War Criminal: Georgia Frontiere

How I've gotten this far into the War Criminal series without mentioning Georgia Frontiere is beyond me. Well, baseball has officially ended with the quiet thud of a Cardinals World Series Victory (btw, David Eckstein as World Series MVP is gayer than Rip Taylor) and the NFL is in full swing, so here it is. Unlike most of my War Criminals, this woman may actually belong behind bars. A Raiders site describes her as "Marge Schott without the winning personality or smoker’s cough" and thats pretty accurate. By the age of 30, Georgia had burned through five husbands and moved on to sucking money from Colts owner Caroll Rosenbloom (husband #6) in 1966. Rosenbloom would trade teams with Rams owner Bob Irsay, taking over the Rams in 1971.

Rosenbloom, an accomplished swimmer, drowned under mysterious circumstances in 1979 leaving the team to Georgia. Rumors persist to this day that the former showgirl had her husband bumped off. In the premier episode of the PBS series Frontline, several mobsters claim his legs were held to cause his drowning. Before he died, Rosenbloom had made it clear that his son and the Rams GM would take over the team in the event of his death. That of course didn't happen. Georgia inherited the team as a tax dodge and promptly fired her son in law. A couple notes on the funeral...While Rosenbloom had asked for a simple ceremony with friends and family, Georgia kept the 600 guests she had invited waiting an hour before entering with musical accompaniment and Jonathan Winters served as master of cermonies (Winters and Don Rickles would do a ten minute comedy bit later in the service). Three months after the funeral, Georgia shacked up with musician Dominic Frontiere who would later become husband #7.

Murderer? Perhaps. Thief? Definitely. When Rosenbloom and Irsay swapped teams, Georgia conspired to keep one of the Colts' Super Bowl trophies. The NFL had to replace the trophy.

By 1994, Georgia and her attorney/Rams chairman John Shaw had sufficiently run the team into the ground to the point where the fans in LA quit bothering to show up. They bilked her hometown of St. Louis out of a luxurious taxpayer-funded stadium and moved the team.

Back in the day, I was a big time LA Rams fan. Unlike LA Raiders fans, who may have enough collective intelligence to tie their shoes, I, like most Rams fans moved on. We weren't going to reward this gold digging harpy for destroying a great franchise and then skipping town. Southern California Raiders fans are keeping Al Davis in rhinestone studded glasses and tracksuits to this day.

I'd like to close with this quote from columnist Pete Goering after the St. Louis Rams won the Super Bowl in 2000:

Was XXXIV the number of the Super Bowl or the number of Georgia Frontiere husbands?