WWF logo, the WrestleMania logo.
There's more I imagine to digging in new there and part two of our conversations so keep your eyes peeled and your earspeeled to our feed here as we present part two of our conversation with Brian Penry in his time in the World Wrestling Federation. We'll see you then. ISIL what is a production of the Lab Entertainment Group.
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