ISSUE 01 -- Exploring the early origins of the traveling carnival in America, 1920-1938

Photo Credit: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 05 Jul 1923

Most histories credit the 1893 Chicago World's Fair--which brought together the largest agglomeration of showmen ever assembled up to that point--with the traveling carnival's origination. Along the Midway Plaisance, an avenue at the fair's periphery, the freak shows, games of chance, burlesque, wild west shows, and other more unsavory diversions assembled, and their close proximity led many of the showmen to compare notes on their business. Otto Schmidt, a participant in these meetings, organized the Chicago Midway Plaisance Amusement Company, and he and his acts set out on a tour of the Northeast. The show featured thirteen attractions, some direct form the Midway Plaisance, but failed to make its final booking in New Orleans, folding due to poor organization and business practices. Nevertheless, it provided the model for a new type of traveling amusement–-part circus, part amusement park–-and several showmen from Schmidt's troupe revamped the idea with success, going on to operate some of the first traveling carnivals.

From spring to fall of 1902, seventeen carnivals toured the United States. They pitched their tents in empty fields or vacant lots, or were booked in conjunction with state and county fairs, these having become a welcome diversion for the small towns that served as the center of isolated farm communities. By 1905, there were 46 traveling carnivals plying their trade. By 1937, an estimated 300 different shows traversed the country. The average carnival consisted of a circular avenue, the midway, ringed by the different attractions and circumscribing the rides and food vendors within a circular enclosure of colorful tents. Among the different attractions, a pre-World War II carnival would invariably include a model show, where naked or scantily clad young women were exhibited behind a see-through fabric; a sex exhibit in which grift was especially common (anything even loosely associated with sex--fetuses preserved in formaldehyde, anatomical aids, or caged guinea pigs); a palm reader; a dance pavilion; games of chance; food concessions; and, of course, the rides.

Source: St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture

Felix Adler: The King of Clowns

Photo Credit: Chicago Daily News
Date: 23 Jul 1927

Frank Bartlet Adler (17 Jun 1895 – 01 Feb 1960), better known by his stage name Felix Adler, was a circus performer and entertainer known as "The King of Clowns" who performed under the big top for over 20 years. Adler's jovial image adorned several classic Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus posters, and he can even be seen performing in Cecil B. DeMille's 1952 film The Greatest Show on Earth. His face was immortalized for all time as a commercial mask created and sold by Verne Langdon of Hollywood's renowned Don Post Studios, and was once photographed by American designer Charles Eames for the his visual slide presentation accompanied by circus music--a photograph which today retains fame in the form of the album cover for Langdon's Circus Clown Calliope. During the course of his career under canvas, the legendary entertainer performed before millions of circus fans throughout North America, and was inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame in 1989.

With the Ringling Bros. Circus, Adler waddled the rings in a droopy clown suit followed by a piglet which he trained to climb a small ladder and slide down a greased slide to receive a nip of milk from a baby bottle as a reward. These pigs made their debut only after intensive training from Felix and later his wife, Amelia. Once the pigs grew too large for entertainment purposes, they were given to families along the road, who often kept in touch with the Adlers. Because they grew so quickly, more than 360 pigs were trained during Adler's circus career. After his marriage in 1948, Adler's pigs were all named "Amelia." Some of the performances were not in script. During a "Big Bad Wolf" act, a pulley broke loose from some of the high tackle and hit Adler, knocking him unconscious momentarily. The pigs started climbing all over him and making great noise as the audience howled. John Ringling urged Adler to keep that in his act, but he was never able to repeat the act.

Source: Felix Adler Children's Discovery Center

The Flying Trapeze

Photo Credit: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey
Date: 22 Jul 1936

The art of trapeze was developed in 1859 by a revolutionary French acrobatic performer named Jules Léotard (1942 – 1870), the son of a gymnastics instructor. He first invented the flying trapeze by connecting a bar to some ventilator cords above the swimming pool in his father's gymnasium in Toulouse, France. Despite having passed his Law exams at an early age and seeming destined to join the legal profession, Léotard went on to perform with the Cirque Franconi in Paris as their main aerialist, first performing in London at the Alhambra in May 1861. He was a great success. In the early years of young Léotard's performances, the flying trapeze did not have the safety net as is typically seen today. He would perform over a series of mattresses on a raised runway to give the audience a better view of his tricks or "passes."

At the Ashburnham Hall in Cremorne, Léotard performed on five trapezes turning somersaults between each one, and appeared again in London in 1866 and 1868, mainly in music halls and pleasure gardens where he was immensely popular. Léotard also popularized the one-piece gymwear that now bears his name, and his notoriety was marked by George Leybourne's popular music hall song of the day, "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze," but tragically he died at the young age of 28 from an infectious disease (possibly smallpox). "He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease / a daring young man on the flying trapeze / his movements were graceful / all girls he could please / and my love he purloined away."

Source: Victoria and Albert Museum

101 Ranch Wild West Show

Photo Credit: Unknown
Date: 06 May 1929

Named for its cattle brand, the 101 Ranch was a cattle ranch in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma before statehood, established by Colonel George Washington Miller, a veteran of the Confederate Army, in 1879. After relocating the original ranch in 1892, Miller leased 100,000 acres of land and built the largest diversified farm and cattle ranch in the United States and one of the early focal points of the oil rush in northeastern Oklahoma. The 200 cowhands working the ranch, which included Bill Pickett and his famous "bull-dogging" technique for wrestling cattle to the ground, developed a reputation for excellence, and whenever they competed in the local round-up competitions, they usually won. When George Miller died in 1903, his three sons, Joseph, George Jr. and Zack, took over operation of the ranch. Soon after, neighbor Major Gordon W. Lillie, who performed as Pawnee Bill, motivated the Millers to produce the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. But the Miller Brothers would come late into Wild West Show business and suffered financially along with the other shows after the invention of motion pictures.

Their show had more problems than most in a business that was harsh in the best of times. During their first year on the circuit, they suffered a serious railroad accident. Later several members of their cast contracted typhoid fever. In 1908, when Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill combined their shows into an extravaganza that broke records at Madison Square Gardens in New York City, the Miller Brothers took their show abroad. In England, the British military confiscated most of the 101's horses, stagecoaches and automobiles to build up for war as tensions were building related to the pending World War. When the Millers' show toured in Germany, authorities arrested some of their Oglala Sioux performers on suspicion of being Serbian spies, and they were never seen again. A frantic Zack Miller managed to get the rest of the cast out of Germany via Norway, and then to England. Once the cast returned to Oklahoma, the eldest brother Joe Miller refused to pay the Native American cast overtime. As a result, the entire Native American cast quit the show.

Source: Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture

Irene, Gulliver and Bunny

Photo Credit: Unknown
Date: 21 Apr 1924

Every carnival featured a freak show, often called a "ten-in-one" or "string show," consisting of a number of different acts appearing in a single tent. The freak show provided the mystery to a carnival and, although now moribund as an institution, it remains of abiding interest, with freak show paraphernalia commanding high prices by collectors. Most shows had at least one genuine lusus naturae--a fat woman, a living skeleton, Siamese twins--and a number of "made" acts. These ranged from outright frauds--a "Wild Man of Borneo" (or geek) who might have grown up in Brooklyn, or a mind-reader who worked his dazzling clairvoyance by means of an elaborate code--to acts that were semi-legitimate. Tattooed men, torture acts, sword-swallowers, and snake charmers were the most common sort of act, constituting a sort of middle class of the carnival world; they ranked slightly lower than nature's aristocrat, the freak, but far above the lowly geek.

To attract an audience, a "talker," a quick-talking announcer, would gather a crowd, attracted by the talker's "pitch" as well as by the exhibitions, several of whom would appear with him on the "bally platform" giving short demonstrations. This was called "turning the tip." Once the tip had been turned, that is, lured into paying the entrance fee, they would be further induced to buy cheap merchandise--photos, pamphlets, and the like--and then to pay an additional fee to see the "blow-off," a genuine freak--a fat man or woman, a bearded lady, pin-heads, or victims of other birth defects. A good "blow-off" could underwrite the operating expenses of a ten-in-one, therefore, freaks were a highly valued commodity. Carnival and carny alike were exotic, simultaneously feared and envied. The carnies rejection of the "normal" world, of proper society, was an affront, but it was also an invitation. In the midst of the Great Depression, when the traveling carnivals were at their most popular, customers could still be counted on to spend their hard-earned pennies. Perhaps it was because escape from the hardship of everyday life had assumed a monumental importance for the hard-pressed citizenry.

Source: St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture

Mr. & Mrs. Peter Robinson

Photo Credit: Fotograms
Date: 11 Apr 1925

Freaks was an American Pre-Code horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1932, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnival performers. The film was based on Tod Robbins' 1923 short story "Spurs." The director took the exceptional step of casting real people with deformities as the eponymous sideshow "freaks," rather than using costumes and makeup. Browning had been a member of a traveling circus in his early years, and much of the film was drawn from his personal experiences. In the film, the physically deformed "freaks" are inherently trusting and honorable people, while the real monsters are two of the "normal" members of the circus who conspire to murder one of the performers to obtain his large inheritance. Among the characters featured as "freaks" were Peter Robinson ("the human skeleton"); Olga Roderick ("the bearded lady"); Frances O'Connor and Martha Morris ("armless wonders"); and the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton.

Despite extensive cuts, the film was still negatively received by audiences, and remained an object of extreme controversy. Today, the parts that were removed are considered lost. Browning, famed at the time for his collaborations with Lon Chaney and for directing Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931), had trouble finding work afterward, and this effectually brought his career to an early close. Because its deformed cast was shocking to moviegoers of the time, the film was banned in the United Kingdom for 30 years. Beginning in the early 1960s, Freaks was rediscovered as a counterculture cult film, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the film was regularly shown at midnight movie screenings at movie theaters across the country. In 1994, Freaks was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," and was ranked 15th on Bravo TV's list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

Source: Turner Classic Movies

Wild Men From Borneo

Photo Credit: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 24 Dec 1935

In typical sideshow fashion, the "Wild Men of Borneo" were pure gimmick. The Davis Brothers, Hiram and Barney, were not from Borneo at all. Hiram was born in 1825 in England and Barney in 1827 in New York. The dynamic duo were dwarves, each standing only three and a half feet tall. The brothers began their exhibition career in 1852 after showman and promoter Lyman Warner purchased the brothers from their destitute and widowed mother. Warner created an intricate persona for the tiny brothers. Renaming them Waino and Plutano, he billed them as savages from darkest Borneo. Audiences at the time had likely heard of Borneo, but the area was still veiled in great mystery. As a result, the public swallowed the story completely and Warner was inspired to elaborate the fictional biography further. Warner created a promotional booklet, entitled What We Know About Waino and Plutano, Wild Men of Borneo, and within its pages their "capture" was detailed.

For their part, the brothers played their roles to the hilt. During exhibitions the "Wild Men" acted wild and spoke a strange gibberish language. Over time, the brother began to develop characters. Waino played a gentle savage character who read poems while Plutano played a trickster and stubborn character. Both brothers were remarkable strong for their size and would often lift volunteers from the audience off their feet. Warner passed away in 1871, and his son Hanford took over possession of the duo until they became involved with P.T. Barnum and his traveling exhibitions in 1880. Hiram (Waino) died of natural causes in 1905, and seven years later, in March of 1912, Barney joined his brother at the age of 85. The brothers were laid to rest side by side in Mount Vernon, Ohio, but their legacy lived on as several traveling carnivals would incorporate the "Wild Men of Borneo" act into their shows.

Source: The Human Marvels

Human Cannonball

Photo Credit: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 14 Jan 1937

The human cannonball is a performance in which a person (the "cannonball") is ejected from a specially designed cannon. The impetus is provided not by gunpowder, but by either a spring or jet of compressed air. In a circus performance, gunpowder may be used to provide visual and auditory effects, but this is unrelated to the launching mechanism. The first human cannonball, in 1877 at the Royal Aquarium in London, was a 14 year-old girl called "Zazel," whose real name was Rossa Matilda Richter. She was launched by a spring-style cannon invented by Canadian William, also known by the stage name The Great Farini, who was a well known 19th and early 20th century Canadian funambulist, entertainment promoter and inventor, as well as the first known white man to cross the Kalahari Desert on foot and survive. Richter would later tour with the P.T. Barnum Circus.

The propellant of choice today is compressed air. The human projectile climbs into a hollow topless cylinder that slides inside the cannon barrel. Having been lowered to the bottom of the barrel, the cylinder is blasted forward by compressed air at 150-200 pounds per square inch. The cylinder stops at the cannon's mouth when fired, and the human cannonball lands on a horizontal net or inflated bag, the placement of which is determined by classical mechanics. Outdoor performances may also aim at a body of water. Elvin Bale, the "Human Space Shuttle," was experimenting with air bags to break his fall while on tour in 1986. He overshot the airbags and crashed into a wall, seriously injuring himself. On another occasion two members of the Zacchini family, long famous for its cannonballing exploits, were launched simultaneously from opposite ends of the circus. They collided in mid-air; one Zacchini broke her back.

Source: The Straight Dope

Animal Trainer Mabel Stark

Photo Credit: Three Lions
Date: 09 Jan 1938

Mabel Stark (09 Dec 1889 – 20 Apr 1968), whose real name was Mary Haynie, was a renowned tiger trainer of the 1920s, and she was referred to as the world's first woman tiger trainer/tamer. She joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1922, where she performed in Madison Square Garden with snarling tigers and a black panther. By the end of that season, of the six wild animal acts featured with the circus, Mabel Stark's was clearly the greatest success. In 1923, she starred in the Ringling Bros. center ring, but two years later in 1925, the circus banned all wild animal acts. After a sojourn to Europe where she performed in a circus, she came back to the U.S. in 1928 and began work with the John Robinson Show. In Bangor, Maine, she lost her footing in a muddy arena and was seriously mauled by her tigers. She would suffer a wound that almost severed her leg, face lacerations, a hole in her shoulder, a torn deltoid muscle and a host of other injuries. She was rescued by fellow trainer, Terrell Jacobs, and returned to the ring in a matter of weeks, swathed in bandages and walking with a cane. She suffered numerous maulings and serious injury over her nearly 60 years of working with tigers. At one point in her career, she would face 18 big cats in the ring.

She performed with the Sells-Floto Circus in 1929 and then rejoined the company she started out with back in 1911, the Al G. Barnes Circus, after it had been sold to Ringling Bros. in 1930, and stayed there until it folded in 1935. She toured with some small circuses and lived in Japan where she performed her circus act in the 1950s. She returned to California and finished her career at the Jungle Compound (later called Jungleland) at Thousand Oaks. Stark appeared occasionally on television in the 1960s. For example, she did a stint as one of the guests with an unusual occupation on What's My Line?, the popular Sunday Night CBS-TV program. In 1968 Jungleland was sold to a new owner who disliked Stark and fired her. Soon after she left, one of her tigers escaped and was shot. Stark was angry and hurt about the animal's destruction and felt that she could have safely secured the tiger if the owners had asked for her assistance. Three months later, on April 20, 1968, she died from an overdose of barbiturates. In the last pages of her autobiography, Hold That Tiger, Stark writes: "The chute door opens as I crack my whip and shout, 'Let them come.' Out slink the striped cats, snarling and roaring, leaping at each other or at me. It's a matchless thrill, and life without it is not worthwhile to me."

Source: Conejo Valley Historical Society

X-Ray Proves He Swallows Sword

Photo Credit: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 13 Dec 1936

Originating in India before 2000 BC, the deadly art of sword swallowing has a long and varied history. During its early history it was used as a demonstration of divine union and power. The migration of the art to other lands, most notably China in the 8th century, saw its transformation from divine demonstration to theatrical production. It quickly migrated to Japan, where it became a central part of the Japanese acrobatic theatre, Sangaku--an array of performances that included fire eating, tightrope walking, juggling and early illusion. Simultaneous to the arts' eastern migration was a migration to the north and west, all the way to Greece and Rome in the 1st centuries AD. Sword swallowing was performed during the Middle Ages as part of street theatre and was popular at festivals and other large gatherings. However, from the founding of the Holy Inquisition in 1231, it and other forms of religious persecution slowly spread in their influence throughout Europe. Sword swallowers along with jugglers, magicians, prophets and other performers, found themselves increasingly the target of religious persecution, being condemned and executed as heretics, witches and practitioners of the dark arts.

Sword swallowing began to die out in the mid-19th century, but in 1893 sword swallowing was featured at the World Columbian Exposition at the Chicago World's Fair and spawned the beginning of the popularity of the American practice of the art. Sword swallowing became a stunt, and as such, it became competitive, where there seemed to be an undue focus on the novel and bizarre in the American practice. It is during this time that we see a growing popularity with swallowing longer swords, multiple swords, hot swords, bayonets recoiled down the throat, glowing neon tubes and so forth. With the growing interest in the art came clever innovations. In fact, one could often find sword swallowers on the same bill as the magic greats such as Houdini, clearly indicating their appeal. But by the mid-20th century there was a demise in circuses in general and sideshows in particular. Today there remains only one full-time permanent sideshow in the world, the Coney Island Sideshows by the Seashore, in New York City, and a very few smaller traveling sideshows.

Source: Sword Swallowers Association International