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Emmett Blackwelder, the Turtle Man

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Today is the birthday of Emmett Blackwelder (1923-1996). Born in North Carolina with limbs (all four of them) that stopped at the joint, the highlight of his act consisted of juggling with wooden paddleballs. He performed in Ward Hall’s and Chris Christ’s sideshows, invested wisely, and retired in 1984.

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.

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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

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This entry was posted on December 28, 2012 at 7:56 am and is filed under Dime Museum and Side Show, Human Anomalies (Freaks), Limbs, Missing or Small with tags , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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