As we reflect back on the life of Kathy Moreland (nee Carlton) — better known as little person Darling Dagmar in the wrestling ring — one can’t help but reflect on just how much she was in the spotlight in a completely different way than many pro wrestlers.
The 4-foot, 2-inch, 85-pound Katherine “Kathy” Carlton was born December 3, 1942, in Winston-Salem, South Carolina, to normal-sized parents, Ernest James Carlton and Pearl S. Carlton. They had three other full-sized children: Robert, Nancy and Gail.
Darling Dagmar ssigns in at the hotel desk after her match in Toronto. Photo by Roger Baker
In that era, whether you were a little person or a dwarf, chances are you were just called a “midget” and treated as an anomaly. Carlton was a dwarf.
As high school was coming to a close, Carlton discovered professional wrestling and saw others of her stature getting a chance to perform and travel. She was intrigued.
The Fabulous Moolah at the wedding of Edsel and Kathy Moreland (Darling Dagmar).
Carlton trained under Lillian Ellison — the Fabulous Moolah — and Ellison’s then-husband Buddy Lee, along with another little person (whose name Kathy couldn’t recall in a 2010 interview). Soon she was on the road, dubbed Darling Dagmar, which was an homage of sorts to a “big” wrestler who had used the name in the 1950s and fought against Moolah. (That woman, Sylvia Marie Puckett Clarke, was also known as Marie Darnell in the ring.)
An adventure had begun.
Darling Dagmar battles Frenchy Lamont in a mixed little person match in Stampede Wrestling. Photo by Bob Leonard
There are countless examples of the newly-named Darling Dagmar profiled in the newspapers and wrestling magazines.
Oakland Tribune talked to Dagmar for its New Year’s Eve 1975 edition. An excerpt from the piece, written by Paul McCarthy:
Though one of a legion of wrestling’s “little people,” she says her lack of size isn’t indicative of her strength.
“I can lift 200 pounds on my shoulders,” Dagmar says with self-assurance and just a hint of a challenge in case a listener wanted to take a test spin.
Living out of a suitcase and being constantly on the go to matches in Japan, Canada and criss-crossing the U. S. surprisingly hasn’t taken its toll.
“I love traveling,” she claims, “and I’ve always been interested in history, so the two go together just fine for me.”
Not that grappling has all been fun and games, mind you.
“I’ve gotten a lot of bruised and broken ribs in my time. I’ve had both ankles broken at some time or another, and once I was thrown out of the ring and landed against a chair. It took 18 stitches in my head to make me right,” says Dagmar.
Sandy Parker and Darling Dagmar. L’il Al photo
In another interview, she talked about the reaction of the crowd.
“The kids are the biggest fans. They know there’s a difference — they know we’re grown up,” Dagmar told the Corpus Christi Times in October 1976. “They’re not laughing at us, oh no. They halfway think we’re young like them and they identify with us.”
Darling Dagmar packs for morning flight to Detriot after her match in Toronto. Photo by Roger Baker
The road life appealed to her: “Probably if I had a nine to five job it would be very boring to me. Now, I go home anytime I want to or sometimes I book myself three months in advance . . . I was always interested in wrestling. Now I’m outgoing, before I started wrestling I was very shy. I always wanted to travel and I like wrestling, so the combination worked.”
Darling Dagmar hands over her boarding pass prior to her flight to Detroit after her match in Toronto. Photo by Roger Baker
We are fortunate to have one feature on her from Wrestling Revue June 1969, with text and photos by Roger Baker, archived here (with permission).
Darling Dagmar strikes a double vision pose while in Toronto. Photo by Roger Baker
When Kathy met Edsel Clyde Moreland in March 1974, they fell in love and that too became newsworthy, two little people getting married. Edsel was four years older than Kathy.
It is believed that Moolah helped pay for part of, if not all of, their wedding, which was on March 16, 1975.
The wedding of Edsel and Kathy Moreland (Darling Dagmar).
Moreland would make the news locally as co-founder of the Little People of America group in Columbia, SC. He had actually graduated from the Ringling School of Arts in Sarasota, Fla., so had been an entertainer himself, but in his later years, he had been a commercial artist.
Edsel Clyde Moreland
More than once, Dagmar told the story of dating Edsel, and reluctantly telling him about her job.
I thought, oh boy, wait until I lay this one on him and I said, “I’m a professional wrestler.”
He said, “What???”
The two had a happy marriage from all accounts, and attended Shandon United Methodist Church. Both worked at South Carolina ETV for a time, Kathy as a secretary.
Paulla Kaye, Susan Green, Joyce Grable and Darling Dagmar at the 2010 Gulf Coast Reunion in Mobile, Alabama. Photo by Scott Teal
After Edsel died on April 9, 2009, at the age of 70, Kathy found herself returning to professional wrestling, revisiting old friends, first at the Gulf Coast Wrestlers’ Reunion in Mobile, Alabama, and then the Cauliflower Alley Club, which honored her with an award at its 2011 reunion.
Darling Dagmar at the 2011 Cauliflower Alley Club reunion. Photo by Joyce Paustian
Darling Dagmar at the 2011 Cauliflower Alley Club reunion. Photo by Joyce Paustian
Joyce Grable introduced Dagmar at the CAC Baloney Blowout on April 19, 2011, in Las Vegas.
Joyce Grable and Darling Dagmar at the 2011 Cauliflower Alley Club reunion. Photo by Joyce Paustian
“When I first went to Moolah’s, and she was there. I went in, and I heard this big voice, it just bellowed out. And I’m looking around, and all of a sudden I look down, and there’s little Darling Dagmar,” Grable said. “She’s been a very good friend, one of the best little people, lady rasslers, that there has was ever born. She took so many new girls on the road.”
Magic happens at the Cauliflower Alley Club, like this shot of Darling Dagmar reconnecting with Jake “The Snake” Roberts in 2011. Photo by Greg Oliver
Dagmar herself didn’t speak much at all after accepting her award. The photos alone — including the one above seeing Jake Roberts for the first time in decades — say a lot, though.
There weren’t a slew of other appearances after that, and Dagmar hadn’t really been in the news until just recently, when word circulated that she had been confined to a nursing home, and then died in early November in hospice care. Her funeral, a private, family-only service, was Friday, November 8, 2024 — though long-time foe Diamond Lil (Katie Glass) did attend, and word of Dagmar’s death spread slowly from there.
Darling Dagmar versus Diamond Lil in Toronto. Photo by Roger Baker
She is buried at Greenlawn Memorial Cemetery, in Columbia, SC, next to her husband; both Fabulous Moolah and Mae Young are nearby as well.
A good summary of the life of Kathy Carlton / Kathy Moreland / Darling Dagmar comes in a line she said to the Columbia Record in 1984: “There are so many other problems, compared to being little.”
TOP PHOTO: Darling Dagmar in her wrestling prime and in 2011. Left photo by Roger Baker; right photo by Joyce Paustian.
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