EDITOR’S NOTE: Kansas City Bomber was on the CBS Late Movie on September 11, 1975; December 6, 1976 and February 10, 1978.

Barry Sandler wrote Making Love, the first mainstream American film to deal with homosexuality and Crimes of Passion. His film script — written as his Master’s Degree thesis at UCLA — was for this movie. He always had Raquel Welch in the lead and said, “”Raquel was a huge star at the time — kind of like the pop culture goddess. I just thought it would be great to see her as a roller derby queen; it seemed like a perfect meshing of pop culture with that role.”

Sandler personally delivered the script to her house and her husband Patrick Curtis bought the script for their production company, Curtwel Productions.

The original idea changed somewhat, as Sandler told Stone Cold Jeff, “It was a dark, gritty, character piece, more in the vein of Requiem for a Heavyweight. It’s about this young woman from Kansas City who goes out to Hollywood dreaming of fame and fortune, making it in the movies, and she’s really not good enough to do so, but she’s desperate to make her name and to get attention. She struggles and struggles, and never makes it, and then one day, she meets this kind of beat up, bruised up, burnt-out ex roller derby queen who kind of takes her under her wing and coaches her, and tries to get her involved in the roller derby. It sort of shows her becoming a roller derby star, and the irony is that she makes it in the roller derby, but as a black-trophy … as a bad girl who gets hissed at, beat up, and spit on every week. The irony is that she is able to find the stardom she desperately yearned for, but not as a movie star–as a star on the roller derby track getting booed at and spit at every week. And so it’s kind of dark, and much grittier and different, kind of almost along the lines of Midnight Cowboy.”

It was originally to be made at Warner Brothers and he believed that they would have stayed true to what he wrote: “Warner Brothers was a much more adventurous studio at the time. They were making The Devils and A Clockwork Orange, Performance. They stuck with those kinds of movies. MGM wanted to sell Raquel Welch in a tight roller derby jersey, running around the track. Listen, they weren’t stupid, they were smart to do that. It certainly made them a lot of money, and it would have been a much riskier project to go the other way. They weren’t sure whether Raquel could pull it off. I think she could have, but they wanted to play it much safer and go with a much more straight-on roller derby story.”

Roller derby used to be a totally different sport than it is today. Imagine if pro wrestling won over women and they decided to do it for real. That’s exactly what happened with roller derby.

The sport has its origins in the banked-track roller-skating marathons of the 1930s. It became a competitive sport thanks to Leo Seltzer and Damon Runyon. Yes. The short story writer.

In 1940, more than 5 million spectators watched in about 50 American cities. Eight years later, Roller Derby debuted on New York television and by the 1960s, it aired on several national networks. Of the competitors to Seltzer — who owned the name roller derby — Roller Games was started by Herb Roberts and bought by Bill Griffiths Sr. and Jerry Hill.

By the mid 1960s, Roller Games had teams in Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Florida and Hawaii, with leagues in Canada, Mexico, Australia and Japan. The biggest team — and where the TV was taped — was in Los Angeles with the L.A. Thunderbirds. It was such a big deal that in 1972, an interleague match between the Thunderbirds of Roller Games and the Midwest Pioneers set a roller derby attendance record of 50,118 at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.

Yet by 1975, Roller Games disbanded and many of the skaters started local circuits, kind of like how pro wrestling has survived the ups and downs of popularity. In the late 80’s, RollerJam and RollerGames both aired on television, but the revival didn’t take except with people that remembered watching the original games on UHF TV.

Welch understood what the sport was all about, telling the New York Times, “The game is almost show business, it’s a carnival atmosphere, but I can understand its popularity. Most of the spectators are basic people and there’s something cathartic about watching people get dumped. The yelling creates a certain kind of intensity. The type of violence draws you in, makes you involved. The skaters are tough but I think all women are tough. The skaters aren’t any tougher than most of the women in the world, underneath. Skating is a batchy, sweaty, funky life. I don’t want to do another film about it. I’ve done my number. But I enjoyed it.”

Welch played K.C. Carr, who has just left her team in Kansas City to start life all over again in Portland to skate for the Loggers. It’s all because their owner, Burt Henry (Kevin McCarthy), wants her. She dates him without knowing how he manipulates the team, like sending her best friend and roommate Lovey (Mary Kay Pass, Nurse Sherri) to another team and gets the crowd to drive “Horrible” Hank Hopkins (Norman Alden) crazy after he realizes that the older player has a crush on K.C. He has a plan to get out of Portland and go to Chicago, bringing her along. He sets up a match between her and Jackie Burdette (Helena Kallianiotes), which will lead to her leaving, just as she lost a match at the start of the movie with “Big Bertha” Bogliani (Philadelphia Warriors skater Patti “Moo Moo” Cavin) but by this point, she knows he’s a liar and instead of throwing the fight, she wins. The actual fight got out of hand between Welch and Kallianiotes, with the sex symbol getting punched in the face. She also suffered bruised knees, a spasm in her trapezius, hematomas on her head, several headaches and a broken wrist that delayed filming for two months.

The most harrowing scenes are when K.C. stops in Fresno to visit her two children who live with her bitter mother (Martine Bartlett). Her son Walt (Stephen Manley) refuses to speak with her, as he worries about her getting hurt. Her daughter Rita is a young Jodie Foster. And when Hank confides that he hates riling up the crowd and confesses how beat up he is, it made me think of the many aging heels I’ve met through wrestling.

The battles between K.C. and Jackie make up most of the film, including one battle where they tumble down a hill and are nearly hit by a train before being saved by team coach Vivien (Jeanne Cooper, Katherine Chancellor from The Young and the Restless). Kallianiotes earned her Golden Globe nomination for this movie.

Real roller derby venues in Kansas City, Fresno, and Portland were also used for key scenes and stars Judy Arnold (the captain of the Philadelphia Warriors and the skating double for Welch), Ralph Valladares (the holder of every important scoring, speed and endurance record in the history; “The Living Legend” was a member of the T-Birds as a player, coach and manager for 38 years), Danny “Carrot Top” Reilly, T-Bird Ronnie “Psycho” Rains, T-Bird and later New York Bomber Captain Judy Sowinski, one of the best jammers in the game “King” Richard Brown, “The Body Beautiful” Tonette Kadrmas, announcer Dick Lane and John Hall, a former skater who became the in-field manager for the Detroit Devils.

Director Jerrold Freedman mainly worked in television, directing TV movies like A Cold Night’s Death, Unholy Matrimony, The Boy Who Drank Too Much, The Comeback and The O.J. Simpson Story (as Alan Smithee). He also helmed episodes of The X-Files and Night Gallery. Oh yeah — he also wrote and directed the Charles Bronson movie Borderline. The script was written by Thomas Rickman (Coal Miner’s Daughter) and Calvin Clements Sr. (who wrote 66 episodes of Gunsmoke) from Sandler’s story.

Perhaps most odd, Phil Ochs was originally approached to write a theme song for this movie. His song was rejected but A&M Records released it. He hoped to publicly debut the song at the Olympic Auditorium during a Roller Games television taping at Los Angeles’ Olympic Auditorium. Thunderbirds owner Bill Griffiths Sr. said no thanks.

Welch claimed that this was the first of her movies that she liked. She isn’t always the heroine in this and despite her looks, she comes off as tough. I wish she’d made more films like this.

Roger Corman found out this was getting made and created his own roller derby film, Unholy Rollers. It’s very similar to this movie but has the benefit of Claudia Jennings as its star. She’s even wilder than Welch and ends the film attacking the entire audience and flipping off the cops. It’s great.