In the age of 24-hour coverage and social media saturation, the sports landscape is dominated by players, coaches, and owners who are perceived as bold, brash, bumbling, captivating, charming, controversial, combative, flamboyant, fiery, quiet, mysterious, miserable, successful, or simply interesting enough to capture the ever-shrinking attention span of fervent and often fickle fans.
Curly Lambeau would have thrived.
The co-founder and legendary first star of the Packers—as a player and coach—loved the limelight, and his opportunities to enjoy it weren’t limited by the size of Green Bay’s market.
At the peak of his powers, Earl Louis “Curly” Lambeau was a national celebrity. Pro football wasn’t the cultural behemoth then that it is today, but Lambeau still hobnobbed with Hollywood stars, heavyweight champions, and other rich, famous trendsetters of the time. With his love of flashy clothes, expensive cars, and beautiful women, one wonders if the Kardashians could have kept up with Curly.
As both a coach and public figure, he was loved, hated, respected, revered, and reviled—often at the same time and by the same people. After a three-decade run at the top, his exit from Green Bay—filled with backroom intrigue—was a scandalous predecessor to Brett Favre’s controversial departure more than a half-century later.
Packers team historian Cliff Christl, a Green Bay native, refers to Lambeau as “fascinating and enigmatic.” Ward Cuff, a former Marquette University standout who played in New York and Chicago before joining the Packers to play for Lambeau in 1947, described Lambeau to Christl as “kind of crude and a schemer and a womanizer…a real cheat.”
Bud Lea, another Green Bay native who spent decades as a columnist and sports editor for the Milwaukee Sentinel, first glimpsed the legendary Lambeau when his father took him to a Packers game at City Stadium, the venerable field located next to Green Bay East High School.
Although the guys in uniform were the heroes of the day—Don Hutson, Clarke Hinkle, Arnie Herber, Johnny “Blood” McNally, and Tony Canadeo—the young Lea couldn’t take his eyes off the larger-than-life figure on the sideline. “He was a fancy dresser. He marched up and down the sidelines with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was brash, assertive, colorful—the closest thing to royalty in Green Bay,” Lea said of Lambeau.
Lee Remmel, who spent time as a reporter, public relations director, and team historian, used to say: “Jean Nicolet may have discovered Green Bay, but Lambeau put it on the map.”
It’s not hyperbole to suggest that the Packers—and perhaps the National Football League itself—wouldn’t exist without Lambeau. A century after he co-founded the team with George Whitney Calhoun, Lambeau’s name graces the most famous stadium in the sport, and a 14-foot, 2,000-pound statue of him holding a football in one hand and pointing skyward with the other greets visitors outside.
Despite his prodigious shadow, Lambeau remains a mysterious and almost mythical figure to many Packers fans. Unlike Vince Lombardi, whose statue towers over the same plaza a short pass away from Lambeau’s and whose legacy still looms large over the city and the league, Lambeau isn’t the subject of iconic photos, best-selling books, or NFL Films specials that can be viewed on YouTube.
Many fans know that he helped found the Packers and then played, coached, and guided the franchise. But they don’t know his story, which would make for a great movie. Lambeau’s parents—father Marcel, a construction worker whose parents had come from Belgium, and Mary Sara Latour, whose folks hailed from France—welcomed Earl, the first of their four children, on April 9, 1898. The Lambeau home, a brick house located at 615 North Irwin Avenue, was located just a few blocks from East High, where Lambeau would go on to be a standout athlete. (The Lambeau family lived in several locations over the years.)
A strapping athlete who stood 5’10” and weighed about 180 pounds, Lambeau got the nickname “Curly” as a youngster because of his dark, wavy hair. In addition to establishing himself as a standout in the shotput, discus, and broad jump on the track team, Lambeau was a four-year starter on the East football team. He ran, passed, punted, and drop-kicked his way to stardom. In what is regarded as the highlight of his high school career. Lambeau led his team to 7–6 victory against rival Green Bay West on Thanksgiving Day 1916. The Green Bay Press-Gazette said he “dimmed the playing of the other men” and lauded his “great ground gaining, heavy booting, and hectic defense.”
After graduating on June 15, 1917, Lambeau was expected to enroll at the University of Wisconsin. Popular legend has it that he tried out for football and left school when the freshman team was disbanded, which didn’t happen. The university has no record of Lambeau enrolling as a student or playing for the football team in ’17. Lambeau did, however, appear in sandlot football games that fall in Green Bay, playing for the South Side Skidoos and the Green Bay All-Stars. After spending a year working for his father’s construction business, playing ball, and courting his first wife, Marguerite Van Kessel, Lambeau left Green Bay after the summer of 1918 and headed to a small Catholic college in South Bend, Indiana.
At the time Notre Dame was not a nationally-known football powerhouse. In fact, Notre Dame teams weren’t even known as the Fighting Irish, a nickname that was adopted in 1927. After starting as “The Catholics,” the school’s teams were known as “Rovers” and “Ramblers” because they traveled long distances to play games. Lambeau arrived and began playing for Knute Rockne.
Although rules of the day prohibited freshmen from playing during that era, the standards were relaxed during World War I. Lambeau, who played fullback in Rockne’s “Notre Dame Box” offense he later adopted for the Packers, scored the first touchdown in the season opener, a 26–6 triumph against Case at Van Horn Field in Ohio. (Case would later merge with Western Reserve.) In the next game more than a month later, Lambeau scored two touchdowns in a 67–7 blowout at Wabash in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
Notre Dame finished the war-shortened season with three victories, one loss (at what is now Michigan State), and two ties. Lambeau enjoyed playing for Rockne and wearing a letterman’s sweater on campus, but reports indicate that he missed Marguerite and the familiarity of his hometown. At the end of the semester, Lambeau came home for Christmas break and reportedly contracted a case of tonsillitis that required surgery. When an infection delayed the procedure by six weeks, Lambeau, who had always enjoyed athletics more than academics, decided that he was too far behind in his studies to return to South Bend.
That’s the popular version anyway. Other theories for Lambeau’s departure from campus included his desire to marry Marguerite—marriage was frowned upon for Notre Dame student-athletes at the time—his lack of academic success in South Bend, and the notion that he would lose scholarship money to players returning to campus from military service.
Back in Green Bay, Lambeau landed a job as a shipping clerk at Frank Peck’s meat packing company, Indian Packing, at a salary of $250 a month. As a young, single man still known in town for his athletic exploits, life seemed great. The idea of returning to college held no appeal, and he quenched his thirst for competition by playing sandlot sports around town.
When the Packers formed after a pair of meetings in mid-August of 1919 at the Green Bay Press-Gazette offices, Lambeau was named the inaugural captain. Two weeks later the team started practicing three nights a week at a field next to the packing plant. Lambeau had convinced his employer to provide uniforms for the team, which played games at Hagemeister Park. The first-season opponents included teams from New London, Oshkosh, Sheboygan, Racine, the Milwaukee Athletic Club, and Michigan foes from Menominee, Ishpeming, and Stambaugh. The Indian (short for Indian Packing Company) “Packers” were 10–1. (A controversial loss to Beloit was marred by what Lambeau called unfair officiating.)
Lambeau loved being back in the game. In addition to playing for the Packers, he coached at East High through 1921. When the Indian Packing Company fell into financial trouble in 1921, the Acme Packing Company bought it, and new owners John and Emmett Clair entered the team into the new American Professional Football Association. On August 27, 1921, the Packers were granted a franchise APFA, which was based in Canton, Ohio, and led by legendary Jim Thorpe. The Packers were 7–2–2 in their inaugural season, but the team was hardly a success as a business. The Clairs gave up their membership in the league, which had changed its name to the National Football League at the urging of George Halas, who had moved his team, the Decatur Staleys, to Chicago and dubbed them the Bears.
Searching for uniformity in roster size and player acquisition, the league cracked down on teams using college players, which was a problem at the time. Lambeau had to apologize for using two college players and bought his way back into membership by paying $250, including $50 of his own money. Lambeau’s friend, Don Murphy, the brother of an Acme Packing Company investor, sponsored him. Murphy sold his car and gave Lambeau money for the franchise fee in exchange for being allowed to play in the opening game of the 1922 season. Lambeau kept his end of the bargain. He also kept control of the team, which was his personal property until a corporation was formed in 1923.
In addition to innovating on the field, where his teams were utilizing the forward pass with regularity and were believed to be pioneers in film study, Lambeau was creative on the business side. In the era before the NFL draft was established in 1936, he used his charm to recruit college players and instituted daily practice sessions and helped find them side jobs, which was unique at the time. “It’s pretty amazing that he was able to convince players from all over the country to come to Green Bay,” Christl said. “It was often said that he could ‘charm the birds out of the trees,’ and I think that was key. You look at a guy like Don Hutson, who was a star at Alabama. Lambeau was able to convince him to come play in Green Bay. His personality was a key to his success.”
Contrary to popular belief, the Packers were not an instant success as a financial entity. Given the small attendance and cost of player salaries, the margins were slim. Andrew B. Turnbull, the business manager of the Press-Gazette, stepped in to rally support from the business community in the form of a stock sale.
After a few years, the franchise began to solidify. The Packers constructed wooden bleachers at Hagemeister Park and opened a ticket office near the Press-Gazette offices. Lambeau handled contract negotiations, which—coupled with his prickly on-field antics—drew the ire of players, many of whom felt they were low-balled. According to legend Lambeau created three contracts for each player. He sent the official contract to the league. One copy was for the team records. A third version was kept in a locked desk drawer, and they were works of fiction. When a player would come into his office to ask for a raise, Lambeau would embarrass him by pulling out phony contracts for stars like Hinkle and Hutson and ask if he felt he deserved more. Hutson, the top player in the game at the time, commanded a salary of $300 per game—roughly twice what other veteran players made. In order to keep the number a secret, Lambeau arranged to have two different banks each pay Hutson $150 so that other players wouldn’t find out.
Lambeau was notorious for fining players exorbitant amounts for minor infractions. Reportedly, he was so enraged after a loss to the Bears that he docked the entire team half a game check. He belittled players on the field, threatened their jobs regularly, and (when he was between marriages) competed with them for women.
Lambeau never coached a televised game, but the cameras would have loved him. He stamped around the sideline, kicking at the air when things didn’t go right, and grabbing players by the jerseys and screaming encouragement before sending them on to the field. The Packers won three consecutive championships in 1929, 1930, and 1931, and Lambeau was a quote machine for sportswriters at the time, including Green Bay native and East High School alum Red Smith, who worked at a variety of papers before becoming a nationally syndicated columnist at the New York Herald-Tribune in the 1940s. When the Packers needed publicity in the early days, he would make outlandish statements to draw attention to himself and the team. He quickly realized that the rivalry with Chicago was good for business, and he and Halas attacked their games against each other with the fervor of modern pro wrestlers. The rivalry between the two teams was crucial for the success of the franchises and the league as a whole.
For all their success on the field, the Packers were financially insecure for virtually all of Lambeau’s tenure. A real estate deal, coupled with a string of lackluster seasons, hastened his exit from Green Bay. In 1946 at Lambeau’s urging, the Packers purchased Rockwood Lodge, a 50-acre waterfront resort that was located 18 miles northwest of Green Bay. Lambeau loved the two-story property, which was built by Norbertine fathers and located on a limestone bluff 100 feet above the water and surrounded by acres of pristine woods. It had 40 rooms and a handful of cottages for players with families. The Packers used Rockwood for their training site from 1946 to 1949, but there were problems. For starters fans in Green Bay weren’t happy because they had become accustomed to seeing players around town. A bigger problem was that the practice field in front of the lodge consisted of a thin layer of soil on top of a bed or rock that caused players shin splints and other leg injuries.
Lambeau’s idea of a training facility was sound, though likely 20 years ahead of its time, but several members of the Packers board of directors were less than thrilled to spend $32,500 to purchase the lodge and grumbled when Lambeau’s third wife, Grace, ran up bills to decorate the property. On January 24, 1950, during a rare winter thunderstorm, the lodge caught fire and burned. The fire was discovered in mid-afternoon by caretaker Melvin Flagstad; his wife, Helen; their two children and two neighbor kids. Flagstad blamed faulty wiring for the fire, but there were unfounded rumors for years that it had been a case of arson. The building was a total loss, and the Packers collected a much-needed $75,000 insurance settlement.
The fire came after the two worst seasons—a 3–9 finish in 1948 and a 2–10 mark in 1949—in Packers history. Lambeau, who had alienated many of his former allies in the organization, was perceived as being out of touch with strategic changes in the game. His “Notre Dame Box” offense seemed outdated and unproductive. Members of the board of directors hated that he was spending chunks of time in California during the offseason rather than minding the store. Toward the end of the 1940s, Lambeau had run team co-founder Calhoun out of his publicist position and replaced former team president and “Hungry Five” member Dr. W.W. Kelly as team physician. He also raised eyebrows by turning over day-to-day operation of the team to assistant coaches Tom Stidham, Charlie Brock, and Bob Snyder so that he could focus on a rebuilding program.
At a contentious meeting on November 30, 1949, at the Brown County Courthouse, Calhoun, Kelly, and attorney Gerald Clifford tried to convince board members that Lambeau had to go. Lambeau survived that storm, and the board decided to give him a two-year contract extension, which he never signed. Eight days after the Rockwood fire, he accepted a two-year contract to become coach and vice president of the Chicago Cardinals.
In his resignation letter to Emil R. Fischer, president of the Packer corporation, Lambeau detailed the organizational strife. “It is apparent that there is a growing reluctance to alter the policies under which the corporation has operated the last several years,” Lambeau wrote Fischer. “Unfortunately, I have not and cannot now subscribe to those policies. This difference of opinion, honest though it be, has brought about a dangerous disunity of purpose within the corporation, one which, in my opinion, threatens the existence of the club. No organization can survive divided against itself. Therefore, I am resigning as vice president of the corporation and relinquishing the positions of head coach and general manager effective as of this date. I hope this action will restore the harmony so necessary if the Packers are to keep their place in major league football. I take it with the deepest regret and only after long and careful deliberation. One does not easily break away from something to which he has devoted 31 years. But I feel my decision is in the best interest of the Packers and the fans of Wisconsin, to whom the Packers really belong.”
Lambeau coached four years after leaving Green Bay—two with the Cardinals and two with the Washington Redskins. On June 1, 1965, he died of a massive heart attack in Sturgeon Bay. He had come to pick up his fiancée, former Lumberjack Band drum majorette “Golden Girl” Mary Jane Van Duyse, at her family home at 522 Michigan Street. Lambeau, who was 67, had offered to cut the lawn for Van Duyse’s father, Francis, when he collapsed. Two months later, City Stadium was renamed Lambeau Field.
THE FIRST COACH OF THE GREEN BAY PACKERS?
The next time you are conversing at a tailgate party or tap room where Packers matters are discussed, ask your fellow green and gold brethren the following question: who was the first coach of the Green Bay Packers?
The answer invariably will be Earl Louis “Curly” Lambeau.
That’s what Wikipedia says. That’s what Lambeau’s statue at the Pro Football Hall of Fame says. That’s what the Packers’ media guide says. It’s common knowledge, right?
Wrong.
Packers team historian Cliff Christl, who relishes time studying record books, media guides, and century old newspaper articles like many people enjoy an afternoon at the lake, unearthed records nearly 20 years ago that Lambeau, who is rightfully credited with co-founding the franchise, was not the first coach.
So who was the first coach? That depends. Which team do you consider the first to play in Green Bay? Culled from team records and Green Bay Press-Gazette archives, Christl’s research showed that Willard Ryan was the coach when the Packers were formed as a semi-pro team in 1919. In 1921, the Packers’ first season in what became the National Football League, Joe Hoeffel served as coach.
Although the Packers and the Pro Football Hall of Fame have acknowledged the inaccuracy, neither entity has shown interest in correcting the record. Lambeau is credited for coaching 29 seasons with the Packers and was awarded the 1921 club’s 3–2–1 record, numbers that rightly belonged to Hoeffel. The discrepancy likely wasn’t an attempt to “whitewash” history or add to Lambeau’s legend (though he certainly didn’t balk at the notion). Statistics and records were spotty in the early days of pro football, and the rules actually limited the role of the coach.
Although Hoeffel likely scheduled and conducted practice sessions, negotiated with some players, and made substitutions during games, the rules prevented coaches from talking to players during games. As captain of those early teams, Lambeau handled much of the “coaching” during games. Then, as now, fans were more excited to watch players than coaches. Newspaper stories in Green Bay referred to “Captain Lambeau’s Packers,” and other cities did the same for stars like Red Grange in Chicago and Jim Thorpe in Canton.
It’s unclear how the duties were split between coach and captain, but early stories from the Press-Gazette mention both Ryan and Hoeffel. Ryan, a native of Washburn, Wisconsin, was the football coach at Green Bay West, where several of the original Packers players played for him. In 1919 he coached at West and for the Packers. Lambeau was captain of the Packers and coached at his alma mater, Green Bay East. Ryan left Green Bay before the start of the 1920 season, moved to Minnesota, and later served as a school administrator near Phoenix.
Hoeffel, a Green Bay native and star at East High School, was a standout end and captain of the University of Wisconsin football team in 1912. After spending three years as an assistant coach at the University of Nebraska, he returned to Green Bay in 1916 and coached the team at East. Lambeau was his star player at the time. Hoeffel left the Packers after the 1921 season and joined his family’s business in Green Bay.