Daughters of the Sexual Revolution: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

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