Know thou of the Giant Shoe Museum at Pike Place Market in Seattle? Its purview is not shoes as big as houses (although that’s entirely possible), but rather shoes worn by pituitary giants, including those of the famous Robert Wadlow. We mention it today because, in addition to being the Ides of March, March 15 also happens to be National Shoe the World Day.
The day is designed to raise awareness of the fact that in a world of abundance, many lack something as seemingly basic as footwear. It’s no laughing matter. My dad, who grew up on a Tennessee farm during the Depression, lacked shoes throughout his childhood, and once sustained a major infection from an exposed sore which necessitated a doctor’s visit, a rare indulgence for the family at the time. In adulthood, his feet were gnarled, maimed-looking appendages. They looked like they were made of barnacles. At the opposite end of the spectrum, you have Filipino First Lady Imelda Marcos, whose 3,000 pairs of shoes caused an international scandal in the 1980s.
It’s hard for us in 21st century America to concieve of people going without shoes, as every Goodwill and Salvation Army seems to have bins full of discarded kicks available to purchase for the price of a cup of coffee. But abroad, there are still scenes like this to be found (this was taken in Sudan):
There are many charities that accept donated shoes and they are easily found on the internet. Have at it! But enough with the spinach, now for the dessert. In fact, a dozen or so desserts. Something as fundamental to human health and happiness as footwear is bound to play a role in entertainment history. We were able to cook up this little trad show biz listicle tracing that history with very little effort. So lace up your hiking boots for a little tramp down Cobbler’s Alley!
Stories with plots resembling the fairy tale Cinderella go all the way back to ancient times. Print versions of the tale closer to the one with which we are familiar date to the 17th century. It became a staple of English Panto starting in the early 1800s. There are more screen versions (and parodies and homages) than you can name, but some key ones I would mention here include an 1899 one by Georges Melies; Thanhouser’s 1911 version starring Florence La Badie, directed by George Nichols; the Mary Pickford version from 1914; Walt Disney’s 1950 animated feature; and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1957 musical, which was created especially for television.
The Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus Museum in Sarasota has these, the slapshoes Emmett Kelly wore as Weary Willie. Whoever wore the first over-sized clown shoes is one of those questions that cannot ever be answered. It seems likely that the first funny shoes arrived shortly after the invention of shoes themselves, and that Eureka moment would be pre-historic. But we do know that pioneers like Joseph Grimaldi and Tom Belling were instrumental in making big shoes a permament and indispensible part of the wardrobe of auguste clowns and tramp comedians.
English music hall comic Little Tich’s shoes were almost as big as he was!
In 1904, comic strip character Buster Brown became the mascot for the Brown Shoe Company. There were many stage and screen incarnations of the character subsequently, as chronicled here.
When I was researching my book No Applause, I visited it the Library of Congress to see, among other things, their exhibition Bob Hope and American Variety. That’s where I came upon these: Eddie Foy’s dancing shoes, circa 1910. Material culture isn’t always my thing, but really important objects strike me to my heart. I must have gaped at these puppies for a half hour.
Charlie Chaplin eats his own shoe in The Gold Rush (1925)
A promotion for a shoe company lies at the heart of Harry Langdon’s Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), as emphasized by this French poster.
Harold Lloyd plays a shoe salesman in his first full talkie feature Feet First (1930)
In the 1934 Hal Roach holiday classic March of the Wooden Soldiers a.k.a Babes in Toyland, Florence Roberts played Widow Peep, a.k.a. The Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe. I couldnt find a good still photo depicting the shoe’s exterior, but here’s an interior with core cast and co-director Gus Meins.
There are numerous screen adaptations of the fairy tale about the Shoemaker and the Elves. I chose this still from Walter Lantz’s Jolly Little Elves (1934) on account of its shockingly anti-semitic imagery, which was an unfortunate trope in vaudeville and the cartooning world. With anti-semitism on the rise yet again, it seems a good moment to point out that it should never be downplayed and it’s never harmless.
Haha, a hit, a palpable hit! A moment in history allows us to observe Shoe the World Day and the Ides of March in one swoop. In 1938 Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre presented Thomas Dekker’s hilarious Elizabethan comedy The Shoemaker’s Holiday in repertory with their groundbreaking production of Julius Caesar!
Jerry Lewis’s shoe department scenes in Who’s Minding the Store? (1963) are on my shortlist for his funniest moments on celluoid. They also contain what I believe to be his quintessintial expressions of “Hey, Lady!”
On Married With Children (1987-97), anti-hero Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill) usually regarded his 9-to-5 as a shoe salesman as a bleak existential ordeal. Despite the fact that a good part of the time, it allowed for lecherous burlesquery like this.
In 2006, Liam Kyle Sullivan scored an old-fashioned 15 minutes of fame when her drag character Kelly sang a techno-parody song called “Shoes” which became an internet sensation. I saw her perform it live in a variety show hosted and produced by Margaret Cho around that time. There was definitely some vaudeville happening in that room! I reviewed the show for Time Out New York and was ecstatic to see just now that it’s up on the official Margaret Cho website (Kelly’s not mentioned, but the shoe is…I mean the show is. See what I did there? It’s a little thing I learned from Ed Sullivan. )
For more on the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on classic film comedy please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.
(Travalanche) 
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