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# Emily Beaumont
- URL: https://www.gwawrestling.com/emily-beaumont/
- Published: 2026-10-28T13:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-28T12:59:59.000Z
- Description: Emily Beaumont left Magnolia Hall for the wrestling ring before her brother James Montgomery did. She worked the Rio Grande Valley and the Gulf Coast for nineteen years with a lace parasol and a sleeper hold.
- Author: Josh Schairbaum
- Tags: Profiles, wrestlers, Rio Grande Valley, Gulf Coast, Frontier Era (1957-1968), Expansion Era (1969-1975), Golden Era (1976-1987)

*Emily Beaumont wrestled in the Great Western Wrestling Alliance, the American territory promotion chronicled across this site. She worked the* [*Rio Grande Valley and Gulf Coast territories*](https://www.gwawrestling.com/territories/) *from 1959 to 1977, and in 1976 she and "Wild Rose" Mary Sullivan became the first GWA Women's Tag Team Champions.*

## **AT A GLANCE**

- **Name:** Emily Beaumont
- **Also billed as:** Emily Belle, Belle Emily Beaumont, Southern Belle Emily Beaumont
- **Born:** 1938, Magnolia Hall, rural Louisiana
- **Billed from:** New Orleans, Louisiana
- **Height:** 5'5"
- **Weight:** 130 lbs
- **Family:** half-sister of ["The Gentleman" James Montgomery](https://www.gwawrestling.com/the-gentleman-james-montgomery/)
- **Active:** 1959 to 1977
- **Territories:** Rio Grande Valley, Gulf Coast
- **Era:** [Frontier, Expansion, Golden](https://www.gwawrestling.com/eras/)
- **Groups:** Southern Comfort; the Ball Belles, with "Wild Rose" Mary Sullivan
- **Championships:** GWA Women's Tag Team Championship (inaugural champions, 1976)

## **EARLY LIFE**

Emily Beaumont was born in 1938 and grew up at Magnolia Hall, the Montgomery family house in rural Louisiana, with her older half-brother, James Montgomery. They share a mother; her father was a Beaumont, and she carries his name. She was the more rebellious of the two.

At nineteen she left Magnolia Hall for New Orleans and learned to wrestle on the women's cards there, against her family's wishes. She went into professional wrestling first, and James followed her into the GWA.

## **CAREER**

### **Rio Grande Valley (1959 to 1965)**

Beaumont came to the Rio Grande Valley from New Orleans in the spring of 1959 and made her debut in San Antonio that April. She was billed as Emily Belle that first year and as Belle Emily Beaumont from 1960\. She brought a white lace parasol to the ring, and she was known to use it on her opponents when the referee looked away.

![Emily Beaumont swings a white lace parasol at a blonde opponent in red while the referee argues with a man at the ropes and the front row shouts, early 1960s.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e1/2a/e12a6d47-8023-4862-bf2c-4dc09b758c7c/content/images/2026/10/emily-beaumont-parasol.jpg)

The parasol, early 1960s.

She worked the Valley circuit through 1965, with dates in Columbia in 1962\. Her longest rivalry of those years was with ["Lonestar" Lucy Grant](https://www.gwawrestling.com/lonestar-lucy-grant/), and it outlasted the decade.

### **The Gulf Coast (1966 to 1975)**

When the Gulf Coast territory opened in 1966, Beaumont moved her base there and became the Southern Belle, and over the next decade she went back and forth between the Gulf Coast and the Rio Grande Valley. In November 1973 the *Grapple Gazette* put her rivalry with Lucy Grant on its cover: "Lonestar Lucy Grant has had it with Southern Belle Emily Beaumont."

On the Gulf Coast her opponent was Lisa "Action" Jackson, the half-sister of ["Harlem Hurricane" James Washington](https://www.gwawrestling.com/harlem-hurricane-james-washington/). At the [Soul Power Olympic Brawl](https://www.gwawrestling.com/soul-power-olympic-brawl-1972/) in Los Angeles in 1972, Beaumont beat Jackson by disqualification, and Jackson kept after her once the bell rang. They met on cards across the territory for years.

### **Southern Comfort and the Ball Belles (1976)**

In 1976 Beaumont stood with [Southern Comfort](https://www.gwawrestling.com/southern-comfort/), alongside her brother James, ["Bayou" Benny Lacroix](https://www.gwawrestling.com/bayou-benny-lacroix/) and their manager, "Big Easy" Eddie Fontenot. That April, a segment on *The Wrestling Wrap-Up* showed her walking into a Houston diner where Lisa Jackson sat after a show. Beaumont made a remark about Jackson's family and threw a drink, Jackson flipped the table, and Wild Rose stepped between them.

She and ["Wild Rose" Mary Sullivan](https://www.gwawrestling.com/wild-rose-mary-sullivan/) teamed that year as the Ball Belles. On 3 July 1976, at [Showdown Spectacle '76](https://www.gwawrestling.com/showdown-spectacle-76/) in the Houston Astrodome, they beat the Stunt Sisters, Reckless Rita and Dynamite Dawn, in the tournament final for the new GWA Women's Tag Team Championship. They lost the belts before the summer was out.

Beaumont wrestled her last year in 1977.

## **CHAMPIONSHIPS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS**

- GWA Women's Tag Team Championship, with "Wild Rose" Mary Sullivan as the Ball Belles: the first champions, at Showdown Spectacle '76

## **IN THE RING**

From 1961 Beaumont walked to the ring to Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces," twirling the lace parasol, and at the apron she waited until the referee held the ropes open for her. She wrestled in a powder-blue satin suit trimmed with lace, with the Montgomery family crest from Magnolia Hall on the front, sheer tights and white lace-up boots. Her long satin gloves and gold earrings went to the referee at the bell. In her Gulf Coast years she wore her auburn hair in a lacquered bouffant.

![Emily Beaumont, in powder-blue satin and long gloves, holds a dark-haired opponent in a sleeper as the referee checks her arm in a smoky Texas auditorium, early 1960s.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e1/2a/e12a6d47-8023-4862-bf2c-4dc09b758c7c/content/images/2026/10/emily-beaumont-sleeper.jpg)

Beaumont applies the sleeper, early 1960s.

She would not lock up until her opponent had curtsied or the referee ordered it, and she could stall for minutes to get it. She was a technical wrestler who worked her opponents down on the mat, and she won most often with a sleeper hold. When the holds were not enough, she pulled tights, used the ropes, and reached for the parasol, a puff of powder or a can of her own hairspray.

As a young woman in the Valley she played a spoiled rich girl. By the late 1960s she had cooled into the lady of the house, who never raised her voice.

## **IN HER OWN WORDS**

Beaumont spoke in a slow Louisiana drawl. She called every opponent "sugar" and every referee "young man," whatever his age.

> "You see, a true belle always stays one step ahead."

> "It's the subtlety of Southern strategy, sugar, where the mind leads and the body follows."

## **LEGACY**

Beaumont wrestled for nineteen years in the Rio Grande Valley and on the Gulf Coast, and her rivalries with Lucy Grant and Lisa Jackson ran for most of them. She and Wild Rose are the first names on the GWA Women's Tag Team Championship.

More [GWA wrestler profiles](https://www.gwawrestling.com/wrestlers/).