David Penzer interviewed the former Gorgeous George/Stephanie Bellars on the “Sitting Ringside” podcast. She talked about her time in the wrestling business, what she is up to these days, and she went into great detail on her relationship with Randy Savage when they were together in WCW.
Here are some highlights:
Gorgeous George explained why her legal name now is George Frankenstein:
“Over 20 years ago, I legally changed my name to George Frankenstein. My birth name is Stephanie Bellars and when I was with Randy (Savage) for those that don’t know, when I was doing wrestling, we changed my name to George. When me and him broke up, we were having issues with the name. I’ve been George, so I wasn’t going to go back to Stephanie. He didn’t want to sell me the name, so I was like, ok, I will legally change my name to George. At the time, I was getting married to my ex-husband as of now, Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein from The Misfits. So that’s my legal name, George Frankenstein.”
George tells the story of how she met Doyle:
“The last day of my wrestling was Doyle’s first day of wrestling. Randy is the one who actually brought me over to talk to him. He knew I was a misfit fan. I was a big music buff. He remembered going through my CDs and he said The Misfits are here (at the wrestling show). At the time, Randy and I were on the outs and I thought he (Randy) was trying to get brownie points. I went up to Doyle and when we made contact, it was tunnel vision. It was love at first sight.”
George talked about her background before wrestling and what she’s been doing since:
“I quit school in seventh grade. I hated school. I was an advanced kid and I had nothing in common with people in school. All my friends were at least 5 to 10 years older than me, so to me, they were stupid. I didn’t have anything in common with anybody my age…I lived in a bad area of town in Radford, IL right outside of Chicago. Our area got hit really hard in the era of the drugs and it destroyed our neighborhood. It destroyed every friend I had. I started dancing at a very young age. I was 16. I had a fake I.D. I had a kid when I was young. The first time I ever had sex I got pregnant. I was 16 and I needed to support myself and having a regular job just didn’t cut it, so I danced and that made up for the money. I moved to Florida and that’s how I met Randy, at a strip club. After that, I started wrestling. After wrestling, I got with Doyle and we ran for 13 years. Then I had a nervous breakdown and we got divorced. I moved back to Radford for a little while. I moved back to California about 15 times. I’ve been gypsying over the United States for the last 20 years. I’ve found I can cook very well so I’m getting ready to start a food truck in Alabama. I’ve been truck driving for the last three years. I’m going to be a grandma in 2 months. My son is having a baby. My daughter is 18 now and my son is going to be 29, so all of my family is going to be migrating to Alabama. I got Covid twice.”
George talked for a half hour on her relationship with Randy Savage. Here are the highlights:
“I knew about Hogan and I knew about Randy, but I never watched wrestling. The night I met him (Randy) was crazy. I had gotten into a fight with Evil Knievel. I didn’t know it was Evil Knievel. The night this happened, I had no money and it was my first day dancing at this place and it was a topless place and I had never been topless. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to. I had no money. Me and my girlfriend moved to Florida and we had only been there a few hours. We moved into a hotel. They wouldn’t hire her because she was a black girl. I told her to stay at the hotel. I’ll go work and make money and we will figure this out. I left and went to the club…I had three dollars and I couldn’t even get a drink to calm my nerves.
There was a dude sitting next to me. I didn’t even notice who he was. I was too worried about what I was going to do. There’s Randy on one side and I didn’t even look at him and then there was this old dude on my other side. Next to this old guy was the ZZ Top people and The Allman Brothers. This whole bar was full of famous people. I wasn’t even paying attention. I didn’t give a sh*t what was going on. This guy said, ‘Buy me a drink’ and he takes his elbow and hits me as hard as he can in my arm. I didn’t know he was Evil Knievel. As soon as I did this, this guy started this huge fight with me. Two bodyguards grab me, pick me up and throw me outside. I’m scruffed up and crying. This guy came out and said, ‘Hey girl. Are you alright?’ It’s him (Randy)…He said, ‘I don’t want to creep you out or anything, but I’m having a party at my house right now.’
All I can think of is me and my girlfriend haven’t eaten in three days. He said there was lots of food. I’m wondering, why are you here if you are having a party at your house? Now I’m beginning to think he’s a creeper. He said, “There were too many people there. I just wanted to leave so we came here.’ He said, ‘Here’s my address and phone number. If you feel like coming over and want to talk, I’m all yours. There’s tons of food if you’re hungry and there’s tons of drinks if you want to talk.’ I got in my Jeep and I’m thinking, he said there’s food there…I went there….He said, ‘Now you see where I live. If you ever need anything, you call me. We’re friends forever now.’ I went home and I didn’t call him again. The girl I moved down there with, I had her go home because she couldn’t find a job anywhere…I started working at a place called Diamond Dolls. I needed a roommate. There was a post-it note on the mirror in the back and it said, ‘ Roommate needed, no drinking, no drugs.’ I’m like, who’s this girl and she was standing behind me and she said I could move in now…I told her the story about Randy…She knew wrestling was coming to the Ice Palace and she said she wanted me to call Randy and get tickets otherwise she is going to have her dog eat my clothes. I called and left a message and Randy called back right away and said, ‘I’ve been wanting to see you. I don’t know why you haven’t called me in all these months. I got your tickets at Will Call.’ When I got there, I hid. I didn’t let them see me. I went with the girl and her brother.
The next day Randy called and he said, ‘Did you go wrestling last night?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Why didn’t I see you?’ I said, ‘I wanted to stay out of your way.’ He said, ‘I wanted you to see me.’ He said, ‘We are going to the gym. I’m on my way to get you.’ I said, ‘Ok’ I told my roommate that and she was getting weird. He bought me a gym pass and we went to dinner. He brought me home and she saw this and she was getting funky. The next day, he picked me up and this went on for three months. He never tried to kiss me or anything…My roommate said, ‘How was your date’ (in a snooty tone) and I said, ‘To be honest with you, it was the best date I’ve ever been on in my life. He treated me like a woman.’ I’m not used to that. I used to go out with drug dealers and people beating the crap out of me and putting me in the hospital. I went out with crappy people. For the first time in my life, I went out with a gentleman and I didn’t know what to do. After that, we became best friends. He used to come over and watch TV. I was so poor when I lived there, I didn’t even have a bed. I slept on the floor on a blanket. He used to hang out and watch TV on the floor on a blanket. When I first moved in with her, I didn’t have a cell phone. When we first moved in together, she said ‘Do you want to get a cell phone with me?’ I said, ‘Ok.’ When I started hanging out with Randy, I was never with her at all. She came up to my room and said, “The cell phone bill is due.” He (Randy) knew I never used the cell phone one time. He said, “Excuse me. She never uses that cell phone. You know what? She’s moving out. She’s moving in my house right now. Get yourself together and I will be back in one hour.’ This was news to me. I got my stuff together. He went back to his house and called a florist. He bought billions of roses and had the whole house covered in red roses. It had a card on the table. He had me close my eyes when I walked in and it said, ‘Welcome to the house of madness.’…I moved in with him and then we started dating.
The first two years, he was amazing. He was the best boyfriend I ever had. I would marry him in a heartbeat. Then you know what, he got nuts…(Going back to how she entered wrestling): He said, ‘You know the gimmick is for me to have a girl with me? They (WCW) want to play off that and I want to because I’ve done it so long with Liz, that’s what I’m used to.’ When him and Eric were talking about him breaking out from Kevin Nash, the first thing they wanted to do was put him with somebody and Torrie Wilson was new on the scene. We went out to California and I met her. I hate talking about somebody, but I’m not a fan of hers for a couple reasons. I’m not a fan of hers because when I met her, she came off like a skank and that’s who they wanted to put Randy with. We went home and I said, ‘If you honestly think you’re going to be traveling 300 days a year with her then I’m not going to be your girlfriend anymore and I don’t want to have anything to do with you.
He said, ‘Well, then I guess you’re going to have to step up your game. You’re going on TV with me.’ I said, ‘I don’t want any part of that.’ That was never in my plan of being with that dude. He said, ‘Well, they are going to put her with me. That is the plan.’…They threw me in the mix fast and that’s the only reason why I did it was because I didn’t want him traveling with her…He didn’t want me to wrestle at all for two reasons. He didn’t want me to learn because if something ever happened between me and him, I could go on my own. The other reason is he didn’t want me to be put in situations where I would have to be a wrestler. That’s why Nora and Madusa tried to train me as much as they could for the small time that we did stuff, but he would always say, ‘No.’
People would tell him ‘You don’t want her to be Sable and you be the Marc Mero.’…A lot of times people would want me at an autograph session and not Randy because they said he charges too much and they just wanted the girl. He would tell them that if it’s not both of us, they are not getting it. I was asked to do Playboy twice and he told them, ‘If I’m not on the cover too, then she’s not doing it.’ It got to the point where I thought he had my phone tapped and I had bugs in my clothes and my purse because he had a friend who owned a spy place and I thought everything we had was tapped.
The best I ever looked was the worst I’ve ever been on drugs in my life. I was hanging on a thread of death. I was on uppers and downers and steroids and drinking and drugs, I’m surprised I’m alive. Between my health and him going crazy, it was like a circus and I wanted it to stop. I was ready to die and I had a kid. My son was little at the time and I didn’t want him to be without a mom…The craziest thing is the way he died is exactly the way I said I was going to die with him. I thought we were going to smash that wall because when we would leave his parents house, the exact same scenario would always happen because he would be so furious at Lanny, he couldn’t stop. Every single time we would leave Sarasota, he would be screaming and screaming. I said, ‘You’re going to have a heart attack or a stroke and lose control of the wheel and hit that wall.’
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Sitting Ringside with David Penzer with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
