Isaac W. Sprague, The Original Living Skeleton

Today is the birthday of the original “human skeleton”, Isaac W. Sprague (1841-1887). His weight loss began at age twelve, although he wasn’t to join a sideshow until age 24 in 1865. P.T. Barnum hired him the following year for his American Museum and the traveling show he mounted when the former institution burned down. At the time of his death while performing at a Boston museum at age 46 he weighed only 43 pounds. The cause of his muscular atrophy was never identified.

To find out 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.

For more on silent and slapstick comedy 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

Frank Lentini, The Man With Three Legs

Today is the birthday of Franceso Lentini (1881-1966). He was born in Rosolini, Sicily, and technically he had MORE than three legs — his total inventory was three legs, PLUS a fourth foot growing out of one of those legs PLUS two sets of genitals. In actuality the extra parts weren’t really “his”; he had an incomplete conjoined twin growing out of him.

When he was eight he moved to the U.S. to perform with Ringling Brothers, and he would later work for Barnum & Bailey (then a separate organization) and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West over the course of his 40+ year career. His compeers in the sideshow called him “The King.”

He was known for his wit. When someone would ask about the difficulty in buying shoes, he would say he bought two pairs and gave the spare shoe to his one-legged friend. Unusually, the third leg was fully operational; Lentini would entertain crowds by kicking a ball with it, or sitting on it like a stool.

To find out about  the history of vaudeville, 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 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

Piramel Sami, Doubled Bodied Hindu Enigma

Born in India in 1888, Piramel Sami possessed a parasitic twin brother growing out of his chest. For the sake of showmanship, the poor half-creature was represented as Piramel’s sister and dressed in the clothes of a small girl, and the “two” of them were called Piramel AND Sami. I imagine he got very tired of correcting people. He initially toured with a cousin of his, a dwarf named Soopromanien Munsamy, and a pair of pinheads named Gondia and Apexia. From ca. 1900-1915 he toured with the Ringling Bros sideshow. He reportedly hated life in the U.S. and turned to India as soon as was practicable.

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 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

Myrtle Corbin, The Four Legged Girl

Today is the birthday of Joseph Myrtle Corbin (1868-1928). Myrtle possessed an extra set of small, doll-like legs. Corbin was a dipygus; her axis had split during her development as an embryo. She actually had two pelvises, and each of the inner legs went with one of the outer ones. In addition, one of the outer legs was club-footed. She dressed all four legs in the same socks and boots. Her father had exhibited her since infancy; when she was 14 she hired by P.T. Barnum. Later she worked for Ringling Bros. (then a separate organization), and at Coney Island. At age 19, Myrtle retired from show business and married Dr. Clinton Bicknell and gave him five children. It is rumored that two of them were produced with one vagina, three with the other.

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 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

Violetta, the Armless and Legless Venus

In 1929, the French surrealist journal Variétés published photos of Violetta  as though she were a living, breathing work of surrealistic art — which, if you think about it, she was.

Born Aloisia Wagner in 1907 in Bremen-Hemeligen, Germany, the woman who came to be known as Violetta the Trunk Woman came into the world without arms and legs but quite normal in all other respects. She began exhibiting herself at age 15 and moved to the U.S. in 1924 at the invitation of Samuel Gumpertz of the Dreamland Circus Sideshow in Coney Island. She was to be a mainstay of his show as well as the Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey sideshow. Because she had a comely face and a well-formed torso, she was presented as a beauty, a sort of living Venus de Milo (with an emphasis on Venus), with her hair styled, her face made up, her body wrapped in oddly revealing and suggestive diaphanous fabric and literally placed on a pedestal. In short, she was a bizarre sex object. She was well-spoken, did humorous patter about she didn’t think of much of limbs anyway, sang songs, hopped around, and did amazing tricks like threading a needle and sewing with it, drawing a picture with a pencil, and lighting and smoking a cigarette, all using only her mouth. Audience members were encouraged to come to the stage and touch her (to prove that she was real) but she drew the line at kissing her, which many people tried to do. Not only was such a thing an unthinkable liberty, but she happened to be married. (She wore her wedding band on a necklace). No one seems to know when she died; the latest reference to her I can find is from 1940.

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 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

Count Orloff, The Human Window Pane

Ivannow Wladislaus von Dziarski-Orloff (1864-1904) was billed (among other things) as the Transparent Man, or the Human Window Pane. In addition to completely atrophied limbs, he had skin you could see through, showing all the blood vessels at work. It was also said that you could shine a light through him. Born in Budapest, he enjoyed a normal childhood, but then began wasting away at age 14. The condition caused him great pain, for which he took opium, which became a kind of trademark. He was frequently also billed incorrectly as an ossified man, but rather than being stiff, immobile and brittle like Jonathan R. Bass, he was bendable as though he had no bones, something of an opposite condition. After being exhibited in medical schools in Europe, he toured the U.S. with his own sideshow.

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 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

Commodore Foote and the Fairy Queen

Charles Nestel was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1849; his sister Eliza followed in 1857. Both were midgets. They began performing publicly in 1861 in a show called The Little People. At full maturity both of the siblings stood around three feet tall. With the stage names Commodore Foote and the Fairy Queen the two performed in dime museums, with the sideshow of P.T. Barnum’s circus and the with the American Lilliputian Opera Company. When Charles passed away in 1937, Eliza was so despondent she only outlived him by ten days.

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 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 de Barcsy Troupe

Sadly, and somewhat surprisingly, I haven’t been able to find a photo of this whole amazing family in one shot. The Baroness Sidonia de Barcsy (born this day in 1866) was a bearded lady; her son Nicu was a 27 inch tall little person. Her husband, a legitimate Hungarian Baron, six foot three and 400 lbs, was a Fat Man and a Strong Man. The whole family toured as a performing unit. The story (at least what I have been able to learn) sounds like a fairy tale; if it’s hokum, no one has taken the trouble to debunk it. The Baron Anton de Barcsy is said to have been an aristocrat and cavalry officer in Hungary. When his young wife gave birth to their two pound son in 1885, she began to sprout a beard. These twin providential miracles are said to have occurred just as the Baron lost his fortune in some bad speculations and political upheaval in his homeland forced him to flee the country. Heading west, and possessing no other marketable skills, they began to exhibit themselves in circuses in the Great Capitals of Europe. How very lucky!

In 1903, they headed to America. Nicu, now 18 took the tile of “Capitain”. For the next nine years the family toured with the sideshows of the Campbell Bros., Hagenbeck and Wallace, and Ringling Bros. Circuses. When the Baron passed away in 1912, Sidonia married “The Long Haired Cherokee Buck Man”, a.k.a “Buck” or “Cherokee Buck” a half German-half Native American trick roper whose real name was Frederick Valentine Tischu. The reorganized family continued to play circuses like the Campbell Bros, and Coney Island for the next eight years until Sidonia began to get sick in 1923 and Buck left her for a performing dwarf named Doletta Boykin (or Dodd). Sidonia passed away in 1925. Nicu continued to exhibit himself solo as the Baron de Barcsy until the mid 1930s, whereupon ”Little Nick” retired to the family’s house in Drummond, Oklahoma. He lived in that town as a local character until he passed away in 1976.

 

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 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

Chauncey Morlan

Today is the birthday of Chauncey Morlan (1869-1912). Morlan was said to have weighed 140 lbs by age seven; by the time he joined Adam Forepaugh’s show at age 15 he was over 400. Morlan became one of Forepaugh’s leading attractions, eventually reaching a weight of 748 lbs. While working for that show, he met and wooed Annie Bell, the Ohio Giantess, whom at 490 lbs was a little slip of a thing alongside her husband. Their 1892 wedding at Huber’s 14th Street was a major media event, with hundreds of admissions-paying onlookers in attendance. The two continued to work dime museums for their remaining years. Annie passed away in 1909. It is said that on the rebound the recovering lover often looks for the opposite of she whom he has just lost. Thus it was that in 1909, Chauncey married 100 lb. Stella Manning.

To find out about  the history of vaudeville, 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 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

James Morris, “The Rubber Man”

Born in 1859 in upstate Copenhagen, New York James Morris possessed the unique gift of being able to stretch his skin out like taffy, sometimes as far out as 18 inches.  He could pull his skin over his face like a turtleneck. He would amuse friends and co-workers with the ability at first; he began doing it professionally at J.E. Sackett’s dime museum in Providence. In 1882 he joined P.T. Barnum’s circus and toured with the show for many years throughout the United States and Europe. There are accounts of him plying his trade as late as 1898.  Though he made good money at his act, he also drank and gambled and had to earn money as a barber on the side. It is not known what became of him after the turn of the century.

To find out about  the history of vaudeville, 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 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