Today is the birthday of Dolly Dimples (b. Celesta Herrmann, 1901-1982), one of the most famous of all sideshow Fat Ladies. Originally from Cincinnati, Dolly weighed 150 lbs in the sixth grade; 300 lbs when she left high school; over 400 lbs a year after that. Her career began in 1927 when she visited the Happyland Carnival in Michigan and it was noticed that she weighed 50 pounds more than the Fat Lady they were then employing. Her husband Frank Geyer had recently been laid off from his job, so when the sideshow offered Celesta a position, she took it.

Billing herself as Dolly Dimples (sometimes Jolly Dolly and “The World’s Most Beautiful Fat Lady) the 4’11″ woman swelled up to 555 lbs over the next few years thanks to a strict regimen of high calorie foods. In the 1930s she began working for Ringling Bros Barnum and Bailey Circus, her professional home for the remainder of her career. It all ended with a major heart attack in 1950. Scared for her life, Dolly lost 443 lbs in one year two months by limiting herself to baby food, thus meriting an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for fastest weight loss ever for a woman. Out of a job? Nope! She wrote a diet book! And lived another three decades to extol the virtues of moderate eating.

To find out more about  the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of Edmund Newell (1857-1919), usually billed as either Major Edward Newell [sic] or General Grant Jr. One of many little people in the employ of P.T. Barnum, he is best known today for having married Lavinia Warren’s sister Minnie in 1877. She died in childbirth a year later, whereupon Newell moved to London and married a woman of conventional height named Mary Ann Drake.

To find out more about the variety arts past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. And don’t miss Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, to be released by Bear Manor Media in 2013.

Today is the 150th birthday of Fleming W. Ackerman (1863-1946), known professionally and informally as Colonel Speck. The son of a prosperous Moravia, New York businessman, Ackerman was normal sized until he reached the age of four years old, whereupon his growth slowed down considerably. His tallest height in adulthood was four feet four inches. Extremely gifted at music he began singing and playing in local amateur theatricals at around age 8 or 9. His first professional engagement was at a local theatre in Owego with the Tremaine Brothers in 1875. He undertook a regional tour with one Mademoiselle Leon the following year. In 1876 he received an offer of work from P.T. Barnum (he had not yet reached his full height). The family turned it down because the boy was only 13. In 1878 he attended a music conservatory in New York City. While there he not only studied, but he performed professionally and became friendly with the happy quartet of General Tom Thumb, Lavinia Warren, her sister Minnie, and her husband Major Newell. 

This association was fortunate, for the following year Warren engaged him as a performer with the Liliputian Opera Company, which toured all over the U.S. and Canada. In 1882 the company folded when their unscrupulous manager fled with the box office take, stranding them in Chicago. They played another season as the Pigmie Picnic Party [sic] under new management and then disbanded. Following this, Speck worked for several months in solo engagements, but overworked himself to the point that he permanently blew out his voice and was forced to retire from show business.

Fortunately he had inherited his father’s acumen as an entrepreneur, and became a successful local businessman in Moravia and surrounding towns operating a photography studio, a telephone exchange and a bus line. He also kept a hand in performing as the Drum Major of a local brass band, Huff’s Cornet Band, which played parades, fairs and other events.

For all the information you will ever need on this interesting character, I recommend The Drum Major of Company A: A Biography of Fleming W. Ackerman a.k.a. Colonel Speck by Frank S. Foti, which may be purchased here. 

To find out more about  the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of Joseph Merrick (sometimes known incorrectly as “John”, 1862-1890).

Born normal, the physical deformities that gave him his nickname began to emerge in childhood and were fully manifested by the time he was an adult. After years of attempting to make his living first as an apprentice cigarmaker, then as a street hawker, he endured periods of homelessness and spent several years in the work house before embarking on a career as a human oddity in 1884 at the age of 22. Several music hall professionals collaborated on the enterprise, showing him in converted storefronts and billing him as “The Elephant Man, Half a Man and Half an Elephant.” His career as a professional freak was short, lasting about two years. By then attitudes about the exhibition of human curiosities were changing; and Merrick’s was a particularly shocking case.

The remainder of his short life was spent in a hospital under the care of the physician Sir Frederic Treves — as you no doubt know if you’ve seen either the 1979 stage play or the 1980 film on the subject. Before the play and the film, Merrick was not as well known in the United States as Barnum’s most famous prodigies such as Tom Thumb, Chang and Eng, Zip the Pinhead, or Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy. Now I daresay his name is roughly as well known, for better or worse.

It should be said that Merrick was a most singular case. Many people have gotten the false notion from the film that special people were invariably cruelly used and exploited in show business. Having investigated the lives of over 150 of them by this point, I have found that to be the exception rather than the rule, and a rare one at that. At any event, Merrick was treated with terrific humanity by society during the last four years of his life. His death at age 27 was self-inflicted. Throughout his life his condition had demanded that he sleep upright due to the weight of his head, which would either strangulate him or break his neck were he to lie down. One night — for whatever reason — he decided to lie down. 

To find out more about  the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of Anna Swan (1846-1888). Eighteen pounds at birth, the Nova Scotia native was four and a half feet tall by her fourth birthday and reached seven and a half feet in her adulthood. In 1862 she came to the attention of agents in the employ of P.T. Barnum. At first her parents refused all offers for reasons of propriety but eventually the sums grew too large to resist. Swan was to be one of the most popular attractions at Barnum’s museum and a personal favorite of Barnum’s. In 1871, she met and married the Kentucky giant Martin Van Buren Bates. After being exhibited for a time as the World’s Tallest Couple the pair retired to a custom built home in Seville, Ohio, occasionally re-emerging to make public appearances. Two children born to Swan were also giants but died in infancy.

To find out more about  the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of Vivian Wheeler (b. 1948), notable in these annals for oh so many interesting reasons. Wheeler was born a hermaphrodite; since her parents already had two sons they had the male organs removed, making her technically female. But like her mother and her maternal grandmother, she continued to produce in profusion one attribute most females do not possess: facial hair. As a child she helped pay her own way by working in sideshows. As a young woman she tried to settle down, shaved her beard, went through several failed marriages and had two children, who were later put up for adoption. (Because of her male bone structure both were delivered by cesarian section). By 1981 she was back in the sideshows, often billed as Malinda Maxey. She has been in the Guinness Book of World Records numerous times since 2001 for possessing the longest female beard, which has ranged in length from 11 to 17 inches. In 2010 she receive a huge amount of international publicity when her biological son tracked her down: the headlines “Adopted Son Discovers  His Mother to be a Bearded Lady” spread like wildfire around the world; articles about the incident continue to run to this day.

Here is a local news segment about her incredible story:

To find out more about  the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of Berniece Evelyn “Jeanie” Smith (1916-1999). Born with no legs and a pair of twisted arms, she nonetheless learned to walk on her upper limbs and to do a variety of acrobatic stunts. She was exhibited in fairs and carnivals from childhood, initially by her mother and later (after her mother’s death) by an adopted guardian who was reportedly abusive. While performing at the Great Lakes Exposition in 1936 she met Aurelio “Al” Tomaini (1912-1962), a seven foot eleven inch giant (although he claimed to be over seven inches taller). The two fell in love and got married. Given the fact that Jeanie was only two feet five inches tall, they are probably the couple with the greatest height spread in history. The “World’s Strangest Married Couple” transitioned from performing in sideshows to settling in and building a fishing lodge in the sideshow retirement community at Gibsonton, Florida called “The Giant’s Camp”. After Al’s death in 1962 from complications related to his pituitary condition, Jeanie continued to operate the lodge with their two adopted children until her own death in 1999.

To find out more about  the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of Joan Whisnant (1923-1998). Born in Red Fork, Oklahoma, Whisnant came into the world without any arms, but was taught by her parents to do everything everyone else does…with her feet. She could eat with fork and knife, turn the pages of books, wash dishes, brush her hair and embroider. Her parents kept her out of the sideshows, but she did learn a performing skill: she was able to play the guitar. And that was the avenue through which she got some attention in her teenage years, playing publicly at state fairs and in a Ripley’s Believe it or Not Odditorium.

To find out more about  the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

The quintessential image of the remarkable Johnny Eck

Today is the birthday of the amazing Johnny Eck (John Eckhardt, Jr., 1911-1991), best known for his role in Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932). It is often assumed that Eck was born “cut off at the waist”, but in fact he did have miniature, non-functioning legs, which he had strapped close to his body with a special contraption. Born with a fraternal brother named Robert who closely resembled him and was fully-formed, the two staged a notorious act in Rajah Raboid’s magic show in 1937. Raboid would pretend to saw Robert  in half; then Johnny would emerge from the box as though his legs had been cut off. Spectators were known to faint or flee the theatre during this act.

Johnny had first joined a sideshow as a single-o in 1923, with this brother coming along to watch after him. Billed as “The Half-Man”, he also worked at Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey, as well as Ripley’s Believe it or Not and the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. In addition to Freaks he also appeared as a Gooney Bird in three Tarzan pictures: Tarzan the Ape-Man (1932), Tarzan Escapes (1936) and Tarzan’s Secret Treasure (1941). After this, he returned to his hometown of Baltimore, living in a house with his brother Robert. The two men operated a penny arcade and a children’s train  ride in a local amusement park (which Johnny operated as the engineer). In his last decades, he concentrated on his hobbies of screen painting and putting on Punch and Judy shows for the local kids.

Here are some home movies of Eck clowning around for the camera, thoughtfully cut to some rockabilly, with some bonus footage of Willie “Popeye” Ingram:

To learn more about the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of Frances O’Connor (1914-1982).

Born without arms (or even stumps), O’Connor developed the ability to perform most ordinary everyday tasks with her feet: cut up her food with fork and knife and eat it; drink from a cup; smoke a cigarette, etc. In addition to her dexterity she also possessed natural beauty and a winning personality, which combined to make her a shoe-in for show business. With her mother as manager she began working in circus sideshows billed as “the Living Venus de Milo”, first for Al G. Barnes, and then for Ringling Brothers, where she was to remain for over two decades. What she is best known for today however is her memorable turn in Tod Browning’s 1932 movie Freaks, in which she appears in several scenes, speaking a few lines and demonstrating her skills. She retired from show business in the mid 1940s and lived out the rest of her life in retirement.

To learn more about the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the most commonly accepted birthday for the muumuu-wearing microcephalic sideshow performer Schlitzie (1901-1971). best known for his performance in Tod Browning’s 1932 movie Freaks, little is known about this performer’s origins or even his given name (which may possibly have been Simon Metz). What is known is that by the 1920s Schlitzie was already a major sideshow star (often billed as an “Aztec”, a “pinhead” or even a “Monkey Girl”) in such premium venues as the Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Circus, the Tom Mix Circus, Clyde Beatty Circus, and others. In 1935 chimp trainer George Surtees became Schlitzie’s legal guardian and manager. Other films Schlitzie appeared in besides Freaks included The Sideshow (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1932) and Meet Boston Blackie (1941). 

And now, Schlitzie’s big scene:

To learn more about the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Also please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of James Grover Tarver (1885-1958). During his 26 years with various sideshows (1914-1940) he was billed at different times as “Texas Jim”, the Texas Giant” and “What-a-Man-Tarver”. Shows he ran with included Hagenbeck-Wallace and Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey. Those dimensions on the pitch card are almost certainly exaggerated. There is a legend that was replaced at Ringling Brothers by Texas Jack, but it looks to me like they both retired around the same time. Tarver spent his last years working on his Arkansas farm.

To find out more about show business past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of Noah Orr (1836-1882). Standing 7′ 3″ in stocking feet (but nine feet in his military boots and hat), he went to work for P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in the 1850s and later worked for Barnum’s circus, touring Europe as well as the United States. During his last four years he traveled with the Lilliputian Opera Company, a troupe of little people, in their production of Jack the Giant Killer. He is buried in his hometown of Marysville, Ohio.

To find out more about show business past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of Francis Joseph Flynn (1872-1898), professionally known as “General Mite”. Born on a farm in upstate New York, his birth weight was two and a half pounds and his height in adulthood was never more than 27 inches (although he was exhibited as an “adult” when still a child, when he was obviously much shorter.)

He was first exhibited by his father at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. Billed as the “Smallest Man in the World” he was taken on tour by promoter F.M. Uffner along with fellow little person Lucia Zarate. In 1878-79 they appeared at Brighton Beach Bathing Pavilion, Coney Island. From there, it was on to England, where for publicity purposes the General was “married” to English little person Millie Edwards (despite the fact that he was all of twelve years old). In the 1880s, he appeared with Zarate again in the sideshow of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. When Zarate died in 1890, Flynn and Edwards moved to Australia. Flynn died there 8 years later at the age of 26 (his liver and kidneys had been steadily failing). He is now proudly remembered in both Greene, New York (the place of his birth) and Broken Hill, New South Wales (the place of his death).

To find out more about show business past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of George Francis Ethinger (1905-?). Born with a parasitic conjoined twin, George possessed three legs, three buttocks, two stomachs and two kidneys. In addition to this (s)he was a pseudohermaphrodite, born in the No man’s Land betwixt genders. Billed as May-Joe, the child was exhibited by the team of Bolus and Startzel until the age of four in the sideshows of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Great far East Show. For a time the child’s parents tried to exhibit him/her in their native Ohio but with much resistance from local authorities, The photographic record indicates that May-Joe lived through adolescence: whether (s)he continued to work in sideshows through adolescence, or whether the family merely sold pictures is unknown. Other professional names used by May-Joe included Joe-Pearl, Josephine-Pearl and Elsie-Lynn.

To find out more about show business past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

For more on silent and slapstick comedy please see my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

He’s the gentleman in the middle

Today is the birthday of Clifford Thompson (1904-1955), billed variously as “The Scandinavian Giant”, “The Wisconsin Paul Bunyon” and “Count Olaf”. While billed as being 8’7′ tall, the reality (as was typical in the business) was probably about a foot shorter. Thompson only appeared in actual sideshows for about eights years: four years for Al G. Barnes, four years for Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey. After this for many years, he worked in sales and did advertising endorsements for milk, beer, shoes, and automobiles. At age 45 he went back to school, earning a law degree, practicing for four years. He was not only the tallest lawyer in history but the tallest man ever to appear in Hollywood films. His credits include Seal Skins (1932) and Murder in the Private Car (1934). Thompson liked being “tallest”, famously (and foolishly it turns out) calling out Robert Wadlow to see who truly measured up. Wadlow took him up on it and handily dwarfed the little fellah in public in his own hometown, quipping “When you grow up you will be an awfully big boy”.

To find out more about show business past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Tonight Turner Classic Movies is continuing its excellent Halloween programming with a night devoted to the excellent horror director Tod Browning (for more on Browning’s interesting background, including vaudeville see my article here). Here’s the line up:

8:00pm Freaks (1932)

The ultimate Tod Browning film—the one in which he finally went too far! The freak show to end all freak shows—no real life side show ever boasted this many or this diverse a menu of freaks. In a way, the film represents the culmination of the entire history of sideshows although the makers couldn’t have known it at the time.  The freak show was about to die. This movie puts the period on the form even as it catches it on celluloid. But did it also cause the downfall? At any rate, where else can you see all at the same time: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams (daughter of Hyams and McIntyre), Olga Baclanova, stuttering Rosco Ates, Harry and Daisy Earles of the Doll Family, half-man Johnny Eck, the conjoined Hilton Sisters, Schlitzie the Pinhead, Koo-Koo the Bird Girl (and Elizabeth Green the other Bird Girl), he/she Josephine Joseph, limbless Prince Randian, pinheads Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow, armless Frances O’Connor, living skeleton Peter Robinson, little person Angelo Rossitto, and bearded lady Olga Roderick? Nowhere, that’s where! (What, no fat lady or giant? What the hell kind of circus is this?)

The plot can be summed up in a sentence almost. It has what I call the Hop Frog plot, after the famous story by Edgar Allen Poe (the film is actually based on the story Spurs by Todd Robbins). Such a plot consists of the ugly revenge by an outcast upon the powerful people who once ridiculed him. A most satisfying, primal and barbaric form of entertainment. In this, a midget(Earles) is cruelly used by the beautiful Cleopatra (Baclanova). She toys with him. When she learns he is rich, she marries him and tries to poison him. And  then…the terrifying revenge of the freaks.

Though it is priceless and indispensable and endlessly rewarding, the film always was and always will be a mess. Because many of the cast are freaks and/ or foreign you really can’t hear a good half of the dialogue. But anyway, dialogue never was Browning’s forte, it’s about the pictures. Still, the tone of the film is confusing….we side with the freaks but we also are made to identify with the villains (the beautiful trapeze artist and strong man) when their revenge comes…it is a nightmare, being pursued on a rainy night by creatrures crawling through the mud. At back of it—we recognize it as our own comeuppance for being cruel to those born different, the reckoning we always suspected would come. If the film is so accepting of freaks (as many claim it is, and the early scenes seem to be), I’m not sure the film-makers would also depict freaks as our nightmare at the climax of the film. But it is smart. We are complicit in this exploitation. Every few scenes the plot stops so we can have a gratuitously theatrical scene with freaks where we see them do amazing things, just as we would in a sideshow.

We accept her, we accept her, gooble gobble, gooble gobble!!!!

9:15pm Mark of the Vampire (1935)

Essentially a remake of Browning’s 1927 London After Midnight (see below). Not a good film, though a good and weird one! Seems to be set in Czechoslovakia. A baron has been killed, presumably by vampires from a nearby castle. Browning revisits much of Dracula here, right down to the recapitulation of certain scenes. Lionel Atwill as some sort of investigator, frequent Browning collaborator Lionel Barrymore as a Van Helsing-like vampire expert. It is clearly a vampire movie for most of the film.  Bela Lugosi plays the count…never speaking. And he has a daughter, a sort of early template for Vampira, Lily Munster, et al. Many scenes of the usual slow moving bats on fishing wire changing into vampires and so forth. One very cool shot—the only one in the movie—of the vampire daughter flying into the castle as a giant bat. Then the movie stops on a dime and the entire reality changes. It turns out to be a conventional murder investigation. Barrymore hypnotizes the suspect and forces him to relive the crime. It turns out the vampires are hired actors; the guardian of the murdered man’s daughter murdered the baron with poison.  Talk about being short-changed! Surely this ending must have left audiences grumbling!

10:30pm The Devil Doll (1936)

This is a film I’m afraid can be placed squarely in the “bad” category. Neither excellent as horror nor as camp, The Devil Doll is an illustration not only of Browning’s decline but also of the decline of the original classic wave of early horror pictures. The original concept sounds like it had been promising, called The Witch of Timbuktoo and based on a story called “Burn, Witch, Burn” (Later made into a British film in the early 1960s), it was originally a voodoo tale, as the film’s eventual title bears witness to. But various elements within the studio system lobbied to have the voodoo element—and all reference to Africans—expunged. The story Browning’s drunken imagination eventually produced has falsely imprisoned banker Lionel Barrymore and his fellow inmate, a benevolent scientist, escaping from Devil’s Island. The scientist lets Barrymore in on his research: a plan to reduce living creatures to a sixth of their normal size so that world hunger will no longer be a problem. Unfortunately, the scientist dies, allowing Barrymore to use the technique in order to pursue his own aim—revenge on the crooks who framed him for embezzling. Humunculi are dispatched to stab the victims with tiny stilettos to paralyze and/or shrink them. The uncanny quality of the tiny people and animals is fairly enthralling and one of the film’s few saving graces. The other gimmick – that of Barrymore in disguise as an old woman – might be funny if it wasn’t played so straight. The consummate technical actor, Barrymore even invests his old lady with a French accent, which none of the other characters, equally French, don’t have. In the end he is exonerated. The laboratory explodes in a big ball of flame, and Barrymore has a weepy, covert rapprochement with his estranged daughter (Maureen O’Sullivan) in a somewhat tedious epilogue.

12:00am: Miracles for Sale (1939)

I’m very excited to see this one of the first time, one of the very few Browning pictures I’ve not seen. This was his last movie. It concerns a man who creates illusions for professional magicians (and exposes mediums in his spare time) who is drawn into solving a murder mystery.

1:15am: London After Midnight (1927)

Technically this is a lost film, from Browning’s silent period, long thought of as among the Holy Grails of lost films. This is because it has one of star Lon Chaney’s most famous “looks”, one of his greatest make-up creations, certainly up there with Phantom of the Opera. I knew this film’s reputation even as a kid, based strictly on photographic stills of him in that costume. The version that is available now is a re-creation, more of a slide show really, painstakingly stitched together from still photos. I was so excited to finally see it — but was disappointed. Not in the method, but in the story itself. Chaney’s make-up is overkill; the movie (the same plot as Mark of the Vampire) didn’t deserve that excellent make-up. You want a true horror movie — the guy looks like a combination of Nosferatu and Jack the Ripper. But it’s just a silly murder mystery in the end with a preposterous explanation.

To find out more about show business past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Kitty Smith’s is the saddest story I’ve encountered thus far in exploring the sideshow world and writing about over 150 of its artists. Most human anomalies are born different; they’ve never known any other reality, so they simply learn how to get about in the world and the rest of us find their accomplishments remarkable. Others in the sideshow world alter themselves in an interesting way: e.g.,  grow hair in unusual places (on women, that tends to be the chin); get tattooed; or gain massive amounts of weight. Katherine M. Smith however was MAIMED into her condition.

Born on this day in 1882 and raised in Chicago, Katherine M. Smith was nine years old when her drunken, abusive father held her arms against a hot stove and burned them beyond reclamation. In later years she tried to gloss over this incident and claimed the ‘accident” had been her own fault, but there are records of the legal trial (he was acquitted but Kitty was placed in a home). In the Home for Destitute and Crippled Children, she learned to do with her feet many of thing things ordinary people do with their hands: write, draw, paint, play piano, sew, embroider, type with a typewriter, comb her hair, brush her teeth, and even make furniture with woodworking tools. When she reached majority, she published pamphlets telling her life story and asking the reader to donate a quarter — she raised $35,000 in this fashion.

It wasn’t until she was in her forties that she began working in actual sideshows, and when she did, she worked in the finest, at Coney Island and for John Robinson’s and Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Circuses.

To find out more about  the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

And check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Originally posted in 2010

America’s most famous and respected little person (of the twentieth century) began his career as an even littler person. William John Bertanzetti was only three years old when a Hollywood talent scout spotted him standing on his head, a favorite tricks of his as a child. The fact that he was smart and agile, but resembled an infant, made him the perfect person to play certain specialty parts, particularly in comedies. He was like a special effect. That moment in an old black and white comedy when the baby reaches out of the carriage to beat someone over the head with a rattle – that was usually Billy Barty. His first role was in the 1927 silent Wedded Blisters.  He was in a scene that was cut out of the Marx Brothers’ Monkey Business (1933), he played the baby that turns into a pig in Alice in Wonderland (1934), played Eddie Cantor in Roman Scandals (1934) after Eddie shrinks when staying in the steam room too long, and was also in Gold Diggers of 1933, Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Midsummer Nights Dream (1935), wherein he played Mustard Seed).

Perhaps because he was getting older, his father decided to put Billy into vaudeville. The year was 1935—hardly an auspicious time to do so. The act was called “Billy Barty and Sisters”, and featured Billy’s two average-sized sisters playing piano and violin ,while Billy played drums and did impressions. The family travelled around to gigs by car, and did so until Billy was old enough to go to college—1942.

Barty majored in journalism at school, got the degree and was even offered a job as a reporter, but the call (and probably the money) of show business was too great. The 3’9”, 80 lbs adult Barty began working night clubs. In 1952 he joined Spike Jones and His City Slickers, the comic novelty band for such records as “Der Fuehrer’s Face” and “Cocktails for Two”. Billy’s schtick with the band was similar to what he had done with his sisters, but now he had a wide audience on television, on records, and in live performances. He stayed with Jones for about ten years, and for the rest of his career concentred in acting in film and television. In the 60s, he was in films like Jumbo (1962) and the Elvis pictures Roustabout (64) and Harum Scarum (1965). In the 70s, he worked for Sid and Marty Krofft, on the popular children’s programs Pufnstuf, The Bugaloos and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. In the mid 70s, he went from playing bit parts to actual acting roles, in movies like Day of the Locust (1975) W.C. Fields and Me (1976) Foul Play (1978) Hardly Working (1981), to name just a few. He was very mindful of his position of responsibility as America’s best known little person, and did what he could to educate people about midgets and dwarves by founding The Little People of America in 1957, and The Billy Barty Foundation in 1975. He passed away in 2000.

Here’s a sample of how he functioned with the Spike Jones ensemble:

To find out more about show business past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

To learn about silent and slapstick comedy please see my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Today is the birthday of Ronnie and Donnie Galyon (b. 1951), the world’s oldest living pair of conjoined twins. Born in Dayton, Ohio joined from the sternum to the groin, they share a set of organs and thus cannot be separated. They were exhibited since their early childhood with Coleman Shows and others, toured Latin America for a time (when the climate grew unfriendly for freak shows domestically), and appeared with Hall and Christ toward the end of their career. They have been retired since the 1990s, apart from the occasional television appearance on shows like Jerry Springer, and documentaries on the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel.

To find out more about show business past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

To learn about silent and slapstick comedy please see my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc