Clowns 0801539633, 9780801539633

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John H. Towsen, a profe-ssional clovYn, acrobat, and juggler, started performing at the age of seven on the Red Skelton television show and appeared regularly on television shows and commercials until the age of thirteen. He studied drama an& French literature at New York University, where he recently completed a Ph.D. thesis on the evolution of clowning. He is a graduate of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's Clown College, a member of Clowns of America and International Jugglers Association, and an instructor of workshops on clowning and circus-related techniques fo;r the State University of New York.

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A clown is a poet who is also an orangutan.

for my brother Randy

Steve Linsner

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l ClOWNS

Copyright © 1976 by John H. Towsen. Copyright under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All inquiries should be addressed to Hawthorn Books, Inc., 260 Madison Avenue. New York, New York 10016. This book was manufactured in the United States of America and published simultaneously__in Canada by Prentice-Hall of Canada, Limited, 1870 Birchmount Road, Scarborough, Ontario. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number·: 75'-41793 ISBN: 0-8015-3962-5 12 3 4 5 6 78910

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Acknowledgments

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Introduction

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1 Fools, Natural and Artificial J The Clown on Stage j

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The Clown to the Ring

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The American One-Ring Clown

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Knockabouts and Cascadeurs

140

6

Stand-up Clowns

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He Who Gets Sl,apped

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8

The Clown Entree

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9

The Three-Ring Clown

256

JO JJ

Tramps-Sad and Sassy

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Jester to His Majesty the People

306

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The Clown-Mime

338

Notes

357

Glossary

371

Selected Bibliography

383

Index

389

viii

JlcllnoflDled9menfs

Writing a history book is such an enormous undertaking that the author soon finds himself enlisting the help of all available friends and relatives. This book was certainly no exception. It was a group effort all the way. I would like, first of all, to thank my parents for their much-needed encouragement over what has proved to be a long and very trying period. The same thanks are due Barry, Carolyn, Dorothy, and their entire families. Five good friends contributed a large amount of their valuable time to this project

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Hamlet parody, all of which since have become standard circus acts. Their musical parody, Kubelick II and Rubinstein, later was performed by Antonet and Crock, becoming the foundation for Crock's longer musical eccentric act. Unlike Chocolat, Little Walter's success was achieved independently of his whiteface partners, who also included Tonitoff, 11€s, Lavatta, E. P. Loyal, and his own son, Joe Walter.

GROCK

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Inevitably Antonet's arrogance and Little Walter's growing independence led to the termination of their relationship. Little Walter's place was taken by Crock (1880-1959), who evolved his own brilliant and personalized interpretation of the auguste role.

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rock early in his career. hotograph from Tristan Remy, s Clowns, by permission of

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Born Adrian Wettach in Switzerland, he was the son of an amateur acrobat with a keen interest in the circus. Early in life, Grock became fascinated with downing, acrobatics, and music, practicing them fanatically until he excelled as a wire walker, tumbler, juggler, contortionist, and musician. His forte was music, and he could in fact play twenty-four instruments. His first major breakthrough as a down came in 1903, when he was engaged as a partner to a whiteface down named Brick, taking the place of Brock, the clown's former partner. Young Adrian Wettach liked the sound of his predecessor's name and from then

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Clowns on he performed as Greek. Greek's success with Brick caught th attention of Antone~, eventually leading to the Antonet-Croek partnership and increasing fame for both. Soon, however, Crock became a star of such importance that he no longer felt the need ta· share top billing with any clown. Instead he preferred a le luminary who would accept the billing of "Greek and Partner," , merely serving as a straight man for Crock's inspired zaniness. Crock's auguste was a silly and at times stupid character, but he. was decidedly not the butt for the pranks of Monsieur Clown. Greek wrote that he wanted to show the audience that he "was not just an auguste who always misses the chair when he sits down or hooks his nose on every rope." His stupidity was that of, the naive fool who is discovering the ways of the world for the ; first time. The simplest matter-of-fact statement was likely to be· greeted by one of his famous non sequiturs, such as "Pourquoa.1" ("Why?") or "Sans blaague?" ("No kidding?"), or even the German "Nit m-6-6-6-glich" ("lmpossible")-in each case extending the vowel sound to outrageous lengths. He would casually· adopt what seemed to him to be reasonable ways to do things, but he could never quite grasp logical approaches to simple tasks. In his famous musical entree (discussed in greater detail later), he ex• periences difficulty playing the piano because the stool is too far from the keyboard: his solution is to move the piano closer., When he is shown that there is an easier way, his huge jaw drops ' into a benign grin that expresses his great delight and admiration .. "In appearance," wrote one newspaper reviewer, Grock is an ainiable baby, clothed impossibly, but with so confiding a smile that there is no grown-up member of the au- · dience who does not wish to protect him from the superior ' patronage of the shiny young man who partners him. When·! he has been on the stage for a few minutes, it is obvious that he wants no protection; the young man laughs at his ridiculous clothes, his toy fiddle, his bald head, and his enor•··, mous confiding smile. Greek is never depressed by.; patronage; he is, indeed, entirely unconscious of it. . . . -

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The Clown Entree It is apparent that Crock has been burdened with a multitude of inconveniences that would break the heart of anyone else. His legs and arms are quite irresponsible, and much of the time that he would like to give to his beloved music is wasted by his efforts to control his enormous feet, to bring his hands into the right position, and to keep his body reasonably straight. All this time he gazes at the audience with eyes that are full of trust. You feel that he is convinced that this time at least he is spending his evenings with really nice people who, if they see anything odd in him, will know better than to comment about it; who will, moreover, share in his delight at surmounting all his innumerable difficulties. 2 Crock's contributions to the clown entree were significant, yet paradoxical. During the course of a long career-he retired in 1954-Grock concentrated his creative talents on a single entree, endlessly refining it, constantly discovering new subtleties. This musical entree grew to be an hour in length, far too long for most circus programs. By then, however, Crock was performing exclusively in music halls, where he became one of the most highly paid attractions in Europe; later in his career, Greek owned his own circus, where his act, of course, was given all the time it needed. But while Grock perfected the entree form, he also turned it into a one-man show, his musical eccentricities existing virtually independently of the whiteface clown. His comic effects were derived from his many props more than from any dramatic conflict with the whiteface clown.

THE FRATELLINI

It was the three Fratellini brothers-Frarn;ois, Paul, and Albertwho, at least in the minds of the French public, raised clowning to the level of an art. Sons of an itinerant circus performer, their earliest memories were of the sawdust ring and the open road, for they had all made their performance debuts by the age of five.

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The Clown Entree

The Fratellini brothers. From left to right: Paul, Frano;:ois, and Albert. Reproduced from Adrian, Ce Rire Qui Vient du Cirque.

Paul was born in Sicily in 1877, Franc;ois in Paris in 1879, and Albert in Moscow in 1886, an indication of the wide-ranging tra,vels undertaken by the Fratellini clan. By the turn of the century, Paul was already well known as a clown and Francois as an acrobatic equestrian. When an older brother, Louis, also a clown and acrobat, died in 1909, leaving a widow and five children, the three remaining brothers decided to combine their efforts in order to be able to provide for the entire family. Their engagement at the Cirque Medrano after World War I was so successful that it sparked a strong resurgence of interest in the circus. By 1923, the Fratellini had become the darlings of the Parisian intellectuals, lauded in print for their artistry and worshipped by a coterie of adoring fans who would show up at the circus just in time for the Fratellini entree, which sometimes ran as long as forty-five minutes. 3 That same year, the venerable Comedie Franc;aise invited them to perform on their stage, and Raymond Radiguet used the Cirque Medrano as the setting for the principal scene in his novel, Le Bal du Comte d'Orgel. The theatrical avant-garde saw the Fratellini as proof of the unlimited possibilities of the actor. Jean Cocteau secured them to perform the leading roles in his bizarre farce, LeBoeuf sur le Toit, or The Nothing-Doing Bar, because he needed "the best mechanical puppets in the world, in other words, clowns." Jacques Copeau, the celebrated director of the experimental Theatre du Vieux Colombier, wrote the foreword to the Fratellini's memoirs, calling them the inheritors of the commedia dell'arte, and hired them to teach his acting students pratfal1s, juggling, acrobatic leaps, music, the delivery and receiving of blows, and other down skills. Frani;ois even worked with the students on animal impersonation, showing them how he would play a dog or a rabbit. The Fratellini's success has been attributed to many factorsincluding a knack for being in the right place at the right time and for attracting publicity-but above all they succeeded because of their talent and experience. They were alI said to be superb comic actors, yet they also were skilled acrobats and musicians with a lifetime of experience behind them. As a trio, the possibilities they discovered in the addition of a second auguste to the classic

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The Clown Entree In his obvious stupidity, Albert was closer to the classical auguste; in his penchant for violence and gadgetry and his affinity for_the grotesque, he was very much in the tradition of the harlequinade. But it was Albert's appearance, which he himself described as being that of a hairy old ape, that was most shocking. By exaggerating certain characteristics often associated with the auguste, he projected a far more monstrous image. If the auguste tended to be drunk, Albert would have a large red nose. And while most augustes used very little makeup, Albert painted his lips black and the areas around his mouth and eyes white, with a

Fratellini brothers performing traditional levitation routine. Annie Fratellini.

clown-auguste opposition gave their entrees richer dramatic contrasts than those of their competitors. The whiteface clown of the trio was Fram;ois, the former acrobat and equestrian. Although elegant and at times condescending, in the tradition of the authoritarian clowns Footit and Antonet, Frarn;ois was far more gentle. "He is grace and beauty and wit," wrote one tritic. "When he walks, his feet do not tread the ground, they tickle your ribs. You could cry with gladness, because to see him is to believe." Less elegant, despite his many efforts in that direction, was Paul, whose makeup and costume were that of the traditional auguste. "He represented the petty bourgeois forever convinced of his own superiority," wrote Henry Thetard, "yet always ready to commit some dirty trick when he thinks he can get away with it." Paul's character was often likened to that of an accountant. His indignant astonishment and outrage at the sight of the monstrous Albert was always a sure cause for laughter. 236

Albert Fratellini.

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Clowns blend of flesh and carmine tones giving color to the rest of his face. A red wig, big shoes, elaborate headgear, and a ragged yet very colorful costume completed the picture. 4 Albert Fratellini's visual concept of the auguste was to have a widespread influence. In Europe, many augustes borrowed from Albert's image, including the great Spanish clown, Charlie Rivels (born 1896). Its greatest impact, however, has been in the United States (chapter 9), where Albert's colorful appearance has totally replaced the black-and-white costume of the earlier augustes. Exaggerated even more, the Albert look has become the basis for the American image of Bozo the Clown, a commercial trademark many people associate with all clowns. Unlike Crock, whose stardom in some ways worked against the idea of the clown entree, the Fratellini exemplified the kind of ensemble performing that made the entree such a highly regarded form of theater. Perhaps because they were brothers, they did not succumb to the petty rivalries that destroyed so many other entree pairs and trios. Instead, they were a smoothly functioning trio (a "trinity," to Copeau), whose characters provided such effective contrasts: Fran-;ois, the elegant one; Albert, the grotesque; and Paul halfway between them, sometimes taking one brother's side, sometimes the other's. The success of the most famous entree clowns came before the age of mass media. The growth of sound film, radio, and television since 1930 has not helped the circus-nor has it destroyed it. Despite a gradual decline in the circus's prominence, there have been many clown teams since the twenties 'that ' if not as well known as Crock or the Fratellini, are not necessarily their in___ .feriors: Pipo and Rhum, Alex and Porto, Alex and Zavatta, the Cairoli, and the Andreu-Rivels are popular examples of an ongo· ing tradition. Modern forms of popular comedy have brought a new touch of realism to circus clowning. Rhum (1904-1953, real name Enrico Sprocani), perhaps the most brilliant auguste of recent times, also appeared frequently in films, cabarets, and music halls. Likewise, Achille Zavatta (born 1915), another popular auguste clown,

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~~,..__ Dario and Bario.

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'I turned to the music hall after World War II; when he returned to the circus in the sixties, his characterizations resembled more those of a theater comic than of a circus clown. In the last forty years, the auguste clown increasingly has been noted for his emphasis on subtle effects, his evolution paralleling the development of Crock's career. Federico Fellini's assertions in his film I Clowns notwithstanding, it is the whiteface clown who has become more and more expendable. Footit, Antonet, and Frai-M;ois Fratellini were all fine acrobats and comics, but today the whiteface clown is often little more than a comic foil for the auguste's comic effects, much in the same way that the ringmaster was in the nineteenth-century circus. In some cases, traditional entrees even have been performed without a whiteface clown. The Bario Juniors, for example, use a nonclowning woman to play the straight. Both Porto and Zavatta have felt they were good enough not to need a whiteface partner

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Rhum (Enrico Sprocani). Photograph from Tristan Remy, Les Clowns, by permission of Grasset.

Photograph from Tristan Remy, Les Clowns, by permission

to be funny. "The whiteface clown is an anachronism whose words no longer ring true," argues Zavatta. "And the public of our time, which goes to the movies and watches television, will no longer support this interpretation," 5 Polo Rivels (Paul Andreu), brother of Charlie Rivels.

CLOWN TEXTS The experience of reading a clown entree obviously is not the same as seeing it performed. It would be beside the point to judge

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Clowns

these scenarios on their literary merits. Those entrees that have found their way into print usually have been transcribed not by the clowns, but by dedicated drcus fans long after the fact-after the entree has been conceived, transformed, and refined through hundreds of rehearsals and performances. Still, any written version will be incomplete. The text reproduces the words and the most essential actions, and little else. Except for the auguste's frequent malapropisms (most of them impossible to translate), the words move the plot along but provide little of the comedy. Furthermore, these words may change from night to night, according to the clown's mood and memory, the audience's reactions, and the degree of improvisation. Most clowning involves gestures, grimaces, acrobatics, fabulous props, juggling, elements of mime, strong character contrasts, and dozens of lazzi which distinguish one performer from the next. What happens between the lines gives life to a scenario that may read very poorly. The clown depends as much on action as did Keaton, Chaplin, and the other silent film comedians. A. H. Kober, a publicity agent for the Circe Sarrasani, provides us with a fine illustration of the discrepancy between text and performance in this passage from his book, Circus Nights and Circus Days (1931), Clown scenes are concocted in strict privacy, but on occasions I have heard the performers memorizing them over their cups of coffee. This is how it goes. "Well then, I enter from audience with saxophone and play; you enter horn gangway and interrupt me, box on the ears, fall, your exit. I resume playing, he enters from audience and interrupts me, box on the ears, fall, his exit. You meet him, box on the ears, fall; I tick you off, box on the ears, fall. The ring-master ticks all three off, box on the ears, fall. General exit, re-entrance, concert on chairs, you fall through chair, he falls over back of chair, etc., with Italian march finale when Eugen and Mariette enter and you lose your trousers." The scene would be similarly written down in the clown's book of stage directions, but though one knows that

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The Clown Entree

Eugen and Mariette are the head-clown's children, it is impossible to form an idea of how the business really works out in the ring. As a matter of fact it works out very nicely and is greeted with frantic applause from the audience, but the explanation of the mystery is that when the stage direction prescribes "I enter, you enter, he enters," all performers understand the wider application of such terse instruction. As amplified, the scene would read as follows: "I enter with cloak, which I remove, turn round solemnly and bow to the audience, wish the ring-master a polite good evening and start playing a nice tune on my burnished saxophone. Then you enter with your knock-kneed walk, doing business with your elastic umbrella, and take off your idiotic melon-hat to the audience, thereby knocking up against a man in a box, to whom you apologize with your usual silly bow. He enters in his tight trousers and big frock coat, dancing, shuts the garden gate, opens it, goes through and shuts it carefully behind him. He then raises his hat to the audience, disclosing a smaller one underneath." Where we use a single word the clown requires a gesture, which leads up to a comic action; from this interplay of gesture and action is built up the humour that scores the clown's success. 6 The repertoire of clown entrees is limited in number and seldom replenished. Audiences are often nostalgic for the good old routines, and circus managers have tended to discourage innovation, often requiring their clowns to perform only traditional entrees. This is not always the case, however. The circus owner Paul Busch once decided that the timeworn entree, The Barber Shop, in which two clowns shave a third with gallons of lather, had grown too tiresome and was not to be given in his circus for five years. At one performance, however, the Fratellini brothers ignored the ban and presented the barber entree-and brought the house down. Nor have attempts to impose a writer's structure on the clown's zaniness succeeded. Greek mime may have had its Herodas, and

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Clowns the commedia dell'arte its Goldoni and Cozzi, but entree clowns always have been their 6wn playwrights. In 1932, the Cirque Medrano manager tried hiring writers to script new entrees for his clowns. When the authors first saw their texts performed in the ring, they were shocked to discover that all the traditional clown effects and tricks had found their way back into these "new" entrees. After a few more performances, the old had totally forced out the new and almost all traces of the writers' originality had vanished. Clowns borrow their ideas from a variety of sources, from past comic traditions and from incidents in their lives as circus performers. It would be foolhardy, however, to state categorically that such and such an entree was originated by a particular clown in a particular year. Earlier versions are always being uncovered, and clowns have never been bashful about claiming authorship of entrees with quite ancient antecedents. The Broken Mirror, for example, in which one clown accidentally breaks a large mirror and then must enact the role of his partner's reflection, was known to circus audiences in the Pipo-Rhum entree, and to millions more in the hilarious Marx Brothers version in their film, Duck Soup (1933). Will and Fred Hanlon were said to have originated it, but according to Lupino Lane this idea was conceived by his grandfather and first performed in 1862. Actually it appears in an anonymous Spanish play of the seventeenth century, The Mirror, or the Rogueries of Pabillos, and probably in even earlier comedies. The sources for clown entrees can be found in a wide variety of comedic traditions. Clown dentist gags date back to an old com...media dell'arte scenario by Flaminio Scala, The Tooth Extractor, first published in 1611; a similar scene appears in The Widow, by Elizabethan ·playwright Thomas Middleton (1580-1627). The popular entree, The Barber Shop, likewise bears a remarkable resemblance to a drawing of a commedia routine in the Recueil Fossard. The Potato Sack, an entree in which the auguste hides in a sack and yet gets pummeled by the clown, is obviously based on a very similar scene in Moli€'re's The Tricks of Scapin, which the

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Charles Manetti and Rhum in the Broken Mirror entree.

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French playwright had borrowed from the rrtountebanks, Mondor and Tabarin. The idea of statues that come alive appeared as early as 1723 in the English pantomime, The Necromancer; or Harlequin Doctor Faustus. Fairground parades, many of which had appeared in print as early as the eighteenth century, may well have provided the basis for several other entrees. Other forms of comedy, including today's movies and television shows, also have borrowed from the repertoire of the circus clown; mirror gags, for example, are seen frequently on television. Clown entrees and lazzi can also be found in burlesque, music hall, minstrelsy, early film, vaudeville, silent film comedy,

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Lively Statuary from a Byrne Brothers pantomime. Courtesy of the Theatre Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

and the American medicine show. Grimaldi's sausage machine, for example, was used in Thomas Edison's 1901 film, Fun in a Butcher Shop, and also appeared in minstrel shows and on the vaudeville stage. The acrobatic entree of the 1860s, Dead and Alive, reappears in a twentieth-century medicine show version, Pete in the Well.' The original idea of the dead person coming to life is preserved, but the medicine show adaptation included only the simplest movements that anyone could do, conveniently omitting any complicated-acrobatics. Although the circus has a reputation for broad humor, its clown entree originals usually are subtler and more demanding than the adaptations based on them.

THE CLOWN AS IMPOSTER Their very appearance makes it clear that clowns are separate creatures altogether, that they never really can belong. In most

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entrees, the clowns (especially the augustes) are always intruders and almost always impostors. But there they are, insisting on their right -to be in the ring, ever watchful of the authorities (the ringmaster, for one) who might eject them, loudly proclaiming their great talents as acrobats or sharpshooters, dramatic actors or skilled musicians, and finally reducing everything to chaos in their attempt to carry off their impersonation. In one especially popular entree, the clown enters and takes a seat in the front row of the audience, refusing the ringmaster's request that he get back to work. The title in French is Le Clown dans les Places, and much of the dialogue revolves around the -~'word place, with its double meaning of "place" and "seat." Who is the clown, and where is his proper place? When the ringmaster informs the clown that those seats are reserved for the public, the clown replies that he too is a small part of the public. When the ringmaster points out that he is merely a clown, the down asks him how he arrived at that startling conclusion. Because he is wearing red, white, and black makeup, explains the ringmaster. So what, says the clown, that means al1 the ladies in the audience with red, white, and black on their faces are also clowns. And so on, as the ringmaster unsuccessfully tries to prove that the clown is not in fact a normal person. Perhaps the most basic category of clown entrees would be those in which the clown plays a dirty trick on his partner or on the ringmaster. Posing as a marksman, for example, the down may ask the ringmaster to hold a match as a target. The clown's stalling tactics result in the ringmaster burning his fingers. When the auguste later tries the same ruse, he is naturally less successful. The clown is seen as a clever trickster, the auguste as an easily detected impostor. More often, the clown and auguste will collaborate in an attempt to fool the ringmaster and the public. Several variations of the marksman theme are of this type. In Ham and Poum, a parody of a traditional magic act, the clown is to fire his pistol and the auguste catch the bullet in his mouth and then drop it onto the plate he holds in his hand. To do so, the auguste conceals a

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Clowns bullet in his mouth, but his trickery backfires when he accidentally swallows it. There a.re many similar entrees: in The Broken Plates, the auguste daringly juggles with the plates, eventually dropping one after the other; in The Balloons, he holds a balloon over his head but allows it to burst before the clown can shoot; in the famous William Tell parody, the auguste, as the archer's son, cannot resist taking bite after bite out of the apple until only the core remains, a scene which reappears in Chaplin's film, The Circus (1928). Often the clowns will complain of the hard life of the circus and announce that they are going into a new business, which of course gives them the opportunity to try to pass themselves off as professionals in areas they know nothing about. In the so-called Barber of Seville entree, for example, the clowns demonstrate all the wrong ways to give a shave, using razors a yard long. Similar catastrophes await the clowns in the bullfight parody, the dentist gag (more large implements), and the wallpaper-hanging routine. The latter, in which the clowns get caught up in their own glue and paper, has been repeated in many film comedies. In these entrees, the plot and any idea of deception play second fiddle to the broad effects produced as the clowns burlesque their chosen profession. In some cases, however, the problem of deception becomes almost a mime exercise. The classic example is The Broken Mirror, in which the auguste's imitation of the clown is aided by his partner's obvious intoxication. "It is the simplest plot imaginable," wrote AntoQ.y Hippisley-Coxe of the Pipo-Rhum version, "yet their timing-their sure knowledge of the psychological moment-and their artistry in that one short scene is worth more than three long acts at many a London theatre." 8 This same theme of replacement and imitation is echoed in such entrees as The Automatic Boxer, The Automatic Restaurant, and The Mechanical Puppet. In the last entree, the auguste is entrusted with a robot, which he of course quickly manages to destroy. At the ringmaster's suggestion, he does his best to imitate the robot so that the clown will not suspect what has happened. This same comic idea is used by Woody Allen in his film Sieeper(1973). 248

The Clown Entree A somewhat similar theme runs through another traditional entree, The Clarinet. The auguste (the legendary Charlikowski, otherwise known as Charly) arrives too late for his clarinet recital: the ringmaster already has given his job to the whiteface clown. Unfortunately, the clown cannot play a note, so he and the auguste strike a deal. While the clown mimes playing the selection, the auguste will hide nearby and actually produce the music. The problem, as in the mirror routine, is for the auguste to coordinate his actions with those of his whiteface partner. Once again, the auguste spoils everything and reveals them as the impostors they really are. In some entrees, the role of the whiteface clown is less that of a comic trickster in cahoots with the auguste, and more of a straight man. The act will usually begin with a demonstration of his talent, often as an acrobat, juggler, or musician. Before he can get very far, he is interrupted by the auguste, who-clearly cast in the role of intruder-disrupts the act simply by insisting on becoming a part of it. Perhaps the most popular form, however, is the musical entree, featuring a clown who can play a dozen musical instruments well enough to hit the wrong note whenever-and only whenever-he chooses. Musical clown entrees may vary considerably, but they usually involve the whiteface clown playing a pretty tune on an instrument, only to be interrupted by the discordant sounds produced by his less talented partner. One of the most famous examples of this was the Fratellini's Music entree. Its success depended to a large extent upon the precise timing of the three Fratellini brothers, as they established one mood only to effectively destroy it with another. The two more respectable clowns, Frans:ois and Paul, enter the ring, each carrying a guitar or mandolin. They set up two chairs in the center of the ring, but actually sitting on them becomes difficult because each is too polite to sit down before the other does so. They continually bob up and down, issuing a stream of apologies, until one of them finally throws the other down and holds him there until he himself is seated. As they strike the first notes, the spotlight mysteriously moves away from them. When 249

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Paul Fratellini. Courtesy of the Milner Library, Illinois State University.

they discover its whereabouts, they relocate their chairs accordingly. But again it deserts them. This leads to a chase after the elusive light. They finaliy pounce on it and, with much effort, "carry" it back to the chairs. At long last, Francois and Paul begin their musical offering, and a pleasant concert it is. Just when the audience is beginning to enjoy these fine instrumentalists, a third party-the grotesque.Albert-sneaks in wi_th a large tuba and an enormous musical score, letting forth a large blast that shocks these two serious artists. "It is not a mere accident," explained Albert, "that I do not appear until the moment when, after a careful preparation, the allegria must give way to buffoonery. Only this crescendo of buffoonery could justify the appearance of the grotesque vagabond that I incarnate." 9 The two musicians, of course, are dismayed at Albert's interruption, yet they cannot determine the source of the disturbance. Again the tuba sounds, but this time they spot the intruder, pounce on him, and eject him from the ring. The same business is

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repeated, with variations, before terminating in a riotous scuffle in which clown gadgetry, including a water-shooting tuba, comes into play. The conclusion to the Fratellini entree is not the obvious chase off, but rather a pleasing concert by all three clowns. The idea behind Crock's musical entree (appendix A) was much the same, yet much gentler in spirit. Crock's whiteface partner is very much the straight man, a serious musician whom the auguste insists on accompanying. The result is a unique blend of musical skills, acrobatics, and even jugglery, as Crock finds reasons to climb all over his chair and piano, play several instruments, and juggle with his bow. When, for example, his partner tries to force him to remove his hat, Crock takes refuge on top of the piano rather than reveal his baldness, and then comes sliding down to the ground on the piano lid, which has been propped up against the side of the piano. Returning to his chair, he falls right through it when the seat collapses. The same thing happens with a new chair. Crock maneuvers his body so as to play the piano with his rear end. He sits on another chair, and its seat likewise collapses. Here he executes his famous jump to the back of the chair, the invention of which he described in detail in his autobiography: At a matinee, I was in the act of seatin~ myself on the back of my chair ... the seat of the chair fell out, and there I was in the middle of the chair with both feet on the ground. The audience saw that this was not intentional and were all the more delighted. What was Crock going to do now? ... All I knew was that I wanted to be on the back of the chair to play the concertina .... The simplest thing would be to jump out. I collected myself, jumped, croc;sing my legs in the air, and landed on the back of the chair . . . . No other artiste has ever done it as I did. Many have tried it, and among them fully trained acrobats. 10 Later in the entree, Crock drops his violin bow, tosses it up in the air, and fails to catch it. He tries again and again misses. Embarrassed, he hides behind a screen and practices throwing and catch-

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ing the violin bow. He does it with ease, but when he tries it in front of the audience, he misses once again. Now he is really confused. Back behind the screen, he experiences success, but out in front again, the same failure. Moments later, however, absorbed with an unrelated matter, he unconsciously tosses the bow up into the air and matter-of-£actly catches it. Grock and his partner conclude the entree with a clarinet duet. There has been no real conflict, only Greek's attempt to adapt himself to the role of musician. While Grock may be an impostor, he somehow manages to carry out a role that was never meant for him. Clown entrees are often spoken of as parodies, especially those entrees in which the downs attempt to interpret a serious piece of drama or a musical composition. The traditional Hamlet parody and the Fratellini and Grock entrees just related are the best-

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The Clown Entree

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known examples. Such terminology is not accurate, however, if parody is taken to mean social satire. Satirical sallies may appear from time to time, but the attempt is usuaily to discover what happens when clowns play Hamlet or try to be musicians, acrobats_, or magicians. The clowns are usually poking fun at themselves, and not at others. The result is a parody in Webster's sense of a "feeble or ridiculous imitation." The comedy of the entree grows out of the chaos that these impostors create and the means by which they either triumph or are unmasked.

Scenes from Grock's entree. Courtesy of the Theatre Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

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The Three-Ring Clown

J.ie JRree-~i11/J f8lo6'n

Today's audience at a typical American circus does not see just one clown act, performed in a single ring. Instead, the spectators' eyes are boggled by the sight of a score of clowns flooding three rings and a hippodrome track, competing for attention as they simultaneously perform a dozen different comedy routines. Most Americans fully expect this bustle of frantic activity, for the threering setting is an important part of the American tradition of circus. The three rings evolved out of the cutthroat competition among nineteenth-century American circuses. Townspeople waited all year for the day the circus came to town, and each show tried to outdo its rivals in an attempt to win audiences. As early as 1872 the Great Eastern show added a second ring. The practice was __ soon imitated by other circuses, and by 1888 Barnum&_ Bailey ~as performing in three rings, with stages between the rings, and the whole surrounded by a hippodrome track. The tent, which had covered a single ring and a few thousand spectators, was replaced by a "big top," which could seat as many as 16,000 with the most distant spectator several hundred feet from center ring. It was not long before the three-ring format became standard; given the choice between the hundreds of performers in three rings or a third as many in a single ring, most circus fans opted for the daz-

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zling excitement of the bigger show. Circus owners meanwhile thrived on the increased revenues that the larger houses produced, and the circus enjoyed what is now nostalgically regarded as its "golden age." 1 When the colossal three-ring extravaganza supplanted the onering "mud show," the days of the talking and singing clown were numbered. They simply could not be heard throughout the big top, especially when they had to compete with other acts and with the blaring of the band that accompanied the performance. Nor, of course, could European-style clown entrees, with all of their dialogue, be presented easily in the later American circus. By 1885, writes Sherwood, all of the clowns with the Barnum show were silent, and there was even a rule that any clown who opened his mouth was automatically fired. The limitations that this development imposed on the clown were hardly new, however. When the French government silenced the fairground comedians of the eighteenth century, its Harlequins and Pierrots cleverly found other ways to get their story across. Early circus clowns likewise had suffered from restrictions on dialogue, as had the Clowns and Harlequins in English pantomime. Indeed, the clown's ancestors traditionally were accustomed to playing in less than the ideal surroundings-street corners and marketplaces, for example-and thus were forced to master the art of winning and maintaining a crowd's attention. Grimaldi's audiences actually found it easier to follow the actionpacked pantomime plots than spoken dramas. In the huge theaters of their day, it was difficult to hear everything the dramatic actors were saying, but the harlequinade was self-explanatory. The three-ring circus represented perhaps the greatest chaUenge to the clown's creativity. At its worst, the three rings reduced the clown to a kind of pantomimic horseplay, a rough-and-tumble slapstick comedy totally lacking in characterization and plot. Not everyone approved of this new type of clown. One journalist, writing in 1905, complained that the American clown's vitality had been lost. As evidence, he described twenty clowns in a dressing tent "frantically changing from one set of fool costumes into another equally monstrous, so that they may run out for five minutes into a three-ringed pandemonium, make a face and hit a partner with a slapstick." 2

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1890 American circus poster. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Barnum & Bailey in Germany in 1900. Several traditional down acts are shown, including

Whoa, January!, The Dentist, The Barber Shop, and The Clown Band. Courtesy of the Library

0£ .Congress.

Many similar complaints were voiced, often by old-time clowns who looked back with nostalgia-on the days of the one-ring circus. Jules Tumour lambasted the three-ring circus as a "mammoth monstrosity." Robert Sherwood lamented that "the art of clowning gradually went out with the generation that followed Dan Rice." In the 1890s, Dan Rice himself complained to John Ringling that "you haven't got one real clown in your show-I mean a jester who can stand in a ring and hold the audience all by himself. Instead, you march in a dozen buffoons who try to get laughs by falling all over each other or whacking one another over their padded buttocks with bladders or staves. That's your 'bigger than ever.' Twelve idiotic simpletons instead of one talented clown." 3 Much of their violent comedy was right out of the harlequinade, minus the conventions of English pantomime. "When I get through my work," complained Slivers Oakley in 1905, "I feel as if I'd been playing scrimmage against Yale. If people only would laugh at something nice and kind and gentle! But no-not for theirs! We have to kick and get kicked, punch and get punched, get up, fall down, ro11 around, and get generally walked

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Marceline, the famous auguste of the New York Hippodrome.

Clowns all over, trampled under and_ hoofed up, to make any sort of hit at all. Well, honest now, [ had a partner that got only one good laugh all the time he was in the business, and that was when an elephant stepped on his foot and smashed it flat. He set .up a screech that slit the tent-top pretty near, and they laughed! Gee! you should have heard them laugh! When we carried him out, groaning and biting his fingers, they almost had a fit." 4 At its best, however, the three-ring structure led to an enrichment of the repertoire of comedy acrobatics and to an expansion of the clown's range of pantomime. Least threatened were those clowns who excelled in acrobatics, for they found that their ski11s fitted in nicely with the pace and size of the new show. Less common but equally important, at least until the 1920s, was the solo pantomime clown, who had to be talented enough to perform alone for five minutes before thousands of spectators. As the American circus entered the twentieth century, it was these two traditions that represented the three-ring clown at his highest artistic level.

COMEDY ACROBATICS

The circus clown's earliest comedic impulse had been to involve himself in the acts of skill being presented in the ring. The clown to the ring was a "down to the rope" and a "down to the horse." The repertoire was enriched considerably in the nineteenth century by Auriol, Boswell, the Price Brothers, and the entire circus tradition that they spawned. As new circus apparatus was introduced, the clown's ~possibilities expanded accordingly. With the invention of the trampoline, human cannonball act, flying trapeze, unicycle, and other technical equipment, the clown had new acts to burlesque, provided that he possessed the requisite skills. The clown's disruption of an act sometimes followed the pattern of comic meddling introduced by the first augustes. Particularly successful in this line was the famous French clown, Marceline Orbes (1873-1927). Marceline left England in 1905 to come to the New York Hippodrome, where he enjoyed considerable success for more than a decade. Although a tumbler by training, he wore

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Gijon Polidor, with his pet sparrow, pig, and dog. Photograph by Harry Atwell.

Clowns the misfit evening clothes of the auguste. Marceline would wander about the vast Hippodrome~ a small figure against an imposing background, apparently 'trying to be useful. Like the typical solo auguste, however, he only got in the way. When the roustabouts tried to set up the ring curb, Marceline would pull out each peg as soon as it was hammered in and take it to the first man in line. The circus hands never caught on, and would have to set up the ring three times. When the carpet was unrolled for the ponies, Marceline would roll it back up as the ponies entered the arena. As the trapeze artist swung through the air, Marceline would pull at a rope, releasing the net, which he then would start to fold up neatly-leaving the trapezist stranded high above the arena floor. Gijon Polidor, one of the best of the early Ringling clowns, engaged in a similar performance. Accompanied by his pet sparrow, pig, and dog, he strolled around the arena, trying to duplicate the tricks of the other acts-never with quite the success he had anticipated. His attempts to become a bareback rider landed him on the ground. He scaled the rope ladder with the aerialists, but could not muster enough courage to "fly through the air with the greatest of ease." He pantomimed his intention to execute a forward somersault from a springboard. As he ran down the ramp, however, the lights would go out; when they came on a moment later, Polidor lay prone on a table ten yards away. As the acrobatic comedy tradition evolved, it became separated from the mainstream of three-ring clowning. It was an area of specialization, a star turn several steps above the antics of the other clowns. Comic versions of other acts were developed: comedy stilt walking, balancing, trampoline, hat juggling, high bar, and so forth. Usually !hese acts were presented simultaneously; for example, a "grotesque acrobatic turn" in ring one, a "burle~9ue bar act" in the center ring, and a "hilarious gymnastic travesty" in ring three. Sometimes the comedy acrobats had to compete with the other clowns for attention during their slot on the program. The 1934 program for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus advertised: The biggest congress of funmakers ever assembled. A multitude of amazingly clever clowns in all parts of the arena. At the same time, a melange of astounding acrobatic feats sensational. Stage 1: Harry Rittley (table toppling);

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The Three-Ring Clown Stage 2: The Hart Brothers (acrobatic); Ring 2: The Humpty Dumpty Troupe (acrobatic comedians); Stage 3: Nelson and Nelson (comedy stilt walk); Ring 3: Mickey Kardo Troupe (comedy acrobatics); Stage 4: Frederico Canestrelli (comedy balancing ladder). Perhaps the most popular of these was Harry Rittley's "table rock" (which actually had been performed many years earlier by the French clown, Charley Poley). Rittley built a tower by piling five tables on top of one another, each table smaller than the one below it. Precariously positioned on the top, he caused the tower to sway back and forth, traveling a bit further from the vertical each time, much further than one might think possible. Eventually he pressed his luck and simply went too far, toppling to the ground with a loud crash. More traditional forms of comedy acrobatics, such as equestrian clowning, were just as popular in the three-ring circus. Its greatest exponents in the twentieth century have been the members of the Hanneford riding family, which came to the United States from Ireland in 1915. The Hannefords span at least 150 years of circus history, from England's Wombwell Menagerie of the 1820s to the present-day performances of Tommy and George Hanneford. When they came to America, the clown of the act was the great Edwin "Poodles" Hanneford (1891-1967). Buster Keaton spoke of Poodles as "the only trained acrobat I ever saw who could take a fall and make it look funny."~ In his full-length raccoon coat, Poodles would dive on and off the horse, ride backwards, or sometimes hold onto the horse's tail for dear life, while the other members of his family stood comfortably on its back. He was especially famous for stepping off the back of the horse, which gave the impression of his being momentarily suspended in midair. Part of Poodles's act can be seen in the Shirley Temple movie, Our Little Girl (1935). In more recent times, it has been performed by Poodles's nephew Tommy, and by Lucio Cristiani. Both of these fine equestrians include a quick costume change in their act: with his jacket and hat on the ground, the clown falls off the horse, does a forward roll, and stands up wearing the garments. The old Pete Jenkins act, in which an audience "plant" tries his

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