The Oakland Tribune 8-26-98 By Paul Sterman Staff Writer Dennis Rodman has nothing on Ann "Banana Nose" Calvello. Mr. Bad Boy of Basketball, meet the Queen of Meaon on the Roller Derby Scene. The legendary skater, whose career has spanned 50 years, was coloring her hair in greens and purples, lustily antagonizing audiences, fighting with referees and even sporting tattoos all over her body long before Rodman garnered fame with such attention-grabbing antics. And Calvello is still making noise. At 69, she continues to compete in occasional roller derby matches, mixing it up with players half her age. Calvello will skate in a benefit scheduled for Saturday at the San Jose Civic Auditorium, which will pit the California Bombers against the New York Demons. (Fittingly, bad-girl Calvello will be a Demon.) These aren’t token appearances - a brief skate done for old times’ sake. Calvello is fit as a fiddle, and she hurls herself around the track, playing the villain, scowling at the crowd and throwing elbows at her opponents with gusto. And the hair? Calvello’s still having fun with that as well: She promises to show up Saturday with her pate painted in shades of pink, blue and green. "I’m not your average, 69-year-old senior," says Calvello. Uh, no. On a revent afternoon, she sat down to discuss her skating exploits, gleefully poring through thick scrapbooks and piles of photographs in her memento-filled San Bruno apartment. Sporting form-fitting blue jeans and cropped, spiky white hair, hoop earrings and chalk pink lipstick, the deeply tanned Calvello is a lively presence, spicing her conversation with blunt comments and frequent laughter. Roller derby, started in 1935 as the whimsical brainchild of Leo and Oscar Seltzer, basically petered out in the early ‘70s. It was the "Wrestlemania" of its day. Like professional wrestling, it was much more theater than sport. It featured a league of coed teams – the men and women competed separately in a match – who sped on roller skates around a circular track while trying to outrace each other and doing plenty of fighting along the way. Helmeted heads knocked into each other, bodies flipped onto the rink, faces smashed into the railing. Audiences loved the kitsch and the spectacle. Roller derby was a popular entertainment draw throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, airing weekly on television. Along with archival Joanie Weston – "The Blonde Bombshell" – Calvello was the premiere star of the sport. Recruited into the International Roller Speedway at 18, she became one of the original members of the Bay Bombers, the San Francisco team that played at the Cow Palace, in 1954. Calvello, who grew up in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, was very fast and very nasty on the skating rink. After she left the Bombers in 1959, she skated on a variety of teams, usually casting herself as the main enemy of the home squad. She relished the role. "I like to be booed," she says. The hammy skater became well-known for her audacious behavior and fiery outbursts: She’d throw chairs, scream at crowds, stomp on skaters and fight with abandon. One Bay Area paper dubbed her "The Meanest Mama on Skates." Tht roller derby penalty box became her home away from home. "They said I got the most penalties in the whole history of roller derby," says Calvello. She started playing Picasso with her hair in the mid-1950s. Believing there were "too many blondes" on the roller derby circuit – including herself – this quintessential nonconformist decided to do something about it. One St. Patrick’s Day she colored her hair green. The crowd went crazy, and a multihued head soon became her visual trademark. She also would paint her nails in glitter-blue and wear a skate of different colors on each foot. Jim Fitzpatrick, a South San Francisco firefighter, vividly recalls watching Calvello Pperform at San Fracnisco’s Kezar Stadium when he was a kit. He was a big Weston fan so he rooted hard against Calvello. His impression of the skater? "Mean. Mean and dirty." When he grew up, of course, Fitzpatrick saw that the belligerence was all an act, and he became friends with Calvello as he got involved with roller derby himself. Fitzpatrick, 39, joined the Bay Bombers when the team briefly re-formed in the late ‘70s. Over the last 25 years, roller derby matches have basically been presented as fund-raisers, held on an intermittent basis. Calvello has continued to participate through the years, competing in about 10 matches last year. Calvello, who had a brain tumor successfully removed last December, maintains there was a strong element of sport in roller derby. There was real athleticism involved in the contests as well as some genuine, hard fought competition – an aspect that she loved. She certainly has the battle scars to back her up: "Banana Nose" has had her schnozz broken 12 times, she’s cracked most of her ribs, broken an eardrum and fractured both elbows. Nowadays, the skater stays busy using her well-muscled arms to bag groceries a couple of days a week at the Safeway in Millbrae. She said old roller derby fans constantly recognize her in the store. "The first thing they say is, ‘Where’s your green hair?’ "Like I could wear green hair working at Safeway." Calvello’s colorful career may soon be viewed on the silver screen. Bay Area filmmakers Sharon Rutter, Liz Pike and Christine Murray began shooting a documentary about the skater in June and are trying to raise money to complete the film. They hope to have it finished by September 1999. The women said they were drawn to Calvello as a film subject because she’s such a character and an individualist – one who is an inspiration for the way she’s continued to break boundaries. They also say it’s fascinating to explore the raucous, raunchy world of roller derby and Calvello’s dynamic place in it. "In all the old footage we’ve watched of her, like from the ‘50s, she’s always the center of the action," says Rutter, a Burlingame resident. "She’s mowing people down, she’s arguing with the refs." Getting to spend time with Calvello, the filmmakers said they’ve found her to be an extremely warm and nurturing person. But when she’s on the skating track, notes Rutter, "She’ll scare the living hell out of you."