UC Santa Barbara Professor David Walker Presents a Sneak Peak of his Mormon Wrestling Documentary

On Wednesday, March 26th, UVA Mormon Studies hosted the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Chair in Religion and Society David Walker to screen and discuss a rough cut of his documentary Mormon Wrestling: A Genealogy. The film follows the lives of two twentieth century wrestlers: Jonathan Delaun Heaton, “The Mormon Missionary,” and his son, Don Leo Heaton, “The Mormon Giant.”

Interspersing documentary clips and audio throughout his presentation, Walker contrasted the father-and-son wrestlers, noting that, while Jonathan played heavily into his Mormon gimmick—dressing up like a 19th century missionary and posing at matches with multiple women to appear as a polygamist—his son, Don Leo, was more hesitant to accept the Mormon label. This coincided with Mormonism’s mid-twentieth century shift, under Prophet and President David O. McKay, into a more “normalized, masculine, and American” cultural identity. Walker noted this change with the loss of long hair and beards for military crew-cut looks, the change to more modern attire for missionaries, and the prominence of celebrities like the Osmonds. In some ways, he argued, Don Leo exemplified these changes in his more clean-shaven, masculine appearance and his refusal to engage in stereotypical Mormon gimmicks.

Some members of the Church, however, took issue with “The Mormon Giant’s” wrestling. They believed he portrayed Mormons as violent—a far cry from their new identity as family-friendly. Don Leo even received a cease-and-desist letter from the Church Information Service in his use of the name, “The Mormon Giant.” But others, including David O. McKay, encouraged him to continue wrestling with his Mormon connection. As Walker explained, Don Leo’s ringside dramas both brought Mormonism into mainstream American culture and also provided ways for Mormons to deal with real socio-political issues such as public ostracization. Wrestling provided the public with a narrative venue in which they could engage their real social problems. For Mormons, that meant watching “The Mormon Giant,” take on anti-Mormons like “Kowalski the Krusher,” and physically attack their socio-cultural rejection.

Ultimately, Walker saw in Don Leo Heaton, “The Mormon Giant,” yet another example of the fine line many Mormons walk between their cultural status as “normal, ideal” Americans, and their “peculiar” religious identity that, for over a century, has led them to be othered by mainstream American media and pop-culture. Wrestling provided a stage for expressing the tensions inherent in a religion that desired assimilation but also valued its uniqueness.

To see the full gallery and learn more about the event, visit the event page.