Olympic
Clowns
By Bruce
“Charlie” Johnson
World Clown Association
Historian
What do
Summer Olympic gymnasts and circus clowns have in common?
Some of
them use the same skills.
Bars
Both women and men compete on horizontal bars in the Summer Olympics.
The men perform on a single bar while women perform on the uneven bars.
Circus clowns have performed on the same apparatus.
I have not seen an entire clown bar act, but I have seen short film clips
of these acts. Some of them worked
on bars supported by poles at the Olympic height.
Other clowns have worked on aerial bars at the height used by trapeze
artists.
Remember that in the circus there is a fine line between a clown act and a
comedy act. The similarity is enough
that we can learn by studying these acts no matter how they are technically
categorized.
Burt Lancaster began his entertainment career performing a comedy bar act
with his partner Nick Cravat. They
had their own act, called the Lancastes, on the 1935 Gormon Bros. Circus.
In 1937 they were part of the Brocks comedy bar act touring with the Dan
Rice Circus. I have found a
reference to them performing their bar act and a perch pole act on the Kay Bros.
Circus but don’t know which year they were there.
They also appeared in vaudeville shows.
In 1941 bookings became scarce and
Lancaster
retired from the act.
After
Lancaster
became a movie star he
reunited with Cravat and recreated their act as special guest stars appearing
for four weeks with the 1949 Cole Bros. Circus.
The duo appeared together in the 1950 film titled “The Flame and The
Arrow” and two years later teamed again in “The Crimson Pirate.”
Their acrobatic skill and Cravat’s comedic talents are put to good use
in both films. A little bit of their
skill on horizontal bars is displayed in a scene of the 1952 film titled “The
Crimson Pirate.”
Walter Guice was a clown who specialized in performing on the aerial bars.
In 1906 he did an aerial bar clown act with Charles Elliot on the John H.
Sparks Old Reliable Virginia Show. In
1913 he began a two-decade association with the Sparks Circus.
That same year he used his acrobatic skill to introduce an equestrian
clown act performed with Flora Bedini, his wife.
The partners in his aerial bar act changed over the years.
His act fluctuated between a duo, a trio, and a quartet.
A review of the 1926 Sparks Circus in Billboard
magazine referred to his “twisters over the bar.”
A Billboard
magazine review of the 1931 Sparks Circus mentions his leap from the center bar,
eluding one bar, and landing on a catcher’s trapeze.
(Sometimes the aerial bar apparatus was part of the frame holding the
trapeze rigging allowing performers to move from one to the other.)
The same article reveals that Walter Guice was performing as a tramp
clown at the time. In 1937 Walter
Guice, and his troupes, performed comedy aerial bar acts with the Ringling Bros.
and Barnum & Bailey Circus™. I
don’t know how long he performed his aerial bar act, but he was still active
as a clown in 1955 appearing as part of the RBB&B Circus™ Clown Alley.
The Leaps
Leaping over or onto obstacles was a popular sport at medieval fairs and
markets and is the basis for the long jump and vaulting competitions in the
Summer Olympics. The
Art of Vaulting, by William Stokes, was published in 1652.
In it he explained how he learned to leap over horses standing side by
side, landing upon the furthest horse in a standing position or seated in the
saddle. Since the circus began as an
equestrian show, it was natural that horses would be used for the obstacles.
Phillip Astley, the father of the modern circus, performed similar feats
in his circus. (Astley gave his
first circus performance in 1768.) The
Franconis also included leaps in their eighteenth century circus performances in
England.
It was not long before clowns began demonstrating their leaping ability.
In 1801, Mr. Porter, a clown at
London
’s Royal Circus, would leap
from a springboard over a ribbon held 12 feet in the air.
He would also fire two pistols while passing through a hoop surrounded by
fireworks. (A springboard is used by
both men and women in Summer Olympic vaulting events.)
A clown named
Campbell
cleared five horses in an American circus in 1814.
Three years later he appeared with James West’s English Circus Company
in
New York
.
In addition to leaping over five horses, he threw somersaults through a
“balloon of fire.” (In circus
jargon a balloon was a paper covered hoop.)
Five years later a clown named Williams leaped over a stage wagon and six
horses.
Jean-Baptiste Auriol (1806-1881) began appearing at the Circus Olympique,
in
Paris
, in 1835.
He performed as a juggler, tumbler, equilibrist, ropedancer, equestrian,
and grotesque clown. He was
particularly noted for his leaping ability.
He could clear eight soldiers mounted on horses or 24 standing soldiers
with fixed bayonets. He was one of
the very few acrobats of his era capable of doing a double back somersault.
His popularity as a clown in
Paris
lasted for 29 years.
Around the time of the American Civil War, John Lowlow was billed as the
Georgia Cracker and Shakespearian Clown. He performed as a leaper.
After completing each trick he was known for shouting, “Bring in
another horse!” Another horse
would be led into the ever widening gap between the springboard and landing
mattress. “Bring in another
horse/elephant” became a traditional line for use by clowns performing in the
leaps. (Some leaps acts used
elephants as the living hurdle the acrobats had to clear.)
In 1880, Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth™ advertised Robert Sherwood
as the “champion acrobatic clown of the world in a double somersault over two
elephants and six horses.” (In
circus history only one person was able to surpass this feat.
In 1881, John Worland completed a triple somersault from a springboard
during shows in two locations,
Eau Claire
,
WI
and
La Crosse
,
WI
.)
Frequently a circus contract includes a clause requiring a performer to
“be generally useful.” This
clause was used to force the male performers to participate in the leaps.
This meant that the act was a combination of serious acrobats and clowns.
Some clowns were champion leapers, while others did simpler comedy bits
to add variety and humor to the performance.
Aleck Seibert wore clown make up for his jumps over eight horses with the
1887 Holland & McMahon’s Great World Circus.
In mid jump he took off his clown hat and made faces at the audience.
Just as he cleared the eighth horse he would quickly tuck into a single
somersault and land on his feet in the center of the mat.
At the turn of the century Pepe Jerome and Roberts were leaping clowns
with the 1906 Barnum And Bailey Circus™, and William Henchey was the clown in
the leaps with the 1907 The Great Van Amburg Shows.
In 1914,
Russian clown Vitaly Efimovich Laarenko became world famous when a short movie
showing him somersaulting over three elephants was distributed internationally
by the Pathe film company.
At some point It became standard practice to have a long downward slanting
ramp leading to the springboard to help leapers pick up speed.
Some of the comedy bits that were incorporated by clowns into the leaps
were based on the ramp. For example,
a clown might run down the ramp, stop just short of the springboard, remove
their hat, and scale it over the animals. Another
common gag was to run down the ramp, miss the springboard, and run across the
back of the animals. Some clowns
would hit the springboard and continue moving their legs while airborne as if
they were running on air like a cartoon character.
Another gag was to come down short landing straddling the center animal
in the line up. Sometimes a clown
would wear a break away costume tethered by a wire so it came off when they hit
the springboard. In the early
1970’s I saw a two-man leap act performing with the Polack Bros. Circus at the
Los Angeles County Fair. After the
straightman jumped through a balloon (paper covered hoop), the clown jumped
through a balloon. When he landed he
was wearing a dress. The loose
fitting costume had been sandwiched between two layers of paper covering the
hoop.
The Downie Bros. Circus featured a leaps act throughout the 1930’s in
which the clowns outnumbered the straight acrobats.
The clown participants included Johnny Bossler, Minert De Orlo, Shorty
Hiinkle, Roy Leonhardt, Billy Pape, and Stanley White.
In 1981 and 1983, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus™ Red
Unit included a revival of the leaps. I
don’t know any details of this version of the act.
The RBB&B Circus™ revived the leaps again in 1995 for the 125th
Edition of the show. The Chicago
Kidz had toured with the previous edition performing a jump rope act that
included elements of hip hop dancing. Janos
Novak, a former acrobat from
Hungary
, coached them in performing
the leaps for the new production. The
kids learned to jump over PVC hurdles the height of an elephant.
If they missed, the hurdle tipped over harmlessly.
Only after they could consistently clear the hurdles were elephants
introduced to the act. David
Larrible joined the young gymnasts in the act.
He recreated many of the traditional clown bits associated with the act.
Charivari
In Summer Olympic vaulting competitions a padded hurdle is used instead of
a living animal. However, its origin
is preserved in the name of the apparatus, a horse.
The horse has been used as a prop for clown acts.
The leaps were a slow paced act with the acrobats taking turns and
carefully setting up their approach. In
the circus a Charivari is a face paced act with tumblers rapidly leaping and
somersaulting over a horse. (Terms
often have more than one definition. A
circus Charivari can also be a noisy parade, particularly starting a show.)
Naturally this type of act would be parodied by clowns.
Among the
acrobatic acts Digger Pugh produced for Tom Arnold's 1947/48 Haringey Circus in
London
was a Clown Charivari with 15
or more clowns. The following year
there were 20 clowns in the Charivari act. That
is the earliest reference I have found for the act.
In his book, Clown Alley, Bill Balantine describes origin of the act on the
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus™.
During a scouting trip to Europe in 1973 Irvin and Kenneth Feld,
producers of the RBB&B Circus™, saw a group of Swedish acrobats, billed as
the Stupids, perform a speedy comedy vaulting act using a mini trampoline to
propel them over a chest-high horse. They
landed on a crash pad. There was one
other foreign act performing a similar act at the same time.
The Stupids and the other group had only ten people in their act.
The Felds wanted to produce a similar but larger act.
They asked Victor Gaona, patriarch of the Flying Gaona family of trapeze
artists, to create and direct the act which would feature thirty entertainers
performing forty-five leaps and falls in ninety seconds.
The act would include forward somersaults, some with half and full
twists, and some double forward somersaults.
Victor began teaching acrobatics to the 1973 Ringling Bros. and Barnum
& Bailey Clown College™ students. Using
a safety belt and lunge line to prevent injury, they began learning the tricks
on a trampoline. When Victor felt
they were ready, he had them begin vaulting over the gym horse.
In addition to performing the tumbling tricks, the clowns had to learn to
incorporate them into a comedy routine. For
example, one of the clowns would land standing upright on top of the horse.
Then he would side step the other clowns diving over the horse.
Some of the clowns would pass between his legs.
Finally, another clown would land on his chest and they would both fall
backwards to the mat. Another gag
frequently included was for one clown to land lying on the padded top of the
horse. The next clown would land
lying down on top of him. The rest of the clowns dog pile on top until they
finally all topple over sideways onto the mat.
Usually a clown in a harness, or a dummy, is pulled high into the air on
the end of a wire.
Sometimes the clown act followed a straight acrobatic act as a parody of
it. For example, the 1976 RBB&B
Circus™ Blue Unit program lists the twelfth act in the performance as
“Charivari … Followed by a Platoon of Pranksters in their own Sporty Spoof
... The Crazy Klods.”
Most often Clown Charivari was a stand alone act with its own theme.
For example, the 1984 RBB&B Circus™ Blue Unit clown alley performed
the act costumed as convicts who were attempting an escape by going over the
wall.
The 1996 RBB&B
Circus™ Blue Unit production used a clown family as a unifying theme.
For the Clown Charivari act the top of the horse was built to look like a
bed. “Baby” lay down to go to
sleep and began counting sheep. The
sheep were all costumed clowns vaulting over baby and the bed.
After their first time over, Baby got up and joined in the acrobatics.
Clown Charivari often does not have a definite ending, but in this
version it concluded with the entrance of a wolf that chased all of the sheep
away.
The acrobatic Clown Charivari is most closely associated with the Ringling
Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus™, in particular the Blue Unit, but that is
not the only place it has been performed. In
1982 I saw Mexican clown Peluzza performing a variation with the Ice Capades.
In his version, Peluzza played a convict being chased by four keystone
style cops. (Although it was
performed as a novelty act in an ice show, Peluzza and the Koppers did not wear
skates. They performed on mats
covering the ice.)
The 1996 Clyde Beatty and Cole Bros. Circus clown alley performed their
version of this routine.
The Dell’Arte International clown school used a version of an acrobatic
Charivari for the finale of their 2010 clown show.
The Italian Circus
Medrano, currently performing in
Israel
as part of an eight-month tour
of that country, concludes with a comedy vaulting act performed by male acrobats
dressed as women.
Diving
Another acrobatic Summer Olympic sport using a springboard is diving.
One of the most
unusual venues for acrobatic clowns was aquatic shows.
In one version, diving exhibitions and synchronized swimming were
combined into an entertaining production. In
the
Seattle
,
WA
area there was an aquatic show
amphitheater built on the shores of Greenlake.
Marineland of the Pacific, just north of
Los Angeles
, sometimes had a diving show
in the dolphin pool. Diving
exhibitions were performed at other amusement parks and sometimes toured
municipal pools. These shows often
included clowns performing comedy diving. I
worked at Raging Waters, in
San Dimas
,
CA
, in 1993 as a clown.
The park’s entertainment that summer included an act billed as the All
American High Dive team. Their
exhibition included some comedy dives.
Sometimes these comedy diving acts were called the Aquamaniacs.
(That name is currently used by scuba diving schools and people
interested in keeping fish in aquariums.)
They wore old fashioned swimsuits or other comedy wardrobe.
If they worked solo, the clown would get tangled up in the rails on the
diving platform and slip and fall on the board.
When they performed as teams they would often they do tandem dives or the
type of stunts performed as part of Charivai.
To view some diving clowns in action go to
http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675020791_Aquazanies_diving-stunts_Aquashow_jump-from-diving-boards
When Chuck Sidlow was a young boy his parents knew George A. Hamid, Sr.,
the owner of the Steel Peer in
Atlantic City
,
NJ
. The
attractions on the peer included Diving Horses.
Chuck told me that as an attention getting pre-show
Acapulco
cliff divers would come out of
the audience and “fall” into the water.
The group included a midget dressed as a little boy.
The announcer would warn his “mother” to keep her boy away from the
edge. Of course, the boy ended up
diving into the water. Chuck said
that when the midget was not able to perform he took his place.
The clowns working at the Circus World amusement park in
Florida
between 1976 and 1986
performed a comedy diving show. Kenny
Ahern began his professional career performing at that park.
A group of swimming and diving clowns appeared at Clown Camp
® in 2000 as part of the Twentieth Anniversary Celebration.
They were the Triton Aquatic Clowns from
Tokyo
,
Japan
.
The did not do high diving, but performed their comedy on the regular
diving boards, the deck around the pool, and in the water of the University of
Wisconsin – La Crosse swimming pool.
In 1957 Arthur Concello produced a unique comedy high dive act for the
Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus™.
A diving board and changing booth were built into the frame for the
aerial rigging. Concello recruited
members of the flying trapeze acts to perform the standard clown diving gags.
However, instead of landing in water, they landed in a new style safety
net that provided more spring than the nets formerly used by trapeze acts.
In another interesting hybrid a solo clown performs some of the diving
gags, but instead of landing in a pool of water they land on a trampoline.
Larry Griswold’s performance of this type of act on Frank Sinatra’s
television show
Nov. 13, 1951
has been preserved and is
available for viewing on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OShqwy_U-o4
More recently Don Otto performed a similar type of act titled the Diving
Fool. I saw him perform his act in
an edition of the Ice Capades about twenty years ago. Don’s
act is also available for viewing online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwjWT31cJgs
When you watch
this year’s Summer Olympics from
London
keep in mind that the history
of clowning includes many comedy gymnastic acts by Olympic caliber athletes.
That is one more thing we can take pride in when we think about our
wonderful art that has embraced many different performance styles over the
centuries.
Barnum & Bailey Circus™, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey
Circus™, RBB&B Circus™, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown
College™, and the Greatest Show On Earth™ are all trademarks of Feld
Entertainment, Inc.
Originally published in the July 2012 issue of Clowning Around.
Copyright
2012 by Bruce “Charlie” Johnson. All
rights reserved.
