7 ANATOMICAL WONDERS

AN ANATOMICAL WONDER is a sideshow performer whose freakishness is not readily apparent until it is demonstrated. In other words, he or she is less a human oddity (see chapters 4-6) than a working act (see chapter 9) but has elements of both.

Contortionists

In the early eighteenth century, a “famous Posture-Master of Europe” performed at various venues, accompanying magician Isaac Fawkes. In 1721, at the Bartholomew Fair in London (as shown by a famous aquatint discussed in chapter 1), a banner depicted him in various contortionistic positions and read, “Faux's [i.e., Fawkes's] Famous Posture Master.” The French lad was one of two such prodigies exhibited by Fawkes. A 1723 advertisement for the other described the “Surprising Activity of Body” he performed, including making “a Pack Saddle of his Back,” standing “upon his own Shoulders,” making “a seat of his own head” (i.e., bending backward to place his head between his thighs), folding “his Body three or four double like a piece of Cloth,” and other feats of contorting, tumbling, and dancing, including vaulting and posturing on a slack wire (Jay 2001, 54-57). The young posture master's stunts were described in some doggerel of the day:

Then with his Legs extended six Foot wide,
His feet plac'd on two Chairs on either side.
With what agility we see him rise,
And vault as if upon a Rope he flies.
As on the fiddle he's beheld to play
Such Tunes as ne'er was heard before that day,
Which being done, to close and make an end.

 

How from the Scaffold he does
bend:

And though he's nine Foot high
beneath it sink,

To rise again by his own single
Strength.

 

A nineteenth-century contortionist was billed as Knotella, his real name being unknown. He was remarkably flexible, and one pitch photo (signed “Faithfully Yours, Knotella”) shows him bending backward so that the back of his head is touching his calf. He resembled a human hairpin. (Similar contortionists are shown in figures 7.1 and 7.2.)

Knotella and a contemporary bender (as they were known in the business) were featured in an 1897 article in Britain's Strand magazine. The latter was “a charming young lady” known professionally as Leonora. “Clad in snaky, scaly tights,” wrote the author (FitzGerald 1897), “Leonora throws herself into postures.” One photographer showed her lying facedown with her legs bent back so her toes touched her chin: “Leonora posing as a human boat,” it was captioned.

Lucy Elvira Jones was an American contemporary of Leonora. At age thirteen she performed at the 1894 Texas State Fair. She was double-jointed and, with her legs bent in the opposite direction at the knees, she “ran around on all fours like a dog” (Mannix 1999, 94).

FIGURE 7.1. A bender (contortionist) strikes some characteristic poses in these nineteenth-century wood engravings.

FIGURE 7.2. The Great Zella ties himself in knots in this publicity composite. (Author's collection)

Benders were among the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Congress of Freaks in the 1920s, typically contorting like human pretzels for their group photograph by Edward J. Kelty (Barth 2002, 102, 104-5). In the 1930s, Lorraine Chevalier—of the celebrated Chevalier acrobatic family—amazed audiences by placing her chin on a table, then, grasping the sides, arching her body backward until she was “sitting on her own head” (Packard et al. 2001, 35).

A more recent contortionist was “Bobo the Rubber Man,” Francis X. Duggan, who was with the Hall & Christ Show in the late 1960s. A “front bender,” Bobo performed a trick in which, bent double, he went through a little barrel. “He had a reputation as a drinker,” Ward Hall says, “but being aware of my puritanical feelings, quit his alcohol abuse entirely.” Once, he went out on the midway to get a sandwich and did not return. The wind had toppled a sign, which struck him, breaking his hip and other bones. Although it was expected that the injuries would put an end to his career, in a few months he was back working his act. He later received an inheritance and retired to his hometown of Green Bay, Wisconsin (Hall 1991, 36-37).

India-Rubber People

Performers who can stretch their abnormally elastic skin are generally called India-rubber people (figure 7.3). Such people have a condition called cutis hyperelastica, or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, after the Danish and French dermatologists who studied it. This is an inherited disorder in which the skin is characteristically soft and velvety as well as hyperelastic. (The skin is also prone to bruising, and the condition may be accompanied by hyperextensibility of the joints, pseudotumors, calcified cysts beneath the skin, and scarring due to skin atrophy [Taber's 2001].)

Many persons with cutis hyperelastica have progressed from amusing their friends to performing in sideshows as an India-rubber man or elastic-skin woman. One such performer was James Morris, who was born in 1859 in Copenhagen, New York. He was a barber who stretched his skin as a diversion for friends, later exhibiting at church socials and Elks’ benefits in Rhode Island. Seeing the money that could be made, Morris went on to perform at the dime museum of J. E. Sackett in Providence. Then, beginning in 1882, he signed on with P. T. Barnum for a reported $150 a week.

Morris traveled with Barnum's show, appearing across the United States and later touring Europe. A lineup of Barnum & Bailey Circus sideshow performers in 1888 shows a young Morris—bespectacled and mustached—stretching his upper-chest skin as if it were a pullover. A later photo shows a man pulling down the skin of his left arm several inches (aided by an off-camera assistant). The performer “may be Barnum's own James Morris, wearing a beard to cover up new scars on his face,” states one source, although the identification is far from certain. He has also been identified as Carl Haag or Felix Woerhle (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 290, 327).

FIGURE 7.3. An elastic-skin man stretches his chest skin in this 1896 color lithograph. (Author's collection)

In any event, James Morris was reportedly a person of some culture—an intelligent man who learned from his travels. However, he was rumored to have been addicted to drinking and gambling, thus squandering the considerable money he is thought to have earned. As a result, he continued to exhibit himself long after he might have retired. Concludes Drimmer (1991, 308): “There were many other elastic skin men, but Morris was considered one of the best. He was able to pull the skin of his chest up to the top of his head. He could pull out the skin of one leg and cover the other with it. He was able to pull his cheek skin out a good eight inches.”

Among several females of the genre was Etta Lake, a heavy-lidded beauty who could stretch her skin some six inches. She flourished in the late nineteenth century. When she was photographed in 1889, she was with the King & Franklin Circus (Mannix 1999, 115).

Another elastic-skin woman was depicted on a circa 1960 banner painted by Snap Wyatt. Headed “Freaks,” it shows, along with a leopard-skin girl and a Spidora illusion (see chapter 10), a young, scantily clad woman pulling out the skin of her cheek and side (Johnson et al. 1996, 115).

Another Snap Wyatt banner of about 1965 is for an unidentified “Rubber Skin Man.” He is shown stretching the skin from his thighs not by mere inches but by some three feet or more. Although this was obviously an exaggeration, it was an effective, eye-catching dramatization of the very real oddity ticket buyers were about to see—“Alive,” as the banner's bullet guaranteed (Johnson et al. 1996, 123).

Some persons have skin that is notably loose, hanging down like that of a bloodhound. For example, at the Chicago world's fair in 1933, Ripley's “Believe It or Not!” show featured Arthur Loose, whose neck flesh hung down in great folds. Billed as the Rubber-Skinned Man, he “pulled out his cheeks eight inches and let them snap back into place.” Another was Agnes Schmidt, the “Rubber-Skinned Girl” from Cincinnati, Ohio, who had similar loose folds, especially on her thighs (Mannix 1999, 96, 116). There was also Jack Stretch, who had sagging skin all over his chest and abdomen, as shown in a nude photo from 1964 (Hall 1991, 50, 58).

Today, a young American man named Gary Turner is one of only about ten people worldwide known to have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Nicknamed “Stretch,” he notes that the more he stretches his skin, the more elastic it becomes. Although he does not perform on a sideshow platform, he did appear on the next best thing—a segment of television's Ripley's Believe It or Not! in 2001, where he demonstrated his peculiar ability for a modern audience.

Another modern rubber man is both a contortionist and an elastic-skin man. He is Las Vegas performer Thomas Martin Perez, also known as “Mr. Stretch.” He “loves to shock people,” states one Ripley's Believe It or Not! compendium, “by pulling the skin from his neck over his nose like a turtleneck sweater” (Packard et al. 2001, 35).

Interestingly, an abnormality that contrasts with the elastic-skin condition was exhibited by a vaudeville performer known as Sober Sue. A $1,000 reward was promised to anyone who could make the somber-faced lady smile. Even the professional comedians she appeared with were unable to claim the prize because she suffered not from excessively loose skin but from a rather opposite sort of anomaly: the underlying facial muscles were completely paralyzed (Gardner 1962, 136).

Special-Effects Performers

In addition to the benders (contortionists) and those with latex-like skin, certain anatomical wonders have developed the ability to perform remarkable feats with certain parts of their bodies.

Such a person was Martin Joe Laurello, the man with the revolving head, aka the “Human Owl” (Mooney et al. 2002, 12). As described by Percilla “Monkey Girl” Bejano, he “could put his head all the way around” (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 190). That is, he could rotate his head a full 180 degrees, so that he could look behind him. On occasion during the 1920s and 1930s, Laurello struck a pose for photographer Edward J. Kelty with his fellow Congress of Freaks performers at Madison Square Garden. Standing with his feet planted so that his back was to Kelty, Laurello turned his head to stare directly at the camera (Barth and Siegel 2002, 102, 104, 107).

Laurello's banner heralded him as “Bobby the Boy with the Revolving Head.” (As Johnny Meah [1996] interjects, “To add a footnote of sideshow trivia, in the titling of banners, men were always “boys” and women were always “girls” regardless of their actual age.) Supposedly, Laurello “had the ability to dislocate various vertebrae” in order to accomplish his head-turning feat (Meah 1996). Certainly, he had a rare degree of flexibility. Mannix (1999, 112) may be right when he states that “anyone else attempting to do this would have to break at least two neck vertebrae.”

Laurello looked nothing like a freak. From head to toe he was ordinary; his hair was neatly combed, his face clean shaven. Wearing a white shirt, sharply creased trousers, and polished leather shoes, he could have stepped out of the sideshow and passed anyone on the street without getting a second glance. That is, of course, unless someone caught his attention and turned to see him looking—and looking and looking—while he continued to walk away.

Laurello used to perform at Hubert's Museum in New York City, located on Forty-second Street, just west of Broadway. When showman Bobby Reynolds was hanging out at Hubert's, starting when he was thirteen, he remembers Laurello working with such attractions as strongman Charlie Fallon, sword swallower Alex Linton, and others, including the legendary Roy Heckler and his troupe of trained fleas. Like many other sideshow performers, Laurello no doubt found Hubert's a good place to work while the circus was in winter quarters. The museum was on the regular dime museum circuit that included Philadelphia, Newark, Patterson, and other cities (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 155-56, 219-20).

In 1940 Martin Laurello was photographed—in a side view—striking his head-reversed pose, chin resting on his spine, while chomping on a cigar. He was then with Ripley's “Believe It or Not!” show at the New York world's fair (Mannix 1999, 112).

Not much seems to be known about his background or personal life. However, Percilla Bejano said of him: “He was a Nazi. And he didn't like the American flag. You meet all kinds on the sideshow—worse than me!” she added (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 190).

Another anatomical specialty was the “eye-popper,” who, as Ward Hall (1991, 36) explains, “could control the optic muscles, causing his eyeballs to pop out of the socket on command.” Spectators nearly popped their own eyes in reaction. This “had to be one of the best remembered sideshow acts,” says Ward.

There were at least two such performers, both known as “Popeye.” One was Oscar “Popeye” Noggins, who did the bug-eyed stunt at the 1939 world's fair in New York. He performed with the “Strange as It Seems” show, a congress of strange people who had been cartooned by Ripley rival John Hix (Dufour 1977, 124, 186).

The other eye-popper was an African American from Richland, Georgia, “Popeye” Perry (figure 7.4). He often sported colorful outfits that sometimes included fringe and rhinestones, and one photograph shows him wearing a silver cross on a beaded necklace (Meah 1996; Hall 1991, 53). Mannix (1999, 104) says that Perry's bug-eyed appearance was “a bloodcurdling sight and Perry knew it.” He adds: “After the talker had introduced him, Perry would select some squeamish-looking member of the tip—usually a woman—and, thrusting his face toward her, suddenly pop out one of his eyes. The lady usually screamed and retreated back. Then Perry would pop out the other eye. Not infrequently, this was enough to make the girl faint. Perry would wait until she had recovered and then, bending over her, pop out both eyes at the same time. Invariably, this was enough to knock the woman out a second time.”

FIGURE 7.4. Sideshow performer “Popeye” Perry got his moniker from his eye-popping ability. (Author's collection)

Perhaps not surprisingly, Popeye Perry was also a character off the sideshow platform. Percilla Bejano tells about traveling on the road with him:

We used to drive right past [a restaurant], when we saw that Popeye [had] stopped. It was terrible. He'd put his eyes out, you know. Pop his eyes out. They'd come and wait on him, he'd say, “Thank you,” and pop his eyes out on them. They'd run back and tell the boss, “There's a man out there losing his eyes!” [The Great] Waldo [discussed in chapter 9] told him not to. He told him, “You're not on exhibition. You don't do that where you eat.” One time [a waitress] run out to her car after, run out and drove away! She did. Guess she wasn't going to wait on him again. (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 191)

Another eye marvel was John Leather, who “could move each eye independently of the other” (Mooney et al. 2002, 12). Leather was among the acts signed up by showman Nate Eagle for the 1939 world's fair “Strange as It Seems” show (Dufour 1977, 124).

Many other individuals have had anatomical stunts or feats that they could perform to the astonishment of others. Some made careers of performing in sideshows, like Laurello and Popeye, while others came to the attention of Robert Ripley or his “Believe It or Not!” successors. For instance, there was Alfred Langevin, who “could smoke a pipe, play a recorder, smoke a cigarette, and even blow up a balloon—through his eye!” (I have seen an old film showing Langevin doing his pipe-smoking feat.) Marguerite Russell “could fold her tongue,” Feria Mundial of Mexico City “lifted a chair with his shoulder blades,” and Oscar Bradley of Macon, Georgia, walked “on his thumbs and index fingers” (Mooney et al. 2002, 12, 14, 15, 74, 77). There was also “Rubber Face” J. T. Saylors of Memphis Tennessee, who could contort his face so that by lifting his lower lip he appeared to “swallow” his nose (Packard et al. 2001, 33). F. G. Holt of Nashville, Arkansas, had a different use for his facial muscles: he attached little bells to his eyebrows and played various tunes (Mooney et al. 2002, 15).

Then there was Clarence E. Willard (1882-1962), billed as the “Man Who Grows.” He was one of “Ripley's Strange People in Person,” a group of live exhibits who appeared at the Odditoriums and were booked through the NBC Artists’ Service to perform at venues across the United States and Canada. Willard was, according to Bob Considine (1961, 150), “a man who grew before your eyes,” who “could stretch out and add six inches to his height.” Considine thought that Willard was double-jointed, but noted magician James Randi (the “Amazing Randi”) observes that the act became something of “a carnival mainstay” and had a simple explanation: it was a type of illusion (however, since it depended on anatomical manipulation, I included it here rather than in the chapter on magical effects). As Randi (1987, 129) explains:

In this performance, a man is revealed onstage who seems to fit his clothes well enough. He is seen to go into a “trance” and appears to grow by seven or eight inches, by which time his sleeves are far too short and his pants go to half-mast as well. The gimmick is simple: The man is dressed into a too-small suit, and only has to “scrunch down” while in a standing position. The suit appears to fit him at this point, but as he straightens up and swells out his chest, the bad fit becomes apparent. It is a striking illusion, often enhanced by a popping belt buckle and falling shirt buttons thrown in for further effect.

Mr. Anatomical Wonder

One of the most talented and versatile entertainers ever to have a banner billing him as an “Anatomical Wonder” was Melvin Burkhart (1907-2001) (figure 7.5). As a tall, athletic young boxer with an outgoing, comedic nature, he used to amuse friends with his anatomical stunts at athletic meets. He soon appeared on stage at an amateur show. During the Depression, when times were hard and he was “always getting in trouble,” he found work with a small circus, doing a “clown walk-around.” That is, he drummed up business in small towns by walking down the main street in a clown costume with a bullhorn yelling, “Big Show Tonight! Conroy Brothers Circus!” He also sold tickets and clowned. Once, when a performer was sick, his boss, Curly Easter, told him to “Go out there and do something” to fill in. Burkhart recalled (interview in Taylor and Kotcher 2002): “And the audience was out there clapping, so I went out there and I took off my shirt and I told them I was going to show them tricks with my body. I didn't know in those days how to present what I do, but I wasn't bad at it. I had the idea. Anyway, I go out there and they are applauding and carrying on. When I go back in there Curly goes, ‘I’ll be damned. You'll do that next show, too.’ That was it.”

The act was added to Burkhart's other duties, and he has never labored so hard before or since. “I worked two years with the one-ring circus,” he said, “and every time I was with any show, even when I was on Ringling, any time I was on another show, it was like taking a vacation compared to the one-ring circus.” He taught himself magic, developed a human blockhead routine (see chapter 9), and did other acts, such as the electric chair illusion and, for a blowoff, a snake-wrestling exhibition. He worked the bally, filled in as inside lecturer, and, of course, performed as the “Anatomical Wonder” (Taylor and Kotcher 2002).

FIGURE 7.5. Melvin Burkhart, the anatomical wonder, performs here in his youth as the “Man without a Stomach”—sucking in his abdomen until it seemed to touch his backbone. (Author's collection)

One of Burkhart's main anatomical feats, the one he started with as a young man, was sucking in his abdomen to a remarkable degree, so that he became the “Man without a Stomach” (see figure 7.5). Others who did such an act were Rex “Americo” Carson, who was with the Dailey Brothers Circus in the 1940s (Hall 1991, 50, 51), and a later Coney Island sideshow anatomical wonder called “‘Isha Voodie’ / Man without a Middle!” (Stein 1998, 95). Burkhart performed the stomach feat until, in old age, his doctor told him to quit.

Burkhart describes another feat: “I could breathe through one lung at a time.” He would call a young girl up on stage and get her to place her hands on his chest. (He also demonstrated this for an interviewer [Taylor and Kotcher 2002].) “Then I’d say, ‘Now let's see if you can do that.’ And the girl would start shrieking, ‘No! Don't do that!’ Big laugh from the audience.” He could also do a “rubber neck” effect in which—by tipping his head back and drawing his shoulders down—he could give the appearance of having an elongated neck.

Melvin Burkhart established himself as a major anatomical wonder when he was cartooned by Robert Ripley for his famous “Believe It or Not!” feature, and Burkhart left Hubert's Museum to perform at Ripley's Odditorium in New York in 1939. He also appeared in the cartoon feature of Ripley's rival, John Hix, called “Strange as It Seems.” As a result, a furious Ripley replaced him with another anatomical wonder, Ed Hayes, and Burkhart went to work with Ringling Brothers again.

Ripley was especially fascinated by Burkhart's “two-faced man” feat. Unlike the human-oddity version, Burkhart's involved contorting his face so that the right side was “Happy Melvin,” with raised eyebrow and upturned mouth, and the other side was “Sad Melvin,” with the opposite features (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 149, 166). Incidentally, according to Ripley's biographer (Considine 1961, 141-42), Ripley hated the term freaks, which in any case did not apply to many of his attractions, such as anatomical wonders. He threatened to fire any employee who used the word and substituted oddities instead—hence his brilliant term Odditorium.

When Melvin Burkhart was in his nineties, he recalled that when he went to work with the James E. Strates carnival in 1956, there had been eighteen sideshow acts, and he was the only one still alive (Taylor and Kotcher 2002). He told a reporter, “You know the way I figure it, yesterday never was, tomorrow will never be, but today is always.” He entertained and inspired many. When he died on November 8, 2001, at “Gibtown,” his son Dennis, a biochemical engineer, said, “He taught me how to be a rich man. He said a rich man is someone who can make one person smile every day. If I can be half the man my father has been, I will be a great man.” His daughter-in-law Jane Burkhart said, “He did what everybody else always talked about doing. He ran away and joined the circus” (Associated Press 2001).