travsd

Landon Middlecoff: The Kentucky Giant Boy

Apparently, a reference to Kentucky in one’s professional name possessed a kind of sideshow distinction back in the day. Heretofore we have written on Martin Van Buren Bates, the Kentucjy Giant and John Powers, the Kentucky Giant Fat Boy. The handle of Landon Middlecoff (1857-1885) seems to hearken back to back to both of those, in spite of the fact that he was born Tennessee, lived in Midland, Michigan, and died in Quincy Illinois. Middlecoff apparently spent a chunk of his youth in the Bluegrass state. By age 19, he was seven and a half feet tall and working dime museums throughout the country. In the early 1880s he played several seasons with W.W. Cole’s Circus. In 1884 he had a long term engagement at Peoria’s E.E. Piper dime museum, when TB got the better of him. He went to rest at a friend’s in nearby Quincy, where he died several months later.

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.