9 WORKING ACTS

APART FROM HUMAN ODDITIES, THE second main category of sideshow performers consists of those who exhibit a special skill. Such performers are known in carny parlance as working acts.

Fire-eaters

Fire manipulation is an ancient art, combining skill with danger. One of the earliest of the fire-eating wonders lived in the Roman era—a Syrian called Eunus (d. 133 B.C.). In order to excite his fellow slaves to revolt against Roman authority, Eunus claimed that he had received supernatural powers from the gods, who foretold that he would someday be king. As proof, Eunus exhaled jets of fire, just like the legendary dragon. However, a writer named Florus was skeptical and guessed the secret of the fire-breathing trick. Eunus hid a nutshell in his mouth that contained burning material. The shell had a small opening at each end so that when the fake wizard blew through it, sparks and flames were projected. Eunus's rebellion was initially successful, and he named himself King Antiochus; however, the Romans soon regained control. Eunus was captured and died in prison. (Christopher 1962, 2; Encyclopaedia Britannica 1960, S.V. “Eunus”; Gibson 1967, 41).

In seventeenth-century England, a fire-eater named Richardson appeared to dine on various fiery materials. He munched glowing coals, drank flaming liquids, and otherwise attempted to prove that he was unharmed by fire. In the eighteenth century a fire-eater named Robert Powell performed similar stunts at British fairs. Powell supplemented his admission receipts by selling a lotion for the treatment of burns (Gardner 1962, 59). And in the first part of the nineteenth century an Italian woman, Signora Josephine Giardelli, was exhibited in London as the “Fireproof Female.” It was advertised that “She will, without the least symptoms of pain, put boiling melted lead in her mouth, and emit the same with the imprint of her teeth thereon; red-hot irons will be passed over various parts of her body; she will walk over a bar of red-hot iron with her naked feet; will…put boiling oil in her mouth!”(Dawes 1979, 57).

Giardelli was rivaled by Ivan Chabert (1792-1859), who arrived in London in 1818, his posters proclaiming him the “Fire King” (figure 9.1). He too ate burning materials. As the Times reported in 1826: “he refreshed himself with a hearty meal of phosphorous…he next swallowed…several spoonfuls of boiling oil and, as dessert…, helped himself with his naked hand to a considerable quantity of molten lead” (Dawes 1979, 57-60). But it was Chabert's feat of the fiery oven that created the greatest sensation. He entered the oven—actually an iron chest about six by seven feet that had been heated to some 600 degrees Fahrenheit—carrying a thick steak and a leg of lamb. Closing the doors behind him, he remained there, talking with the audience through a tin tube, while the meat cooked. Then he flung open the doors and stepped out in triumph.

Of course, Monsieur Chabert was no more fireproof than other such performers. He merely used magic tricks and simple scientific principles to create that illusion. For example, as magician and writer Walter Gibson (1967, 42) explains: “When he ‘swallows’ burning oil, the performer does not ladle liquid, but merely lets the spoon become wet. The few drops that adhere will burn for a moment, giving him time to raise the spoon to his mouth. Then he exhales, extinguishing the flame, and immediately takes the spoon in his mouth, as though swallowing the oil.” Also, “Chewing of molten metals until they become solid is accomplished by using an alloy of bismuth, lead and block tin, which has a very low melting point. It is dropped upon the moist tongue where it will harden without burning and becomes a solid lump.” For the apparent sipping of burning fuel, a wooden spoon is recommended, “because a metal spoon becomes so hot that it burns your lips” (Mannix 1996, 47). As to Chabert's ordeal of the burning oven, that was a magician's trick. First, Chabert placed the thermometer in the fire to give the impression that the oven was very hot. Actually, the temperature was just above 200 degrees. And, because heat rises, the lower portion of the oven remained relatively cool. The fire was lit in the center of the large iron box, and Chabert was able to lie safely on the floor by the doors, his head covered by a protective hood. He could breathe, of course, through the speaking tube. So that the meat would cook quickly, Chabert hung it on hooks directly over the fire. When it was done, he made his dramatic exit from the oven (Gibson 1967, 42).

FIGURE 9.1. The “Fire King,” Ivan Chabert (1792-1859), whose feats included entering an oven heated to 600 degrees and remaining until a leg of lamb was cooked. (Sketch by author)

Some performers have attempted to prove their resistance to fire by walking barefoot across red-hot embers (figure 9.2). This is possible because wood does not conduct heat well and because the time of contact is quite brief. (Experiments show that it is possible to make a short walk across hot coals or a longer walk over cooler embers. As most people know, one can pass a finger quickly through a candle flame, but drawing the finger slowly through the flame would result in burns.)

FIGURE 9.2. I walk barefoot over a bed of hot coals. (Photo by Benjamin Radford)

Fire eating, however, is the mainstay of sideshow fire acts (figure 9.3). Reports of fire-eating performers date from as early as 1633, and they flourished over the next two centuries. “By then,” states Gibson (1967, 41) “the art was gradually relegated to dime museums and circus sideshows, but these survivals of medieval magic still awe and impress spectators today.”

FIGURE 9.3. “Fire Eater” is a mainstay among ten-in-one banners, like this one at Coney Island's Sideshows by the Seashore. (Photo by author)

Interesting fire-eaters of the past include a nine-year-old purveyor of the “Chinese fire trick,” a Miss Cassillis who toured England as part of a juvenile troupe in 1820. Another was Carlo Alberto, who performed in theaters in England and America as the “Great African Wonder, the Fire King”; an 1843 bill promises that he would also “sing several new and popular Negro melodies.” Then there was the great Chinese magician who combined conjuring and fire eating, Ching Ling Foo (b. 1854). He had imitators, notably “Chung Ling Soo,” who was really an Englishman, William Ellsworth Robinson (1861-1918). Robinson wore suitable makeup and dress and spoke only through an interpreter—convincing everyone that he was a real Chinaman until he was fatally wounded on stage performing the bullet-catching trick (Houdini 1920, 79-83; Christopher 1962, 169-71).

Among the fire marvels of the 1930s were James O’Satyrdae, a “fire manipulator” at the 1939 world's fair in New York (Dufour 1977, 123), and a Dr. Mayfield, who appeared as a Ripley Odditorium attraction. According to one writer, Mayfield “shaved himself with a blazing blowtorch, later turned the torch on his unprotected eyeball, and finally put the torch directly into his mouth, extinguishing the flame with his tongue” (Considine 1961, 143). The blowtorch stunt (figure 9.4) is accomplished by turning the flame down to minimum heat and keeping the flame moving sufficiently fast (Gresham 1953, 200). Other twentieth-century fire-eaters were Andy Briskey, Pete Terhurne (“Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf”), Freddy Lulling, Dan Mannix, Bill “The Baron” Unchs, and many others, including, of course, Ward Hall and Bobby Reynolds (Hall 1991, 53; Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 132; Taylor 2001, 57).

The basic equipment for fire eating is the torch—easily improvised by using Elmer's school glue to affix several turns of doubled cheesecloth to a length of coat-hanger wire—and a metal can into which is poured a small amount of fuel. Naphtha or Coleman brand white gas may be used, but lamp oil (a liquid paraffin) is less toxic, burns cooler, and has noncombustible fumes, although it is rather smoky.

Fire eating is not a trick, but there is a trick to it—or, rather, several techniques that the performer relies on. There is no special substance used to coat the mouth, save one—saliva—and it is important that the lips, mouth, and tongue be well moistened with it. Since flames burn upward, to keep them from burning the roof of the mouth, the head must be tipped well back, so that the mouth is aimed straight up. As the flaming torch approaches the lips, the performer breathes out gently and steadily; otherwise, as one carny instructor told a novice (Mannix 1996, 20), “you'll get gas fumes into your lungs, and there'll be an explosion there like in the cylinder of a car. Only your lungs ain't built to take it.” Finally, the performer closes his or her mouth, and the flame goes out.

FIGURE 9.4. The blowtorch stunt is demonstrated. (Author's collection)

Of course, there is much more to it than that, as I learned from a book on the subject—Fire Eating: A Manual of Instruction (Garth 1993). I also received personal instruction in the art from “Pele the Fire Goddess” (Lynne Couillard), a professional performer who does a complete fire act, performing at Renaissance fairs and other venues. Pele (who takes her name from the ancient Hawaiian volcano goddess) taught me many fine points. For instance, the torch should not approach the upturned mouth vertically (as shown in some illustrations [Garth 1993]), or the rising flames may burn the hand. If the length of the torch makes this unlikely, it is probably too long and may tend to wobble. The torch should instead approach at about a forty-five-degree angle. The tongue is extended to guide the torch into the mouth but then moves to a position with the tip touching the backs of the lower teeth. (During practice with an unlit torch, I had a tendency to curl my tongue backward, but Pele warned me that I would be exposing the sensitive bottom of the mouth to probable burning, and I practiced to correct the problem before “lighting up.”) The wrapped portion of the torch should not be too long. It must be fully inserted into the mouth, which then closes on the wire beyond, yet it should not go to the back of the mouth. Since the metal part of the torch can get quite hot and burn the lips, it is best to close the mouth by simply “biting” the wire (figures 9.5 to 9.8).

FIGURE 9.5. I demonstrate the basics of fire eating. Step 1: Bringing the torch to the mouth at the proper angle. (Right)

FIGURE 9.6. Step 2: Using the wet tongue to guide the torch into the mouth. (Photos by Benjamin Radford)

Some fire stunts require a torch sufficiently moistened with one of the more volatile fuels. Trailing involves making a swipe along the arm and thus leaving a momentary trail of fire behind (figure 9.9). One presses down on the torch as it initially makes contact with the arm in order to deposit the fuel. Hesitation at this point (as I discovered) can cause a burn. Fire on the tongue is a similar feat in which the torch is pressed on the tongue so that when the torch is removed, the tongue remains briefly aflame. (The tongue is well coated with saliva for this feat.) A transfer from the tongue uses the flame left in the previous feat to ignite an unlit torch (Garth 1993, 48-55). Garth (1993, 73) describes another transfer—lighting a cigarette with lit fingers. The fingers are pressed to a lit, fuel-moist torch, and the transferred flame lasts long enough for the performer to light a cigarette with it. The trick is to accomplish the feat quickly. To facilitate this, an unfiltered cigarette is used so that one can draw harder on it. Also, a little of the tobacco is removed from the end that will be lit; this causes the protruding paper to be easily ignited, which in turn ignites the tobacco.

FIGURE 9.7. Step 3: Closing the mouth. (Right)

FIGURE 9.8. Step 4: Exhaling. (Photos by Benjamin Radford)

FIGURE 9.9. Trailing, as I demonstrate, leaves a momentary trail of fire along the arm. (Photo by Benjamin Radford)

FIGURE 9.10. Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf (Pete Terhurne) performs alongside the outside talker during a nighttime bally at the Allentown, Pennsylvania, fair, 2001. (Photo by author)

Safety procedures are essential. One tries to avoid performing outdoors, to keep the wind from blowing flames into the eyes. When working the bally (figure 9.10), however, the professional has to stall until the breeze dies down and tries to turn the body so the wind blows from the back. Fire-resistant clothing, such as blue jeans, is recommended. The torches are kept well soaked in the liquid fuel; otherwise, the fuel would burn off, and the cotton would begin to burn at a hotter temperature. The excess must be shaken off into a bucket, though, so the torch does not drip flaming fuel. A damp rag may be kept handy for the emergency extinguishing of any small fire on the hand or elsewhere (Garth 1993, 16), although Pele cautions that this method may cause steam burns. She keeps a carbon dioxide extinguisher (the kind that can be used on people) at the ready.

Showman Bobby Reynolds (2001), who has performed an impressive number of working acts, including fire eating, says philosophically: “You know, you burn yourself a little bit, but other than that….” He quips, “The guy that don't know how to do it properly makes an ash out of himself.”

Long ago in Toronto I knew Marcel Horne, who sported on each upper arm a tattoo of a fire-breathing god. He performed in the carnivals as “Diablo the Human Volcano.” I wrote the accompanying poem in 1970 after watching a performance.

 

The Fire Breather

You step in lit
circles, light
is your
shadow at the core
of fire.
Match
to torch,
your speech
flames,
your name
burns.
You taste,
then wheel and spit
that
thunder-bolt-
shot
light,
that
burnt
shout.
Unknown to us now
how
it is you burn,
our hands
leap up like flames.
The crackling drowns
you out.

 

Marcel was a fire-breather, that is, one who sips the fuel, then spits it at a torch, thus throwing a great ball of fire across the stage. It is a dramatic effect. It is also a dangerous one. Performers now avoid gasoline and use only less volatile fuels such as kerosene or lamp oil, but the stunt is still dangerous. Failure to spew the liquid as a fine, atomized mist can mean fuel on the performer's face (Garth 1993, 21-22, 61-63). One writer tells in breathless style what happened in one instance: “it splashed from his mouth and all his face exploded and he ran howling through the crowd in agonized frenzy and afterwards was captured in a state of almost nudity and taken to the workhouse infirmary, where he remains in dreadful condition” (Gardner 1962, 70).

Sword Swallowers

The art of sword swallowing is quite ancient. Itinerant jugglers performed the feat for Egyptian pharaohs, and Marcus Agrippa (63?-12 B.C.) mentioned witnessing the effect in ancient Rome. However, he had been drinking at the time and later attributed what he had seen to the wine. A sixteenth-century writer also witnessed sword swallowing and concluded that it was accomplished with the assistance of demons (Mannix 1996, 49-51).

Witnesses to sword swallowing sometimes suspect trickery. Fake knives and swords do exist, but those with single retractable blades must have handles that are longer than half the overall length. And swords with telescoping blades—such as those made by the Parisian magic manufacturer Vosin—are suitable only for theatrical purposes and amateurish demonstrations (Gardner 1962, 76; Houdini 1920, 142-43). The fact is, real sword swallowers swallow real swords (figures 9.11 and 9.12). The important secret is that the performer must conquer what is known as the “gag reflex.” According to the great magician Houdini, in his Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920, 138): “To accomplish the sword-swallowing feat, it is only necessary to overcome the nausea that results from the metal's touching the mucous membrane of the pharynx, for there is an unobstructed passage, large enough to accommodate several of the thin blades used, from the mouth to the bottom of the stomach. This passage is not straight, but the passing of the sword straightens it. Some throats are more sensitive than others, but practice will soon accustom any throat to the passage of the blade.”

One sword swallower of the early nineteenth century was Ramo Samee from Madras, India. He was with a troupe of Indian jugglers who performed in England. A playbill dated Friday, August 2, 1822, heralded his appearance at the Royal Coburg Theatre. Among other feats, he was to balance a ten-pound pagoda on his nose and conclude his performance by swallowing a flaming sword. Two decades later, on Monday, July 11, 1842, Samee was still entertaining, closing his act by “Swallowing a Sword 2-ft. long!!!” “This wonderful feat,” according to the playbill, “still continues to astonish the most eminent medical men in London” (Jay 1987, 287-88; 2001, 125).

FIGURE 9.11. In this nineteenthcentury wood engraving, a performer swallows a sword, flanked by the implements of his art.

FIGURE 9.12. Illustration from a nineteenth-century Scientific American showing the position a sword blade occupies inside the body.

A later sword swallower, perhaps the first of the great modern ones, was a supposed French-Canadian calling himself Chevalier Cliquot. At the age of eighteen, he ran away with the circus and traveled to South America. In Buenos Aires he watched an elderly man swallow a machete and, inspired, began to practice with a silver wire. He advanced to swallowing a twenty-two-inch cavalry sword and a bayonet weighted with a pair of eighteen-pound dumbbells. Reports Gardner (1962, 75), “The most harrowing moment of his act featured a bayonet fixed backwards to a rifle. He would kneel with the point of the blade directly down his throat, his sister would pull the trigger, and the recoil of the rifle would fire the sword down his gullet.”

Once, he satisfied some curious physicians by swallowing a borrowed watch on its chain. The doctors took turns listening to the ticking through Cliquot's belly. One explained: “Poor, outraged nature is biding her time, but mark me, she will have a terrible revenge sooner or later.” Indeed, the performer did have some harrowing experiences, such as the time he took his bows while a sword was still lodged in his esophagus. This bent the weapon at an angle, and Cliquot's throat was injured during the removal (Gardner 1962, 74-75; Houdini 1920, 139-41).

Although Cliquot was a genuine performer, shrewdly offering a £500 reward in the event he failed to swallow a sword, he apparently did engage in a deception. According to a writer in Royal Magazine, Cliquot was not a French-Canadian at all but one Fred McLane from Chicago (Jay 1987, 289-90).

Cliquot had a host of successors. Houdini (1920, 142) mentions two, the first having studied under Cliquot: “Delmo Fritz was not only an excellent sword-swallower, but a good showman as well. The last time I saw him he was working the ‘halls’ in England. I hope he saved his money, for he was a clean man with a clean reputation, and, I can truly say, he was a master in his manner of indulging his appetite for the cold steel.” Houdini also mentions an Italian magician, Deodota, who combined sword swallowing with conjuring before giving up life as a performer for the “jewelry business” in downtown New York.

A pupil of Delmo Fritz was one of the great women sword swallowers, Edith Clifford. She was born in 1884 in London and began swallowing blades at the age of fifteen. In 1901, when the Barnum & Bailey Circus was on a foreign tour, she joined the show in Vienna. She introduced a number of novelties, including swallowing giant scissors, a saw (“with ugly looking teeth,” said Houdini, “although somewhat rounded at the points”), a set of ten narrow blades, and—following Cliquot—a bayonet driven down her throat by a cannon loaded with a ten-gauge shell. Houdini, who visited the show in 1919 especially to see Clifford, spoke highly of her. He noted that she had “perfected an act that has found favor even in the Royal Courts of Europe.” She was “possessed of more than ordinary personal charms, a refined taste for dressing both herself and her stage, and an unswerving devotion to her art.” Her stage was “handsomely arranged,” he said, and “occupied the place of honor in the section devoted to freaks and specialties” (Houdini 1920, 147-51). William Lindsay Gresham (1953, 202) wrote that “the first sword swallower that I ever saw was also the best,” describing Edith as “a pretty girl” who performed “gracefully.” He bought her pitch book for a quarter and called it “one of the shrewdest angles I ever saw” for a sideshow act: it was an actual instruction booklet. However, Gresham lamented, “I kept that booklet for years but never mastered my gag reflex.”

As these examples demonstrate, sword swallowers found many ways to keep their acts from becoming trite. Some, like Clifford, used thin, narrow swords that enabled them to swallow several at once. “Slowly withdrawing them one at time, and throwing them on the stage in different directions,” states Houdini (1920, 143), “makes an effective display.” Another stunt was to attach a small strong lightbulb to the tip of a narrow cane. With the platform darkened, the audience could watch the light pass from throat to esophagus to stomach—an impressive sight. Houdini (1920, 143) noted, “The medical profession now make use of this idea.”

Eventually, this led to the idea of using a neon tube. Ward Hall suggests that a female sword swallower named “Lady Patricia”—Patricia Zerm—was the first to feature the swallowing of a neon tube. “She always wore beautiful gowns,” recalls Hall. “It was a beautiful act” (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 15). Dan Mannix (1996, 49) tells of a performer he calls Rafael who decided to specialize in neon. “Other men swalla one neon tube,” he said. “I only man do all tubes—no swords, no bayonets, no corkscrews.” Mannix thus purchased Rafael's collection of blades, which included a giant nickel-plated scissors.

Rafael told me that he had gotten most of his swords from hock shops. They were old cavalry sabers and lodge swords. He had the blades nickel-plated to make them smooth. He always made sure that the blades were firmly fitted in the hilts. Sometimes after swallowing a sword, the blade falls out of the hilt and the performer really swallows it. Unless he can reach the broken end of the blade with his thumb and forefinger, he is indeed in a predicament. Rafael had had the giant scissors made up specially as a flash item. The bayonet was a standard one he had gotten at an army surplus store.

The blades were displayed on an ornate, heart-shaped stand. It broke down for travel, and the blades were placed in scabbards to prevent scratching or chipping (Mannix 1996, 51).

Mannix learned many lessons from Rafael, such as wiping the sword both before and after swallowing it—before, because “even the smallest particles of dust adhering to the blade could make you retch,” and after, to remove the acidic stomach fluids, which corrode the blades’ expensive nickel plating (Mannix 1996, 51).

Although sword swallowing is an authentic act, performers have been known to use a trick or two. For example, according to Houdini (1920, 138), “When a sword with a sharp point is used the performer secretly slips a rubber cap over the point to guard against accident.” Another safety feature is use of a “guiding tube”—a type of protective sheath that can be swallowed secretly before using a gun to drive down the blade or swallowing a red-hot sword (Gibson 1967, 55).

One dime museum performer did a variation on sword swallowing that was a mixture of genuineness and trickery. He appeared to swallow sharp straight razors. The swallowing was real, but after the blades’ sharpness had been demonstrated, the razors were switched for dull ones. This was accomplished by means of a bandana or handkerchief with secret pockets that held the substitute razors. Under cover of wiping the blades, the performer made the switch—not too skillfully when he was being closely observed by Houdini (1920, 143-44).

Some mock advice was offered to would-be sword swallowers in a pamphlet titled “A Text Book on the Art of Sword Swallowing Explaining How to Do It Sixteen Different Ways.” It was sold by a husband-and-wife team of sword swallowers who billed themselves as the “Victorinas.” Actually, “Joe Van Victorina” was an American, Joseph B. Hallworth (b. 1872), and “Lady Victorina” was Kitty (Fisher) Hallworth. Among the pamphlet's tongue-in-cheek suggestions was a supposedly Chinese method of using opium to dull the senses. Another was to “hire somebody to do it for you, as it may save you much annoyance, and though more expensive is very satisfactory in the long run” (Jay 1987, 290-93). This seems like sound advice.

Mrs. Hallworth may have been the “Victorina” who had a close call at the Chicago Museum in 1902. The incident illustrates why one-piece swords became standard (in addition to the ease of demonstrating their lack of trickery). Victorina was swallowing a thin, dagger-like blade when it separated from the handle. According to Gardner (1962, 76): “Almost fainting with fear, Victorina nevertheless had the presence of mind to drop the handle, constrict her throat and reach down her gullet to catch the butt end of the blade with the tips of her fingers and draw it out. Had she lost it, it might have plunged right through the bottom of her stomach.”

Phenomenal Ingesters

In addition to geeks, who may bite the heads off chickens, and fire-eaters and sword swallowers, who have a taste for the dangerous, there are others with seemingly bizarre appetites. Such was a Silesian who appeared in Prague in 1006, who, for an admission price, would swallow up to thirty-six stones the size of pigeon eggs. Six centuries later an Italian stone eater named Francois Battalia was described in a somewhat exaggerated account:

His manner is to put three or four stones into a spoon, and so putting them into his mouth together, he swallows them all down, one after another; then (first spitting) he drinks a glass of beer after them. He devours about half a peck of these stones every day, and when he clinks upon his stomach, or shakes his body, you may hear the stones rattle as if they were in a sack, all of which in twenty-four hours are resolved. Once in three weeks he voids a great quantity of sand, after which he has a fresh appetite for these stones, as we have for our victuals, and by these, with a cup of beer, and a pipe of tobacco, he has his whole subsistence.

Several stone eaters performed during the eighteenth century. One could be seen in London in 1788 for a mere two shillings and six pence. His playbill called him “the Most Wonderful Phenomenon of the Age, who Grinds and Swallows stones, etc., with as much ease as a Person would crack a nut, and masticate the Kernel.” Another performer, a Spaniard, appeared at the Richmond Theater in 1790, and a later stone eater performed at the Globe Tavern (Houdini 1920, 154-60; Jay 1987, 277-84).

“All of these phenomenal gentry,” wrote Houdini (1920, 160), “claimed to subsist entirely on stones, but their modern followers hardly dare make such claims, so that the art has fallen into disrepute.” He added: “A number of years ago, in London, I watched several performances of one of these chaps who swallowed half a hatful of stones, nearly the size of hen's eggs, and then jumped up and down, to make them rattle in his stomach. I could discover no fake in the performance, and I finally gave him two and six for his secret, which was simple enough. He merely took a powerful physic to clear himself of the stones, and was then ready for the next performance.” Other stone swallowers made use of various substances—such as freshly baked bread or thick cream—to line their stomachs in preparation for their acts (Gardner 1962, 78).

In addition to stone eaters were water spouters, or human fountains, who flourished in the mid-seventeenth century. In contrast to swallowers of swords and stones, they employed the opposite type of glottal control. Their ability was to artfully regurgitate quantities of imbibed liquid. Some used special mouthpieces to eject jets of water high above spectators’ heads. Such demonstrations were especially effective outdoors, where sunlight made the arcing streams sparkle (Christopher 1962, 8-10).

Blaise Manfrede, known as the “Maltese Fountain,” went on tour across Europe transforming water into wine, beer, milk, and other liquids before spouting it. Such performances combined actual skill with magic tricks (Jay 1987, 296-97). For example, Manfrede's pupil, Floram Marchand, performed in England in 1650 with a water-to-wine feat. He came on stage, drank some thirty small glasses of warm water, then spouted glasses of “full deep claret” (figure 9.13). However, the color became increasingly pale, indicating the secret of Marchand's stunt: he had previously cleared his stomach and swallowed a quantity of red dye (a Brazil-nut solution). Other liquids were produced in conjuring fashion—for example, by deftly switching a glass of water for one filled with rosewater that had been concealed behind his water pail (Gardner 1962, 77-78).

A remarkable ingester was Mac Norton (actually a Frenchman named Louis Claude Delair), who performed in European music halls dressed elegantly in full tails. To begin his act, Norton slowly swallowed a quantity of water, then spouted it in an arching stream into a container twenty feet away. Norton also drank an amazing quantity of beer—some thirty to forty large glass mugs. Actually, however, he secretly made use of his regurgitative skill. Houdini, who saw Norton perform in Nuremberg and was on the same program with him in Berlin, explained how he did it: The filled mugs stood on shelves behind Norton, and he brought them forward a few at a time (grasping two or three by their handles with each hand). When these had been quaffed, he turned for the next batch and took that opportunity to eject the beer into a hidden trough (Houdini 1920, 163; Gardner 1962, 79). Norton's main act entailed swallowing goldfish and half-grown frogs, hence his billing as the “Human Aquarium.” Occasionally, however, something could go wrong. Houdini wrote: “I remember his anxiety on one occasion when returning to his dressing room; it seems he had lost a frog—at least he could not account for the entire flock—and he looked very much scared, probably at the uncertainty as to whether or not he had to digest a live frog.” At the Oktoberfests in Munich in 1901 and 1913 Houdini saw several frog swallowers but found them most repulsive. “In fact,” he said, “Norton was the only one I ever saw who presented his act in a dignified manner” (Houdini 1920, 163-64).

Then there was the “Great Waldo,” a German-born Jew who swallowed watches and rings, coins and lemons, and regurgitated them. He did the same with goldfish. Then he added to his act the thing that made him famous: the swallowing of white mice. Waldo—whose real name was Dagomarr Rochmann—picked up the act by watching other regurgitaters who appeared with traveling carnivals. Once he had learned the technique, he made modest sums by exhibiting at Viennese medical schools. When the Nazis marched on Austria, he fled to Switzerland and was forced to rely on his peculiar talent by performing in nightclubs. In time, an American agent offered him employment in the United States, and he remained there the rest of his life. His pitch book bore his photograph. It showed a gangling, bespectacled man attired in formal dress, complete with cape, top hat, and, in his white-gloved hands, a cane. He signed the booklet, “Dr. Waldo” (Mannix 1996, 86-87).

FIGURE 9.13. Among the “human fountains” was Floram Marchand, a seventeenth-century performer who drank water and seemingly spouted streams of claret. (From a contemporary print)

Waldo appeared at Ripley's Odditorium, where he swallowed a goldfish and then regurgitated it moments later into an aquarium. He next swallowed a lemon as the lecturer chanted, “Watch it disappear! Going, going, gone!” As Waldo brought the lemon back, the lecturer noted: “This really is a very dangerous thing to attempt. As you can see, when the lemon is forced back up the throat, it shuts off Waldo's windpipe. His face turns red—from the effort and the shutting off of his wind.” He added, “At times, when he attempts this feat without being in tiptop condition, the pressure of the lemon against Waldo's windpipe has caused him to fall on the stage in a dead faint” (Considine 1961, 142-43). Waldo never really fainted, but some in his audience did when he performed his next feat: swallowing a mouse. After extracting one of the white rodents from an aquarium covered with wire mesh, he held it by the tail, took a puff from his cigarette, and blew smoke into the mouse's face. This apparently somewhat anesthetized it and caused it to relax, whereupon, after dusting it with a feather to make sure it was clean, he popped it into his mouth and swallowed it. He usually swallowed a second one, then regurgitated them one at a time and returned them to the aquarium (Considine 1961, 143; Mannix 1996, 107). Mannix (1996, 107), in his novelized memoir, refers to a performer called the “Human Ostrich,” who is obviously Waldo, and relates an unfortunate incident that may have actually occurred. One of the mice had not been tranquilized sufficiently by the smoke and grabbed onto the performer's stomach lining. He ended his predicament by drinking a full pitcher of water, causing the mouse to swim for its life; then he regurgitated the water with the mouse.

Percilla the Monkey Girl recalled an incident when Waldo had been performing with the show of her adoptive father, Karl Lauther: She said (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 191): “He ran everybody out of Pappa Karl's show once. His mice got loose and ran everybody down the hall. A whole box of them. Mice was everywhere. He was next to my stage, right next to me. It made me sick [watching his act]. I told him ‘Can't you put them somewhere else?’ That's the only time I ever got sick on a show.”

Bobby Reynolds (2001), who once worked with Waldo, told me of his tragic end sometime after World War II: “He killed himself, you know. Yeah, he killed himself. He gassed himself. I think he fell in love with somebody, or—I don't know. He was disappointed in life, and he was in a rooming house in New York and he committed suicide.”

Some of the gastronomic acts feature less disgusting—and more daring—ingestions. These sideshow performances are akin to “torture” acts—those who ingest toxic substances, eat glass and razor blades, swallow tacks, and the like. Some of these phenomenal ingesters—notably those who swallow acids and poisons—use the same method as the spouters: the ability to regurgitate at will. After sipping the noxious substance, the performer secretly expels it into a handkerchief as he pretends to wipe his mouth. Or he regurgitates it into a glass under the pretense of washing the poison down with a drink of water (Gardner 1962, 78). As preparation, a quantity of “oatmeal mush” is sometimes ingested to absorb the dangerous substance before it is expelled later (Houdini 1920, 166).

The drinking-acid feat can also be accomplished by outright trickery. One way to do this is to use what magicians call a “mirror glass.” This is a tumbler, typically fluted, with a mirror cemented in it to form a vertical partition. Even from a short distance, the glass looks empty. The front compartment connects with a reservoir in the bottom of the glass (i.e., a double bottom) that is concealed by a decorative band. Thus, when the acid is poured into the tumbler, it runs into the hidden reservoir. The rear compartment is filled with water, colored to resemble the acid. When the small glass is picked up to be filled with acid, which has previously been demonstrated to be genuine, it is rotated front to back, concealed by the performer's hand. Of course, as a sideshow insider's instructional typescript, “Midway Torture Feats” (n.d.), cautions: “Carbolic acid (phenol) is a deadly caustic, and even a spilled drop or two proves quite painful. The handling of such materials or examination of same by audience must be done with extreme caution.” Even with trickery, such acts are highly dangerous. Witness Narishingha Swami, who reportedly licked sulfuric acid and ingested potassium cyanide and other substances, including powdered glass. His techniques are unknown, but in Rangoon, Burma, something went amiss and he “died with tragic swiftness” (Gardner 1962, 73).

Among the sideshow glass eaters was Paul Owen, who crunched expired electric lightbulbs and water glasses. He also munched on razor blades, telling New York reporters that he had put away some 350,000 since he had acquired a taste for them as a boy (Gardner 1962, 73).

Bernard Leikind, a physicist with whom I taught a 1996 workshop in wonder-workers’ feats, has demonstrated the secrets of eating glass. The glass of choice—preferred by sideshow swallowers—is a common lightbulb, which is thin and easily crunchable. Under Leikind's direction, I took a small piece of such glass, placed it flat between my molars, and easily crunched and ground it into a gritty, sandlike powder, which I then swallowed. In an earlier article, Leikind (1995) explains: “Since glass is chemically inert, it is indigestible. If you start with smithereens of thin glass and chew it into tiny pieces it is not likely to produce a cut.” For extra protection, showman Bobby Reynolds (2001) told me that “the gaff…is…that you take a piece of soft white bread and you chew it up and swallow it behind [the glass], and then the whole thing gets mixed together and you pass it out.” Some glass crunchers entirely gaff their act, explains Mannix (1996, 88), “by putting chewing gum against their teeth and squeezing the bits of glass into it.” Others use the sip-of-water trick and spit the glass out into the tumbler, while still others merely retain the glass in their cheeks.

Many of those who perform swallowing acts in sideshows do just that: they swallow and then have to “digest” whatever they ate. Although ground glass is popularly believed to be a deadly substance if ingested, in fact, when powdered it is about the equivalent of swallowing sand. Performers may cut their mouths occasionally, but that is scarcely fatal, and once the ground glass is swallowed, the performer is “fairly safe” (Mannix 1996, 88). Narishingha Swami used bottle glass, but he had it “ground into powder” before eating it (Gardner 1962, 73).

At our 1996 workshop, I presented a glass-eating feat that I had devised using some basic conjuring principles. I placed an empty soda bottle in a burlap sack and had someone smash it with a hammer. I reached in, picked out a sizable shard of the green glass, popped it in my mouth, and began crunching. Some in the audience began to look horrified, while others, noticing the blood trickling from my lips, laughed nervously, uncertain if I was pulling off another trick. (I had previously performed some feats à la Houdini, including extracting myself from a straitjacket and escaping from a combination of thumb cuffs, handcuffs, and a padlocked wrist chain.) It was indeed a trick. All I had to do was secretly palm a shard of broken green lollipop while the real glass was being smashed and slip a stuntman's “blood” capsule into my mouth. The rest is obvious: After reaching into the bag, I came out with the candy shard, showed it freely, and let it be seen clearly going into my mouth, with no false moves. After crunching the “glass,” I bit into the capsule, swallowed all the evidence, and bravely bowed while wiping the “blood” away with a white handkerchief. Magician Mark Edward, who was a special guest of the workshop, made some subtle variations and shared the trick with his advanced magic students (Edward 1996).

Some of the same tricks used by glass eaters can be employed by chewers of razor blades and swallowers of hairpins and tacks. Mannix (1996) cautions that if hairpins are actually going to be swallowed, they should be bent in such a way that they will not stick crosswise in the throat. Gardner (1962, 73-74) reports that “Sebastian Montero, Robert Ripley's storied glutton, ate razor blades, glass, and thousands of carpet tacks, which could be clearly seen in X-ray photographs of his outraged stomach.” More bread, Sebastian?

Jim Rose presented a variation on this theme in his Jim Rose Circus Side Show, a troupe of human marvels who performed at indoor and outdoor venues that often hosted rock groups. Rose performed a panoply of feats that included fire eating, lying on a bed of nails, and escaping from a straitjacket. He also performed “internal juggling,” namely, “swallowing to the back of the throat, razor blades, then thread, then coughing them back up tied to the thread,” according to a playbill (Gregor 1998, 27). Actually, this is a gaffed feat—an old fakir's trick that Houdini learned from his sideshow and dime museum days in the 1890s. The feat originally used needles but later featured razor blades, which could be seen more easily from the audience. The secret is a duplicate set of dull razor blades prestrung on a thread, and the whole thing collapsed into a small packet. This is palmed and deftly switched for the original blades that are supposed to be swallowed (Gibson and Young 1961, 53-64).

Human Pincushions

Various mystics—including Egyptian fakirs and Hindu yogis—accomplished special feats such as stopping their pulses and painlessly thrusting long needles through their arms and cheeks. They claimed that the “mind power” that allowed them to do so was due to occult forces, and scientific observers attributed the effects to autohypnosis, but in reality, a mixture of simple principles and occasional trickery was involved. Hence, explains Walter Gibson (1967, 102), “a host of imitators sprang up who presented most of the same marvels in practically the same style.”

In causing his pulse to fade away, the performer uses a simple trick. After a member of the audience places his fingers on the yogi's wrist and notes the strong throb, the mystic gradually eases his upper arm against his side, thereby secretly pressing against a block of wood concealed under his armpit. Alternatively, the fakir may wear a stiff neckband, which he presses down with his chin against the collarbone, thus achieving the same tourniquet effect.

The pulse stopping is merely the prelude to a genuine feat: sticking bodkins and skewers through the flesh and controlling the flow of blood when they are removed. The fakir may first press on the nearest artery to briefly retard the blood flow. Then, relaxing, he thrusts the skewer straight forward through the skin. He may push a thin dagger through his throat by first drawing the flesh forward with thumb and fingers. Thus, the blade pierces only the fleshy part. The fakir may then demonstrate that he can control the bleeding when the skewers are removed, allowing the blood to flow or stop as requested. This is accomplished by either removing the implement quickly, which allows the wound to bleed freely, or removing it slowly, which causes the wound to swell and thus retards blood flow (Gibson 1967, 104).

Gresham (1953, 203-4) provides insight into the human pincushion act:

Much of the art of the side show lies in the use of little-known natural laws. There are, for instance, areas of the body where the nerves recording pain in the skin seem to be sparser than other spots. The shoulders are one, the inside of the forearm is another. If you take a hatpin and touch the point of it to the inside of your forearm up near the elbow, pointing away from you, and keep shifting the point a fraction of an inch each way, after a few tries you will find a spot much less sensitive than the others. Now if you give the pin a quick jab it will penetrate the skin, sliding in almost parallel to it. Keep pushing and the point begins to come out the other side, first as a long, slim finger of flesh, then it breaks open with a sharp nip. Leave it there a moment. Now you are a human pincushion.

As to the pain, he emphasizes the advantage of knowing when the piercing will occur and likens it to diabetics giving themselves regular injections of insulin. Of course, Gresham emphasizes that alcohol should be used to sterilize both the arm and the pin. Lifetime sideshow performer Percilla “Monkey Girl” Bejano cautions that the pins should be kept in alcohol “overnight” (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 191). Gresham (1953, 204) adds that, “To be a happy, carefree human pincushion you have to be one of those people who don't get infections no matter what they do.”

One Hindu fakir, whom Mannix (1996, 82) calls Krinko, sometimes allowed his tongue to be nailed to a board by a member of the audience. Of course, the performer had a pierced tongue and guided the nail to ensure that it went through the existing hole rather than making a new one. Krinko also did a stunt that I have seen performed by a magician on television. He swallowed a yard of red ribbon rolled into a ball, then pulled up his shirt, made a cut in his belly with a razor blade, and drew out the ribbon an inch at a time. The secret is that two ribbons are used. The duplicate one is threaded “on a long, flat needle such as women use to run elastic through their panties.” The performer grabs a handful of flesh on his side and inserts the needle through the fold so that when the skin is released, the ribbon runs just under the skin. One end protrudes above the navel, and the other emerges from a point nearly at the back and is allowed to dangle down his pants. This part of the ribbon is pulled carefully until the end in the front is drawn just out of sight. Then all the performer has to do to apparently remove the swallowed ribbon from his stomach is make a slight cut in the skin. “Then he could pull the ribbon through as though he were pulling out the string from a pair of pajamas” (Mannix 1996, 82-83).

There have been many variations on the act, with many styling themselves the “Human Pincushion.” One was Edward H. Gibson, who entertained vaudeville audiences in the early twentieth century. At each performance, an assistant stuck up to sixty pins into Gibson's face and body (Mooney et al. 2002, 133).

A performer with Ripley's “Believe It or Not!” show at the Chicago Century of Progress fair in 1933 was photographed with needles slipped through the skin of his chest, a safety pin placed like a nose ring, and eight needles arrayed in his cheeks and chin like a porcupine's quills (Mannix 1996, 8). (However, the last look rather like acupuncture needles, with fine wire strands emerging from thin handles. The fineness of the needles would help reduce the pain.)

The “Strange as It Seems” show at the New York world's fair in 1939 featured Ellis Phillips, who pierced his cheeks with hat pins, sewed a button onto his chest, and used thumbtacks to hold up his socks (Dufour 1977, 124). Another 1930s performer was a man named Easler of Lorraine, Ohio, who was photographed with skewers through his cheeks and one inserted diagonally downward from his right upper lip to the center of his chin. He claimed that he was able to do his act “because his nerves did not register pain” (Mannix 1996, 25).

I have witnessed a few such acts. At the 2000 fair at York, Pennsylvania, Dr. Frankestien [sic] was the blowoff act in Hall & Christ's ten-in-one. For an extra fee, one could go into a screened-off area to watch this human pincushion stick a large hat pin through the outside of his forearm, show buttons apparently sewn to his chest (figures 9.14 and 9.15), and lift up his pant legs to reveal socks held up with safety pins. He “lectured on himself” (as showmen would say) and gladly answered questions and posed for pictures.

The most dramatic such act I have seen was that of Zamora the Torture King (figure 9.16). He was formerly with the Jim Rose Circus, where he was billed as Tim the Human Pincushion, before expanding his torture act. His real name is Tim Cridland, and he is a practicing Sunni who lives in California when not touring (Gregor 1998, 27, 386). When I caught Zamora, he was at Malibu Jack's Hideaway in St. Catharines, Ontario, performing with Slimenstra Hymen (who exhibited fire breathing, a bullwhip routine, and a burlesque show). Tim's act was a roster of torture feats that included a fire-eating routine, eating glass from a lightbulb, lying on a bed of nails and a rack of sharp swords, walking on broken glass, chopping onions on his chest with a cleaver, licking a red-hot iron bar, and performing the ribbon-swallowing-and-extracting feat (described earlier). Then, as if all that were merely a warm-up, Zamora began to torture himself in earnest, thrusting skewers through the fleshy part of his right forearm, another into his left biceps, and still another into one cheek and out the other. He even inserted the point of yet another under his tongue and pressed down until it exited from the skin of his throat.

FIGURE 9.14. A human pincushion pushes a hat pin through his forearm. His was the blowoff act in Hall & Christ's 2000 ten-in-one. (Photo by author)

FIGURE 9.15. The same human pincushion shows buttons apparently sewn to his chest. (Photo by author)

FIGURE 9.16. Zamora the Torture King performs his grueling act at various venues. (Photo by author)

In terms of sheer numbers, Brent Moffatt takes the “pincushion” title, defeating the previous record of 200 needles in the Guinness Book of World Records. Moffatt, who works in a body-piercing and tattoo parlor in Winnipeg, Manitoba, pierced his body with 702 surgical needles. To fit them all, he used closely spaced rows down both legs. “The first 500 needles were not too painful because my legs had swelled up. The last two were in my nipples—and they're very sensitive.” Removing them was the real pain: “It was excruciating. My legs were covered in blood and people said I was not a pretty picture” (McCandlish 2003). However outlandish Moffatt's feat was, it was accomplished over a period of about seven hours. That scarcely rivals the feats of those who make their livings in sideshows—such as the anonymous performer featured on a 1960 banner as “Pin Cushion Man” (Johnson et al. 1996, 159-60)—putting on several shows a day and living the rough life of a carny.

Although the human pincushion act is typically genuine, there can be gaffs. I recall seeing one method used in a ten-in-one on the midway at the Canadian National Exposition. The performer was a magician friend who did a trick version of the needle-through-the-arm feat. In this version (once sold by magic supply houses), it looks like a large hat pin is pushed through the flesh of the inside forearm. The secret is that, beforehand, an inch-wide stripe of rubber cement is applied across the area. This part of the arm is turned toward the performer, and as he pretends to push the pin through the skin, he simply pinches the cemented area around it. This gives the skin a simulated punctured look. The head of the pin is actually a bulb, and the needle is hollow, so that a drop of “blood” can be squeezed out for added realism. This effect (and its secret) was presented on an NBC special, Psychic Secrets Revealed, hosted by Stacy Keach (April 23, 2003).

Blockheads

Often performed by human pincushions, the blockhead act—in which the entertainer pounds a large nail or ice pick into the nostril and apparently into the head itself—looks like the ultimate pincushion effect (figure 9.17). Actually, it is one of the least torturous of the working acts.

Several writers believe that the effect was developed by fakirs of India, possibly centuries ago (Gardner 1962, 32; Mannix 1996, 79). In the sideshows it began as one of an array of torture or pain-proof feats in the acts of such performers as Ellis Phillips. Phillips, the 1930s human pincushion mentioned earlier, would “drive a long nail into his nose” as part of his performance for the “Strange as It Seems” show at the 1939 New York world's fair (Dufour 1977, 122).

Another was “Professor” Leo Kongee. He “obligingly horrified his American audiences by having six-inch nails driven up his nose.” One of the few African Americans of the genre, Kongee also did other “painless” feats, including sewing a button to his tongue. Still another was a “Peruvian fakir” named Jose Fernandez, who lived in Richmond, Virginia. In addition to swallowing razor blades, he would “drive a 20-penny nail into his head up to the hilt” (Mooney et al. 2002, 134, 135).

FIGURE 9.17. “Human Blockhead” banner at Sideshows by the Seashore, Coney Island. (Photo by author)

The secret of “Driving a Spike in your Head” was one of several contained in a six-page typescript, “Side Show Tricks Explained.” Published by A. B. Enterprises, it also supplied instructions for circus and midway shows (such as the “Rope Spinning Act,” “100 Clown Hints & Ideas,” and “Dynamite Explosion Act”), as well as plans for concessions, rides, and illusions. The instructions called the blockhead feat “another modern miracle” and advised: “Its secret is known only [to] a very few, so help to protect it.” The secret is simple: “Perhaps you do not know it, but neither do thousands more like you, that the hole in your nose does not go up between the eyes as most persons believe, but right back over the roof of the mouth to the back of the throat.” It is into this surprisingly long cavity that the nail or ice pick easily slips. Of course, one prepares the spike by filing the tip to smooth it and slightly round the point. The hammering is feigned. The performer firmly holds the spike between finger and thumb and pretends to tap it in but actually only lets it slip forward a little at a time. Done properly, there is little risk—except perhaps an initial tendency to sneeze.

I discussed the feat with Bobby Reynolds (2001), who added, “You cry a lot with the nail in your nose, ’cause it causes a tear duct to get all screwed up, but other than that, no problem.” Well, maybe one. Doc Swami—magician, fire-eater, and human blockhead—once failed to pay attention and drove the nail too far, so that it got lost inside. Fortunately, a shake of the head and a hard blowing of the nose dislodged it. “That was the first time that had happened,” Swami said, “and I’d been doing the act for 20 years” (Taylor and Kotcher 2002, 168).

One of Bobby's show people, Eddie the Blockhead, kindly demonstrated the act for me in an idle moment. Dressed in a fancy vest and wearing a top hat, he was operating the show's ticket booth. As I readied my camera, Eddie appeared to pound the shaft of a screwdriver into his nose, using the heavy handle of another (see figure 9.18). Apparently seeing me as something of a rube, Eddie explained that, due to a wartime injury, his face had had to be reconstructed, thus leaving a cavity that made the feat possible. His eyes scarcely twinkled. I must say that, although I have seen several blockhead acts, I have never heard that “explanation” before or since.

It was anatomical wonder Melvin Burkhart (discussed in chapter 7) who transformed the act from a torture feat to a comedy routine. And it was Melvin who gave the act its whimsical name, “human blockhead.” He had a number of one-liners. When one lady asked if the feat was a trick, he replied, “No, the nail's real. It's my head that's a fake.”

Other Torture Acts

Additional working acts of the torture variety are explained below.

Climbing a Ladder of Swords. In ancient times, walking on swords was a Shinto ordeal called Tsurigi Watari. However, after Japanese conjurers learned the secret, the Shinto priests abandoned the rite. Later, Far Eastern performers brought the feat to Western audiences (Gibson 1967, 91). Resembling a step-ladder consisting of five to seven rungs of broad swords placed edge upward, the ladder of swords is a sideshow mainstay. The emphasis is usually on the performer rather than the ladder. Wind-whipped banner lines—like the one for Bobby Reynolds's traveling sideshow museum—often include a dramatic “Iron Foot Maiden” banner or some similarly styled act. Bobby's collection naturally includes a classic example of such a “torture rack.” A 1954 publicity photo for a young Ward Hall shows the multitalented performer dressed in a sequined costume, his bare feet on the top two blades of a ladder of swords, and juggling.

FIGURE 9.18. Eddie the Blockhead demonstrates a popular sideshow feat—pounding a screwdriver into his nose—especially for my camera.

The secret of the feat is that a sharp edge of a razor, knife, or sword can be pressed against the skin without cutting it, as long as the blade does not slide or turn. “Likewise,” notes Gibson (1967, 92), “the sword walker must never lose his balance because the slightest sideward motion of his foot might cause severe injury.” Ironically, the illustration accompanying Gibson's explanation is in error, showing the Shinto performer facing the ladder and thus placing his feet across the blade. In fact, the feet must be placed lengthwise on the blade edge “and flat,” states a typescript of instructions, “in such a way that the pressure is applied [to] the entire length of the foot at once” (“Midway Torture Feats” n.d., 11). In figure 9.19, sideshow torture queen Bambi shows the correct style. Note that her body is turned sideways to the ladder, thus orienting her feet along the blade. (Note also how the inside lecturer has moved close, using his foot to steady the ladder and giving the pretty daredevil a helping hand up.)

Mannix (1996, 83) mentions a possible of way of gaffing (or grifting) the ladder-of-swords act: sharpening only a portion of the blade (say, near the handle); that portion could be used later to slice paper as proof of its sharpness. Mannix insists, however, that this was only the occasional spectator's suspicion, at least with Krinko, the sideshow yogi with whom he worked. Krinko had tried passing the swords out for examination, but one man cut himself severely and had to be rushed off for medical attention. In contrast, a set of instructions actually sold to the carny trade (Brill 1957) says to use lodge swords: “These swords are not sharp like a military sword, but you can drag them through paper with a cutting motion. This is good flash.”

Walking on Broken Glass. Typically, the “Iron Foot Marvel” act combines climbing the ladder of swords with walking on broken glass. This is shown, for instance, by a tall (eight by thirteen feet), double-panel banner from around 1940 (painted by George Bellis of Sunshine Studios, Wichita, Kansas). The upper panel depicts a scantily clad beauty posing with one foot, on tiptoe, on a nine-blade ladder. The lower panel portrays her walking on broken glass while a satanic figure dumps more shards in her path (Johnson et al. 1996, 44, 156). Similarly, Bambi of the Hall & Christ Show did the ladder-of-swords act, combined with walking on glass and even lying on a bed of nails.

Walking on broken glass involves a wooden box (approximately three feet wide, four feet long, and six inches deep) whose bottom is covered with broken glass. At show time, the performer may break some old bottles and add jagged pieces to the mix. Then, showing that his or her feet are unprepared, the performer walks, possibly jumps, even dances, on the glass—unharmed. According to “Side Show Tricks Explained” (n.d., 4), thick bottles are broken, and the sharp edges are filed or ground down. These pieces are placed in the center of the box, and the freshly broken glass is put only around the edges. The performer avoids the sharp pieces by staying in the center of the box. The feet may also be prepared by soaking them in a solution of alum, drying them, and then rubbing the soles well with powdered resin.

FIGURE 9.19. With a steadying hand from the inside lecturer, torture queen Bambi demonstrates the classic ladder-of-swords feat in the 2000 Hall & Christ ten-in-one. (Photo by author)

A somewhat different approach is described by physicist David Willey (1999), a friend of mine who has a traveling physics show that has been seen by some 50,000 students. David has also achieved fame as the “resident mad scientist” of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I once stood off-camera as he demonstrated for a TV documentary not only the glass-walking feat but also his preparation technique, which does not involve grinding the glass fragments’ sharp edges (figure 9.20). First, rather large bottles are selected so that the broken pieces will be more gently curved. Any paper labels are soaked off. Then the bottles are placed in a canvas bag and smashed with a hammer (while wearing leather gloves and safety goggles) into relatively small pieces. The box—the bottom made from a piece of half-inch-thick plywood and the sides of two-by-four-inch lumber—is filled to a uniform depth of about three inches. This depth permits the fragments to settle and shift a bit as the foot is slowly, tentatively, placed on them. Then David sorts the glass so that any right-angled pieces (resulting from the juncture of the bottle's side wall and base) are moved to the outer edges, leaving only the flatter pieces of glass in the center. For extra safety, he covers the bed of glass with a heavy cloth and pounds the surface firmly with a cast-iron skillet. This eliminates any jagged points that may have been sticking up.

There is also a technique for walking on broken glass (Willey 1999): “When walking I place each foot slowly, moving it elsewhere if a point or edge is felt, although that is seldom necessary if the bed has been prepared correctly. Care must be taken to brush off any pieces of glass that stick to the bottom of the feet when stepping off the bed.” Of course, the sharpness of the glass should be demonstrated to the audience. Willey uses a shard from the glass bed to cut a string holding a weighty object.

Withstanding Molten Lead. One old fakir test is pouring “molten lead” into the ears and even the eyes. “When the hissing lead hit his flesh and began to throw off steam,” says Mannix (1996, 83), “people in the tip fainted right and left as though you'd fired a charge of buckshot through the crowd.” The fakir would grope about as if blind. But then, with due drama, he would slowly open his eyes, to the relief of the crowd. The secret is that, instead of lead, the fakir uses a similar-appearing compound of antimony. This has an extremely low melting point, so that pouring it over the eyes—which should be closed for the effect—is no more harmful than doing so with candle drippings (Mannix 1996, 83; “Midway Torture Feats” n.d.).

FIGURE 9.20. Physicist David Willey walks on broken glass for a documentary by the Learning Channel. (Photo by author)

Another feat is to dip one's fingers into molten lead—real molten lead. The trick here is to first secretly dip the hand into a bowl of water that is hidden from the spectators’ view. Physicist David Willey (1999, 45) explains, “Heat from the lead goes into evaporating the water and hence not into burning the hand, and the resulting steam layer insulates the hand.” Willey (under whose tutelage I performed the feat) cautions that the temperature of the lead must be raised well beyond its melting point (327.5 degrees Celsius). “Having lead solidify on one's fingers is not pleasant,” he warns.

Lying on a Bed of Nails. This well-known feat comes from the East. According to Robert Ripley (1929, 9), it was common to Sadhus (Hindu ascetics):

Sadhus who sit on beds of sharp spikes have been more or less featured in the Sunday supplements of our country. This stunt is a popular one in India and I saw half a dozen of them. In Mysore a six-year-old boy was starting out in life by assuming a sitting position on a home-made “Kiddie car” of nails.

One old fellow that I saw in Benares had been on his trundle bed for eighteen years, I was told. After some persuasion, highly emphasized with rupees, the venerable old faquir [fakir] stood up on his spiny mattress and gave me the opportunity to see that there was no fake about it.

The bed of nails was popularized in the United States during vaudeville and became a mainstay in circus and carnival sideshows. One circa 1940 banner headed “Torture of India” depicts a woman reclining comfortably on a wooden bench studded—exaggeratedly—with sharp, pyramid-shaped spikes (Johnson et al. 1996, 42). The secret of the bed-of-nails feat is simply “to have the nails all the same length, and all close together,” according to a mid-twentieth-century set of instructions sold to sideshow showmen (Brill 1957). Authorities vary on the correct spacing, with recommendations being one-half inch, one-quarter inch, or two centimeters. (“Side Show Tricks Explained” n.d.; Brill 1957; Willey 1999). All sources agree that pilot holes should be drilled for each nail to prevent the lumber from splitting. In terms of physics, the nails do not puncture the body because if there is a sufficient number of nails to support the body, no one nail will press especially hard (Willey 1999).

Breaking Stone on Chest. This old strongman feat was performed as an act called the “Man of Iron.” It was sometimes exhibited in sideshows. The performer lies faceup and raises his body so that it rests on the hands and feet. (Alternatively, his body may be supported by a padded stool beneath the shoulders and another under the buttocks.) A heavy stone or concrete block is placed on his chest and smashed with a sledgehammer, leaving the performer unfazed (Gibson 1967, 101-2; “Side Show Tricks Explained” n.d.; Willey 1999). The secret is that the heavy stone absorbs the blow, rendering it harmless. Explains Willey (1999):

When the concrete block is broken, the kinetic energy of the sledgehammer goes into causing the block's destruction, ultimately warming the pieces, and the momentum of the hammer is passed through the prone person to the earth. The person swinging the sledgehammer needs to hit the block with sufficient force to shatter it, but not so hard that the hammer has a significant amount of energy left after the initial impact.

He cautions:

It is quite possible for an adult to hit the block too hard, as I found out when an enthusiastic and strong gym teacher hit a block as hard as he could. All the breath was knocked out of me and I had a matrix of puncture wounds on my chest and back. A tetanus shot saw me fine that day, and since then only my wife breaks the block. She practiced just breaking blocks on the ground many times before breaking them on me. Three-section blocks should be placed lengthwise on the top board whereas two-section blocks are best stood on end. I prefer two-section blocks as they shatter nicely.

Willey once broke a block on me, as he had done with Jay Leno. I lay on a bed of nails with another placed on my chest and a concrete block on top of that. I certainly looked like I was a sandwich of torture. However, the block absorbed the blow and I was unscathed, except for a broken piece of concrete that flew in my face. I was glad I had worn a hard hat with a face shield; even so, the impact of the flying concrete broke the safety glasses I wore underneath the shield. I was uninjured but, as I later admitted to some spectators, “surprised.”

Electric Marvels

Because electricity and magnetism are invisible powers that can produce dramatically visible effects, they seemed quite magical in earlier times. In 1884 a teenage girl from Cedarville, Georgia, was discovered to be a “human magnet”—or so it was claimed. Certainly Lulu Hurst could attract audiences, packing lecture halls and opera houses in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, and elsewhere. Crowds came to witness the apparent power of the “Georgia Magnet.” In one demonstration, despite the efforts of several people to resist her, Hurst could push them around the stage. Two strong men pressing against a stick she held out were unable to move her from where she stood. And while she held a stick vertically, a man would attempt to push it down to the floor, but the alleged human magnet merely pressed her hand against the stick and prevented the action.

Magnetism? Hypnotism? Some occult force? Actually, Lulu Hurst was using the simple principle of force deflection—as she herself admitted. Having left the stage after only a two-year career to marry her manager, Lulu conceded that her act had involved “unrecognized mechanical principles involving leverage and balance.” For example, as the two men pressed against the stick she held out, they pushed toward her, while she cleverly directed an upward pressure that effectively deflected their strength. If the men pushed hard enough, and if her deflection were sudden enough and caught them off guard, they might be sent tumbling—much to the amusement of the audience.

Lulu Hurst was not the first such performer (nor the last) to make use of force deflection, along with other physical principles and tricks. In 1846 a French girl, Angelique Cottin, became known briefly as the “Electric Girl” for performing such stunts (Nickell 1991b, 34-40; Gibson 1967, 61-62). However, most “Electric Girls” are attractions at circus and carnival sideshows and dime museums (figure 9.21). The performer is typically called Electra and is, according to the talkers and lecturers, able to withstand strong electrical shocks that would kill an ordinary person. As the act is usually performed, Electra sits in a fearful-looking “electric chair” as the switch is thrown and—claims the inside lecturer—thousands of volts surge through her body. As proof, a mere touch from Electra causes a fluorescent bulb to light or a torch to burst into flame.

A 1976 edition of A. Brill's Bible of Building Plans, a catalog of instructional materials for carny showmen and amusement park operators, advertised the “Electric Chair—Sparks Shoot from Her Fingers.” Workshop drawings and complete instructions for building the chair were sold for just $5. It was advertised as “a simple wood-working project,” the “electrical device” being available from an auto parts dealer. “Spectators are told the girl is receiving thousands of volts,” said the ad in Brill's Bible. The chair “is hot enough to Light a Torch, Cigarettes, Good and Bad Fluorescent Bulbs.” The electric girl could also light a torch “from a glass of water” (Brill 1976, 148). The secret was a special transformer, hidden from view, that produced a “high-frequency” current. Though high in voltage, it was low in amperage and therefore harmless to the performer. When Electra pressed her arm against a metal plate mounted on the chair, she received the current but hardly felt it. The bulb that lighted at her touch was one designed for such a high-frequency current; a common incandescent lightbulb would not have worked. One advantage of this working act is that anyone can play the part of Electra—or “Electricia,” as a Hall & Christ banner proclaimed during 2000 and 2001.

FIGURE 9.21. Banner art from Bobby Reynolds's sideshow promotes an electric girl as she is typically styled. (Photo by author)

An interesting variant on the classic ten-in-one Electra act was one featured at the 1935 Exposition Internationale in Brussels, Belgium. There, a man named Floyd Woolsey was hired by Dufour and Rogers’ presentation “Le Crime ne Paye Pas” (Crime Doesn't Pay). Styled as an exposé of gangsterism in America, the act involved actors re-creating the “last mile” as the condemned Woolsey was escorted to the electric chair by a priest, prison warden, and witnesses. Lou Dufour (1977, 91-92) recalled: “The lighting and costumes were somber, in keeping with the mood we wanted to present. Woolsey would be strapped in the chair and when the ‘electricity’ was turned on he would leap, lunge, and twist. He had a real fit in that chair, finally slumping in feigned death. We paid him $100 a week, which was a pretty good salary, but he was worth every dollar. It was his equipment, and he did the stunt ten to twenty times a day. In six months we must have electrocuted him 2,500 times or so.”

Snake Charmers

Among the “miracle men” of the East are the snake charmers and handlers who show their power over the feared reptiles. Figure 9.22 is a sketch I made in Marrakech, Morocco, in 1971. I was drawn to the scene by the familiar flute music. The performer was putting on a snake show while his assistant used a tambourine as a collection tray. As shown in the sketch, one of the charmer's stunts was to approach a cobra in a squatting position, one hand on the ground and the other holding a tangle of serpents with which he teased the cobra.

In India the itinerant Jadu (magic) performer occasionally does herpetological tricks. For example, he might transform a piece of rope into a snake (after wrapping the rope in cloth and, in the process, making the switch) (Siegel 1991, 186). My friend Premanand, an Indian conjurer and skeptic, knows many such feats. One, described in his valuable Science Versus Miracles (1994, 36), is a rod-to-serpent feat like that of Pharaoh's sorcerers related in Exodus (7:9-15). The snake's mouth and tail are held in either hand, and the reptile is stretched straight. Firm pressure on the head with the thumb and index finger causes the snake to stiffen. In this way, it looks like a rod and is so presented until it is thrown on the ground, whereupon it soon recovers and is “transformed” into a snake.

The Indian snake charmer performs in the open air and uses his flute music to cause a deadly hooded cobra to rise and sway in rhythm to the music. A number of additional snakes, released from baskets and jute bags by his assistants, may be similarly entranced. When the music stops and the performer extends a stick toward the cobra, it strikes quickly. The snake charmer may even have the deadly reptiles crawling over his arms and concludes his act by dramatically capturing each snake.

FIGURE 9.22. A snake charmer in Morocco teases a cobra with a tangle of snakes. (Sketch by author)

Actually, although snakes do have hearing organs, it is the movement of the charmer himself, swaying to the melody, that the cobra follows. By ceasing to pipe, the charmer causes the cobra to poise motionless; then, by extending the stick, he provokes it to strike. In some cases the cobras are drugged or have their venom sacs removed or their mouths sewn shut. But skilled performers can and do handle the most lethal reptiles. From long experience, they understand how cobras behave, know their striking distance, and rely on the snakes’ shortsightedness. In concluding his act, for example, the charmer often deliberately provokes the cobra with the movements of one hand; then, as it prepares to strike, he quickly grasps it behind the head with the other. By taking advantage of the snake's natural tendency to hide, he is able to quickly put it in a basket or bag (Gibson 1967, 70-73; Gardner 1962, 51-52).

FIGURE 9.23. Snake charmer Millie Nevello poses with her charges in her Sparks’ Show pitch card photograph. (Author's collection)

In the West, snakes are part of circus and carnival exotica. They are often included in menageries (see chapter 11), are featured in single-O and ten-in-one sideshows, and are a regular feature of the latter's bally show (figure 9.23). In fact, a talker exhibiting a snake (as part of what would later be known as the ballyhoo) was depicted in an early 1830s print. The scene is European, demonstrating that the practice was not exclusive to American showmen (McKennon 1972, 1:20). Snakes were a regular feature of Barnum & Bailey's circus sideshow bally, as shown by photographs made in 1888. One depicts a “moss-haired” Circassian snake charmer exhibiting a great snake from an elevated position beside a ticket-office stand, with a banner line behind. Another shows what appears to be the same young lady, her snake draped around her, posing for a group picture of sideshow performers (including armless wonder Charles Tripp, bearded lady Annie Jones, and many other stars) (Kunhardt et al. 1995, 325, 327).

The standard bally platform snakes are Indian pythons and Central American boa constrictors. According to Gresham's Monster Midway (1953, 141-42).

These big snakes do not kill their dinners by crushing them to death but by suffocation. They are dangerous only if you let them get a coil around your neck or chest and then only if you are alone and can't find the head or tail. One herpetologist got himself thus entangled and had an unpleasant few minutes until he thought to look in a mirror, find the snake's head, and start unwinding him from there. The girl snake dancers of the carny seldom know anything about snakes except that you have to keep them from extremes of temperature. On days when the thermometer soars above ninety their living props are kept in tubs of water until needed for the show. On cold nights they often take the snakes to bed with them. Boas are mild-tempered for the most part and beautifully colored. Pythons can give you a bad, nonpoisonous bite when startled.

A link with the East was sometimes acknowledged in sideshow snake presentations. A young Indian woman, Saidor A. Isoha, appeared in 1890s publicity photographs by Karl Hagenbeck, whose German circus was among the most important shows in Europe. Isoha reportedly gave up her cobras after watching a man suffer a terrible death from a cobra bite. She once staged public fights, pitting a cobra against a mongoose. Reported William G. FitzGerald (1897) in the London magazine the Strand, “This was a little costly, however, for the cobra was always killed.” Isoha, who dressed in colorful Indian costumes and wore metal bracelets on her wrists and upper arms, owned six Indian and three African pythons, plus three boa constrictors, all in the eight-to-twelve-foot range. Wrote FitzGerald (1897), “She has a real affection for her snakes, and they for her. One large python will form himself into a living turban about her head.”

Most of the European and American snake charmers have been women. The combination of scantily clad ladies and their fang-bearing charges is a subtly erotic, beauty-and-the-beast theme that is irresistible to banner artists. One, by an unknown artist from the Millard and Bulsterbaum Studio, circa 1930s, was headed, “Edna Blanché Snake Charmer” (Johnson et al. 1996, 145). Other banners featured a “Snake Trainer” (like one with the Christiani Brothers Circus-Sideshow & Wild Animals Annex), a “Serpentina” (with the 1968 Hall & Christ Show), and “Eeka and Giant Snakes” (discussed in the previous chapter), among many others (Johnson et al. 1996, 139, 160; Hall 1981, 51). A “Snake Girl” single-O banner, however, featured not a snake charmer but a giant serpent with a girl's head—an illusion show (see chapter 10).

Those doubling as snake charmers have included a Circassian beauty (mentioned earlier with the 1888 Barnum & Bailey sideshow), a tattooed woman (with the 1927 Ringling Brothers Congress of Freaks), and a dwarf, Glen Newman. Newman was with the Hall & Christ Show, whose other snake charmers have included Elise Briskey, Jane and Floyd “Tex” Arnold, Ginger Donahue (see figure 3.9), and, in 2001, erstwhile Coney Island performers Bambi and Bunny Love (Barth and Siegel 2002, 105; Hall 1991).

“Little Pete” Terhurne, aka “Poobah the Fire-eating Dwarf,” once did a snake-charmer show titled “The Midget and the Monsters.” Actually, there was only one monster, a large boa constrictor. Unfortunately, during one week's run at Toledo, Ohio, the monster died. The show's owners, Ward Hall and Chris Christ, ordered another boa, but money being short, it was decided that “the show must go on.” According to Hall (1991, 18-19), Terhurne “took his usual stance with the boa corpse. When people were suspicious, asking if the snake was dead, Pete would cock his head, and with a sly smile, would retort, ‘No, it's just sick.’“And so the show went on until the replacement monster arrived.

Knife Throwers

At least in the United States, knife throwing had its origins in the early pioneer period, when two or more competitors engaged in it for recreation (Hibben 1998, 1). In rural areas, like the Appalachia I grew up in, many passed through the rites of boyhood playing Jim Bowie, tossing their hunting knives at targets such as the eye-shaped limb scars on a beech tree trunk.

A number of the sideshow knife throwers were styled in the Wild West tradition. There was “Mexican Pete, Master of the Knives,” who was described by Gresham in Monster Midway (1953, 81-82). His surname, ironically, was Pearce. Gresham encountered him at “a firelight vaudeville show, hastily thrown together out of neighboring ‘talent’ and a variety of show folk who were enjoying the low-budget campsites, that summer of the Great Depression, in the surrounding state park.” Gresham recalled:

I had seen “Mexican Pete” with a circus years before and had never forgotten him. He would start by pinning a cigarette from his wife's mouth to the board with a knife. Next she would hold a poker hand of four aces and he would nail them down with knives through the spots. Then came the “outlining.” He placed knives so close to her body that sometimes they pinned her clothes. Then he threw a handful of ice picks. Next came bayonets. He finished up by heaving half-a-dozen small axes. To take her final bow the girl stepped out of a frame of hardware. I thought Mexican Pete was marvelous. I still do.

One might think Mrs. Pearce—correctly billed as “a fearless little lady”—was also wonderful. It took nerve to be so outlined with a frame of hardware, no matter how much confidence she had in her husband's skill.

Another professional knife thrower from the western tradition was “Couteau Gene” Stebbings, who once performed with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. An erstwhile rancher, Stebbings was also a “trick gunner and authority on frontier fighting.” He went on to manufacture throwing knives and tomahawks for other “impaling act artistes” (Gresham 1953, 84-85).

Although an expert acknowledges that “you can throw any knife” (Hibben 1998, 2), he and other professionals generally advocate the use of specially designed throwing knives. Those seen on the carnival midway in Gresham's day had perfect balance on each axis—length, width, and thickness. In shape, however, the blade suddenly flared near the point to compensate for the handle's weight, as well as to provide a gleaming surface for spectators to see. The steel was plated with nickel or chrome to prevent rust, and the handles were typically painted red to provide “flash” (Gresham 1953, 87).

Longtime professional knife thrower Chris Christ (Ward Hall's partner in the Hall & Christ Shows) told me about the importance of a knife's heft: “You want something heavy. It's kind of like if you ask someone to drive a stake and they look for the littlest hammer you know they never did it before. You want the heaviest hammer. You want it to work for you.” Chris suggests a ratio of about an ounce and a quarter per inch, so that a thirteen-inch knife would weigh approximately a pound. He cautions that a lightweight knife will wobble, whereas a hefty one is “going to go right where you put it” (Christ 2001).

As Gresham learned from Pearce, throwers usually hold the knife by the blade, “exactly as you would hold a pencil—if you were going to write with the point held perpendicular to the writing surface.” The fingers and wrist are kept rigid, and when the arm is straightened in the act of throwing, the knife leaves the fingers due to its own inertia. Gresham (1953, 88) adds: “This is the whole secret of throwing knives: holding fingers and wrist rigid and judging the distance. I have seen many professionals on the midway use a wrist flip, but they simply made it a hundred times harder for themselves.” (Some professionals do throw by the handle. For example, Gil Hibben [1998] designs his knives for utility, which means they have sharp blades that could cut the hand. But expert throwers like Hibben are outside the midway tradition.)

The knife thrower always wants to work from the same distance. When held by the blade, the knife will make three-quarters of a turn in a few feet, or one and three-quarters revolutions at a little more than twice the distance. Slightly closer or farther away, and it will not be the point of the knife that strikes the backboard.

When throwing knives to outline a spread-eagled person on a rotating wheel, Christ prefers a smaller, lighter knife (about ten and a half inches long and approximately nine ounces). A heavier knife, he says, will “swing out of there.” Hitting the proper spot on a rotating wheel requires timing, so that the knife's trajectory intersects that of the moving spot. “And it's got to be vertical to you when it meets up,” he says (Christ 2001). One bit of showmanship in this regard is that, for safety, the knives are aimed a bit farther away from the target person than it appears. While the wheel is moving, it is difficult for the audience to see how far away the blades are, and as the wheel slows to a stop, the person unobtrusively extends his or her arms to make it look as if the knives came closer than they actually did.

What about outright trickery in knife throwing? I asked Christ about a gaffed backboard I had learned about, which was—according to Walter Gibson (1967, 125-26)—”an ingenious mechanical device.” It had slits at the supposed strike points, and within each slit was a concealed knife. The knife's point had a spring pivot, which the girl who stood against the board could activate by pressing an arm or other part of her body at the appropriate spot. The knife would instantly spring into view and quiver as though it had just struck there. The area behind the knife thrower was dim, and as he swept his arm backward as if readying for a throw, he tossed the blade behind him, then followed through as if actually tossing the knife. The audience, anticipating the throw, would look ahead to the expected impact. Since a blade then seemed to stick in the backboard, the illusion was complete. Some people actually believed they saw the glint of the blade flying through the air. This clever mechanism was illustrated in a nineteenth-century print (figure 9.24) and featured in a 1920s Broadway show, Stepping Stones (Gresham 1953, 90). It was also used, then exposed as a joke, in the 1947 Roy Rogers movie On the Old Spanish Trail. It was apparently also used on an episode of Charlie's Angels called “Circus of Fear” (October 19, 1977), with Kris Munroe (played by Cheryl Ladd) as the girl against the backboard. More recently, the mechanism was featured on a television exposé of conjuring secrets by the Masked Magician. However, Chris Christ (2001) says that it was never used on the midway.

FIGURE 9.24. Gaffed knife-throwing act using a trick backboard from which knives sprang into view. (Nineteenth-century illustration)

Little trickery is employed by circus and carnival sideshow knife wielders. One stunt, however, is to use a sharp knife (the ones used for throwing are dull) to halve an apple placed on the nape of an assistant's neck. With a quick blow, the performer divides the apple, without cutting the assistant. The secret is that the apple was prepared by pushing a large darning needle through it at the bottom, which stops the blade at that point.

Chris Christ (2001) acknowledges that when the knife master performs blindfolded, “obviously, you use a trick blindfold.” (There are many different types of blindfolds sold by magic supply houses.) Other than that, knife throwing is a matter of skill. “It's kind of like juggling,” he told me. “It's just a matter of practice and certain basic principles.”

Of course, as legendary showman Ward Hall sagely observes, “In this type of act, there are occasional mishaps.” Hall's first partner was Harry “Leonardo” Leonard, who did a knife-throwing act until his death in late 1964. Hall was often Harry's human target in the act, in which the two men dressed in identical costumes and billed themselves on the banner line as the “Two Leonardos” (Hall 1981, 19, 22). Hall recalls one of their mishaps (1991, 42): “On our opening night with the All American Circus in Oxford, Alabama, I miscalculated a move and received a small cut on the face. My aunt read of it in a trade journal and suggested that I should cease such dangerous endeavors. I didn't quit working the act, but anytime there was a mishap Harry would eliminate that particular stunt from the act. Over the years the act got shorter and shorter.” In addition to being a human target, Hall has featured a number of knife throwers in his shows, including Chris Christ (with Connie Kelly among Christ's lovely assistants), John Trower (also with Connie Kelly), Johnny Munroe (with Marilyn and Kathy Munroe), and Bruce Hill (Hall 1981, 57; 1991, 50-55).

Over the years, there have been many attempts to give knife acts new appeal (figure 9.25). One performer had his lovely assistant appear fully clothed. In fact, she was overdressed—in a breakaway outfit. Each knife pinned part of her costume, and after each throw she gave a little twist that left a portion of it on the backboard. Voilà! Knife throwing and striptease combined. (Gresham 1953, 91-92).

FIGURE 9.25. Vaudeville knife-throwing act featured several interesting feats. (Flyer from author's collection)

Some performers tried other combinations, often pairing knife throwing with another western-style act, such as rope spinning or whip cracking. Mannix (1996, 118) describes the whip-snapping artistry of a cowboy named Bronco Billy who performed such feats as cutting a cigarette from his assistant's lips. “The assistant had to keep his head thrown back and the cigarette sticking out straight,” says Mannix. “Otherwise his nose got in the way of the whip lash.” A few knife throwers—including Chris Christ and John Trower—are truly masters of the blade, doubling as sword swallowers.