‘Gladiators’ Show Offers Way to Muscle In on TV

Breaking into television wasn’t the snap that it seemed it was going to be Saturday for Sue Farwell. She tore through the chin-ups, 40-yard dash, tug-of-war and obstacle course with fierce determination in hopes of becoming a contestant on a new TV series that calls itself the ultimate game show.

Then she tore her left knee with a twisting snap as she threw herself into her last test: a one-on-one “power ball” game that turned out to be a blend of tackle football and pro wrestling.

As the 28-year-old Los Gatos woman was carried off in pain, the next person in line at the Universal Studios sound stage stepped up to take Farwell’s place and end her dream of becoming a contender on “American Gladiators.”

The 13-week-old show pits back-yard athletes against a team of muscular, costumed “gladiators” in hand-to-hand combat inside a Colosseum-like arena. Successful challengers can win as much as $35,000 in prizes.

The contests include jousts with padded sticks, called pugels, on elevated platforms, shoot-outs with weapons that fire tennis balls, a body-slamming game of human marbles and the “human cannonball”--where contestants swing themselves on ropes in hopes of knocking gladiators off pedestals.

Critics of the show have complained that “American Gladiators” has managed to turn trash TV into crash TV, in pursuit of ratings. One reviewer labeled it “a bizarre new way of packaging the industry’s oldest product . . . sex and violence.”

But, retorts Samuel Goldwyn, son of the famous movie mogul, whose Samuel Goldwyn Television has syndicated the show to 115 cities: “It’s a legitimate sporting event.”

Whichever it is, the show drew 2,500 hulks and hams to Saturday’s tryouts. Some waited in line up to two hours to submit their bodies to abuse in hopes of getting on television.

“I like the challenge of using skills I haven’t used since I was in school,” said Paul Spiegel, 25, a high school football coach from Concord, who body-blocked opponent Darryll Choyce through a fence separating the “power ball” test zone from the obstacle course track.

“Some of my friends wondered why I was doing this,” said Choyce, 27, a foundry worker from Hawthorne, “but it’s a chance to do something physical.”

The television tryouts drew an assortment of Hollywood aspirants. Most of those with stars in their eyes--the bodybuilders, for instant, who showed up in designer sweats and shorts--were quickly eliminated when they failed the chin-up test. Men had to complete 25 in a half-minute and women eight. About 80% of all the hopefuls couldn’t pull off the pull-ups, in fact.

“I thought I could make it, but I only did 17,” said Carl Chavez, a 24-year-old computer analyst from Riverside. “I’ll be able to do 25 before I come back.”

Officials of the show will hold tryouts in Chicago, Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit and St. Louis before picking 22 new contenders for next year’s episodes.

Producer Eytan Keller said the demanding nature of the tryouts helps answer whether future contestants are “good, controllable competitors, or are they nuts.”

Joanna Needham, a 31-year-old Los Angeles police officer who was a competitor on the show’s first group of episodes, said nothing was staged during the taping. It was so real, in fact, that she separated her shoulder when she was slammed by a gladiator.

Show publicist Richard Bornstein said only four minor injuries were suffered during the initial 13 shows. But as Bornstein recounted the casualty list Saturday, tryout contestant Teri Davis, 31, of Anaheim, fell to the floor during her “power ball” test as her knee gave out with a loud pop.

A few minutes later, Farwell met a similar fate in the same spot. Before twisting her knee, Farwell had been optimistic about the future of both “American Gladiators” and her role in it.

“I watch it to see how they do athletically,” she said. “The average guy probably watches it for a good laugh. It’s good entertainment to see people knocked around.”