3 THE TEN-IN-ONE

THE QUINTESSENTIAL TYPE OF SIDESHOW, often called a freak show (or sometimes a kid show to distinguish it from more adult-oriented amusements), is known in circus and carnival parlance as the ten-in-one. It was created in 1904 at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE). Until then, midway attractions were of the single-O type, that is, individual exhibits. These sideshows can be of two types, either pit shows or platform shows. Pit shows are “typically viewed from above by climbing stairs and filing past a plywood enclosure or small room visible only to the paying patron” (Davies 1996). Platform shows utilize elevated staging (Taylor 1997, 92; Nelson 1999, 155; McKennon 1972, 2:100–101, 149).

In 1904 Walter K. Sibley, an ex-prize fighter and professional bicycle racer turned carny, had some little pit shows—a big snakes exhibit, a pair of fat boys, and a couple of other features, including a baboon that Sibley imaginatively named Zeno the Ape Man. That year the CNE midway was crowded, so Sibley hit on a plan. He consolidated his four pits inside two tents placed side by side, and he showed the exhibits for a single admission price.

Competing showmen complained about Sibley's “four-in-one,” which did a thriving business, grossing more than all four shows would have done separately. By the following year Sibley had acquired a special long tent to enclose several exhibits, and that pioneering show debuted at a fair in Waco, Texas. Again his competitors protested, but only briefly, before hastening to get long tents themselves and thus group their attractions (McKennon 1972, 2:101–2).

In the following pages I describe the setup and operation of the ten-in-one, from its main external features—the banner line and bally platform—to the acts and exhibits inside the show tent and culminating in the blowoff.

The Banner Line

Being a type of string show, the classic ten-in-one has the requisite banner line to visually advertise the wonders of the show (figure 3.1). Stretched in front of the long show tent, this row of banners consists of colorfully painted canvases, typically one for each exhibit or act, which is usually depicted in an exaggerated manner. The banner line is part of the show's front (or outside portion), which also includes such other elements as the ticket booth and signs (figure 3.2); however, there are also non-banner-line fronts (such as the painted panels used for many single-O attractions).

Such banners—for individual amusements—were prominent at eighteenth-century fairs, as shown in the aquatint of London's Bartholomew Fair in 1721 (Jay 2001). One banner illustrates a tightrope walker with his balancing pole and proclaims, “Rope Dancing is here.” Another pictures the magician Isaac Fawkes exhibiting his “Dexterity of hand.” Among others is one showing three poses of a contortionist, who is dubbed “Famous posture master.”

As we know from other rare old prints, traveling British and American showmen used hanging banners to advertise their exhibits. One British itinerant had a canvas depicting a bear, labeled “The Man of the Woods”; another, suitably illustrated, heralded “The Surprising Camel.” From a presumably rented building, one banner dangled from a projecting cross-arm, while the other hung flat against the little structure's front. Both banners had their bottom ends stitched around a rod that provided weight and support to keep the cloth unfurled (McKennon 1972, 1:22). These banners were practical. They could be painted by artists who were used to working on canvas. They were also durable and—being lightweight, rollable, and foldable, and thus compact for storage—were ideal for travel.

The British showman's American counterpart displayed an “African Bison” in 1818 in Charleston, South Carolina. The local newspaper, the Charleston Courier, made reference to the banner, one of the earliest recorded in America, by stating that the exotic animal's “likeness will be hung at the corner of Meeting and Ellery Street” (Polacsek 1996, 31).

Banners were common to the outside shows—sometimes called side-shows—that followed circuses and menageries in the mid-nineteenth century and set up on nearby lots. One in Ohio in 1858 consisted of about half a dozen tents, each with a single attraction and an accompanying banner. According to the Bucyrus (Ohio) Journal: “One contained a French Giant, with a Prussian name and an English face, whose portrait outside occupied full 12 feet of canvas. Another hid from public sight the ‘Skeleton Man’ whose merits and perfections were not only depicted upon canvas, but were noisily heralded to an admiring crowd by a round, brandy-faced Johnny bull [i.e., Englishman]” (Polacsek 1996, 31).

FIGURE 3.1. A banner line graces the Museum of World Oddities sideshow at the 2004 Erie County Fair. (Photo by author)

FIGURE 3.2. The banner line is part of the sideshow front that includes the ticket booth and other features. (Photo by author)

The precise origin of the banner line is uncertain, but it is clear that individual banners began to be juxtaposed in various ways. In 1863 a showman named Joseph Cushing purchased the privilege (or concession) to exhibit a sideshow with the L. B. Lent Equescirriculum, an early railroad circus. Cushing conducted his show beneath a round top (circular tent) fifty feet in diameter. According to a banner historian, the circular sidewall (the canvas wall portion) of Cushing's tent had “every available spot on it covered with full-length paintings” (Polacsek 1996, 31). An 1873 photograph of P. T. Barnum's “Great Show” documents an array of huge pictorial canvases delineating the sideshow area. At one end, a banner bears the cameo portraits of the Bunnell brothers, who were owners of Barnum's sideshow privilege. Although it is difficult to see each banner clearly in the panoramic photo, one obviously depicts a giant (identifiable by the smaller people pictured around him), another a colossal fat lady, and still another a “living skeleton.” (I suspect the last two were Hannah Battersby and her husband John, who are discussed in chapter 4) (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 199, 232–33; Bogdan 1990, 210).

Show banners often took “theatrical license” and dramatically or comically exaggerated the exhibits. For example, in 1842 Barnum hung an eight-foot-tall banner outside the New York Concert Hall, where his Fejee Mermaid debuted. The advertisement showed a lovely, bare-breasted, living specimen of the fabled entity, yet visitors discovered inside a hideous, seemingly mummified creature that, Barnum admitted, appeared to have “died in great agony” (Kunhardt et al.1995, 41). As a more modern example, one of the banners of the Hall & Christ Show in the late 1960s (and another in the 1970s) pictured Sealo the Seal Boy with a human head on the body of a seal and accompanied by “other” seals (Hall 1981, 56, 72). (Actually, such “seal children” typically have a deformity in which vestigial feet and hands are attached to the torso, discussed in chapter 6.) Another clever style of exaggerating was to have, among the standard-size banners, one that was doubly tall for a giant or excessively wide for a fat lady (Johnson et al. 1996, 160; Barth 2002).

FIGURE 3.3. Legendary showman Bobby Reynolds strikes a characteristic pose beneath colorful banners. At left is the bally platform. (Photo by author)

According to Freak Show (Bogdan 1990, 101): “Some banners gave the impression that an attraction was alive when in fact it was in a jar, preserved. Other banners depicted exhibits in thick jungle fighting wild animals or battling with their captors. Still others showed the exhibit dressed elegantly and being received by nobility. Bannerline paintings of midgets depicted exhibits as being so small that they could stand in the palm of a normal-sized person.”

The banner line caught the eye, and the individual placards piqued the curiosity and imagination of the spectator (figure 3.3). The row of canvases might be longer than the tent, or there might be a double-tiered banner line so that the show looked larger than it actually was (rather like the false front used in architecture). If the midway was crowded with attractions, however, the ten-in-one showman might have to “crescent” his line inward to fit the available space. In any case, there was a gap in the middle so that customers could pass from the ticket booth into the tent (Polacsek 1996; Mannix 1996, 73).

Since sideshow exhibits involved many traditional themes—fat lady, midget, Punch and Judy, rubber man, and so forth—paintings representing such typical attractions were advertised ready-made by some artists. For the same reason, the canvases were sometimes offered for sale secondhand.

The early canvases were regarded as examples of fine art, reflecting their origin in the studios of painters. These were often the same artists who did murals, theatrical scenery, and other commercial offerings. Some artists began to specialize, such as the Williamsburg, New York, firm of J. Bruce, Show Painter, who advertised “paintings” of a lady snake charmer, magician, bearded lady, and other standard attractions (Polacsek 1996).

After the advent of the traveling midway at the end of the nineteenth century, show “paintings” gave way to a new genre of sideshow banners. “Banner artwork,” states Polacsek (1996, 36), “became more illusionistic—fiction on canvas—rather than depictions of reality.” In time, the artwork-like style of the old canvases evolved into the more hard-edged poster, even caricature, style of later banners (Hammer and Bosker 1996). Often a banner sported a bullet—a term probably borrowed from sign painters for a large circle of color sporting a word or phrase such as “ALIVE” or “SEE THIS” (Keyser 2001; Johnson et al. 1996).

Among the great twentieth-century banner painters was David “Snap” Wyatt, who had a good compositional sense and a bold, almost cartoonish style. He flourished during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, producing a great quantity of banners from his studio near Tampa, Florida. His nickname came from the vernacular of sign painters, who, lacking work, would take to the road “snapping signs,” that is, grabbing whatever sign jobs could be had (Meah 1996). Snap Wyatt told William Lindsay Gresham, author of Monster Midway (1953, 157):

“I always try to think of new angles,” he told me, lighting a fresh cigar and sweeping a host of paintbrushes and cans away from a corner of a table so I could sit down. He gathered up a handful of brushes, examined them and then threw them into a bin. “These are ready to give away,” he explained. “Working on canvas the way I do, it knocks hell out of brushes. Takes a new set for each banner. The canvas I use has got to be tough. If it comes up wind you've got to drop your banner line—if you have time. If you don't use heavy canvas your banners will rip all to hell and gone like boardinghouse sheets. But I’m always trying to figure out a new angle. Like one season I tried out banners all in black and white. You know what I mean—a novelty. Something different. Now I’m back again, using color. But those black and whites were a change from the old stuff. They really stood out, across the midway.”

An even greater banner artist was Fred G. Johnson, who had a sixty-five-year career painting canvases for such great circuses as Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey and Clyde Beatty. He began in 1909 as a seventeen-year-old apprentice at the United States Tent and Awning Company, soon progressing to banner artist. During World War I he painted U.S. Army ammunition trucks. He later painted for another tent company and after its bankruptcy in 1929 worked out of his own Chicago garage. Beginning in 1934 he signed on with the O’Henry Tent and Awning Company in Chicago, where he worked for the next forty years. Johnson's banners included “Dickie the Penguin Boy,” “Amazon Snake Charmer,” “Waltzing Dogs,” “Huey the Pretzel Man,” “Albino Girl,” “World's Smallest Man,” and many more. One impressive Johnson banner was a whopping 8 by 19 feet and portrayed “The Royal Family of Strange People: Freaks Past & Present.” In 2000, while I was researching voodoo in New Orleans’ French quarter, I lucked upon a big Johnson banner in Whisnant Galleries on Chartres Street, self-proclaimed “dealers in unusual collectibles.” The banner caught my eye from the sidewalk. At 126 by 116 inches (roughly 10 feet square), it was taking up much of a wall. The gallery graciously permitted me to photograph the painting (see figure 3.4), titled “Major John the Frog Boy” and dated 1940.

FIGURE 3.4. “Major John the Frog Boy,” painted by the great banner artist Fred G. Johnson and discovered in a New Orleans gallery. (Photo by author)

Johnson's technique has been recorded (Whisnant 2000):

Much like other painters of the period, he used a traditional orange and yellow framing curtain around a centralized image. Using white crayons, boiled linseed oil, benzene, and Dutch Boy white lead paint, Johnson perfected a technique that permitted him to work on up to five banners simultaneously. He sketched in the outlines with charcoal and then inked the subjects with black paint to maintain the integrity of the outline. Johnson applied a thin coat of white lead paint on top of water, linseed oil, and benzene. With the canvas primed in this manner, he applied the background and figures and then let them dry. The next day he added finishing details. He never varnished the canvas because he feared the canvases might stiffen and crack.

Fairgrounds art collector Jim Secreto (1996) would add, “The key ingredient in Fred G. Johnson's banner is color—known as FLASH.”

FIGURE 3.5. Banners by the versatile Johnny Meah grace the front of the Hall & Christ World of Wonders sideshow. (Photo by Benjamin Radford)

One of today's premier banner artists is known affectionately to carnies (and carny aficionados) as “The Great” Johnny Meah. Unusual among modern banner painters, Meah was once a carny himself—a sword swallower, a human blockhead, and a fire-eater—as well as a brush wielder. He has painted many of his visually strong, brilliantly colored canvases (figures 3.5 and 3.6), signed “MEAH Studios,” for the Hall & Christ Show, a classic ten-in-one that I had the opportunity to visit on Pennsylvania midways in 2000 and 2001.

The Hall & Christ Show provided an interesting twist on the traditional front. Ward Hall and his longtime partner Chris Christ had an ingenious setup. Their show traveled in two semitrailers—one for living quarters, the other for the rest of the show. Each had banner-style art painted on one side by their friend Johnny Meah; the artwork was covered during travel by hinged panels that opened out to display additional “banners.” So, to make a banner line, the trucks were parked parallel to the midway, end to end, except for the necessary walkway between. I asked Ward where this idea for double-duty use of the trucks came from. He replied: “It is nothing new. If you look at pictures of the Ringling show—even before the Ringling show, if you look at some pictures of the last years of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, and you'll see that they had a solid front, and it was on wagons. On the Ringling show they had four wagons that folded out and made the front. And then they had a banner that went between the two for the doorway” (Hall 2001).

FIGURE 3.6. More banners by Johnny Meah. (Photo by Benjamin Radford)

Whatever its precise form, the banner line has been a mainstay of circus and carnival sideshows, although with the decline of such amusements, the canvases are becoming historical treasures and art collectibles. Johnson's “Major John the Frog Boy,” which I happened upon in New Orleans, was priced at $8,500.

Banners, however, are only one part of an effective package that ten-in-one showmen use to draw a crowd. The other includes a spieler and a free sample show held outside on what is called the bally platform.

FIGURE 3.7. On the elevated bally platform—part of the front of the World of Wonders sideshow—Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf draws a crowd, known to carnies as a tip. (Photo by author)

The Bally Platform

The term ballyhoo, meaning flamboyant or sensational publicity, comes to us from the midway—the Midway Plaisance of the 1893 world's fair, in fact. The spielers (as they were then called) used interpreters to summon the Eastern entertainers using a certain Arabic term that has been variously represented (e.g., Mencken 1919). Carnival historian Joe McKennon cites Jean DeKreko, an old carnival showman who was actually at the 1893 fair; DeKreko represented it as Dehalla Hoon, which supposedly meant “come here.” But for that meaning, the phrase would be ta'ala huna, according to Tariq Ismail, an Arabic-speaking friend I consulted. In any case, as McKennon (1972, 1:39) goes on to explain: “If the interpreter was away and the talker wanted his people out front, he used that word himself. He pronounced it a little differently, though. To his Western ear it sounded like ‘Ballyhoo.’”

Ever since, outdoor showmen have used the term, often shortened to bally, to call their performers out front. Bally is also the term for the free entertainment given outside a sideshow on an elevated stand called a bally platform (figure 3.7). The bally is used to draw a crowd—or tip, in carny lingo. Showmen speak of building a tip, and the goal is to turn the tip, that is, convince the spectators to buy tickets for the show.

FIGURE 3.8. The outside talker works the bally at Coney Island's Sideshows by the Seashore. (Photo by author)

The spieler who works the bally, in effect a pitchman for a show, is known as a talker (figure 3.8). Sometimes this important figure is called the outside talker to distinguish him from his counterpart, the inside talker or lecturer (discussed later). Between ballys, another spieler—usually doubling as the ticket seller—often fills in. This grinder is not trying to build and turn a tip but simply trying to move more patrons inside (Keyser 2001; Nelson 1999, 94–95).

McKennon (1972, 1:33) insists that “no talker in outdoor show business has ever been called a barker by fellow showmen.” Nevertheless, I have found the term in the memoirs of lion tamer George Conklin (1921, 156), and it may have had currency in circus lingo at one time. In any case, according to Derek Nelson, in his American State Fair (1999, 95):

By the 1950s, barkers had become “talkers,” using microphones and loudspeakers, instead of the old megaphones. When the Minnesota fair offered three sideshows (a freak show, “Harlem in Havana,” and “Moulin Rouge”) on the midway, a corresponding trio of talkers worked the crowd as they made their circuit. Kenneth “Duke” Wilson of Venice, Florida, labeled “king of the talkers” in a contemporary article, was last; the best talker handled the third show because he had the last chance at the crowd's money. As always, psychology was at work. Ticket sellers did their jobs very slowly during the first few sales to make the crowd pile up, which in turn made the people in the back more anxious to get in. Talkers repeated, “Show time! Show time!” over and over, even when the show was 45 minutes away.

One of the great talkers of his day was Nate Eagle. Profiled by the New Yorker in 1958, Eagle was called “the last of the great carnival ‘talkers.’” He was described as “silky, persuasive, sarcastic, deeply misleading, confidential, ingratiating, hugely adaptable, often insulting, and, at the core, impossible to ruffle by anything attributable to God, man, or nature.” A carnival owner, Fred Beckman, once said to Eagle, “You have all the ingredients necessary to rise in your profession—a deceptively honest face, a genius for legitimate fraud, no conscience, a golden tongue, and a feeling that a quarter in somebody else's pocket is a personal rebuke” (Nelson 1999, 95, 121).

Daniel P. Mannix—who once worked for a carnival, then turned his experiences into a quasi-novelized account titled Step Right Up!—describes a talker working a bally in the late 1940s:

The talker was standing on the front edge of the platform talking into the hand mike. “Step right up! Friends, you are now standing in front of the premier attraction of the midway, Krinko's Great Combined Circus Side Shows.” His voice came booming back to us from two loud-speakers hung at both ends of the tent. “Inside here we have the greatest congregation of attractions ever to appear under one top. If you will look from one end of the banner line”—he leaned over the edge of the platform and waved the mike toward the long line of brightly colored canvas paintings in front of the tent—“right down to the other, you will see the acts which we present on the inside.”

Mannix continues, describing a common bally feature called a snake charmer (illustrated in chapter 9), among others:

May stepped forward with her snake, and without looking around the talker put his hand on her shoulder. “This is Conchita, whose mother was frightened by a snake, thus giving her innocent child a strange power over reptiles. Over here, we have Bronko Billy, fresh from the plains of the Great West, with genuine cowboy feats to amaze and interest the kiddies.” The cowboy, looking very fine in his buckskin suit, spun a loop with his rope, and then sent it shooting up into the air for a flashing second. “Captain Billy, the most tattooed man in the world, and his Bed of Pain!” Captain Billy shucked off his shirt for a moment and turned slowly around. “Madame Roberta, the gypsy queen, who will read your palms and tell your futures by the secret methods of the ancient gypsies combined with modern, scientific techniques!” The elderly lady in the gypsy costume stepped forward and bowed. “And finally, we have Krinko himself! The magician straight from Egypt, presenting mysteries of the Orient for your approval!” Old man Krinko waddled forward, bowing and waving.

After mentioning a five-legged horse, the talker turns the tip, using a common ploy:

“The performers are now leaving the platform and the show is about to start. The admission price is fifty cents to adults and twenty-five cents to kids. But wait!” A few of the people had begun to wander away now that the free show was over, but his shout stopped them. “I’m going to put away those fifty-cent tickets.” The ticket seller held up a roll of big, red tickets. “And I’ll make kids out of everyone here! Anyone who can get to the ticket box within two minutes by my watch,” and he pulled out a large time-piece, “can go in for the twenty-five cents! This is the first show of the evening, folks, so I’ll make it an exception. Don't forget this is the premier attraction of the entire midway, so step right up, ladies and gentlemen!”

The entertainers filed off the bally platform as Krinko urgently beat a brass triangle with a metal rod (Mannix 1996, 23–24).

Sometimes, from among the crowd, one or more sticks (shills) would hurry forward to get a ticket, thus prompting others to follow. According to On the Midway (Keyser 2001): “Without a good shill, an entire tip may stay perfectly still after a bally, all with cash in their hands, and not one of them will go for the ticket boxes, unless some brave soul leads the way. Shills fill the need for such brave souls.”

Once, while doing research for this book, fellow carny aficionado Benjamin Radford and I had an opportunity to test the power of shilling. For our benefit, Ward Hall—with the help of Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf on the bally—had masterfully built a tip. At the appropriate moment, Ben, inspired to get things going, rushed to the ticket booth (which was set up so Ward could do double duty as talker and ticket taker). I was right behind, immediately followed by a line of customers. With a wink of recognition, Ward took the proffered dollar from each of us and, while reaching for the ticket roll, deftly folded the bill and slipped it back with the ticket.

We had first met Ward the previous year and watched the great showman demonstrate the art of turning the tip. As usual, Poobah (Pete Terhurne, himself a legendary entertainer) ate fire on the bally platform while the show's snake charmer, Ginger, stood by with a great boa wrapped around her (figure 3.9). At the end of the bally, Ward glanced backward from his perch on the ticket stand as if looking into the show tent. “I see the eight-foot woman is standing,” he said dramatically, indicating that it was time for the show to begin. Quickly, the crowd began to form a line to buy tickets.

FIGURE 3.9. With (left to right) Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf and Ginger the Snake Charmer on the bally platform is Ward Hall, the outside talker. The banner of the eight-foot woman is at the far right. (Photo by author)

Later, I commented on the eight-foot woman. She was indeed that tall, just as her towering banner (painted by Johnny Meah) indicated (see figure 3.9). However, once inside, one learned that the lengthy lass was only a mummy—and a gaffed one at that. I laughingly complimented Ward on his effective line about the eight-foot woman having just stood up. “I didn't say that,” he protested, his eyes twinkling. “I said, ‘The eight-foot woman is standing.’ She was standing, she is standing, and she will be standing!” (Hall 2000).

In one of the many delightful conversations I’ve had with Ward's fellow showman and talker, the legendary Bobby Reynolds, I invited his response to the term barker. (To the lay public, the word means talker, but it is never used by real carny showmen.) Bobby, wittily distinguishing between the amateur and professional terms, quipped: “You know the difference between a barker and a talker? About five hundred dollars a week!” Bobby wanted to be a talker ever since he was a boy. In the early 1950s, he says:

I used to go to Coney Island and I used to shine shoes and pick up bottles, and I used to sleep under the boardwalk…. And Coney Island was my playground…. That's how, now—I was smitten by the talkers. I always wanted to be a talker. You know I—if it wasn't for the talkers I probably would talk like “dese, dems, an’ dose,” you know, and say, “when you had dis interview you'd be tawkin’ to a guy dat was from Joisey.” But unfortunately or fortunately, whichever the case might be, I learned how to be eloquent in my speech.

And so he is. Impromptu, Bobby lets a sample bally spiel roll off his silver tongue. Giving voice to the banner line, he trills:

Frrrreaks, wonders, and curiosities! A panorama of the strange, the weird, the odd, the bizarre, the macabre, and the unusual. Ladies and gentlemen, on the inside, everything that's pictured, painted, and advertised out here you will definitely, positively see on the inside. Frrrreaks, wonders, and curiosities! And put away the fifty-cent tickets. Don't sell any…. But if you go right now, for two minutes, by my watch, as long as there's a line going in, I shan't raise the price: It's a quarter. Twenty-five cents. Frrrreaks! Fat Alice from Dallas…. (Reynolds 2001)

Now for those “Frrrreaks, wonders, and curiosities!” Ladies and gentlemen, they're on the inside. The line forms right here, and the show is about to begin.

On the Inside

The ten-in-one's traditional home is a long tent. It might seem, therefore, that setting up the show would be simplicity itself. However, Hall (1981, 52) indicates otherwise with an anecdote about an ex-circus juggler named Richard A. Johnson who was joining the Hall & Christ Show: “Dick had never been with a carnival and asked how long it took to set up the show. When I told him it took eight hours, he asked how big the tent was. I told him it was 30 by 90 feet. He replied that it should take less than an hour to erect it. I stated that it did take less than that to get the top up, and when he joined, he learned that the other seven hours were occupied putting together the ‘ten thousand’ pieces that made [it] into an elaborate show.”

Leslie Fiedler, author of Freaks (1993, 282), takes us inside the show tent: “beside the Ferris wheel, the kootch show, the hot-dog stand, and the games of chance, the talker spiels and the ‘marks’ file into the seedy wonderland of the Ten-in-One.” Inside, the tent was “usually poorly lit and stuffy with the overpowering smell of old canvas” (Ray 1993, 10).

The attractions might be arranged on one or more platforms. A show I recall from the 1969 Canadian National Exhibition had a single long platform, with a curtain at the back. The platform was divided along its length into roughly ten workstations. With such a setup, one area might consist of a magician's table, another a huge chair for the fat lady, still another a stand of swords, and so on—whatever is needed for that act or exhibit.

An alternative setup consists of a staging area, called the pit, where the acts are performed. This may be a roped-off area of the bare ground or grass or, more likely, a large rectangle of planking. The necessary props are set up in this area. For example, for the Hall & Christ sideshow of 2000, there was a bed of nails, an electric chair, and a ladder of swords, among other items. (These are discussed in later chapters.)

Whether the ten-in-one is a platform type or a pit type, the show is conducted by an inside talker or lecturer. He introduces each of the features, either moving along the platform from one exhibit to the next or working as a sort of ringmaster in the pit. Frequently, the attractions—especially the freaks (or human oddities)—do their own lectures, perhaps talking briefly about their deformities and life histories. “Theatrical license” is freely utilized, and the presentations typically make use of one of two major types of exaggerations: the exotic, whereby the exhibit is represented as being from some distant land (Borneo rather than Brooklyn), or the aggrandized, in which the oddity is endowed with some status-boosting characteristic, such as having appeared before royalty, possessing some talent or ability, or coming from a prototypically normal American family (Bogdan 1990, 97).

At the end of some acts or exhibits, spectators might be offered a pitched item, such as a “true-life” booklet; a photograph, known as a pitch card (figure 3.10); or some other item, such as an envelope of magic tricks. Frequently, giants sell huge finger rings (figure 3.11), and midgets offer miniature Bibles. Such an extra, inside sale is known as an aftercatch (Taylor 1997, 91, 95; Bogdan 1990, 103).

Meanwhile, the outside talker may appear at the entrance and call “Bally!” Immediately, a couple of those who have finished their performances will hasten outside to take their place on the bally platform and help build the next tip (Mannix 1996, 24). Alternatively, there may be two or three performers—such as a fire-eater and a snake charmer—who exclusively work the bally in order to be available as needed. Ten-in-ones operate more or less continuously. New customers who enter, say, during the sword swallower's performance would follow the lecturer during the next several features—magician, fat lady, giant, and so on—and when the sword swallower is on again, that is their signal to exit the show.

There are many variations in how ten-in-ones are framed and operated—whether based on idiosyncrasies, practicality, inspiration, or whatever. Showman Doug Higley once told me in this regard that “Whatever you say is true,” because almost every possible approach has been tried sometime by somebody.

The term ten-in-one refers to how many exhibits or acts are featured. Although Fiedler (1993, 282) states that “even the number of performers is set at no more nor less than the magic ten,” actually, there are frequently more than ten attractions (Bogdan 1990, 45); Gresham (1953, 8) refers to the “ten (more or less)-acts-in-one show.” Ten-in-one is an insider term, never appearing in the show's billing, and a show would not fail to open for lack of an act or two. According to Ray (1993, 8), “as few as four performers sometimes make up the ‘ten’ Side Show acts—the Rubber Girl doubling up (so to speak) as the Electric Girl and maybe even as the target for the Knife Thrower!”

I found an example of versatile performers doing such double duty when my research took me to Coney Island's Sideshows by the Seashore, the country's only permanent ten-in-one. The continuous, all-day show is performed in a small theater, with a handful of performers doing multiple acts. For example, the inside lecturer opens with a magic routine, then does a human blockhead act (in which nails and an ice pick are pounded up his nose), followed by sword swallowing. Madame Twisto not only is the star of the blade box (an illusion in which she is harmlessly dissected by numerous broad blades) but also doubles as Serpentina, the snake charmer. (These and other acts and exhibits are discussed in subsequent chapters.)

FIGURE 3.10. Giant J. G. Tarver was one of several who used the appellation the “Texas Giant.” (Author's collection)

FIGURE 3.11. Giants often sold oversized finger rings as pitch items. (Author's collection)

Ward Hall, who uses the term five-in-one for a show of intermediate size between the single-O and the ten-in-one, once took the idea of performers doing multiple acts to the extreme. When his then-partner Harry Leonard was suffering ill health, he and Ward framed (built) a new, efficient little show called Pigmy Village. It had banners for six acts, with Harry lecturing and Ward making bally and selling tickets. The “pigmy” show was little in more ways than one: the whole thing could be loaded in the showmen's house trailer, and “Once inside, we find only one pigmy,” stated Sally Rand in a 1963 television special. She added, “But then Mr. Hall didn't promise six pigmies; he only promised six acts.” All of them were performed by the multitalented Pete Terhurne (aka Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf, profiled in chapter 4). After a few seasons, Pete was stricken by exhaustion and high blood pressure, and he collapsed. Luckily, Ward's new partner, Chris Christ, caught him and kept him from falling from the platform. The incident sealed their resolve to return to “the big-sideshow field,” where the burden of work would be shared by more performers (Hall 1981, 38–48).

Nor were the ten-in-ones the largest sideshows. Some circuses had very large shows. For example, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus had a great Congress of Freaks sideshow. During the 1920s and 1930s, their annual “class photograph” at New York's Madison Square Garden, taken by photographer Edward J. Kelty (Barth and Siegel 2002, 102–9), averaged thirty or more people, including—in circus and carnival terminology—both freaks and working acts (those other than the oddities, who exhibit special skills) (Taylor 1997, 92, 96). The freaks typically included a giant, one or more fat ladies, a “family” of midgets, a human skeleton, a “What Is It?” (Barnum's term for a microcephalic dwarf), and a human torso (an armless and legless person). In addition, there were “made” freaks, such as a tattooed woman. Some years the show also included a giantess or two, a leopard-skin girl, albinos, a bearded lady, and others, including the famous Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy. The working acts usually included a sword swallower, a rubber man (contortionist), a snake charmer, a pair of wild men, and various anatomical wonders (performers whose oddities could be seen only by demonstration), including an elastic-skin man and a backward boy (who could turn his head 180 degrees). Such large shows eventually declined. In 1973 Hall and Christ “put together I think probably the last big, big sideshow—I’m talking about twenty acts, everything you can imagine, for the Ringling show in Washington, D.C.” (Hall 2000).

In short, sideshows come in all sizes, from the single-O to the five-in-one and ten-in-one to shows twice as big or more. The ten-in-one, however, is the classic size, but it can take many forms. It is frequently called a freak show, and, indeed, human oddities are often a major or even the sole theme. At the Indiana State Fair in 1934, a wide banner behind the bally platform screamed “FREAKS” in huge letters, followed by “ALL ALIVE.” The show was headlined by “Roberta-Robert / Hermaphrodite” (a half and half in carny lingo, often billed as “half-man/half-woman” on banners). Other shows have advertised “Strange Human Freaks,” “Famous Freak Show,” “Strange and Curious People,” “Oddities of the World,” “Freaks / Oddities / Curiosities,” “World's Strangest People,” and just “Freaks” (Nelson 1999, 116, 122; Taylor 1998, 94; McKennon 1972, 1:107, 199; Johnson et al. 1996, 30; Hall 1981, 18, 50, 73).

There have also been large sideshows devoted to illusions (the term has the same meaning as when used by stage magicians to describe a large magic feature, such as sawing a woman in half). One such illusion show (which can be a single-O or larger show, as long as all the exhibits are magic tricks) was photographed at Palisades Park, New Jersey, in 1926 (Barth 2002, 54). Called Temple of Wonders, it had a front composed of some fifteen framed banners, featuring, for example, “Leona the Girl of Mystery,” shown being pierced by swords, and the “Human Butterfly,” depicted as a human head on an insect's body (similar to Spidora in chapter 10). Two banners—one advertising a “2 Headed Girl” and another for “Maxine the Half Lady”—might be thought to represent human oddities, but such sideshow features exist in both freak and illusion forms (as discussed in later chapters). Posing for the photo on the bally platform is the “Prof. of Magic” performing a levitation trick.

Especially with illusion shows, a talker might go too far. McKennon (1972, 1:143) tells a story illustrating this truth:

One talker on an Illusion Show promised the crowd in front of his bally that the four-legged girl would strip and run up and down the aisles. He turned quite a few from his “tips” with that spiel. Naturally, the two girls in this illusion couldn't leave the apparatus; but the show was good and the “Marks” got their ten cents worth. He used this “opening” for half a season without any “heat” other than occasional “squawk” from some disgruntled seeker of things erotic. Finally, one night in Wichita, Kansas, he made a pitch to a big “tip” and “turned” almost all of them over the bally. After the performance was over, instead of using the regular exit, the crowd of sex seeking Sun Flower Staters came back out “over the bally.” The talker took refuge on top of one of the Ferris wheels. In the resultant “Hey Rube” [a battle with locals] many heads were bruised and possibly a few bones broken. The show's doctor didn't treat the injuries of the townspeople. This was on one of the big railroad shows, and this talker had to find another show for the remainder of that season.

In addition to freaks and illusions, another theme is depicted by a large, nine-by-thirty-foot banner painted circa 1965 by Snap Wyatt. It proclaims, “World's Strangest Girls!” The illustrations on it and accompanying banners show a female fire-eater and sword swallower, a tattooed lady, a frog girl, and others. Apparently, this was a ten-in-one show operated by Dick Best, featuring “all woman freaks or working acts” (Johnson et al. 1996, 110–14, 158).

Still another theme is represented by the all-animal sideshow. One I saw in 1972 at the Canadian National Exhibition was set up like a ten-in-one with a banner line, but it had no bally platform, since it was operated as a grind show (a continuous entertainment). Such a show is called a walk-through, where the exhibits are viewed at the patron's own pace. This show included a ram with four horns, a cow with five legs, and other oddities. As billed, the “World's Smallest Horse” was a “preserved exhibit” (a fetus pickled in a jar), and the “World's Largest Horse” was in “photographic form.” To distinguish the living exhibits from such curios (as I describe them in chapter 12), banners still typically feature bullets of color that scream the word “ALIVE” (Nickell 1999).

Another word that began to appear on banner bullets in the 1960s is “REAL” (figure 3.12). It is often used with a wink, for although it seems to mean “genuine,” it might only mean, for example, that the “extraterrestrial” specimen is made of real rubber. In response to the spectator's query about an exhibit, “Is it real?” Ward Hall answers for carnies everywhere: “Oh, it's all real. Some of it's really real, some of it's really fake, but it's all really good” (Taylor 1997, 81). Echoing the sentiment is Bobby Reynolds, whose traveling International Circus Sideshow Museum & Gallery features a banner touting “The Really Real Frog Band! Real Frogs!” Outfitted with miniature clarinets, drums, and other instruments is a band of stuffed amphibians. Has Reynolds gotten any complaints from patrons? “No. They'd look at it, they'd say, ‘Do these frogs play?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, they used to.’ ‘Are they real frogs?’ ‘They're real frogs.’ ‘Why don't they play?’ ‘They're dead’” (Taylor 1997, 22–23).

FIGURE 3.12. “Real,” proclaims a bullet of color advertising a “Giant Snake eating Frog.” This is a clever play on words, since the exhibit is actually a large snake that eats frogs. (Photo by author)

Showmen like Reynolds and Hall know that they are in the sideshow business to make a living and that their success is measured by how well they can turn the tip. Reynolds consequently emphasizes the importance of the outside elements, stating, “The banners are almost as important as the talker.” What about the inside? He says, “You could have nothing in there. Who gives a damn, you know?” It seems I’ve caught him at a particularly cynical moment. “They'll come out—. No matter what you have in there they wouldn't like it anyways; so what's the difference, you know? Might as well enjoy it, you know. They're gonna—. On my tombstone, you know what they're going to write? ‘Screw you. I got your dollar’” (Reynolds 2001).

When I asked Ward which part of the sideshow was the most important, he had the following to say (Hall 2001):

One part is no more important than any other part. First of all, the show has to be booked at spots where it can get money. I’m not going to mention the name, but I had been asked this year to take the sideshow on a circus, a certain circus. And though I would love to have been with that circus, I couldn't have made a living, because they have not enough business, and you have to have a lot of people, they've got to be in front of you, in order for you to sell tickets. So first you have to book spots where you know you're going to have people. Then you have to have assurance from the carnival company or the fair or whatever, that you're going to have a good location, because you can get put fifty feet out of the money, you know, at the fair. Then it is necessary, of course, to have a show, because if you're going to bally you got to have something to talk about.

Showmen often take yet another crack at getting their patrons’ money, in addition to the cost of a ticket and the extra proceeds from the sale of after-catches (which usually go directly to the performers as a bonus). There is still one more ploy: the blowoff.

The Blowoff

Shows need to divest themselves of patrons from time to time to make way for new ones. P. T. Barnum effected this by means of a clever gag. Signs in his museum proclaimed, “This way to the Egress”—apparently a major exhibit. When people suddenly found themselves back out on the street, they might realize that egress means “exit” (Wilson et al. 1996, 63). Barnum's approach was good for a walk-through show. Bobby Reynolds, whose traveling sideshow museum has many homages to Barnum, displays his own egress sign. He is delighted if a patron gets the joke.

Carnival showmen call the crowd leaving a show the blowoff (or simply the blow). The most dramatic blowoff I have witnessed was at the single-O sideshow featuring Atasha the Gorilla Girl, which actually frightened patrons out of the show. When the illusion was complete and Atasha had been transformed into a wild gorilla, the beast leaped out of its cage and lunged at the crowd (for a more detailed description, see chapter 10). Passersby on the midway would see people running out of the tent, perhaps laughing nervously, and that blowoff would help gather a tip for the next show (Nickell 1970).

The term blowoff is also applied to an extra inside attraction that functions like an aftercatch for the entire show. It is sometimes called an annex (Gresham 1953, 13); in his autobiography, Hall (1981, 38) describes it as an “annex attraction.” Either a patron can pay to go behind the curtain and see the feature, or he can blow off, meaning to exit the show. For the extra admission charge, one might see a five-legged horse or an illusion such as the headless woman. The 2000 Hall & Christ ten-in-one featured a human pincushion as a blowoff (Mannix 1996, 24; Bogdan 1990, 103–4; Taylor 1997, 92; Keyser 2001). Some showmen reserve their best acts or exhibits for the blowoff. Reportedly, the revenue from a good blowoff feature can make the nut for the show—that is, cover its entire expenses. (Showmen speak of the daily nut or the weekly nut. If a show is on the nut, it has not yet made expenses; when it begins to make a profit, it is deemed off the nut [Mannix 1996, 21; McKennon 1972, 2:149; Keyser 2001].)

During the heyday of the sideshows, the extra feature was introduced by the lecturer in much the same way that the talker on the outside bally introduced the show initially. The spiel might specifically indicate what the patrons would see, but often the showman used a blind opening, one that could apply to any exhibit. It typically emphasized the mysterious, unusual nature of the exhibit and permitted the showman to change the blowoff at any time without having to alter the spiel.

Sometimes only the men in the audience were offered the extra attraction. The lecturer might indicate that there was something risqué about the act or exhibit, or that it was only for those with strong stomachs. Sometimes this was true. “More often, however,” according to Bogdan (1990, 104), “it was just a trick to get the man to pay more.” (This ruse was used with the blade box illusion, discussed in chapter 10.) During what Reynolds calls this “small intermission,” there might be some amusement for the children (Taylor 1997).

Bobby Reynolds, who defines a blowoff succinctly—“That's where you get an extra quarter”—gave me this blind opening for a blowoff, which he delivered impromptu:

Ladies and gentlemen, if you gather down close, everything that's pictured, painted, and advertised on the front you will see on these long elevated stages for your general admission. The attraction I have back here tonight, if I didn't tell you about, you wouldn't even know it was here. Now I’ve been in this business for a number of years and I’ve introduced a lot of strange people. People like Frank Lentini, a man with three legs, sixteen toes, and four feet. Betty Lou Williams, a girl that had her baby sister growing out of her stomach. The attraction I have back here this evening is equally as strange as the two I just mentioned. Now there is a small admission to see this. We don't apologize for it. There'll be no show out here on these stages until this attraction is over. And if you would like to go, it's only a quarter, .

He added: “I didn't tell them what the hell's in there. You can have anything in there, you know. It's all done with Christian Science and rubber bands” (Reynolds 2001).

Reynolds illustrates this point with a humorous anecdote. Showman Dave Rosen had an animal ten-in-one that included armadillos and something called the Jungle Mother. In the blowoff, Rosen had Johanna the Bear Girl, but on this occasion—a busy Fourth of July—she was a no-show. Rosen was frantic at the prospect of lost revenue, so he turned to his lecturer, Reynolds:

And he says, “Bobby—.” I says, “She's not here, what am I going to sell?” He says, “Well.” He brings out these two little monkeys. “They're simian monkeys.” I says, “They're simian monkeys.” He says, you know, “simian monkeys.” I says, “Dave, you want me to sell ‘em like they're Siamese monkeys? Is that what you're tryin’ to tell me?” He says, “Yeah.” So I says, “Okay Dave, put ’em in there.” And I go through this—through the antics. I got everybody in there. The place was packed. He says, “Okay Bob.” I says, “Okay what?” He says, “Tell ’em about the simian monk—.” I says, “No. I did my job. They're in there. You tell ’em about the simian monkeys, not me!” And he goes in, and I don't know what the hell he told ’em. He probably told ’em they were worth $5 million apiece, and…they all come out going, “What the hell's a simian monkey?” You know, but that's part of my life. (Reynolds 2001)

Of course, walk-through shows, which lack an inside lecturer, would not have a blowoff—unless they were run by someone like the irrepressible Bobby Reynolds. In 1999 his traveling sideshow museum—which he dubs his “Freakatorium”—included a small, screened-off area near the egress posted with banner-style signs. “Human 2-Headed Baby” they proclaimed, with pictures of a cute, if double-headed, infant. “Real,” they promised, although the astute reader of this book would have noticed that the word “Alive” was missing. This blowoff simply had its own ticket seller and featured a preserved fetal specimen. (The following year, the same exhibit was operated as a single-O grind show, with its own location on the midway.)

 

Now that you have seen the banner line, listened to the talker, watched the bally, and gone into the top of the ten-in-one; now that you have listened to the inside lecturer, viewed the working acts, and been caught by an aftercatch or two, it is time to blow off this chapter. If you will come this way, Ladies and Gentlemen, you will actually go behind the scenes to learn the secrets of the exhibits and meet the remarkable people who make up the show. This way, please.