“Step Right Up! Step Right Up! See the half boy Johnny Eck, who walks on his hands! See the Lion Faced Man, whose entire body is covered in fur! See the armless girl who does everything with her feet! See the Siamese Twins, joined forever at the hip! See them all and much more for just one thin dime!”

So went the ballyhoo, or pitch to get the audience inside the tent or building that held what were known as freaks, or more sensitively, medical curiosities and human oddities. Though more commonly thought of as part of traveling circuses, there were many amusement parks across the country that housed small permanent freak shows as part of their sideshows.  It is important to realize how amusement parks were operated at the turn of the century. There was usually a nominal fee to gain entrance, which went to the owners of the park. The rides and attractions were individually owned and operated, some by the parks owners, and some by private investors who rented space in the park from the owners.

Most of the amusement parks at this time were small trolley parks with plenty of green open space and a few rides. A few, like Wonderland Park in Revere Beach, MA, Dreamland (pictured), Luna Park in Coney Island, NY and Euclid Beach Park in Cleveland, OH were big enough to lease space to freak show entrepreneurs, though Euclid Beach banned them after new ownership took over in 1900.
 
Some parks also displayed not only human oddities, but whole groups of people from other parts of the world. For example, Revere Beach’s Wonderland had a Japanesevillage, complete with a faux Mount Fuji, and an exhibition called the Turkish Village described on a sign as “A Congress of Strange Oriental People”.

Early on, I developed a fascination with sideshow performers.  In the early '70s I came into possession of a paperback titled Very Special People. It provided a history of sideshows and their performers. The book cemented my passion for the subject. I knew some of the names already, being a voracious reader of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and having seen stills in FM from the then unseen by me 1931 Tod Browning film, Freaks.

An overview of all sideshow performers is a book length project, so I will focus on four (really five) performers that I find particularly interesting.

Johnny Eck, the Half Boy was born in Baltimore in 1911. He entered this world without legs just before his normally limbed twin brother, Robert. Most famous for his appearance in the film Freaks, where he showed his agility and incredible hand walking ability, he started performing at the age of 14 at the best shows in the country. He and his brother did a bizarre act where a magician would call his brother to the stage and put him in a box to saw in half. He would drop down, and Johnny and a dwarf with pants up over his head would climb in. After they were sawed in half, and put back together, they would get up and start to walk away, only for Johnny to jump off his “legs” and run the other way. I can just imagine what the reception was for that kind of illusion in the early '20s. Johnny died at the age of 79 in his Baltimore home.

Lionel the Lion Faced Boy was born in 1890 near Warsaw, Poland. He suffered from a condition known as hypertrichosis, a hereditary disease resulting in hair that covers the face and body like fur. His pitch was that his condition was caused by his pregnant mother witnessing his father being ripped apart by wild lions! He toured extensively in Europe and the US including time at Coney Island Dreamland Circus. He wasn’t terribly imposing in real life at only four foot six inches tall, but was very erudite, and spoke five languages. He died in 1932.

Another star of Freaks was a beautiful young woman who had many gentleman callers asking for her hand. She was an expert marksman, and had legs to die for. Her name was Frances O’Connor, and she was born in Minnesota in 1914 without arms. Frances quickly learned to do everyday tasks like eating, drinking, and dressing with her feet. She was very close to her mother, who accompanied Frances everywhere she worked. Her act was simply to sit and chat, drinking some water she had poured in a goblet from a pitcher. She would remove a cigarette from the pack, light, and smoke it, and later would use her feet to shoot at a target with a rifle. The fact that she wore a dress and that her movements would show quite a bit more leg than a man could normally see in the 1920s was probably another reason she was so popular.  She, like most performers of the time, supplemented her income by selling photo postcards. Frances signed the back of each card she sold with her feet, and I dare say she had better penmanship than most people today. She turned down many marriage proposals, and retired when her mother died. She then moved to California, where she died in 1982, at the age of 67.

Daisy and Violet Hilton were Siamese twins born in England in 1908. They were joined at the hip and buttocks. Basically sold by their mother to their midwife and her husband, the twins were given singing, dancing, and music lessons to maximize the profit they could make for their new masters. Treated as nothing more than slaves, the two played in vaudeville houses in Europe until the age of eight when they moved to San Antonio, TX. They started performing at circuses, sideshows, and vaudeville in the US, making thousands of dollars a week, without seeing a penny. When a woman who was divorcing her husband found a publicity photo he had from the girls that said “To our friend Bill with love and best wishes from your pals Daisy and Violet Hilton” she had the girls subpoenaed. The wife was trying to use the photo as proof her husband was unfaithful. When a lawyer working on that case was questioning them, he noticed the girl’s nervousness with their “manager” in the room. He demanded the manager leave, and the girls explained the predicament they were in. He won them their freedom, and gave them the ability to support themselves and keep what money they earned. Soon after their emancipation they starred in Freaks, and in the 1950 camp classic Chained for Life. They were soon penniless, however and in later years bagged groceries for a living. They were both married, but neither marriage lasted. They were found dead one day in 1969, after failing to appear at work.

While it is plain that the great majority of freak shows were found in traveling circuses, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a host of amusement parks and areas that served the public’s great interest in human oddities.  One lasting tradition in all freak shows was called the “blow off”. Once you had paid, and had seen the 10-12 performers that the show offered, the proprietors would want you to leave, so they could bring in a new audience. This provided the birth of the blow off. The barker or host would get everyone’s attention, and alert them that it was time to leave the show, BUT, if they wanted to part with just one more dime, they could see one more attraction, guaranteed to be the most amazing thing they had seen. Occasionally, this attraction would be a bona fide performer who had name recognition, or who might be too horrible in appearance for the general show. Most often, however, the audience was treated to a taxidermy trick where a monkey’s upper body is grafted onto the lower half of a large fish. Most commonly referred to as a Fiji Mermaid, they were remarkably consistent in appearance, though there must have been many around. Perhaps they were the work of one artist?

Through all the years that human oddities were exhibited (most were gone by the 1970’s) I still think one exhibit may be the strangest one of all, the exhibition of live premature infants.  At the turn of the century a new device was invented to help improve the survival rate of prematurebabies. This, of course, was the incubator. At the time, incubators were expensive, and hospitals were wary, as no data were available to suggest they were effective. Enterprising amusement park owners and concessionaires jumped in and hired doctors and nurses to staff fleets of baby incubators. Parents and family got in for free and any one interested in gawking could pay ten cents. They were a rousing success both for babies and the amusement park owners. They were profitable, and nearly 85% of babies survived versus 15% without incubators. This was a short lived phenomenon at amusement parks, however, for as soon as hospitals saw that they worked, they bought incubators themselves, and families could be spared the indignity of having their babies stared at by strangers while receiving the life saving treatment. I have seen postcards of these exhibitions from Wonderland at Revere Beach, MA (pictured), Coney Island, and The White City in Chicago.

I hope this gives you a taste of another one of my favorite topics, sideshows and the performers who made their living in them. There are many invaluable resources available to you, should be interested in reading more on the topic, including Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer, which is no longer in print, but pretty easy to find. I bought a hardcover to replace my tattered paperback for fifty cents. A newer book that is also an excellent read is American Sideshow by Marc Hartzman. In the ReSearch series is the excellent Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others by Daniel P. Mannix. All the images in this article are postcard images from my collection, with the exception of the Johnny Eck image, which is widely available.

Next month it will be time to return to a more traditional amusement park topic, scary dark rides. They are my second favorite type of ride after roller coasters. Until then, I’ll see you in the queue line, dime in hand.