Sideshows

Both a great American adventure and a rare entry into a sheltered world, Under the Big Top describes one man's pursuit of every child's fantasy: running away to join the circus. Bruce Feiler's unforgettable year as a clown will forever change your view of one of the world's oldest art forms and remind you of how dreams can go horribly wrong -- and then miraculously come true. Book jacket.

Cultural Writing. Memoir. Howard Bone was a sideshow magician virtually his whole working life. During a long, eventful, and adventurous career he lived every aspect of outdoor show business in its golden era. SIDE SHOW captures the flavor of those boisterous times -- the characters, the scenes, the scams, the dodges, the joys and sorrows of carny ways as only an insider could know them. An appealing, amusing and down and dirty glimpse into the rarely depicted nether regions of show business -- Ricky Jay, magician, actor, and author.

A true crime story about the life and murder of Grady Stiles, Jr. (1937-1992). Stiles suffered from a hereditary condition, called ectrodactyly, which caused his fingers and toes to merge, giving them a claw-like appearance. He performed with various sideshows under the name, "Lobster Boy." He married Mary Teresa Herzog, another sideshow performer, and moved to Gibsonton, Florida. They had three children together. Known for being hot-tempered and abusive, even going so far as murdering his daughter's finance. No sentence was served because of his disability. In 1992, his wife, and her son by another man, hired a neighbor to have Lobster Boy killed.

Written by the "King of the Sideshow" himself, Ward Hall (1930-2018). Born in Trenton, Nebraska, Ward moved with his father to Denver, Colorado, and, at age 14, he worked for the Cole Bros. Circus as a prop hand. He dropped out of school and joined the Dailey Bros. Circus in 1946. He and his partner, Chris Christ, owned the World of Wonders traveling sideshow. This autobiography is short but provides a nice introduction to the circus from the mid-twentieth century to 1981, the year of publication. A more up-to-date authorized biography is, "Ward Hall: King of the Sideshow!," written by Tim O'Brien (2014).

James Taylor is the founder of Shocked and Amazed! On & Off the Midway, a journal "devoted solely to the entertainment explosion in the weird, bizarre and unusual (author's website)!" He was codirector of Baltimore's American Dime Museum, which closed in 2007. This book collects stories and photographs from Mr. Taylor's experience with the unusual and outrageous. Some of the stories may have appeared in past issues of the journal. Excellent!

The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow had their first circus tour in 1992. They began as a "loose-knit assemblage of odd humans" (Rose, 1995) performing in underground clubs, "the grunge scene," along the West Coast, particularly in Seattle. This book, written by owner and performer, Jim Rose, chronicles their start through the 1995 touring season, when the book was actually published. They toured with popular music acts, like Nine Inch Nails, and even performed at Lollapalooza in the early 1990s. Readers will meet The Amazing Mr. Lifto, Matt the Tube, The Torture King, and The Armenian Rubber Man, among others. Shows consisted of performance art, such as contortion, fire-eating, sword-swallowing, regurgitation, straightjacket escapes, and much, much, more!

The carnival sideshows of the past have left behind a fascinating legacy of mystery and intrigue. The secrets behind such daring feats as fire-eating and sword swallowing and bizarre exhibitions of human oddities as "Alligator Boys" and "Gorilla Girls" still remain, only grudgingly if ever given up by performers and carnival professionals. Working alongside the performers, Joe Nickell blows the lid off these mysteries of the midway. The author reveals the structure of the shows, specific methods behind the performances, and the showmen's tactics for recruiting performers and attracting crowds. He also traces the history of such spectacles, from ancient Egyptian magic and street fairs to the golden age of P.T. Barnum's sideshows. With revealing insight into the personal lives of the men and women billed as freaks, Nickell unfolds the captivating story of the midway show.

A fascinating look into the history of the American sideshow and its performers. Learn what's real, what's fake, and what's just downright bizarre. You've probably heard of Tom Thumb. The Elephant Man. Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins. But what about Eli Bowen, the legless acrobat? Myrtle Corbin, the four-legged woman? Or Prince Randian, the human torso? All these and more were stars during the heyday of the American sideshow, from 1840 to 1950. American Sideshow chronicles the lives of truly amazing performers, examining these brave and extraordinary curiosities, not just as sideshow attractions, but as people, delving into the lives they led and how they were able to triumph over their abnormalities. American Sideshow discusses the rise and fall of the original sideshows and their subsequent replacement by today's self-made freaks. With the progress of modern medicine, the physical abnormalities are disappearing, either through treatment or prevention; and, ironically, those same technological advancements now make it possible to change our bodies at will. It's amazing how easy it is to have your tongue forked, horns surgically implanted, or your earlobes removed. There are also modern-day giants, fire-eaters, fire-breathers, sword-swallowers, glass-eaters, human blockheads, and, oh, so much more. These fascinating personalities are celebrated through intimate biographies paired with stunning photographs. Approximately 200 performers from the past 160 years are featured, giving readers a comprehensive and sometimes astonishing view of the history of the American sideshow.

Everyone loves a carnival, whether it's the Big Top or a traveling midway kicking up dust. These roving extravaganzas are as amusing as they are mysterious and as innocent as they are sordid. Step Right Up is a one-of-a-kind anthology that collects the finest literature and the most absorbing first-person accounts about carnivals, sideshows, and the circus, capturing all of the spectacle and sensation of this unusual and treasured tradition. A colorful assortment of characters populate the fairgrounds and circus tents of this unique collection from circus legends like P. T. Barnum and Otis Jordan the Frog Prince to a motley crew of ride monkeys and rubes. Step Right Up takes the reader everywhere from a small village in Romania to the streets of Coney Island and offers everything from Fred Rosen's account of the scandalous demise of Grady "Lobster Boy" Stiles Jr. to imaginative fiction like Michael Chabon's macabre take on the origin of clowns. The bizarre romance and mystery of the world's oldest and oddest traveling institution come to life in selections from Katherine Dunn, Kevin Baker, Jim Tully, Flannery O'Connor, Lee Durkee, Robert Hough, Michael Chabon, Fred Rosen, Susan Dickinson, Joseph Michell, Edora Welty, and Ellen Hunnicut.

A social history of the "freak show" from 1840-1940 divided into two parts. Part one is a historical overview of freak shows from their time as "haphazard traveling exhibits" to the more organized ten-in-one shows seen at midways and circuses, including the methods and techniques (exotic versus aggrandized) circus owners would use to sell someone as a freak. The second part provides specific case studies of freaks.

Tessa Fontaine's astonishing memoir of pushing past fear, The Electric Woman, follows the author on a life-affirming journey of loss and self-discovery--through her time on the road with the last traveling American sideshow and her relationship with an adventurous, spirited mother. Turns out, one lesson applies to living through illness, keeping the show on the road, letting go of the person you love most, and eating fire: The trick is there is no trick. You eat fire by eating fire. Two journeys--a daughter's and a mother's--bear witness to this lesson in The Electric Woman. For three years Tessa Fontaine lived in a constant state of emergency as her mother battled stroke after stroke. But hospitals, wheelchairs, and loss of language couldn't hold back such a woman; she and her husband would see Italy together, come what may. Thus Fontaine became free to follow her own piper, a literal giant inviting her to "come play" in the World of Wonders, America's last traveling sideshow. How could she resist? Transformed into an escape artist, a snake charmer, and a high-voltage Electra, Fontaine witnessed the marvels of carnival life: intense camaraderie and heartbreak, the guilty thrill of hard-earned cash exchanged for a peek into the impossible, and, most marvelous of all, the stories carnival folks tell about themselves. Through these, Fontaine trained her body to ignore fear and learned how to keep her heart open in the face of loss. A story for anyone who has ever imagined running away with the circus, wanted to be someone else, or wanted a loved one to live forever,The Electric Womanis ultimately about death-defying acts of all kinds, especially that ever constant: good old-fashioned unconditional love.

Biography of Ward Hall, sideshow impresario now in his 70th year in show business. Co-owner, with his partner, Chris Christ, of the World of Wonders traveling sideshow.

Created in 1973-74 and previously unpublished in English in its entirety, Circus Sideshow, by Czech-born American photojournalist Antonin Kratochvil (born 1947), offers an amazing pageant of tightrope walkers, jugglers, snake women, giants, dwarves, contortionists and fire eaters at a circus in Gibsonton, Florida, a small coastal town near Tampa. The town was then known as a winter vacation hotspot for circuses, a place to recharge before setting out on their spring and summer cross-country tours. Visiting the mobile homes, caravans and trailers of the performers, and walking through their narrow alleys and circus tents, Kratochvil was able to photograph freely and intimately, and his black-and-white photographs testify to his vision of them as people expelled from society, but who] were able to maintain their dignity. In 1974 he sent his photographs to the New York editorial office of American Photo, which the magazine's art director, Jean-Jacques Naudet, printed as a ten-page report. Circus Sideshow documents an amazing lost American subculture.

The mystery, color, and magic of the circus was a subject of fascination for European artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The French Post-Impressionist painter Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891) explored this theme in a number of drawings and sketches, as well as in his 1888 Pointillist masterwork, Circus Sideshow. Drawing connections to Parisian street life, to the works of other artists, and to the broader complexities of modern life, this lively book establishes Circus Sideshow as a pioneering work in the genre of circus-themed art. Lush reproductions of the work are buttressed by images of Seurat's preparatory drawings and ephemera from circuses and street performances of the time to offer a full understanding of the historical context.