L. Albano, video-star wrestler

NEW YORK - "Captain" Lou Albano, 76, who became one of the most recognized professional wrestlers of the 1980s after appearing in Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" music video, died yesterday.

Mr. Albano, whose real name was Louis Vincent Albano, died in Westchester County in suburban New York, said Dawn Marie, founder of Wrestlers Rescue, which helps raise money for the health care of retired wrestlers. He died of natural causes, Marie said.

World Wrestling Entertainment called him one of the company's "most popular and charismatic legends."

With his Hawaiian shirts, wiry goatee, and rubber bands hung like piercings from his cheek, Mr. Albano was an outsize personality who, in a career of nearly five decades, was known as much for showmanship as for talent in the ring.

His fame skyrocketed when he appeared in Lauper's 1983 music video, playing a scruffy, overbearing father in a white tank top who gets shoved against a wall by the singer.

Partly because of the success of Mr. Albano's partnership with Lauper, the entity then known as the World Wrestling Federation forged ties with the music industry. That helped bring it to a wider national audience in the mid-1980s, known as the "Rock n' Wrestling" era.

"When the Captain hit the screen with the video, it gave us a whole new audience," said "Irish" Davey O'Hannon, a professional wrestler who knew Mr. Albano since the 1970s.

It was a time when Mr. Albano and other wrestlers, such as Hulk Hogan, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, and Andre the Giant, were so popular they could headline a television cartoon series and appear in movies.

Mr. Albano later had a role in the music video for Lauper's 1984 song "Time After Time," and he appeared in episodes of the TV series Miami Vice and in the 1986 movie Body Slam. He played Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, a live-action animated show, from 1989-91.

His career in the ring began in 1953 in Canada, and he went on to form the "The Sicilians" tag team with Tony Altimore. He retired from the WWE in 1996.

Mr. Albano was born July 29, 1933, in Rome. After moving to the United States, the family settled in Mount Vernon, N.Y. Survivors include his wife, Geri, four children, and 14 grandchildren.