Wally Boag –
Clown Prince of
Disneyland
By Bruce “Charlie” Johnson
I did a
special Halloween night performance in 1987 while on tour with the Family
Showcase Theater, a one-ring indoor circus. When
I entered for my first clown act, I was wearing a gorilla mask.
Bill Reynolds, the Ringmaster, told me to take off the mask.
I took it off and then performed my act.
When I entered for my juggling act I was wearing the gorilla mask again.
Bill reminded me that I couldn’t wear the mask while performing.
Reluctantly I removed it slowly.
When I entered to perform my second clown act I was wearing the gorilla
mask for the third time. Bill
demanded that I give him the mask.
Quickly I removed the gorilla mask revealing that this time I was wearing an old
man mask underneath it. I performed
my act wearing that mask. That was
the only time I have performed that routine.
I thought it was appropriate for the day.
It was also my tribute to Wally Boag, a performer I had seen perform the
mask gag. While I was growing up in
Wally Boag
(September 13, 1920 – June 3, 2011) was sometimes referred to as the Clown
Prince of
Wally did
have a tremendous influence upon other entertainers.
In their autobiographies, Julie Andrews and Steve Martin each paid
tribute to Wally and his influence upon them.
When Julie
Andrews was twelve-years-old, she was an audience plant in Wally’s act in a
review called “Starlight Roof.” When
he asked if anybody would like a balloon sculpture he had just completed, Julie
would come up on stage from the audience.
After he gave her a balloon dog, he would ask what she did when she
wasn’t in school. She would reply,
“I can sing – a little.” Then she
surprised the audience by singing “Polonaise” from Mignon with an F above a C.
Comedian
Steve Martin worked at
The cover of Wally's Autobiography
Wally’s
first performance was a comedy dance at a family gathering when he was five.
His own career began at the age of seven when he was booked for three
weeks doing a “Dutch” dance routine with Shirley Ann Handlesman.
When he was sixteen he had his own dance school where he taught classes
while his parents managed the business.
By the age of eighteen he began performing in Burlesque theaters, playing
clarinet in the pit band and appearing on stage in sketches.
He began touring vaudeville doing dance routines and serving as the
emcee. These appearances gave him a
firm understanding of comedy.
Wally’s dance training equipped him for physical comedy and gave him a feeling
for rhythm. Steve Martin said,
“Wally had something about him, an infectious happiness and a mysterious
something else I later learned was called comic timing. Everything he did had a
rhythm, and it all came together in a kind of comedic concert as he charmed and
teased the audience.”
Like many
young entertainers Wally tried to find a unique identity for himself.
In 1940 he discovered it when he learned balloon sculpture.
Wally was not the first balloon artist.
In his autobiography, Wally credits Tom Gary with teaching him how to
make a dachshund out of four airship balloons.
That is the only balloon sculpture that Tom knew.
Wally invented his own multiple balloon sculptures including a clown, a
jockey riding a horse, various animals, and hats accented with strings of beads.
Wally conceived of the idea of building an entire act around balloon
sculpture. Mark Leddy, one of the
biggest talent agents in vaudeville in the 1940’s, didn’t know of any other
balloon acts when he began booking Wally in 1941.
Wally’s
accomplishments as a balloon artist are impressive.
He performed his balloon act in
How did
Wally manage to achieve so much with a balloon sculpture act?
First, he developed an entertaining premise.
He entered holding four uninflated balloons in his hand.
He introduced his balloon sculptures by saying, “I have a new approach to
psychology. Now you may not know
much about psychology, but let me explain.
You can never be happy in life unless you understand what makes you
miserable. – Now you can tell something about a person’s character by the way
they blow up a toy balloon. For
example, this is a straight forward type.”
Then he inflated a balloon so it filled from the nozzle towards the
nipple. “That is how a straight
forward type would fill a balloon.
Now some people are backwards.” He
inflated a balloon so the air filled the nipple first and then continued towards
the nozzle. (He accomplished this by
stretching the nipple end of the balloon before he entered the stage.)
“Then there are those who are scatter brained.”
He inflated a balloon so it started filling at the nipple end, and then
the nozzle end started inflating, and finally the center of the balloon filled.
(He accomplished this by stretching the nipple end before the show, and
then after the balloon started inflating he pinched the center closed so the air
was limited to the nozzle end.)
Each time
he inflated a balloon he had a different method and joke.
When he announced his impression of a near sighted person the balloon
curved around while he inflated it so the end hit him in the eye.
He announced the thoughts of some people go around in circles, and then
curved a balloon as he inflated it.
Without tying it he curled it further into a circle.
When he released the balloon it spun around in midair in front of him as
he commented, “Their life doesn’t seem to go anywhere.”
When he inflated a small balloon for the ears of a giraffe he said, “This
is a boring person. As you can see
he doesn’t have very many thoughts.”
While he
twisted balloons together, he told jokes.
Some were related to the animals he sculpted.
For example, while making a dog he said, “I had to sell my dog.
He ran in front of my lawn mower and I accidentally cut off his tail.
I had to sell him wholesale because I couldn’t retail him.”
Some of his jokes were topical.
For example, while performing in
Wally used
convoluted statements. For example,
after his balloon act, Wally would announce, “At this time, I would like to
feature the pedal extremities using the metatarsal portion of the flanges and
the vulnerable part of the Achilles anatomy, and with my soles spasmodically
coming into direct contact with the flooring, I shall endeavor to perambulate to
the tempo of the musical composition.
Or, in other words, I’m gonna do a dance.”
Wally also
used alliteration. For example, at
the “Golden Horseshoe Review” he introduced himself to the audience as “Wally
Boag, that loud, long, lean, loquacious, sometimes laconic lunatic who loves to
deal, delve, and dabble into delirious dialogues and dynamic dissertations … In
other words, I’m a traveling salesman.”
Over the
years Wally added more variety to his acts.
In 1947, while performing in
In 1950
Wally developed a ventriloquist act while performing in
In 1955, a
friend suggested that Wally audition for a new amusement park opening in
Wally
performed three acts in
He removed
a pack of cards from his carpet bag, announced his impression of
Wally
included a short portion of his balloon act in the Traveling Salesman routine.
After making a dachshund from four balloons he would bring a child up
from the audience. He interviewed
them before presenting them with the sculpture.
He would start to extend the dog to them with his left hand.
When they began to reach for it with their right hand he would shoot out
his right hand to shake with them.
He would repeat this several times before letting them succeed in getting their
prize.
Wally
ended his routine by asking the pianist if he knew a little ditty titled “When
They Operated on Father, They Opened Mother’s Male.”
While the pianist played a few bars, Wally did some dance steps.
Then he removed his toupee commenting on how hot it was getting.
When people laughed he would say, “What did you expect … feathers?”
Sometimes he would respond to an audience comment he pretended to hear by
saying, “I heard you madam. She
said, ‘He looked so young.’”
In his
second act, Wally would join Slue Foot Sue in singing “Pecos Bill,” a song from
a Disney cartoon. Wally would
announce that he was the fastest draw in the world.
Then he stood motionless as a pistol was fired in the wings.
He would ask the audience, “Want to see it again?”
That is a gag I have used when I produced clown sharpshooter routines.
When Wally
and Sue got to the line “ he gathered up those crooked villains and knocked out
their fillings,” Slue Foot Sue hit him in the jaw and he began spitting out
teeth which were actually Navy Beans.
He discovered that he got better audience reaction the more beans he used
because people were curious about how many he was able to hold in his cheeks.
In one performance I counted over 50 beans.
He started doing dance steps while he continued spouting beans.
The piano and trumpet player would grab ping pong paddles to hit the
beans back up onto the stage.
When Walt
Disney World opened in
During the
“Golden Horseshoe Revue,” Wally joined the rest of the cast in the finale which
included a rousing rendition of the Can Can.
He would sometimes join the dance hall girls and show off some of his
steps.
As people
left the Golden Horseshoe Saloon they could purchase Wally Boag’s Boag-aloon
kit. It contained some air ship
balloons and balloon sculpture instructions.
During his night club days Wally had sold balloon kits in envelopes.
At
In the
early days
He wrote
the “Enchanted Tiki Room” show and provided the voice of Jose, one of the four
host birds. In 1980, Wally re-wrote the show for Tokyo Disneyland.
Verbal jokes don’t translate well so he worked with a Japanese comic in
developing the script. He asked for
a line that would cause the children to laugh when the thunder and lightning
began. The comic suggested “cover
your belly button.” According to
Wally while that line isn’t funny in
Wally
learned that culture plays a part in a joke’s acceptance internationally.
When he performed in
The
“10,000th Golden Horseshoe Revue Performance” was expanded into an
hour long show by using guest stars and filmed for the 1961 Season opener of”
Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” television show.
It was then turned into a theatrical featurette film distributed
internationally. The special
performance concluded with a bar room fight that showcased some of Wally’s
physical comedy.
In 1962
the bar room scene was included in a stage show titled “Disney’s America” that
opened at the Hollywood Bowl and then went to Radio City Music Hall.
Wally performed his Pecos Bill routine as part of the show.
Wally did
promotional tours for Disney movies.
In 1961, he toured the country doing live performances promoting the film “One
Hundred and One Dalmations.” The
tour included an appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show” where he did his balloon
act concluding with presenting Ed with a dog made out of white balloons covered
in black spots. He also went on
personal appearance tours to promote “The Jungle Book” (1967), “
Wally
appeared in some of the Disney movies.
In “The Absent Minded Professor” he played a reporter, and he also
doubled for Fred MacMurray in one scene by wearing a special customized mask to
portray Professor Brainard bouncing around in the gymnasium.
Wally appeared as the father in a Flubberoleum television commercial that
was part of the “Son of Flubber.” He
also made a cameo appearance in “The Love Bug.”
Wally
retired from the Golden Horseshoe Revue on
Some of
Wally’s performances have been preserved for our study.
He performed an acrobatic dance routine in
However,
the most important thing that I learned from Wally Boag was possible only from
being fortunate enough to see him in many live performances over a period of
years. Each performance was a little
bit different. While he had his
standard bits that he always performed he constantly added new little bits and
jokes. In his autobiography Wally
said, “Most of all, I’d learned how to work with my audience.
People often said they liked my act from the first minute because I
appeared to be friendly – and I was.
I really loved interacting with the audience, and I had learned how to handle
those once-in-a-lifetime moments that happen when your audience is really in
tune with you. I learned how to
ad-lib and deal with those unanticipated situations.”
My
audience interaction style of performing is based on what I absorbed from
watching Wally entertain his audiences.
As he inspired me, I hope to inspire other entertainers.
