1. Some writers differentiate the medicine pitchman from the showman in that they regard the former as a small-time con artist and the latter as a theatrical producer. I see the difference as one of degree and shifting circumstance, and use the terms interchangeably.
2. David Cohen and Ben Greenwood, The Buskers: A History of Street Entertainment (North Pomfret, Vermont: David and Charles, 1981), 87.
3. Bim Mason, Street Theatre and Other Outdoor Performances (New York: Routledge, 1992), 16.
4. Cohen and Greenwood, 21.
5. Samuel McKechnie, Popular Entertainment Through the Ages (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1969), 1.
6. Grete de Francesco, The Power of the Charlatan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939), 1.
7. Ibid., 4.
8. Ibid., 124.
9. Ibid., 12.
10. Ibid., 18.
11. A similar situation exists today on the internet. The World-Wide Web provides instantaneous access to all sorts of information, much of it unverified and of dubious origin. Those predisposed to a certain school of thought can easily obtain “data” to bolster their point of view. We find the eighteenth-century belief in alchemy quaint today, but the notion of instantaneous transformation persists; look at any infomercial, UFO Web site, health food–store catalog, or ad for a psychic hotline.
12. de Francesco, 18–19.
13. Owen Stratton, Medicine Man (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 39.
14. de Francesco, 23.
15. McKechnie, 56–57.
16. Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (New York: William Morrow, 1984), 239.
17. McKechnie, 58.
18. Cohen and Greenwood, 76.
19. de Francesco, 90, 100.
20. Ibid., 104–5.
21. Ibid., 77, 91.
22. Roy Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England, 1660–1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 117.
23. de Francesco, 80.
24. Brooks McNamara, Step Right Up (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1976), 3.
25. Cohen and Greenwood, 74.
26. Kenneth MacGowan, The Living Stage: A History of World Theater (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1955), 107.
27. David Armstrong and Elizabeth Metzger Armstrong, The Great American Medicine Show (New York: Prentice Hall, 1991), 174.
28. C.J.S. Thompson, The Quacks of Old London (London: Brentano’s Ltd., 1928), 140.
29. Cohen and Greenwood, 91.
30. Ibid., 89.
31. Thompson, 25.
32. de Francesco, 106–7.
33. Porter, 97.
34. Ibid., 105.
35. Ibid., 35
36. Ibid., 30
37. Ibid., 1
38. Ibid., 2
39. Ibid., 5
40. Ibid., 36
41. Ibid., 25
42. Ibid., 5
43. Ibid., 33
44. Armstrong, 9.
45. The archaic term patent medicine refers only to royal patronage, not the U.S. Patent Office.
46. Porter, 28.
47. Ibid., 37
48. Ibid., 38–9
49. Ibid., 45
50. McKechnie, 58–59.
51. McNamara, Step Right Up, 9.
52. Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1931), 107.
53. There were some medicine shows in the New York and Boston areas, but for the most part they occurred in rural areas.
54. McNamara, Step Right Up, 6.
55. Ibid., 8
56. Ibid.
57. Richardson Wright, Hawkers and Walkers in Early America (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1927), 198.
58. Ibid., 198.
59. Ibid., 57.
60. Rourke, 19.
61. Ibid., 33.
62. Ibid., 26.
63. Ibid., 39.
64. Ibid., 54.
65. Ibid., 54–55.
66. Ibid., 52–58.
67. Ibid., 59.
68. Thomas P. Kelley, Jr., The Fabulous Kelley: Canada’s King of the Medicine Men (Don Mills, Ontario: General Publishing Co. Ltd., 1974), 104.
69. Violet McNeal, Four White Horses and a Brass Band (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1947), 75.
70. Russel Blaine Nye, Society and Culture in America, 1830–1860 (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 137.
71. A. H. Saxon, P.T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 81.
72. James Twitchell, “The Annals of Advertising,” Ad Age’s Creativity (6 June, 1998, vol. 6, no. 50), 6.
73. Saxon, 30.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid., 11–12.
76. Ibid., 11.
77. Ibid., 55.
78. Ibid.
79. Ibid., 51.
80. Ibid., 67.
81. Burton Raffel, Politicians, Poets and Con Men: Emotional History in Late Victorian America (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1986), 177.
1. Madge E. Pickard and R. Carlyle Buley, The Midwest Pioneer: His Ills, Cures and Doctors (New York: Henry Schuman, 1946), 103.
2. Don B. Wilmeth, Variety Entertainment and Outdoor Amusements (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982), 48.
3. Joseph Kett, The Formation of the American Medical Profession (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 9.
4. Ibid., 5–6
5. Ibid., 10, 13.
6. Ibid., 30, 67.
7. Ibid., 30.
8. Armstrong, 5.
9. Ibid., 5–7.
10. Ibid., 8.
11. Pickard and Buley, 11.
12. Armstrong, 3.
13. Ibid., 4.
14. Ibid., 7.
15. Pickard and Buley, 28.
16. Armstrong, 9–10.
17. Pickard and Buley, 15–16.
18. Ibid., 13.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 21–22.
21. Ibid., 24.
22. Ibid., 16–17.
23. Ibid., 17.
24. Ibid., 26, 27.
25. Ibid., 47.
26. This notion was recently mirrored in a commercial for Robitussin cough syrup featuring a character called “Dr. Mom.”
27. These healing superstitions were often very specific: “Corn beef and cabbage is good for a blacksmith with cramps, but ain’t worth a damn for cramps in a minister.” Pickard and Buley, 75.
28. Winifred Johnston, “Medicine Show,” Southwest Review, 21.4 (July 1936), 253.
29. Pickard and Buley, 63.
30. Ibid., 41, 43.
31. Armstrong, 16–17.
32. Porter, 1.
33. Pickard and Buley, 98–100.
34. Kett, 48.
35. Armstrong, 3.
36. Johnston, 257, 288.
37. Pickard and Buley, 119.
38. Armstrong, 10.
39. Pickard and Buley, 169.
40. Ibid., 169–72.
41. Kett, 107.
42. Armstrong, 11.
43. Kett, 106.
44. Pickard and Buley, 243.
45. Ibid., 181.
46. Ibid., 289.
47. Ibid., 262.
1. Here is a further clarification of terminology: Patent and proprietary have been used interchangeably although there are subtle differences. The word patent has nothing to do with the United States Patent Office. It’s a holdover from the British monarchy, as in “a patent of royal favor.” A more accurate term, used by industry professionals, is proprietary medicine, meaning sold over the counter, without a doctor’s prescription. Proprietary carries the important connotation that the medicine is the invention and exclusive property of the manufacturer. Patenting a formula was not in the manufacturer’s interest, as it would necessitate publishing a list of ingredients. Further, a patented formula devolves to the public domain after seventeen years. More practical than a patent was a trademark, which medicine manufacturers registered with the U.S. Patent Office and used year after year to market their product. Formulas changed, but logos and trademarks were sacrosanct. For example, all the ingredients in Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound have changed since 1899, but as of 1990, the label had not been altered. A. Walker Bingham, The Snake-Oil Syndrome: Patent Medicine Advertising (Hanover, Massachusetts: The Christopher Publishing House, 1994), 5–6.
2. Charles Goodrum and Helen Dalrymple, Advertising in America: The First 200 Years (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990), 17.
3. Armstrong, 162.
4. McNamara, Step Right Up, 11.
5. Bingham, 11.
6. Ibid., 7
7. James Harvey Young, American Self-Dosage Medicines: An Historical Perspective (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1974), 4.
8. The debate about self-dosing is on-going. For example, CNN news story on 9/16/98 asserted that St. John’s Wort and other herbs may be harmful or useless.
9. James Harvey Young, The Toadstool Millionaires (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1961), 169–70.
10. Bingham, 9–10.
11. Arthur Cramp, M.D., Nostrums and Quackery and Pseudo-Medicine (Chicago: The American Medical Association, 1936), 22–23.
12. Bingham, 67–68.
13. Gerald Carson, One for a Man, Two for a Horse (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1961), 33.
14. Armstrong, 162.
15. Ibid., 163.
16. Dorothea D. Reeves, “Come for the Cure-All: Patent Medicines, Nineteenth Century Bonanza,” Harvard Library Bulletin, 15.3 (July 1967), 255.
17. Young, American Self-Dosage Medicines, 6.
18. Armstrong, 165.
19. Carson, 18.
20. Reeves, 256–7.
21. Bingham, 85.
22. Ibid., 49.
23. Reeves, 258.
24. Carson, 30, 49.
25. Bingham, 113.
26. Ibid., 141.
27. James Cook, Remedies and Rackets: The Truth About Patent Medicines Today (New York: W. W. Norton and Co. Inc., 1958), 26.
28. Goodrum and Dalrymple, 17–18.
29. Bingham, 113.
30. The device is still in use, as in the commercial that says “works fast, fast, FAST!”
31. Young, The Toadstool Millionaires, 166.
32. Goodrum and Dalrymple, 24.
33. Bingham, 114.
34. Before the age of People magazine, crowned heads and U.S. senators were the best Barnum could do for a little star power.
35. Goodrum and Dalrymple, 20.
36. Young, The Toadstool Millionaires, 185, 188.
37. Bingham, 95.
38. Ibid.
39. Goodrum and Dalrymple, 29.
40. Ibid.
41. Carson, 73.
42. Reeves, 261.
43. Bingham, 101.
44. Young, The Toadstool Millionaires, 184.
45. Ibid., 181.
46. Greil Marcus, “Where Are the Elixirs of Yesteryear When We Hurt?” The New York Times, Jan. 26, 1998.
47. Ibid.
48. Young, The Toadstool Millionaires, 181.
49. Reeves, 263–4.
50. Young, The Toadstool Millionaires, 180–1.
51. Ibid., 174–5.
52. McNamara, Step Right Up, 13.
53. Cook, 18.
54. Young, The Medical Messiahs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 307.
55. Ibid.
56. Cook, 26.
1. Popular taste did not necessarily keep pace with standards of morality, however. Ordinary people often resisted efforts to have high culture rammed down their throats, behaving boorishly at events like classical music concerts. Lewis J. Atherton, Main Street on the Middle Border (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954), 127.
2. Ibid., 113–7.
3. Saxon, 90.
4. Bluford Adams, E Pluribus Barnum: The Great Showman and the Making of U.S. Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 76–7.
5. Ibid., 80.
6. Tracy C. Davis, Actresses as Working Women (London: Routledge, 1991), 69.
7. Wilmeth, 93.
8. Saxon, 92–4.
9. Wilton Eckley, The American Circus (Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1984), 10.
10. Saxon, 77.
11. Adams, 83.
12. M.R. Werner, Barnum (Garden City, New York: Garden City Press, 1926).
13. Ibid., 80.
14. Adams, 77.
15. Ibid., 83–5.
16. Ibid., 98.
17. Ibid., 99.
18. Ibid., 78.
19. Saxon, 96.
20. Ibid., 112
21. Adams, 80.
22. Ibid., 79.
23. Bernard Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville (New York: The Citadel Press, 1961).
24. McNamara, Step Right Up, 40.
25. Young, The Toadstool Millionaires, 183
26. McNamara, Step Right Up, 42.
27. Young, The Toadstool Millionaires, 183.
28. George L. Chindahl, A History of the Circus in America (Caldwell, Ohio: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1959), 1.
29. Atherton, 131.
30. Ibid.
31. Chindahl, 1–3.
32. Ibid., 5.
33. Eckley, 2.
34. Ibid.
35. Nye, Society and Culture, 189.
36. Chindahl, 192–3.
37. Atherton, 132.
38. Chindahl, 20.
39. Eckley, 12–14.
40. Ibid., 17.
41. Wilmeth, 52.
42. Chindahl, 152.
43. Nye, Society and Culture, 191.
44. Saxon, 117.
45. Ibid., 101.
46. Ibid., 100.
47. Ibid.
48. Kristine Fredriksson, American Rodeo: From Buffalo Bill to Big Business (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985), 10–11.
49. Nye, Society and Culture, 149.
50. Don Russell, The Wild West (Ft. Worth, Texas: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1970), 1.
51. Ibid., 11.
52. Fredriksson, 140.
53. Ibid.
54. Nye, Society and Culture, 191–2.
55. Ibid., 192.
56. Fredriksson, 141.
57. Russell, 19.
58. Ibid., 26–7.
59. Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1971), 427.
60. Russell, 21.
61. Arts and Entertainment Network television program, The Story of the Gun, 1998.
62. B.A. Botkin, A Treasury of American Folklore (New York: Crown Publishers, 1944), 68.
63. The Story of the Gun.
64. Russell, 118.
65. Nye, Society and Culture, 193.
66. Christina C.Z. Jensen, “Indian John: Prairie Medicine Man,” in Mystic Healers and Medicine Shows, ed. Gene Fowler (Santa Fe: Ancient City Press, 1997), 97.
67. McNamara, Step Right Up, 80–1.
68. Brooks McNamara, “The Indian Medicine Show,” Educational Theatre Journal (Dec., 1971), 431–2.
69. Armstrong, 178.
70. McNamara, Step Right Up, 84.
71. Ibid., 81–4.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., 85.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid.
76. Cialdini, 17.
77. McNamara, Step Right Up, 88.
78. Armstrong, 178.
79. McNamara, Step Right Up, 87–90.
80. McNamara, “The Indian Medicine Show,” 436.
81. McNamara, Step Right Up, 97.
82. Ibid.
83. Armstrong, 180.
84. Ibid., 180.
85. McNamara, Step Right Up, 102–3.
86. Young, 193.
87. McNamara, “The Indian Medicine Show,” 441.
88. Sisley Barnes, “Medicine Shows: Duped, Delighted,” Smithsonian 5 (Jan. 1975), 52.
89. McNamara, “The Indian Medicine Show,” 441.
90. Carson, 62.
91. Harlowe R. Hoyt, Town Hall Tonight (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1955), 247.
92. McNamara, Step Right Up, 95.
93. McNamara, “The Indian Medicine Show,” 438.
94. Carson, 62.
95. Armstrong, 179.
96. McNamara, Step Right Up, 106.
97. George Jean Nathan, “The Medicine Men,” Harper’s Weekly 55 (Sept. 1911), 23.
98. McNamara, Step Right Up, 106–9.
99. Ann Banks, First-Person America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 30.
100. Ibid., 31.
101. Ibid.
102. Ibid., 32.
103. McNeal, 35–6.
104. David Edstrom, “Medicine Man of the ’80s,” Reader’s Digest (June, 1938): 77.
105. Stewart H. Holbrook, The Golden Age of Quackery (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1959), 205.
106. McNamara, Step Right Up, 120–25.
107. Ibid., 128.
108. Mary Calhoun, Medicine Show: Conning People and Making Them Like It (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 5–7.
109. Ibid., 8.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid., 8–11.
112. Ibid., 11.
113. Ibid., 20.
1. Minstrel show revenues declined steadily for professional troupes in the 1880s, but the form was a mainstay of amateur groups until 1940 or so. Gary D. Engle, xiv.
2. Nye, Society and Culture, 3.
3. Martin Banham, ed., The Cambridge Guide to Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 50.
4. Richard C. Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 17.
5. Ibid., 18.
6. Ibid.
7. Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 32–33.
8. Ibid., 36.
9. Ibid., 69.
10. Toll, 15.
11. Ibid., 13.
12. Engle, xxv.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., xxvii.
15. Toll, 18.
16. Wilmeth, 119.
17. Carl Wittke, Tambo and Bones (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 145.
18. Toll, 4–5.
19. Russel B. Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular Arts in America (New York: Dial Press, 1970), 162.
20. Cockrell, 75.
21. Ibid., 89.
22. Ibid., 90–91.
23. Ibid.
24. Toll, 30–31.
25. The medicine show “professor” is a version of the interlocutor.
26. Engle, xviii.
27. Toll, 55.
28. Wittke, 156.
29. Banham, 682.
30. Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse, 164–5.
31. Engle, xix.
32. Toll, 67.
33. While the black man was fair game, white minstrel shows never parodied the African American woman.
34. Toll, 57.
35. One of the few exceptions was Bert Fields, a black minstrel who performed in white companies with the likes of Al Jolson (Wittke, 145).
36. Banham, 682.
37. Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse, 166.
38. Engle, xiv.
39. Wilmeth, 121.
40. Toll, 146.
41. Wittke, 113.
42. Ibid., 124.
43. Ibid., 127.
44. Ibid., 138.
45. McNamara, Step Right Up, 19–22.
46. Bernard Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 22–24.
47. London’s Palace Theater had first presented “Living Pictures” in the late 1700s. These were reproductions of famous sculptures with live models that caused an uproar in Parliament. The Palace, under considerable public pressure, withdrew the piece. Susan Pennybacker, “‘It Was Not What She Said, But the Way She Said It’: The London City Council and the Music Halls,” in Music Hall, the Business of Pleasure, Peter Bailey, ed. (Stony Stratford: Open University Press, 1986), 120–3.
48. Douglas Gilbert, American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times (New York: Dover Publications, 1940), 4.
49. John E. DiMeglio, Vaudeville, U.S.A. (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1973), 71.
50. Sobel, 37.
51. Banham, 993.
52. Ibid., 1037.
53. Gilbert, 11.
54. Wilmeth, 131.
55. Gilbert, 10.
56. Ibid., 6.
57. Ibid., 198.
58. DiMeglio, 72.
59. Gilbert, 62.
60. Wilmeth, 133.
61. Sobel, 59–60.
62. DiMeglio, 119.
63. Sobel, 57.
64. Gilbert, 135.
65. DiMeglio, 187.
66. Ibid., 186.
67. Ibid., 107.
68. McNamara, Step Right Up, 132.
69. Ibid., 140.
70. McNeal, 24.
71. Ibid., 25.
72. Another cast member was Joseph Keaton, nicknamed “Buster” by Houdini.
73. Milbourne Christopher, Houdini: The Untold Story (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Company, 1970), 26–30.
74. DiMeglio, 16.
75. Bill C. Malone, Country Music, U.S.A. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 6.
76. Ibid., 78–79.
77. McNamara, Step Right Up, 134.
78. When Houdini and his wife were with Dr. Hill, they were grateful for the steady twenty-five-dollar-a-week salary. McNamara, 136.
1. Banham, 655.
2. “Afterpiece” is something of a misnomer, because they came to be placed all through the shows.
3. Jeffrey D. Mason, Melodrama and the Myth of America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 62.
4. Nye, Society and Culture, 48–49.
5. Mason, 61
6. Ibid., 85
7. William H. Smith, The Drunkard: Or the Fallen Saved (New York: Samuel French, 1844), 50.
8. Ibid., 51–52.
9. William W. Pratt, Ten Nights in a Barroom (New York: Samuel French, 1854), 5.
10. Ibid., 44.
11. Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse, 154
12. Banham, 1011.
13. Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse, 154–5.
14. William Lawrence Slout, Theatre in a Tent: The Development of a Provincial Entertainment (Bowling Green Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1972), 53.
15. Ibid.
16. Catherine Yronwode, Hoodoo: Definition and History (http://www.sonic.net/yronwode/hoodoo.html, Jan. 18, 1999), 1–3.
17. Catherine Yronwode, High John the Conqueror (http://www.luckymojo.com/johntheconqueror.html), 1, 5.
18. Banks, 186.
19. Ibid., 186–7
20. Ibid., 187.
21. McNamara, “The Medicine Show Log,” The Drama Review, 28.3 (Fall 1984), 85.
22. Ibid., 23.
23. Twitchell, 4.
24. Jim Tully, “The Giver of Life,” American Mercury (1928): 157.
25. Ibid., 155.
26. Ibid., 159.
27. Ibid., 160.
28. Stratton, 34.
29. Hoyt, 247.
30. Stratton, 34–35.
31. Hoyt, 245-6.
32. Stratton, 39.
33. McNeal, 144.
34. Calhoun, 37–38.
35. Carson, 43.
36. McNeal, 57.
37. Ibid., 56–57.
38. McNamara, Step Right Up, 68.
39. Calhoun, 39.
1. McNeal, 101.
2. McNamara, Step Right Up, 21–22.
3. McNeal, 59.
4. Ibid., 61–62.
5. Ibid., 62–64.
6. Ibid., 66.
7. McNeal, 65–66.
8. Ibid., 37–39.
9. McNeal, 104.
10. Ibid.
11. Cialdini, 172.
12. McNeal, 94.
13. The term comes from “skid road,” the street in a logging town where the logs were slid to the water to be “rafted” to the mill or market.
14. McNeal, 29.
15. Ibid., 52.
16. Ibid., 132.
17. Ibid., 125.
18. Women worked in blue-collar jobs under mostly dire conditions, doing tasks that no middle-class white woman would consider.
19. Mary Frank Fox and Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Women at Work (Mayfield Publishing Co, 1984), 19. This notion does not apply to farm women, whose status and usefulness were on a par with men’s.
20. Kathleen DeGrave, Swindler, Spy, Rebel (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1955), 55.
21. Stratton, 4.
22. Ibid., 30.
23. Ibid., 42.
24. Ibid., 97.
25. Ibid., 99.
26. McNeal, 54–55.
27. William P. Burt, “Backstage with a Medicine Show Fifty Years Ago,” The Colorado Magazine (July 1942): 128.
28. Ibid., 132.
29. Ibid.
30. McNamara, Step Right Up, 71.
31. Hoyt, 250.
32. Ibid., 248.
33. McNamara, Step Right Up, 75–76.
34. Ibid., 77.
35. Malcolm Webber, Medicine Show (Caldwell, Ohio: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1941), 223.
36. Ibid., 53.
37. Ibid., 21.
38. Ibid., 25–26.
39. Ibid., 47.
40. Ibid., 164–7.
41. Ibid., 28.
42. Ibid., 52.
43. Ibid., 28.
44. Ibid., 53–54.
45. Ibid., 243.
46. Ibid., 88–91.
47. Ibid., 93–99.
48. Ibid., 30–34.
49. Ibid., 111–3.
50. Ibid., 109.
51. Ibid., 102, 130–4.
52. Ibid., 150.
53. Ibid., 163.
54. Ibid., 158.
55. Ibid., 257.
56. William Price Fox, “The Late, Great Medicine Show!” Travel and Leisure, 4 (Dec. 1974): 6, 10, 14.
57. Kelley, 4.
58. Ibid., 7.
59. Ibid., 45.
60. Ibid., 8–11.
61. Ibid., 4.
62. Ibid., 16.
63. Ibid., 14–17.
64. Ibid., 27.
65. Ibid., 38.
66. Ibid., 30.
67. Ibid., 34.
68. Ibid., 35.
69. Ibid., 40.
70. Ibid., 41.
71. Ibid., 84.
72. Ibid., 85–86.
73. Ibid., 93–94.
74. Ibid., 93.
75. Ibid., 96.
76. Ibid., 102.
77. Ibid., 110.
78. Ibid., 138–9.
1. Arthur H. Lewis, Carnival (New York: Trident Press, 1970), 116.
2. Ibid., 140–1.
3. Ibid., 243.
4. A “tip” is a small crowd; a “push” is a large one.
5. Cialdini, 21, 64, 118.
6. Lewis, 254.
7. Ibid., 115. In addition to selling medicine and running jam auctions, the Noells traveled around with the ever-popular animal exhibit. Out of a converted Blue Ribbon beer truck, they showed a chimp, a deformed rooster, white rats, and opossums. None of the animals were exotic, but the Noells convinced their backwoods crowds that they were seeing something special. Traveling through North Carolina and Virginia, the Noells eked out a living on nickel and dime “donations.” When medicine shows died out, Anna Mae and Robert ran “Noell’s Ark” on the carnival circuit. “Noell’s Ark” was an ape exhibit with the added attraction of an ape-wrestling contest. From the “bally platform,” Robert talked chumps from the crowd into getting into the cage with a chimp. Ticket sales and betting were brisk for “man versus chimp.” Even against trained athletes, the chimp was always triumphant. Arthur Lewis, on viewing Noell’s chimps, expressed his reservations that such small, mild-looking creatures would be a match for a large man. Noell replied with a laugh, “That’s what they all think till they get in the ring with ’em. But I say there ain’t no refunds no matter if the fight lasts one minute or ten…. Whatever happens they get a good show, sumpin’ they can’t see no other place in the world, and that’s the truth, mister!”
8. Banks, 32.
9. McNamara, Step Right Up, 35.
10. Kelley, 5.
11. Banks, 39.
12. Gilbert, 202.
13. Ibid., 203.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Irving Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show (New York: Hawthorne Books, Inc., 1967), 198.
17. McNamara, Step Right Up, 44.
18. Kelley, 71.
19. McNeal, 70.
20. Kelley, 72–73.
21. Carson, 89.
22. Armstrong, 175.
23. Stratton, 65.
24. Carson, 91.
25. McNeal, 70.
26. Carson, 91.
27. Barnes, 50.
28. The fear of parasites persists, even in this age of USDA-inspected meat. Ad Age’s Creativity for August 1997 noted this e-mail “Spam of the Month”:
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29. McNamara, Step Right Up, 30.
30. Calhoun, 77.
31. Stratton, 6.
32. Ibid., 6–11.
33. McNeal, 183.
34. Ibid., 159.
35. Thomas J. LeBlanc, “The Medicine Show,” American Mercury 5 (June, 1925): 232.
36. McNamara, Step Right Up, 28.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 28–30.
39. Doc Miller, “Medicine Show Tonight!” Bandwagon 16 (July-August 1972): 21.
40. Dennis Goodwin, Brass Bands and Snake Oil Stands, (Chicago: Adams Press, 1993), 3.
41. McNamara, Step Right Up, 33.
42. McNeal, 68.
43. Hoyt, 246.
44. Gene Fowler, “The Diamond King,” in Mystic Healers and Medicine Shows, 69.
45. Burt, 128.
46. Webber, 78.
47. Ibid., 83–84.
48. Armstrong, 180.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 180–1.
51. McNeal, 122–26.
52. Stratton, 47.
53. Ibid., 47–49.
54. McNamara, Step Right Up, 39.
55. Ibid.
56. Mae Noell, “Some Memories of a Medicine Show Performer,” Theatre Quarterly, 4.14 (May-July 1974): 29.
57. M.R. Werner, Barnum, 52–53.
58. McNeal, 152.
59. Ibid., 152–53.
60. McNamara, Step Right Up, 24.
61. Calhoun, 47–48.
62. Hoyt, 244.
63. Cialdini, 117.
64. Calhoun, 57.
65. McNeal, 119.
66. McNamara, Step Right Up, 142, 147.
67. Kelley, 70–71.
68. McNeal, 97–98.
69. Ibid., 121.
70. Ibid., 96–97.
71. Hoyt, 245.
72. McNamara, Step Right Up, 23.
73. Stratton, 81, 90.
74. McNeal, 106.
75. Stratton, 54–60.
76. W.A.S. Douglas, “Pitch Doctors,” American Mercury 10 (February 1927): 223.
77. McNeal, 69.
78. Ibid.
79. Calhoun, 18.
80. Slout, 22.
81. Kelley, 30.
82. Ibid., 31.
83. Ibid., 35.
84. Noell, 25.
85. Calhoun, 16.
86. Ibid., 15–16.
1. McNamara, Step Right Up, 165.
2. Young, The Medical Messiahs, 318.
3. J.D. Ratcliff, “The Hullaballo About Hadacol,” The Reader’s Digest 41.49 (July 1951): 12.
4. Young, The Medical Messiahs, 317.
5. Ibid.
6. Jerry C. Brigham and Karlie Kenyon, “Hadacol: The Last Great Medicine Show,” Journal of Popular Culture 10:3 (Winter 1976): 517.
7. Young, The Medical Messiahs, 320.
8. Ibid., 317.
9. Ibid., 325.
10. Ibid., 325–26.
11. Ibid., 327
12. Brigham and Kenyon, 520–26.
13. Young, 320
14. Ron Raynolds and T. George Harris, “Yahoo Hadacol,” Life 29.12 (Sept. 18, 1950): 31.
15. Young, The Medical Messiahs, 321–22.
16. Ibid., 322–23.
17. Floyd Martin Clay, Coozan Dudley LeBlanc (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing, 1973) 167.
18. Brigham and Kenyon, 526.
19. Ratcliff, 13.
20. Clay, 69.
21. Young, The Medical Messiahs, 324.
22. McNamara, Step Right Up, 167.
23. LeBlanc bought Cadillacs compulsively. He was fond of saying, “Got rid of the old one because the ashtrays got full.” Raynolds and Harris, 34.
24. Young, The Medical Messiahs, 325.
25. Brigham and Kenyon, 529.
26. Ibid., 530.
27. Clay, 173.
28. Brigham and Kenyon, 231–32.
1. Young, Self-Dosage Medicines, 5.
2. Ibid., 8.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 9.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 10.
7. Ibid, 12. Collier’s hired Adams to write a series of muckracking articles about the patent-medicine business. The magazine’s hostile stance toward the proprietary industry is somewhat peculiar, as it was created specifically as a vehicle for advertising, and nostrums accounted for a quarter of its revenue (Pavese, 30).
8. Ibid., 12–18.
9. Ibid., 25–26.
10. Clever pitchmen like Violet McNeal and Milton Bartok, the Health Evangelist, got around the law and continued to ply their trade for many years. Bartok never claimed that his medicine cured anything, pointing out that “Nature heals. There is no medicine that heals anything; it helps Nature. Nature does the curing.” McNamara, Step Right Up, 163.
11. Kelley, 113.
12. Ibid., 114
13. Slout, 33.
14. Calhoun, 117.
15. Ibid., 117–19.
16. Slout, 70.
17. Johnston, 396.
18. Calhoun, 109.
19. Russell, 85.
20. Armstrong, 182.
21. Malone, 101.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., 6.
24. Armstrong, 184.
25. Calhoun, 121.
26. Armstrong, 183.
27. Kelley, 139.
28. Calhoun, 121.
29. Debra Goldman, “Herbal’s Essence,” Ad Week (Dec. 7, 1998): 58.
30. Noell, 30.