Imagine for a second, you are standing on the
the meticulously controlled set of the 1955 Alfred
Hitchcock thriller to catch a thief. Oh, classic.
Right. And you need a human wall to basically
block a doorway for a scene. So you hire this
six foot five, two hundred ninety pound ex wrestler.
a guy who literally used to fight under the terrifying
moniker, the Black Menace. Yeah, you don't mess
with the Black Menace. Exactly. And you treat
him like a piece of furniture, right? Yeah. You
point to where he stands, he grunts on cue, and
well, that is that. Just a prop. Just a prop.
But what you don't know, what literally nobody
on that set realizes, is that between takes,
this hulking brute you're treating like a meathead
is sitting in a folding chair, quietly sketching
out complex optical blueprints for futuristic
automotive technology. It is, I mean, it's the
ultimate example of hiding in plain sight. Yeah.
We rely so heavily on visual heuristics to make
sense of the world quickly, you know? We see
a giant wall of muscle and our brains immediately
file that person under a physical threat or brute.
Oh, 100%. But in doing so, we completely miss
the multi -dimensional, often brilliant reality
of the person actually standing right in front
of us. Okay, let's unpack this because our mission
today for this deep dive is to explore the Wikipedia
article detailing the life of William Grandy
Davis. Better known to history as Wee Willie
Davis. Right. Born December 7th, 1906 in New
York City and died April 9th, 1981 in Louisville,
Kentucky. and we are going to explore how this
one single human being managed to live roughly
four wildly contradictory lives. It really is
wild. It proves that sometimes leaning completely
into society's stereotype of you is, well...
actually the most efficient way to fund your
secret genius. It's so true. Davis' life is a
master class in challenging societal assumptions,
but also, and this is key, in manipulating them.
He spent his entire career mastering how to manipulate
an audience's visual perception. And it turns
out, manipulating visual perception was exactly
what he was doing off the clock, too. Just, you
know, with lenses and light rather than masks
and muscles. I love that. I want to start with
the raw physical reality of this guy, though.
Because in 1930, when he steps into the public
eye, his physical baseline is just impossible
to ignore. Oh, absolutely. He stands six feet
five inches tall and weighs 290 pounds. Which,
by the way, is massive today. But in 1930. Oh,
right. People were smaller then. Yeah. The average
American male was about five foot seven and maybe
150 pounds. Wow. So a man approaching 300 pounds
who stands six and a half feet tall is practically
a walking natural disaster. He would have eclipsed
almost everyone he interacted with. And naturally,
the wrestling promoters look at this absolute
leviathan and decide to call him we. Willie Davis.
The irony is so thick you could cut it with a
knife. It's hilarious. It's a classic carnival
barker trope, right? You take the largest, most
intimidating person in the room and you slap
this diminutive nickname on them? Like calling
a huge bouncer tiny? Exactly. It immediately
establishes a character. It tells the audience,
we know he's a monster. You know he's a monster.
Let's just have fun with it. And he really needed
that character, because we, Willie Davis, spent
an astonishing 31 years as a professional wrestler.
31 years. Let that sink in. From 1930 all the
way to 1961. Yeah. But he didn't just wrestle
as we, Willie. I mean, the aliases this man fought
under are legendary. Oh, read the list. It's
so good. OK, we have the Black Menace. The Black
Panther, Diablo Hashtag One, Dr. X, The Hood,
The Mask Manager, The Mask Marvel, Red Devil
Hashtag One, and of course, just Willie Davis.
I mean, it reads like a catalog of Pulpfish and
villains from a 1930s radio serial. It totally
does, like a roster of comic book supervillains.
I am struggling to bridge the gap here, though.
Taking body slams, getting thrown into turnbuckles.
How does a human body sustain the physical toll
of a wrestling career for over three decades?
It's a great question. Especially starting back
in 1930. decades before modern sports medicine
or physical therapy or, you know, arthroscopic
knee surgeries even existed. Well, to understand
how he survived, we really have to look at the
mechanics of the wrestling industry during that
specific era. Prior to the 1920s and 30s, professional
wrestling was largely based on catch as catch
can grappling. OK, bring that down for me. What
does catch as catch can actually mean in practice?
It means it was legitimate. brutal submission
wrestling. Oh, so not fake. Not at all. You could
grab almost any hold you wanted. It was not choreographed.
It was this grueling test of joint breaking endurance.
And matches could literally last for hours in
a really boring, painful stalemate. Yikes. That
sounds terrible to watch. It was. And then the
Great Depression hits. People don't want to pay
their hard earned pennies to watch two sweaty
men lie on a mat in a headlock for three hours.
Right. They want to be entertained. Exactly.
They want escapism. They want heroes and villains.
They want theater. So the industry pivots. What's
fascinating here is that the industry transitions
into worked matches, sports entertainment. Ah.
Now, it was still incredibly physically demanding.
I mean, you are still taking real falls on hardwood
and thin canvas. But it became about storytelling.
And Davis had that figured out. Totally. Davis,
with his 290 pound frame and his whole parade
of masked personas, figured this out early. He
didn't need to legitimately break someone's arm.
He just needed to use his massive body to tell
a compelling story of menace and power. He was
mastering the art of physical acting. Yes. He
was learning the geometry of the ring, like how
to be Diablo, hashtag one, how to project aggression
all the way to the cheap seats, and how to make
10 ,000 people boo him simultaneously. He was
learning how to hit a mark and elicit an emotional
response using nothing but his physical presence.
And when you view his wrestling career as a three
-decade master class in physical acting, his
next career move isn't a surprise at all. No,
it makes total sense. It is the only logical
progression. Right. You pack your bags, you head
west, and you go... Hollywood naturally so starting
in 1941 we Willie Davis begins this sprawling
filmography that spans from the golden age of
the 1940s all the way into the late 1970s it's
a huge catalog but Hollywood casting directors
looked at him yeah and immediately put him in
a very very specific box listen to these roles
oh this is my favorite part he played a character
literally named mug in Shadow of the Thin Man
and Ghost Catchers. Just Mug. Yeah, he was Strong
Man in Mighty Joe Young, Bouncer in Johnny Cum
Lately, Henchman Moose Harris in Wildfire, Arab
Giant in Alibaba and the Forty Thieves. Oh my
goodness. And wait, the most incredibly specific
tight cast of all time, he was Swedish Tug of
War Man in Calendar Girl. I mean... They're purely
functional roles. Completely. There is absolutely
no ambiguity about what the Swedish tug of war
man is doing in that scene. He is there to pull
a rope and look massive. Think of Golden Age
Hollywood like a finely tuned machine, right?
OK. You have the glamorous gears, the Cary Grant's,
the Clark Gables, the delicate inner workings
of the plot. But Davis was the heavy iron casing.
Oh, I like that. You don't necessarily notice
the iron casing when you look at a fancy watch,
but the whole mechanism collapses if you don't
have a convincing henchman or bouncer for the
hero to punch his way past. That is a perfect
analogy. Without the physical threat of Davis,
the hero doesn't look heroic. He was foundational
to the visual language of those films. And, you
know, he wasn't just in B -movies. No, he was
in huge stuff. Ubiquitous. He was in Alfred Hitchcock's
To Catch a Thief, playing Big Man in Kitchen.
Literally the name of the role. Yeah. He was
in the legendary John Huston film Noir, The Asphalt
Jungle. He was in Cecil B. DeMille's biblical
epic Samson and Delilah. Need a physical obstacle
to block a door? Call Davis. But I have to push
back on this. I really do. Okay, go for it. You're
painting this as a brilliant career move. But
if you have any actual intellect standing around
for 12 hours a day on a movie set Just to grunt
look mean and get punched by the handsome lead
I mean that has to be soul -crushing sounds rough
Yeah, you're relegated to uncredited roles like
mug or big man in kitchen for 40 years Was he
really just a pragmatist or was he trapped by
his own physique? I completely understand the
skepticism, but we really have to look at the
economics of typecasting. Okay, economics. Most
actors struggle their entire lives just to get
a single line in a film, right? And they wait
tables to survive. Yeah, the starving artist
thing. Right. Davis hacked the system. By fully
embracing the stereotype, by being the very best
mug or strongman available, he guaranteed himself
steady, highly paid work in an industry famous
for chewing people up and spitting them out.
Oh, so he was in on the joke. Completely in on
the joke. He let Hollywood rent his body. He
let the wrestling promoters rent his imposing
frame. And by doing so, he achieved something
very rare. Financial stability. Okay, so you're
going, he was securing the bag. Exactly. But
what was he doing with that financial stability?
Why did he need to fund his life so aggressively?
Yeah. Well, here's where it gets really interesting.
Oh, yes. Because the source material throws us
a massive curveball that shatters this entire
meathead narrative. William Weeway, Willie Davis,
the man who spent his days as henchman Moose
Harris, was an engineer. And not just a hobbyist
tinkering with radios in his garage either. No,
an actual published, documented inventor. In
the July 1950 issue of Mechanics Illustrated,
on page 60, there is a feature on Davis. He contributed
to the invention of a device called the galometer.
We really need to spend some time on the galometer
because to understand what he accomplished in
1950 requires us to look at the actual mechanics
of what he built. It's wild. It is practically
science fiction for the era. Yeah, the galometer
was an early HUD, a heads up display. It took
the car's speed and projected it directly onto
the windshield, hovering right in the driver's
line of sight. Which is crazy for 1950. We're
talking about technology that didn't become standard
in fighter jets until years later. And it only
started showing up in high -end luxury cars,
what, a few decades ago? Yeah, maybe the late
90s or early 2000s. And think about the engineering
problem he was actually solving here. Today,
a heads -up display is just a digital screen
and a microchip. Super easy. Right, but in 1950
everything is analog. So how do you project speed
onto a piece of curved glass using 1950s technology?
Okay, break the mechanics down for me because
my brain goes straight to digital and obviously
he didn't have a little LED screen. No, not at
all. It was an optical and mechanical marvel.
They had to take the physical spinning speedometer
cable from the car's transmission. Wait, like
the actual physical cable under the hood? The
physical cable, yeah. And hook it up to a mechanical
gear system. That gear turned a transparent circular
disc that had the speed numbers printed on it.
Wow. Then they placed a small, intensely bright
incandescent light bulb behind that disc. So
as you sped up, the disc rotated and the bulb
shone through the corresponding number. So it's
literally like a mini slide projector hidden
inside the dashboard. Exactly like a slide projector.
But the genius of the Glamder wasn't just shining
a light. No. If you just shine a light onto a
windshield, the driver has to constantly change
the focal length of their eyes. Oh, because the
glass is close to your face. Yeah, right. They
look at the road, which is at infinity, and then
they have to cross their eyes to look at the
glass two feet in front of their face. It causes
terrible eye strain and completely defeats the
purpose of safety. Right. It'd be incredibly
distracting. You'd get a headache in five minutes.
Exactly. So how did Davis solve the focal length
problem? I'm genuinely asking, did this guy go
to school for optical physics? Well, there is
no record of him having formal advanced degrees
in optics. Really? Yeah. It appears to be a mix
of intense self -study, and a deep, innate understanding
of spatial reasoning. Wow. Perhaps honed by years
of understanding the physical geometry of wrestling
rings and camera lenses. But to solve the focal
length issue, the galometer used a series of
specialized lenses to collimate the light. Collimated
light, what does that mean? It basically means
making the light rays parallel. Okay. They took
the image of the number, passed it through these
lenses, and bounced it off a hidden mirror up
onto a semi -transparent metallic patch, to the
inside of the windshield. That is so complex.
It is. And because the light was collimated,
when the driver looked at the glowing number,
their eyes focused as if the number was floating
20 feet out in front of the car. Just hovering
right over the road. Exactly. Hovering over the
road. No eye strain, no refocusing. It was a
brilliantly elegant analog solution to a super
complex ergonomic problem. That is staggering.
He is building collimated optical projectors
in his spare time. Yeah. And if that isn't crazy
enough, wait until you hear who the primary inventor
and his partner on the galometer was. Oh, this
is the best part. A guy named Egiselaki Mahalakis.
Also known by his professional wrestling aliases.
Yes. He fought under the ring names Prince Ilaki
Imnale Hassan and the Mad Greek. It's unbelievable.
Two massive, imposing professional wrestlers,
The Mad Greek and Wee Willie Davis. It creates
this unbelievable cognitive dissonance. Really
does. Imagine walking into a wrestling locker
room in 1949. You've got these two 290 pound
giants covered in sweat, nursing bruised ribs
after throwing each other through tables in front
of a screaming, bloodthirsty crowd. Yeah, spitting
blood into a bucket. Exactly. And while they
ice their knees, they're casually sketching out
optical projection schematics and discussing
the refractive index of glass for automotive
windshields. This raises an important question,
though, about the boxes we put people in. What
do you mean? Well, we tend to firmly believe
you are either physical or you are intellectual.
You know, you are the brawn or you are the brains.
Yeah, the classic jock versus nerd trope. Right.
People looked at the mad Greek and Wee Willie
in the ring roaring like animals and they saw
mindless brutes. The audience bought the performance
completely. They were blinding people with their
size. The audience couldn't see past the muscle
to the minds underneath. Precisely. And because
they bought the performance, society completely
missed the reality that these same men were pioneering
futuristic automotive safety technology. It's
a shame, honestly. It is. And it makes you wonder
how often that happened to Davis in Hollywood,
too. I mean, do you think the legendary director,
John Huston, while filming the Asphalt Jungle,
had any idea that the guy he just hired to play
a nameless thug could probably explain the optics,
the focal lengths, and the light refraction of
the very camera lenses Huston was using to film
him? Almost certainly not. Huston just saw a
mug. Exactly. He saw a tool to be used for a
shot. Davis lived in a world where his physical
shell completely overshattered his intellectual
reality. But rather than fight it, he monetized
the shell to feed the intellect. So smart. So
after a lifetime of wrestling under masks, says
Diablo Hashtag One, sharing the silver screen
with Hollywood royalty and, oh yeah, inventing
analog heads -up displays, how does a man with
this much variance in his life wind down? Well,
the final chapters of his life offer a stark,
very grounded contrast to the roaring arenas
and the meticulously lit Hollywood sets. Yeah,
according to the sources, Davis eventually left
California and moved to Louisville, Kentucky.
And from 1972 to 1975, when he would have been
in his late 60s, he took a very specific job.
He worked as the gym guard at the Jefferson County
jail in Louisville. A quiet, intensely practical
job. Very. Far removed from the glamour, the
flash bulbs, and the theatricality of his earlier
decades. He did return to the screen for one
final film role in 1978, a movie called American
Hot Wax, where he played a character listed simply
as Freed's friend. Back to the functional titles.
Yep. And then he passed away in Louisville on
April 9, 1981, at the age of 74. Wow. So what
does this all mean? I look at this trajectory
and I honestly struggle to reconcile it. You
go from the roar of 10 ,000 wrestling fans in
Madison Square Garden, to the high stakes sets
of Alfred Hitchcock, to a workbench figuring
out optical projections, down to the quiet echo
of handing out basketballs to inmates in a county
jail gym. It's a journey. It is a staggering
series of contrasts. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, it beautifully illustrates that
a human life is rarely a straight line. Definitely
not hit. And it is never defined by a single
title. Davis's life was a sprawling, multi -faceted
portfolio of experiences. The very same man was
a working actor, an innovative engineer, a jail
guard, and a masked villain. It sounds like four
different Wikipedia pages. It really does. And
maybe the jail guard job was just a desire for
quiet after a lifetime of noise. We don't know.
Right. But his story forces us to confront our
own biases, reminds us to look at the seemingly
ordinary or seemingly stereotyped people around
us with a profound newfound curiosity. That is
the ultimate takeaway here for you listening
right now. Davis's life proves that sometimes
leaning completely into society's stereotype
of you is just a strategy. A very lucrative strategy.
Exactly. He let the world rent his body so his
mind could be free to invent the future. Never
assume you know someone's full story just because
of the role they currently play in your life.
Yeah. That person scanning your groceries, the
woman driving your bus, the massive intimidating
guy at the gym. They might just have a past or
an inner life that would completely blow your
mind. It leaves us with a lingering provocative
thought. Well, if two massive professional wrestlers
in the 1950s were secretly spending their free
time developing collimated heads -up displays
for automobiles, What hidden geniuses, inventors,
and world -changing ideas are currently sitting
quietly in the locker rooms, gymnasiums, and
background movie sets of today. Oh, that's a
great point. Who is being completely ignored
right now simply because they don't look the
part of a tech visionary. Wow. The next time
you see a mug on screen or someone playing the
Swedish tug -of -war man, just remember, you
might be looking at the next great inventor of
our time. You just can't see past the role.