Girl Show: Into the Canvas World of Bump and Grind

GIRL SHOW

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GIRL SHOW Into the canvas world of Bump

and Grirnd A.W. STENCELL

ECW PRESS

Copyright © ECW PRESS, 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of ECW PRESS.

CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Stencell, A.W. Girl show: into the canvas world of bump and grind ISBN 1-55022-371-2 i. Sideshows.

2. Burlesque (Theater).

1999 PN1949.S773 1999

792.7^28

3. Striptease. I. Title. 099-930842-4

Cover and text design by Tania Craan Photo editor: Tania Craan Layout by Mary Bowness Printed by Printcrafters Distributed in Canada by General Distribution Services, 325 Humber Blvd., Etobicoke, Ontario M9W 703 Distributed in the United States by LPC Group-InBook, 1436 West Randolph Street, Chicago, Illinois, USA 60607 Co-published by Pluto Press Australia Locked Bag 199, Ananadale NSW 2038 ph: 61 2 95193299 / fax: 61 2 95198940 Distributed in Australia by UNIREPS ph 612 96640999 Published by ECW PRESS 2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, M4E IE2 www. ecw. ca/press The publication of Girl Show has been generously supported by the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program. Canada

PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

CONTENTS CHAPTER 1

THE BIRTH OF BALLYHOO

1

CHAPTER 2

WHAT'S UP FRONT COUNTS CHAPTER

19

^

GIRLS & GRIFT ON THE SHOWGROUND

35

CHAPTER 4

SEX ON THE HALF SHELL

41

CHAPTER 5

BURLESQUE STARS

65

CHAPTER 6

SHEBAS ON TRAMPLED GRASS

81

CHAPTER 7

THE GIRL-SHOW TALKER

97

CHAPTER 8

A PRIZE IN EVERY BOX

111

CHAPTER 9

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THE ORGANIST IS DRUNK?

123

CHAPTER

10

GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS, AND TUBBY BOOTS CHAPTER

141

11

"WELL, JUDGE, IT'S LIKE THIS"

157

CHAPTER 12

THE SOUL OF BACCHUS

177

CHAPTER 13

HAVE YOU SEEN MITZI?

189

CHAPTER 14

SOME HOUSEHOLD TIPS Cs H A IP 1 fe 1C

197

15

THE LAST OF THE TASSEL-TWIRLERS

207

CHAPTER 16

I CANT HEAR YOU

217

GLOSSARY

232

INDEX

237

BIBLIOGRAPHY

242

PHOTO CREDITS

243

tO MY WIFE sHIRLY AND SHOW FOLKS EVERYWHERE

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Acknowledgments I have always had a passion for the circus and the fairground. I have been one of the fortunate few to glide through life doing what I have always wanted to do — own a circus. Many people have made this journey possible. First, my parents, Jean and Wilfred Stencell, who fostered my interests and let me, as a fourteen-year-old, go out with my first show. My father, who spent many years with MS in a wheelchair, taught me great patience and the power of laughter. I owe continued gratitude to my wife, Shirley, for shelving her dreams and putting all her talents to use in helping me reach mine. Can you ever say enough about a young lady who was a physiotherapist one day and driving an elephant semi the next? I have made a lot of friends on carnival and circus lots and would be remiss not to remember my friend the late Dave Mullaney who always made me appreciate fellow showpeople with his crack "Ain't show folks colorful!" I also owe a debt to showman Bill English who, besides sharing his knowledge of the business, taught me that keeping your word is golden. I want to remember the late Miami Whitey and One Arm Vince for my grifted education. Thanks go to carnies Kent Banner, Karl Greenlaw, Jack Robertson, and Billy Burr for all their help, and to Herbert Rice and Don Marcks for the fine burlesque material. Similarly, thanks to friend Mike Hartigan, ex-carnival owner and master artist, for doing the three excellent drawings for this volume. I am very grateful to George Sanders, the first curator of the Carnival Museum maintained by the International Independent Showmen's Association in Gibsonton, Florida, for his help and encouragement, and for his contribution to carnival history. When there was very little money or interest around the club for the museum, it was George who donated his time and knowledge to gather and preserve what is there now.

Mitzi Sinclair has been a generous source of information on her life as a dancer in vaudeville, burlesque, and under canvas. She also led me to Peter Thomas and Val Valentine. Peter advanced my burlesque education and Val taught me about stripping and carnival revue shows. Dixie Evans and Jane Briggeman helped me locate burlesque people. Former girl-show talker, movie star, and playwright Peter Garey was one of the first to send a big envelope full of photos, clippings, and encouragement. Gayle Madden was one of the first to explain the girl-show business and the art of talking. John Moss not only gave me valuable insights into talking but also about cooch-show operations. Tirza Duval shared her story of being the Wine Bath Girl and provided tales of her late husband, girl-show producer and talker Joe Boston. Roland Porter, Eli Jackson, Gene Stapleton, and Victor Lewis took me into the world of candy butchers and pitchmen. Musician and showman Charles Schlarbaum related his girl-revue experiences as both a candy pitchman and a bandleader. Bill Karlton contributed photos and shared his experiences performing on girl-show stages. Joy Fleenor offered the producer's view of operating a girl revue. For insights into the world of circus and carnival side shows, I owe thanks to the late Carl Davenport and to John B. "Gypsy Red" Jackson, Charles Roark, Henry Thompson, and master showman Ward Hall. Mimi Reed contributed the great backstage photos of Leon Miller's Club Lido, which she took while performing there in 1959. I owe a big debt to all the girl-show people who talked to me, including Shirley and Richard Mayo, Buzz Barton, Mike Miller, Dave and Sandy O'Hara, Vista Miller, Jackie Duggan, Gloria Aldrich, Peter Manos, Leroy Griffith, Sulo Keppo, Molly Parks, Norma Jean Watts, Bertie Austin, Bambi Lane, Bob Tanenbaum, and the late Tubby Boots. Five great ladies — Pagan Jones, Sylvia Cassidy, Ricki Covette, and the late Blaze Fury and Bonnie Boyer — were generous in sharing their memories and photos of their days as headline strippers and exotics. Andy Bunn and Joe Givens took me into the world of female impersonators on carnivals and I have nothing but respect for their craft and lifestyle. Thanks also to the USA Gibsonton, Florida; the Showmen's League of America, Chicago and Toronto chapters; Jerry Church of Amusements of America; Jim Conklin and the staff of Conklin Shows; and Susan and Tim Magid of the James E. Strates Shows. Fred Dahlinger at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, has been not only a friend but a great source of information and encouragement. Fred Pfening Jr. has been an invaluable source of photos. Thanks to

friend and entertainment scholar Dick Flint for his help with materials, photos, and kind words. The same for Steve Gossard, curator of Circus Collections at the Illinois State University; Serge Barbe and Serge Blondin at the Ottawa City Archives; the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, and the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis, Illinois, for use of photos in their collections; and Julie Thomas, Chicago Historical Society, for sending me photocopies of the Little Egypt clipping file. I am also grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for a grant that allowed me to research carnival history in Canada. I owe a special thanks to John and Zyg Kaminski for putting me in touch with ECW publisher Jack David, who provided guidance, support, and patience. It has been both a pleasure and a learning experience working with editor Stuart Ross — I am very grateful for his understanding of the material and his help in bringing the manuscript to its finished form. Thanks also to Mary Bowness, Jen Hale, and the other staff at ECW's Toronto office. Thanks to Stuart McLean and Victoria Ridout for their valuable assistance. Thanks to Tania Craan for her design and photo expertise. This is a book about outdoor show business and the entertainment pleasures, especially sexual ones, that carnival girl shows have given the North American public over the last one hundred years. It is also about some of the people who were the last to deliver those pleasures. A debt is owed to all the show folks — the countless jointees, grifters, fixers, owners, producers, dancers, talkers, candy pitchmen, roughies, and performers who so faithfully devoted their lives to bringing the public so many entertainments on the showgrounds. They may not be remembered here in name, but all their past deeds lie behind these words. A.W Stencell Toronto, 1999

THE BIRT OF BALLYHOO Tne noocfae-Coocfae Dattce aitdw> widujcut

|* ntertainers have always amused and dp* amazed people gathered in market ^ ± ± o in* squares and the courtyards of inns, at religious celebrations, in parks, and at fairs. The professional showman has been as important as the cobbler, the blacksmith, and the baker to our lives, although not as respected. In North America, public amusements and the show folks who run them are relatively new compared to in Europe and the Far East. However, it wasn't long after the first arrivals came to the "promised land" that

their musical and theatrical concerts, displays of acrobatics, wire walkers, and other daredevils were soon recreated in America, The circus business in America had been touring under canvas since the mid-1820s via roads and water transport, presenting horsemanship, acrobatics, comedy, and variety acts. Menagerie showmen followed similar routes, displaying exotic animals, and sometimes wax figures, stuffed animals, and curios. But the public soon lost interest in the investordriven menagerie business, and the financial C H A P T E R l

Opposite page 1: Elvie Calvert, one of the leading girlshow producers of the 1920s and 1930s, poses with the cast of her show and members of the C.A. Wortham show band in 1919, San Antonio, Texas. Note the girl on the swing, an idea likely taken from a current Broadway show or musical revue. The paintings on the front show an Oriental theme. Page 7: Carnival dancer Jean Ellen Ayers (1820s).

panic of 1837 saw many investors and menagerie operators turn to the performer-run circus business that badly needed outside capital and management. Displays of exotic animals became part of the circus. As circuses' popularity grew, the need to accommodate bigger crowds saw the main show tent expand from one center pole, to two, to three and four. Cages of

for viewing along with the performance

animals originally placed in the main tent

were put into a separate menagerie tent. Exotic animals were soon presented in the main circus programs as acts.

Ali Pasha's Beautiful Orient show on a carnival midway, 1915. The painted flat front, supported by back braces, is typical of early American show fronts. This show features an elephant, a small band, and dancing girls.

The modern side show was not part of the early circus. Exhibitions of strange and

.American Circus before the Civil War, writes that

unusual humans and curiosities were

the first circus credited with carrying a

presented separately by showmen in muse-

detached side show charging a separate

ums, theaters, storefronts — any available

admission was the Robinson and Eldred

space where admission could be charged.

Circus of 1848. This large wax-figure show

Gradually circus showmen brought these

cost twenty-five cents to see in addition

attractions onto the circus grounds as addi-

to the fifty-cent main show ticket. In

tional moneymakers.

1851-54, the success of P.T. Barnum's tour-

Stuart Thayer, in Traveling Showman: The 2

ing Asiatic Caravan Museum and Menagerie,

combining human oddities with menagerie animals, strengthened the circus showmen's belief in the drawing power of freaks and curios. By the mid-1860s the side show was an established part of the touring circus. From the 1870s, the New York Clipper, a theatrical weekly founded in 1853, provided itinerant showmen with a list of picnics, celebrations, and fairs to which they could take their games of chance, peep shows, wax works, and freaks alive or stuffed. Amusement centers grew around large northeastern cities. Coney Island, N.Y., on the Atlantic in Brooklyn, became an early destination for a huge population seeking sand and surf. Restaurants, beer gardens, saloons, and entertainment parlors flourished there, catering to the beach and race-track crowds. By the 1880s there were shooting galleries, arcades, and merry-go-rounds, and when the crowd tired of these they could go into pavilions for variety and musical entertainment while drinking and eating. In one area, called the Gut, was a lively gambling and drinking center populated

A typical small railroad circus in Indiana, 1911. The calliope wagon (center) is used for parades and on the lot ballyhoo. The large tent behind it is the side show. At the left is the ticket wagon and concession stands. The marquee (main entrance tent) leads to the menagerie and into the big top. In the middle of the crowd is a high-wire rigging used as a free act before the show to bring the crowd onto the midway.

with con artists and prostitutes. In the 1860s it was said that in the various saloons and parlors, girls pretending to be can-can dancers, as practised in Parisian cabarets in Montparnasse and Montmartre, would do private dances without clothes for a dollar. In Sodom by the Sea, Oliver Pilat and Jo Ranson wrote: "Some patrons wanted more than an

"nO SHOWMAN EVER WENT BROKE UNDERSTANTING the gullibility of the American public" 3

A Hawaiian beauty from the Hawaiian Village show at the Pan-American Expo in Buffalo, 1902.

illusive song or a nude dance. In return for an extra fee, girls gave private exhibitions modeled after those French peep shows, sometimes alone, sometimes with another girl, sometimes with a man or an animal." Beach pavilion owners were also getting the girl singers to hustle tables. The girls sat with the patrons and encouraged them to buy drinks for which the girls got a 25% commission. Coney Island remained a center for fairground-equipment manufacturing and for showmen until the 1950s. Most historians focus on the World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893 with its Midway Plaisance area as the catalyst for the traveling carnival. The fair drew twenty-seven million people with the 4

"Midway" being the most popular area. The fairs' half-naked "savages" from strange distant lands (many of them local black people) and the hoochie-coochie dancers of the Far East (some from as far east as New York City) provided white America with a grand opportunity for a subliminal journey into the recesses of its own repressed desires and fantasies. In those hidden fantasies and longings lay that continued curiosity found in each generation of midway gawkers. The most intelligent of our species are often the first in line before the showman's ticket box. The fair gave the amusement industry the Ferris wheel or, as future carnies would refer to it, the "chump indicator," as it was the highest thing on show lots for decades. If its seats were full, there was a big crowd on the midway. The fair also gave the world the word "ballyhoo," and the stories about the dirty hoochie-coochie dance gave showmen on midways, at amusement parks, and on Broadway a historical past to ballyhoo well into the 1900s. When the fair opened on May 1, 1893, the Ferris wheel and some pavilions were not completed. Bad press dogged the fair and expected attendance lagged. In June, the Ferris wheel finally opened for business

A #12 Eli Ferris wheel on the Morris and Castle Shows at the Des Moines, Iowa, fair in 1927. Advertising banners hang from the backs of the seats, between the wheel spokes, and on the braces. The ten-cent ticket is sold by the chap with the umbrella at the front of the ride.

and the crowds arrived, but six weeks of poor business had led many of the amusement operators to the brink of bankruptcy. Fortunately newspapers started to raise hell about the midway dancers in the Persian Palace, Turkish Village, Old Vienna, A Street in Cairo, and Algerian Village. Across the country, papers denounced the evil dances, with photos and drawings o 1

depicting the objectionable features. The New York Journal said the hoochie-coochie was "neither dancing of the head or the feet." The San Francisco Chronicle screamed, "Mudway Plaisance!" To the showmen's glee, men in barber shops, saloons, and hotel lobbies talked about nothing else. Midway showmen on and off the grounds quickly added dancers to their poorer-grossing attractions. All claimed to be presenting the original evil dance that every-

Fatima, the "Little Tempest," bewitching black-eyed hoochie-coochie dancer in the Beautiful Orient Show on the Pan-Am Expo, Buffalo, New York, 1902.

one had heard so much about. Fairgoers o hurried from one attraction to the next, wondering which shuffle, shake, shimmy, wiggle, or gyration was the real McCoy! The fair was populated by dancers sporting exotic names like Fatima, Houri, Husaria, Farida, and Maryeta. Donna Carlton, in Looking for Little Egypt, states that these girls were mostly Ghawazi, the celebrated voluptuous dancers — and Gypsy prostitutes — from Egypt, making their

Isloa Hamilton, "the Artist's Model," in the dancing show "Around the World" at the Pan-Am Exposition in Buffalo, 1902. She is "posing" in skin-hugging clothes. Posing became part of burlesque and carnival girl shows, and laws that curtailed dancing and nudity overlooked poses and nudity because this combination was "artistic."

5

Interior of the Egyptian Theatre, Chicago Columbia Exposition, 1 893. When the story got out that this was a wicked place, everyone flocked there — clergymen, that they might secure live coals for their text; women, to study the wickedness; old men, for a bit of fun; and boys, that they might be up to the times. Thousands of others watched on through smoked glass.

a11

first appearance in America. Their typical costume was small vests fastened low on their bosoms, bare midriff, and short skirts, with their bodies heavily ornamented by jewelry, beads, and finger cymbals. Their dances featured very little traveling across the stage, but lots of spasmodic movements of the abdominal area and rapid shaking of the shoulders. In an era when most ladies wore corsets, the loose-fitting clothes of these dancers and their body gyrations caused a major stir. Oriental dancing, muscle-control dancing, dance du ventre, and hoochie-coochie became beacons drawing men to circus and carnival lots. The dance became part of carnival shows, 6

circus side shows, burlesque shows, and even refined vaudeville. The legend of Little Egypt as the Chicago fair's hoochie-coochie icon was likely created a few years later when, in 1896, Herbert Barnum Seeley hired some female entertainers for a pre-wedding stag party he threw for his brother Clinton. Police were tipped off and an investigation followed where one of the entertainers, named Ashea Wabe, said she was known as

A typical Oriental midway show, featuring Millie Frido

Mazhar, Turkish dancer from Cairo, at Moose Street carnival, Hartford City, Indiana, 1910. Here she works the bally, accompanied by the traditional drummer and flageolet player.

Little Egypt and had been hired to do an Oriental dance and one pose. Ensuing newspaper coverage suggested she was to have posed naked. This New York City scandal was known as the Awful Seeley Dinner. In the end nobody was charged. Oscar Hammerstein hired Wabe and quickly mounted a hit parody of the investigations, Silly's Dinner. There's no evidence that Ashea Wabe herself ever danced at the Chicago fair of 1893. The publicity over Little Egypt and the hoochie-coochie dance made the terms synonymous with hot, sexy dancing until a couple of press agents at a Minsky burlesque show in New York City were credited with coining the term "striptease" in 1931. In the early 1900s Arabic dancing continued to entertain and shock the public. A thirty-second peep-show film made in

Left: Bostock and Wombwell's Menagerie in England, 1 880s, shows the band on the bally, with staff and uncaged animals out front. Animal show fronts like this one were brought to America, serving as blueprints for American carnival show fronts. Right The Bostock Steeple Chase Carousel in America, circa 1905, was managed by James W. Bostock. He later sold it and purchased the second portable merry-go-round manufactured by the Philadelphia Toboggan Co. The ornate ticket box proclaims, "Positively the only one in America."

1896 bearing dual titles of "Dance du Ventre" and "Passion Dance" was said to be the most popular film in the peep viewers in an Atlantic City Boardwalk arcade until someone complained and authorities ordered it removed. And two films, "Dance du Ventre" and "Fatima's Dance," recorded at Coney Island, were among the first censored in America.

way company. He opened in Toledo, Ohio, and several months later limped into New Orleans broke. He regrouped and his 1895

DEVELOPMENT OF THE TOURING CARNIVAL COMPANIES Late in the summer of 1894 Otto Schmidt, a scenic artist at the People's Theater in Chicago, launched the first traveling mid7

attractions included Streets of Cairo, Helen

showmen here. They first set up on

Conger's Bronze Statues and Living Pictures,

Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn but soon moved

Tony White's One Ring Circus, Frank C.

to Old Iron Pier Walk at Coney Island.

Rostock's Trained Wild Animal Arena, Old

Planned wild animal escapes and Fatima

Plantation Show or minstrel show, Irah Smith's Operetta and Beauty Show, and

the hoochie-coochie dancing bear created

more. Booths on the midway sold Turkish

crowds coming. In 1896 they established a

rugs, Oriental silverware and souvenirs,

show they called "Ye Olde English Faire,"

refreshments, and programs, and patrons

featuring six or seven shows and a British-

could test their aim at a long-range shooting

made gondola ride, one of the first riding

gallery.

devices toured by showmen here.

enough New York press coverage to get the

Some historians place the arrival of two

The turn of the century saw the rise of

British showmen, Frank C. Bostock and

street fairs held on the main drags of cities.

Francis Ferari, in 1893-94 as the real origin of the touring carnival business in America.

Elks' Clubs were the main organizers, presenting street fairs to promote new membership. Frank W Gaskill, an Alliance, Ohio, businessman, saw the success of area

Their years of experience touring menageries and fair attractions on Britain's established fairground scene benefited

Top: The steam engine that powered Flack's carousel at Akron, Ohio, 1912, likely fueled by large chunks of coal. Center. A steam-driven carousel at Flack's Great NorthWestern Shows, based around Grand Rapids, Michigan, circa 1917. A wooden water barrel stands to the right of the engine, with a pile of large-chunk coal by the curb. Bottom: A 1912 street fair celebrating the centennial of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Early carnivals made a living playing such events.

Elks' street fairs and put his own Gaskill

Canton Carnival Company out in 1899. Some historians say Gaskill was the first real touring carnival company, as he played one town after another without much down time. In contrast, Schmidt had to allow a week between each date to set up the next show. All the early carnival companies that sprung up after the Chicago fair carried Oriental Theaters, Turkish Villages, etc., featuring the hoochie-coochie dancers. Bostock's tour in 1900 featured Aaimee, the famous fire and serpentine dancer. A 1903 review of the Ferari Shows, in Saginaw, Michigan, gives a good description of a typical "Oriental" show: "One of the best shows with the carnival company is the Streets of Cairo presented by Abdau Abdelnoux, a native of Beyrout, Syria. There are three camels in the show that give rides. A company of Turks on a platform play weird music while others fight with

Above: The ticket-seller at far left waves a hand in the air as young black performers draw a crowd in front of the Dixie Land minstrel show at an Indiana street fair, 1911.

The front gate on Royal American, 1930s. Carnival owners used gate revenue to pay "free" acts who performed late at night to hold crowds on the midway. Eventually the free acts vanished, but the gate admission continued.

9

Girl show at the Jamestown, Ohio, Fair, 1914. The "Girl in Blue" is a reference to a popular "hooch" dancer named Mile. deLeon who performed in an oldtime opera coat and parasol, then stripped down to tights and leotard. "Poses Plastique" referred to the girls posing as a statue or recreating scenes from mythology, and to tableau vivant acts.

On The Music Hall girl show on Robinson's United Shows, a gilly outfit, the bally platforms don't even have cloth on them to hide the wood frames. The carnival band poses with the girls, the talker, and the ticket seller. The show was typical of carnival girl shows in the teens and twenties with its four double-panel banners and the entranceway or door banner. The whole front area is lit by just three small light bulbs.

swords, juggle guns and swords. There is also a very good magician named Dana from Tunis. The climax of the show is presented by seven Syrian girls headed by the famous Fatima who wears medals won at the Chicago's World's Fair, at Buffalo, and at the Omaha Exposition. She gives a dancing exhibition that includes muscle dances, the w

iggly~wi§glv' tne wormy squirmy, and the ouchie couchie." The carnivals soon left street fairs behind and became a business like the circus that could stand alone. Carnivals became a real-estate game with owners

10

A "Living Pictures" act was usually the butterfly dance, in which the performer dressed in a billowing silky white costume and twirled, creating the illusion of flowing wings, while images of butterflies were projected onto the dress. Circa 1900.

A combination film and dance show on the Parker and Kennedy Shows, 1914. The woman on the bally does a skirt dance as the talker makes his opening with a megaphone. The tent was made of black canvas for daytime showing.

augmenting what shows and rides they owned by renting the show lot out to independent attractions owners by the foot or on percentage. By the First World War years carnival companies settled on a physical layout still used today. Shows had a front gate or entrance arch, then rows of games and food joints on either side. The merry-goround would fill in the center leading the other big rides down the midway. Where the joints stopped on either side, the shows took over, going all the way around, completing the oblong layout. Shows started using free acts to bring crowds out and

Circus and carnival side by side, Keller showgrounds, Joplin, Missouri, early 1950s. In the upper left is Royal American shows, then the world's largest travelling carnival. Across the street is Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus, then the largest travelling circus under canvas. In the lower right is the circus's seven-pole main cookhouse tent, and to its left stands the side-show tent, in front of which is the midway, made up of various concession stands. The carnival entrance is near the intersection of the railroad tracks and the road dividing the lots. On the tracks to the left of the entrance are circus-train flat cars awaiting the loading of the cookhouse wagons once the showpeople's supper is done. The circus moved daily, the carnival weekly.

11

Young men eager to buy tickets to see the Oriental dancers at a 1911 Indiana street fair.

owners began charging patrons a modest fee to enter the grounds. At first many owners were afraid of the "paid gate," convinced nobody would pay to walk around and spend more money. But people did — or, as one carnival owner put it, "No showman ever want broke underestimating the gullibility of the American public." In 1902, Billboard listed seventeen touring carnival companies, and by 1920 there were over 200 crisscrossing the country on no less than 3,000 rail cars. With 200 carnivals, there were almost 200 side shows or 10-in-l's and almost the same number of girl shows. Thousands of people were employed on these outdoor shows and many more in the industries that supplied the products, rides, printing, canvas, etc. The growth of the carnival business and the operation of girl shows was not a smooth ride. As early as 1896 the freaks 12

and fakirs were being condemned by the public press and the pulpit. Critics objected to the "He, she, or it" attraction where nude views were offered for an additional ten cents. Talkers in front of girl shows crying out, "Hot stuff" or "Nothing tame here like women and children are permitted to see in the opera houses," as well as "Living Picture Shows" where girls posed almost nude, irked the bluenosers. Beefs over the games of chance and the clergy's cries over the lewd exhibitions forced many towns to refuse carnival-permit applications. Showmen countered that the Oriental dances were merely historical presentations of the eastern cultures and that their shows were justified as they gave the ordinary man an outlet for his passions and pent-up feelings, but the European custom of having special fairs and festivals as safety valves for human emotions never caught on in puri-

tanical America. Most of the entertainment in girl shows mirrored dancing on vaudeville, burlesque, and revue stages, where Parisian can-can dances and skirt dancing were popular. The butterfly dance's most physical requirement of the dancer was strong arms to swirl the yards of white material onto which were projected slides of butterflies that turned the dancer into a swooping and diving creature on many girl-show stages. "Serpentine dancers" in tight body suits twisted across the stage in slithering movements in appropriate snakelike wardrobe. Before electricity was in every household midway patrons were fascinated with elec-

trie fountain shows which also featured girls dancing in the fountain and doing fire dances. Many girl shows featured dance styles from foreign countries; Gaskill's 1899 International Congress of Dancing Girls showcased dancers representing America, Cuba, France, Mexico, and Spain. Music and dance were the most popular social activities of the roaring twenties, with the Charleston and the Shimmy foremost among the dance crazes. The Charleston copied the movements of the Oriental dancer in the film "Fatima's Dance." While the Charleston dancer jumped from side to side shaking her bottom, the Shimmy dancer shook her shoulders. Both Charleston and Shimmy dresses sported long fringes that exaggerated the dancer's movements. This fashion caught on among girl-show performers who added fringes to their costumes, especially on the bras or halter tops and around the short pants on the hips. During the 1920s through the late 1940s girl-show presentations on carnivals included Oriental shows, cooch shows, Hawaiian shows, water shows, and vaudeville-style revue shows featuring chorus lines and girl dancers. Many were small tab shows, light musical comedies featuring the popular songs and dances of the year. Tides like

"Tango Girls" and "Black Bottom Dancers" were seen on girl-show facades during the First World War years. Carnival producers and girl-show operators copied scenic ideas, dance routines, and the music used in big revues like the Ziegfeld Follies. As new dances came along, the showmen put their own spin to them, perhaps adding more spice and less wardrobe to make their show a little racier

than what downtown offered. Throughout the years, no matter what attractions, games, or rides came and went on the showgrounds, one constant carnival attraction was the girl shows. When you walked onto the carnival grounds, you knew you were going to find a merry-goround and a girl show.

From the start of the touring carnival into the 1930s, most carnival companies carried a band. The main function was to provide music for the ballys on the shows. The band also played concerts in the town each day to advertise the carnival. This is the Clarence Wortham Shows band and lady vocalist on the courthouse steps in Vermillion, S.D., in 1919.

13

BILLBOARD

THE SHOWMAN'S BIBLE Billboard magazine is truly the textbook of popular culture in America up until 1962. It was founded by William H. Donaldson in 1894 as a trade journal for the outdoor bill-posting profession, but soon became the leading weekly paper covering popular music, minstrels, theater, tabloid shows, burlesque, pitchmen, Wild West shows, circuses, and carnivals — any amusement that was barnstorming the countryside. Because show people were itinerant, Billboard gave them a permanent address, at least a paper one, and a way of communicating with each other. Soon Billboard was handling and forwarding over 1,000 pieces of mail daily for show folks. Donaldson campaigned for women's rights in 1915 as he thought it would help women in show-business professions. He successfully drove home a campaign for the government to create a Public Defender so that show folks without local friends or money could get legal advice if they ran afoul of the law. He also stood up for minorities and in 1920 started a special page in Billboard to encourage and recognize black showmen and women.

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15

SHOW TRAINS Trains were the primary mode of transportation for shows from the 1870s until the Great Depression, when the auto truck superseded it. Being a rail show was a status symbol amongst carnival owners who boasted about how many railroad cars they needed. In the horse-drawn-show days, the shows' movements were limited to very short distances and most circuses just played every town or village they came to. Railroads afforded showmen the luxury of planning a route based on what they thought were good towns. Many touring midways moved as "gilly" shows — all the equipment traveled in rented box and baggage cars and had to be "gillied," or transported in rented drayage wagons or trucks to and from the lot. The rail showman could own his own "show" flat cars or he could lease cars from the railway. Most carnival owners ran the train like a hotel. They rented you a wagon to haul your attraction and charged you to load it on the flat car. Staff were rented bunks (two and three to a bunk) and state rooms in the coaches. Each car had a porter who kept it tidy and provided clean linen twice a week. Most shows had a kitchen

A crowd gathers to watch the Hennies Bros. Shows unload beside a fairground in the 1940s. The wagon is the first one off the flats and down the "runs," or loading ramps. The two men at front have the most dangerous job — holding the wagon pole straight. The man coming up alongside the wagon holds a snubbing block on a steel handle, which he can slip in front of a wheel to stop the wagon if it begins to roll. A show bannerline is loaded on the side of the wagon in brackets.

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on the train called a pie car that fed staff mornings and late nights and over the runs. Many owners clawed back workers' wages by selling booze and running gambling concerns. The heyday of the big show trains was in the 1920s through the 1940s but several of the big carnival shows remained on rails up into the 1970s. The James E. Strates Shows that went on rails prior to the Depression remains the only rail carnival traveling today. The last two under-canvas circuses to move by rails were Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus and the Clyde Beatty Circus. Both switched to trucks after the 1956 season. A decade or so later the Ringling show would return to the train but the show itself was no longer in tents but in indoor arenas. At present, two units of the Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus move by train between venues in North America.

Two show workers wait for the gilly truck in the doorway of a CPR boxcar in the rail yards in Sydney, Nova Scotia, early 1970s. This 20-car train carried the famous Bill Lynch shows, the last gilly show in North America

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Wit.

WHAT'S UP FRONT CONTS Show Fronts, Banners, Stages, and Tops

he carnival show front was something col, orful and high that would conceal the plain s tent where the attraction was presented. Its colors, signage, and pictorials were meant to distinguish this show from others in the rows of attractions. The front served as a backdrop for the bally entertainers just as scenery does for theatrical performers. The front had to stop midwaygoers and then hold their attention long enough for the talker to draw them before his bally stage and start his opening. The front's length kept the ballys and spiels of nearby shows a safe distance away so the crowd was not distracted while the talkers worked.

The first walk-over ballys on the big sitdown girl revues were made to look like entrances to music halls or theaters, with a heavy ornate lobby feel to them suggesting a quality show. This marquee entrance look was maintained through the decades. On smaller girl shows the canvas banners and panel fronts offered sexy pictorial artwork and tabloid lettering that ignited the male patron's mind to the decadent adventure waiting inside. The big challenge for scenic artists and front builders was to make something that looked substantial but was easily portable by wagon or railway baggage car. 19

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British showman E. H. Bostock wrote in Worlds Fair in 1939 about wagonmounted show fronts dating back to 1872 with some of them being sixty feet in length when set up. He said that his "best front was a little thirty-eight foot one built in 1883 by Mr. Watson of Belper. This was the show front that I would have success with time after time and it was the first English front to reach America where it was lucky for my late brother Frank Bostock for some years." The elaborate carved fronts of the wild animal shows British showmen Frank

Page 18: A single-wagon girl-show front on Gaskill Carnival, early 1900s.

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Bostock and Joseph Ferari brought to America in the 1890s served as the prototype for wagon-mounted show fronts on American carnivals for the next half century. On the English fairground, along with

Right: A concert band poses in front of a very fine one-wagon show front on the A.L. Heinz Shows, 1916. Braces extend from the top of the end panels down onto the bally platform, with blocks of wood to keep them from sliding forward. The top piece folds flat over the "Isle D'Moure" panel, which hinges and falls backwards onto the roof for transit.

Above: A row of one- and two-wagon fronts at a Gatskill and Mundy midway, late 1 890s. Lavish carvings, mirrors, and painted scenes embellish (from left) the wild animal show, girl show, mirror maze, and musical comedy attractions.

the menagerie shows, the most decorated fronts were those of the bioscope shows, the early traveling cinemas. Like the wild animal shows they needed a strong, appealing front, as they often played alone in towns. These bioscope fronts likely inspired the fancy marquee and entrance facades to permanent cinemas. An early nickelodeon theater in America used one of the Gaskill-Mundy show fronts as a facade. Some early fronts used by Bostock and Ferari were made by Orton and Spooner —

British fairground builders of fronts, carousels, and living wagons noted for their superb quality carvings. The main feature of these early wagon fronts was the walk-over bally or "cross-over," which let the crowd see customers appear on the stage after buying tickets, then walk across and disappear into the tent. Everyone wanted to follow. The first show fronts used by Gaskill were theatrical scenery flats nailed over a wooden frame with nondescript lithos pasted on for decoration. American show-

An early wild-animal front on Gaskill Carnival Co., early 1900s, resembles British menagerie show fronts of the previous century. The steps are painted to mimic marble, a popular decoration on British rides of the era. The organ on the front platform could weigh up to one and a half tons. It could be pushed on rollers into a front panel wagon at either side or, if too heavy, left on a small flat wagon.

Top: Shirley Francis's "Mecca" girl show on the 1922 Rubin and Cherry Shows. This style of front with a projected porch section supported by the two pillars on both sides of the bally platform was probably designed in America by Captain Fred Lewis, who patterned their design after the fronts used by Bostock and Wombwells' Menagerie in England during the 1 880s. Bottom: This elaborate front used in England by Bostock and Wombwells is composed of two wagons. The ticket box is in between the wagons. Early movie theaters and American show fronts took their architectural style from these English fronts.

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A highly carved minstrel-show front of L.C. Toland's Cotton Club Revue, Beckmann and Gerety, 1936. The lion carvings suggest this might once have been a front for a wild-animal show. The canvas behind the seated man covers a small organ or calliope, and guy lines on either side of the front secure the structure against strong winds.

Early carved fronts on the W.E. Groff Shows train, circa 1920.

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men were quick to wagon-mount their various attractions for easy set-up and moving out. Midway pioneer Gaskill, partnered with J. P. Mundy by 1902, had a beautiful midway sporting six wagonmounted fronts by Leonhard Wagon Manufacturing Co. in Baltimore. Francis and Joseph Ferari sans Bostock also had Leonhard build them fronts. The 1903 Ferari Bros. Midway was said to have been the best show built so far with three wagon fronts for the wild animal show, the dog and pony show, the moving picture show, the London Ghost show, and Akoun's Mysterious Asia show. Single-wagon front shows were the Statue Turning To Life, McKay's Girl Show, and Potters and Rice Circus. A total of eight shows with wagon fronts and six of them sporting large band organs. Carousel builders Marcus Illions and C.W Parker both built show fronts for carnival showmen. Parker's factory in Leavenworth, Kansas, in the early 1900s had a reputation among showmen for finepress steel fronts on iron wheel wagons. These fronts featured a myriad of mirrors, cut glass, and zinc and cast

Mrs. Rook's Oriental show on Flack's Great North Western gilly show, circa 1910, provides a good example of the single-banner girl-show front as painted by Hayden, Beverly, and other banner companies.

metal carvings. Another early front builder was H.L.Witt of Knoxville,Tennessee, who created fronts for Johnny J. Jones and K.G. Barkoot. As circuses closed or abandoned their parades, some carnivals picked up the highly detailed circus band and tableau wagons, using their carvings on their show fronts. In 1929 the Henry Ford Museum acquired the John Robinson calliope, focusing interest on preservation of these wagons. Today fewer than one hundred circus parade wagons survive in museums, but not a single carved carnival show front remains. As the carnival business and the big railroad carnivals developed, most shows built everything they could in-house.

Captain Fred Lewis, who came over with Bostock and was his head zoo director and animal procurer for many years, also designed a front wagon he called a transformation wagon because of how it all folded up. By the teens many shows were copying his design and referring to them as "porch" fronts. By 1925 Lewis had opened a scenic and front-building shop in Richmond, Virginia. Two of his fronts were

By the 1950s, few girl-show operators still used banners and a bannerline. This Girlisk show on Mark's Shows is as basic as a girl-show setup gets, harkening back to the days of earlier midway girl shows.

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Top: By the late teens and early 1920s, many larger carnivals sported these porch-like entrances. This type of front thrust the main bally area into the midway and gave the top section more profile than when the bally area was flush with the rest of the front. Center: A very ornate front on Beckmann and Gerety for Nancy Miller's Gay Paree girl revue, 1936. The bally sports a calliope and carvings decorate the end of the wagon inside the bally opening. The panels are tied down as a precaution against strong winds. Bottom: The United Shows of America, formerly Morris and Castle Shows, replaced the old carved fronts on the show in 1 934 with these new steel-framed, canvasdraped fronts, but this style proved impractical and unpopular with showmen and was susceptible to wind damage. Producer Elsie Calvert stands near the drummer at the right of the bally.

used on World of Mirth until 1938. From the teens through the twenties most girlshow revue fronts on large shows consisted of gold-leaf-covered ornate carvings with brilliant white or light blue backgrounds. The best examples of these were the fronts built on the Johnny J. Jones and the C.A. Wortham shows, the latter using carvings from the Spanger Bros, in Chicago. The smaller showman, with his more modest budget, put up a bannerline — a front of canvas banners hung from upright poles. Banners made by individual painters and tent firms were already being used on circus side shows. Early girl-show fronts were large single canvas banners with an entrance doorway cut in the center. E. J. 24

Hayden and Co. in Brooklyn was an early supplier of these single fronts with typical measurements of 22 feet high and 38 feet long. Some operators used three or more smaller banners to make a front. Wellknown show-banner painters plus many of the tent manufacturing companies that retained banner painters on staff built up a stock of banners so a showman needing a girl-show front banner in a hurry could be supplied off the shelf. By the 1920s many small showmen were using small solid fronts built up of wooden panels that provided a front no matter what the wind conditions. The banner and panel fronts were often used by the gilly showmen, their decoration limited to paintings, since the panels had to load through side doors of box cars and stack easily. Decorative carvings wouldn't load flat and were fragile. In a 1934 Billboard story, R. L. Lohmar, partner in the new United Shows of America, said they "discarded all the old carved fronts, substituting framework fabricated from pipe and special steel castings. We then made another radical departure in covering these frames with solid fabric that fitted like a glove. In the final decoration we dispensed with lurid paintings and distorted claims and used a color scheme

consisting of binary colors. The only lettering on the front was on the top title panel." Although their show route lay in one of the most depressed areas of the country, Lohmar credited the new fronts with bringing show grosses up 30%. By the end of the 1930s the progressive nature of the showmen had ended the era of the wonderful carved fronts with their costly carvings and generous applications of gold leaf. The cluttered, old-fashioned look made way for the modernistic, clean front highlighted with new neon lights. Girl-show fronts became clean and shiny with fewer paintings and more enlarged photographs of the performers on the front panels. Some front builders achieved near legendary status. James Yotas Sr. rebuilt the James E. Strates Shows after they were destroyed in the 1940s while stored in tobacco barns in Mullens, S.C. Another master builder was Charles Kidder, whose wife, Maybelle, produced girl shows. He spent fifteen years making fronts for World

Top: Small wild-animal front on the Mighty Sheesley, Midway, 1920s. Detailed paintings, carvings, and rows of light bulbs surround the bally platform, which holds what seems to be only the facade of an organ. The men stand on a small runway that would project the talker into the midway crowd when making his opening. Center: A panel front for the Oh Susanna girl shows on Convention Shows, 1940. This type of front was used on small truck shows and by gilly showmen. Bottom: A more garish panel front that Joe Kara toured on the Bill Lynch Shows in eastern Canada, 1952. Making the bally, from left, are Josephine, Sheri Marco, and Kara doing the talking. The front is a steel bannerline frame, with hinged wooden panels.

of Mirth and Royal American. In 1946 he settled on a farm in Pinker ton, Virginia, where he opened a shop to build show equipment including two fronts for the Strates midway. In 1947 he was in the show's winter quarters in Jacksonville, Florida, building a new front for the Charm Hour Revue that was 120 feet long and cost $20,000. Jack Norman used this front for his Broadway to Hollywood Revues on Strates until the mid-1950s. There always seemed to be a lot of wagon-building going on around the old World of Mirth Shows. Frank Bergen, the owner, was trained as a wagon builder by the Feraris during the First World War. WOM wintered in the Richmond, Virginia, fairgrounds and in 1948 they built a girl25

show front that featured a double-decked bally. From about this time on all the big jig shows on rail carnivals featured this style of front. When ballying, the musicians went up top while dancers, comics, and talker stayed below. Leon Claxton's front in the 1950s on Royal used stairs on each side of the wagon's center entrance to go up to the top level. The 1960s Club Paradise jig show on Strates used an overhead bally for the band but its access was by a ladder behind the front wagon. Another feature on big bally fronts popular in the 1940s was canvas canopies that extended from the top of the wagon front out into the midway thirty or forty feet, supported by poles. The canopy sheltered the tip, the performers, and the talkers from both rain and hot sun. H. C. Landaker, who spent fourteen years building fronts for Beckmann and 26

Left: One of the most modernistic fronts on a girl show was this Charm Hour built in the 1940s, with smooth round corners and various box-like pieces protruding. The only pictorials are the blowups on either side of the doorway. Center: This 1 968 Raynell-managed Girlesque show on James Strates was a remake of the Club Paradise black revue front. Right: Neon-lit pilons separate the pictorial panels on this 1940s Johnny J. Jones streamlined girl-show front with a modern entrance resembling that of a moviehouse. This is an all-girl show — the performers, ticket sellers, and the talker are all women.

Gerety and one season for Kennies, said that in designing a front he would take into account how many people were in the show, the size of the top, and the size of the front wanted. He also had to determine the height and how many wagons the show would load into. When it came to painting the front he stayed away from dark greens and red that soaked up the sun. Instead, he often used white, which customers associated with cleanliness. He put lots of emphasis on details because they make the front stand out.

Landaker's wagon fronts in the 1940s created a "shop window" effect and their modernistic pylons and rounded corner pieces added to the futuristic aura. The Expose front on Beckmann and Gerety, the Charm Hour front on Strates, and the

Maid'n'America front on Cavalcade of Amusements reflect his ideas. By 1945 Billboard was announcing that plastics pioneered by the emerging jukebox industry were the new flash on fronts. Carl Sedlmyr on Royal was said to be one of the first carnies to use these when he fitted plastic columns onto the girl and jig fronts. In was into the late forties and early fifties before we saw pit shows mounted on trucks on circuses. Many circuses went to solid side-show fronts built on wagons o or semi-trailers, replacing the traditional individual canvas banners, and a debate over which was best started. Most showmen still believed the "rag" front won more money than the solid front but had to agree the solid front didn't have to be taken down in strong winds. Most truckborne girl-show fronts of this era were

built with no walk-over ballys as the inside truck body served as the dressing room and the stage was hinged off the back side of the truck. A doorway was cut in one of the front panels on the non-cab end of the truck or semi for the patrons to enter. This was the pattern followed for small shows and cooch shows to the end. Most girl-show fronts by the 1940s featured blow-ups, also popular in lobbies or out-front displays at burlesque show theaters. 8" x 10" glossies of dancers were enlarged to 48" x 84", mounted on heavy cardboard or Masonite, and put into an ornate wooden frame. Color photos of this size were too expensive up into the 1960s and showmen had the photography studio hand-color some of the highlights — the girl's hair, wardrobe, shoes. Sometimes sparkles were added for effect.

A corrugated-metal girl-show front on the World of Mirth, 1940s, overturned by a violent storm.

Top: Blowups as art work on a front, Prells Broadway Shows, 1952. Bottom: "Harem," a small girl-show front painted with an Oriental desert motif and built on the body of a truck, is offered for sale at the Gibsonton, Florida, trade show, 1973. The inside stage is folded up against the back of the truck.

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Top: The new design and scenery for the 1935 season on the inside stage of Elsie Calvert's girl show on United Shows of America. The center pole is about ten feet from the stage front; A-frames weren't popular on girl shows until the 1940s. Bottom: Fancy drapery closes off the sides and a set of stairs for posing girls runs down the back on this girl-show stage on Hennies Bros., circa 1937. A small circular runway, one of the few used on a carnival girl show, is similar to the ones surrounding the orchestra pit in a burlesque theater.

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Probably the most admired painter of show equipment was William Verne "Duke" Ash from Winnipeg, Manitoba. His main canvas in the 1960s was the James E. Strates Shows whose wagons he took from red with silver lettering to painted wagons of every color and pattern, ranging from tartan plaids to lettering dripping blood. One advantage Duke had over other painters was that he could not only letter but do excellent pictorial work. He was usually found painting around the lot perched on a scaffold, dressed only in a loincloth. Snap Wyatt was considered one of the best banner painters of the last half-century. He was also a show-front painter and maker of papier-mache figures for use in side shows and attractions. But Bobby Wicks probably painted and designed more girl-show fronts than anybody. He painted for all the leading rail shows and by the 1950s was the painter on Royal American Shows, which, at its peak of ninety rail cars and over a hundred wagons, was a constant job. Bobby was also a fine pictorial artist as well as letterer. His oil paintings are highly valued among show people. Another oldtimer was tattooist Ralf Johnson, who painted the girl fronts on Cavalcade of Amusements. W O. Burke, the other artist

Top right: Veteran show painter Bobby Wicks sketches a showgirl for a pose he'll enlarge onto the front panels of the girl show on Royal American, early 1950s. Bottom right: Wicks varnishes a finished painting on the Moulin Rouge girl-show front on Royal American, 1955.

Artist Duke Ash, wearing his regular painting outfit, puts the final touches on a girl-show front for Century 21 Shows at their Iowa Free Fair stand in 1971.

Jack's designs and color schemes. After leaving Conklin he designed sets for Broadway shows and several fronts for Strates Shows. He designed many features in amusement parks including Nu-Pike, Long Beach, California, Palisades Park in N.J., and Pontchartrain Beach park in New Orleans, as well as designing the midway area at the Seattle World Fair. Today Bill Browning is one of the last of the show brush painters. During the 1970s and 1980s he mostly painted on the James E. Strates midway. Like Ash and Wick he is good at both lettering and pictorial work. His present forte is fun-house and darkride fronts. There are a few air-brush artists who do mostly carnival work, such as Johnny Bell and Dave Knodderer. But the fastest is a guy called The Wizard. The art work of show artists covered miles when seen on strings of railway cars, wagon sides, and show fronts. These true X

who did the lettering on Cavalcade, got fed up with Al Wagner always stalling him on his pay and fatally shot Wagner. One of the biggest influences on girlfront designs and show art work was John C. (Jack) Ray, born in Edmonton, Alberta. He studied commercial art and had his own studio before moving into theatrical set designing. When Patty Conklin got the 1937 contract for the Toronto CNE midway he hired Ray to do all the fronts for the shows, and Jack changed the fronts every year until 1959. He designed front gates, concession stands, and various decorative pieces for Conklin over the years. Showmen came to the CNE to check out

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"The front to stop midway trotters" Jack Ray, who designed and built this front for the Conklin Shows midway at the Toronto CNE in the 1950s, was a master designer of theatrical scenery, sometimes creating as many as ten new fronts a year.

Bottom left: One of the biggest girl-show fronts built was on Royal American Shows and used for Sally Rand (1948), Gypsy Rose Lee (1949), and Bonnie Baker (1950), before being transformed into the Moulin Rouge front. Here it is in 1951, with feature Yvette Dare in a show produced by Leon Miller. Bottom right: The back of the Moulin Rouge front. The left front panels are supported by a steel framework, and further steel pipes on the roof of the wagon support signs and twin windmills.

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"How to undress before your husband!" One of the simplest girl shows was found on J.C. Weer's lot in the 1940s.

geniuses of the show-art world saw their work get repainted, changed, or fade away in winter-quarter scrap piles as equipment was discarded or wore out. Girl shows have been presented behind all kinds of fronts and banners, but the story is told of a penniless 1930s carny who was trying to operate a girl show with just himself and his wife. They had a small tent, a bally platform, three ticket boxes, a wooden bannerline but no banners. He solved his decorating problem by simply hanging his wife's underwear, bras, and G-strings where the banners should've gone. Business improved quickly and they had a nice season.

A small front built on an army surplus wagon on Metropolitan, a short-lived railroad show. This front was likely used for a single-O girl show.

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SHOW TENTS FOR LARGE REVENUES

Feature dancer Val Valentine stands in the middle of the heart at the top of the stairs on Jack Norman's show with Strates, circa 1960. Beside the band is comedy team McConnell and Moore, and on the far side the Sulo Kippo novelty act and the show's singer. The black curtains are hung on cables strung between the A-frames, and the blocks are used to pull the frame, attached to a sleeve, up the quarter pole on the left side of the tent.

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Early girl-show tents were just ordinary square-end or round-end tents of small sizes and low side walls. By the twenties the large revue-style tents with "dramatic" ends and high side walls were being used. W A. Eiler designed the first dramatic end tent in 1904. He was one of the top men in the one-night dramatic field using wagons and one or two railway cars to move his show. Later, the Baker-Lockwood Tent Co. was the first to offer the "dramatic end" tent in their regular production of showmen's tents. The first ones were crude and didn't shape out well, but the company spent considerable cash perfecting the style. This firm was also the first to put out the telescoping center poles that allowed midway shows to carry wider and higher tents. By the 1920s they were also offering tents in many dark colors besides the standard khaki.The dark tents let girl revues use better lighting and scenic effects. Most girl-show stages were built on a saw-horse or jack-supported stage framework, covered with stage floor sections laid on top. Many were built on wagons or the stage platforms were hinged and folded up against the side of the wagon, leaving the interior available for carrying material, then acting as a dressing room when unloaded. Snapp Bros. Shows in 1922 boasted a girl-show stage built on two wagons, with all the flies made of velvet plush. Another feature was an eighteen-foot-long runway studded with red and white lights that projected into the audience. The orchestra pit folded up, making a crate for the piano. In the 1930s the A-frame was introduced, which eliminated the center poles in the middle of the seating areas in revue tents and allowed audiences an unobstructed view of the

stage. The A-frame over the front of the stage also served as a frame to hang the proscenium from and a solid anchor to attach the main curtain track. Tents were of two types: push pole for smaller tents and bale ring for large round-end tents. Midway revues used square-ended push pole tents. The inside proscenium or frame around the stage, either of canvas or curtains, was very decorative in girl shows and hid the backstage area from the audience's view. On big girl revues the backs of the stages were usually draped with fancy material to match the front curtain color. Jack Norman's shows usually had big staircases at the back with drapes (often parachutes) behind them. Leon Miller had elaborate back drapes in front of which he would place boxes and pillars at different heights that girls would pose on during the production numbers. Usually the only girl shows with painted scenes were the Hawaiian shows and they all had elaborately painted stage scenery with back scenes and side wings painted like palm trees. Joy Fleenor recalled working on the Hawaiian show on Royal with her folks in a scene where all the lights in the tent would dim and a lighted cruise boat would go across in front of the back scenery on a wire.

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GIRLS & GRIFT ON

THE SHOWGROUND let me show you a little lady's you're going to like

, he popularity of the hoochie-coochie dance after the 1893 Chicago World's Fair saw it performed in vaudeville, burlesque theaters, saloons, smokers, carnivals, and the circus side show. The wedding between circus side-show cooch and the grift was almost instantaneous. The girls drew the men in and, through various games of chance, the grift worked them over. Even men who went in with their families were cleverly separated from wives and children once inside. The inside lecturer would tell the crowd he had something special at the opposite end of the tent just for the ladies and kids. The men were

then lured into a closed-off portion of the tent to see the cooch dancers. If the grift were not openly working in the side show, they were certainly standing at the ready by their ironing boards and "tripes" in the cooch area. The old-time circus grifter and carnival flattie are characters of the past. Even if Good Kid Louie, Jake the Snake, or Chicago Yellow were here today and willing to pass on their trade, it would be hard to find students eager to learn such a demanding and precarious business. Once in a while you still see grift operations off the show grounds in the form of three-card-monte mobs. They seem slick 35

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"Gather round, gents, and let us sjow you how

they raffle off turkeys in China"

Page 34: The side-show manager prepares to make the opening on the 1917 Al G. Barnes Circus after the main show has let out. He won't have much trouble selling these military recruits a ticket to see the act the young ladies on the bally will do for them inside the tent.

The side-show manager at Howes Great London Shows & Van Amburg's Trained Wild Animal Circus makes an opening with the dancers on the blow-off of the main performance. The unusual positioning of the bally platform and ticket boxes is a ploy to stop the crowd.

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until you watch how they dump their victim. A real old-time flattie would never leave a mark wailing and never take all his scratch. This guy was just as adapt at "cooling the mark out" as at taking his bank roll. Some showmen and women were pretty hardened toward towners and in most cases they were justified. It didn't take long working on a touring show to get sick of the public, or as show folk so politely put it, to become "sucker sore." Besides the hundreds of questions you got daily from the curious townsfolk, you had to deal with corrupt law officials, high licence fees, poor water or electric supply, corrupt town fathers, unforeseen bills, and a steady stream of pass seekers. In many towns the local moviehouse operator — threatened by this new form of entertainment — had already whipped the townspeople into a frenzy about the show coming to town and taking thousands of dollars away. Some merchants wouldn't sell to show people, while many

hotels and motels wouldn't rent them rooms. If the smallest crime took place while the show was in town, it was blamed on "those show folks." Many criminals knew this and used it to their advantage. Even into the 1960s carnival office expense sheets had columns headed "Shakes," meaning shakedowns by local law and civic officials. When you're traveling and earning your living by showing each day, you have no choice but to pay up, shut up, and show. Shortchanging, controlled games, and various rackets seemed the only way to stay even. But the grift weren't completely heartless — they usually drew the line at children and cripples. Con games of all sorts go back to the times when people first had money in their pockets. Some of the biggest scores on shows often came off farmers who had just sold animals at the auction or market and had a few thousand dollars in their pocket.

Elmer Jones' three-car show in Canada, 1920s. To the right of the midway is a pit show, a ball toss game, and a concession stand, and opposite these the side show. Near the marquee sits a small ticket wagon.

By chance they stopped by the circus or carnival — and by another chance they lost their money. In fact, one thing that has killed grift on circuses and carnivals today is the credit card — folks rarely carry much cash on them. The one bad thing about working grift around shows was its openness. You had thousands of people on the lot, and twice as many eyes. Circus showmen quickly moved the ogrift inside the side shows,* menagerie o tents, and the connection to the big top. Here the mob could encircle its prey and work with few interruptions.

On some circuses the cooch was only operated in the side show after the crowd had come out from seeing the circus performance, not on the way in. Henry Thompson, a veteran side-show operator who "swallowed swords, ate fire, threw knives, did Punch and Judy, and beat the bass drum for the cooch," says that on several of the truck circuses in the fifties he could only work the cooch on the last show at night. As the crowd came out of the marquee they were greeted by Henry and his spiel: "Wait a minute, wait a minute, look in the doorway, look in the doorway, see who you can see from TV land." He gestured toward a dummy made up like Howdy Doody. "Wait just a minute. This is where you're going to see the mogul show, the after guy show, the oldtime coochie-coochie show where we are going to shake it, break it, tear it down to

The side show on one of Elmer Jones' two-car circuses. The one-woman-band act entertains the women and children on one side of the curtain while her music moves the cooch dancers entertaining the men on the other side. A two-car circus had a coach where everyone on the show slept and a small galley kitchen where they took turns eating, and another gutted coach to carry equipment and animals.

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the ground, but we're not going to drop it because it is so hot, boys and girls, we don't want to leave blisters on your hands. This is where you will hear the cannon roar, see the flame, and smell the smoke. You're at the right place at the right time. Let all the short boys come down front where they can see the whole darn show." Once inside, there was a very brief side-show performance and the pitch for Crowd emerges from the 1939 Cole Bros. Circus to be confronted by the side-show bally with girl dancers. The ticket box in the foreground was used to collect a service charge that the circus collected on the "free" passes.

Billboard ad, August 23, 1941.

Fancy painted proscenium separating the cooch area from the rest of the Cole Bros. Circus side show circa 1940s.

"This is an old game of Do-Dittle-andDuck! The more you put down the more you pick up!" 38

the cooch blow-off, and Henry collected the money for the after-show in a cigar box. After the girls did a short dance, he would come onstage and announce, "The girls are getting ready behind the curtain for the special dance of the night, but before they come out and while you are waiting we have some games for the men amongst you." Henry and the cigar box slipped behind the curtain and out of the tent. The dancers had already left. The grift got what they could, then the side wall was dropped and the tent came down. Another veteran, Todd Davenport, described his days trouping on Elmer Jones' two-car circus out of Warren, Pennsylvania: "A guy by the name of Professor Geo (Oram) King had the side show, assisted by his wife, Nellie. The Professor made his

spiel about the sword box in the side show and I stood beside the box. The little lady assistant came up onstage in a dressing robe and I helped her out of her robe. There she stood in high-heel pumps and bra and panties. I helped her into the sword box and closed the lid and out would fly the bra and the panties. The Professor rammed home the swords and then he invited any 'red-blooded ladies and gentlemen' who wished to see the young lady imprisoned by the swords, to step up

and hand me a dime and have a look in the box. I would have several dollars in dimes each time, which the professor could hardly wait to relieve me of. "The kid show did not have a band," Davenport continued, "but the Professor's wife played different instruments. He introduced her as Miss Nellie King, Beautiful Young Musical Genius. She was old and fat but may have been beautiful in her John Robinson days. She would sit on a chair and play a trumpet and kick a drum. In the

Duke Kamakura's Hawaiian act in the Cole Bros, side show, 1943. Dancers Leona Teodorio (left) and Jeanie Carvalhia swivel their hips, while Jeanie's husband Joe plays guitar and Duke himself strums a Hawaiian guitar.

Leona Teodorio was the feature cooch dancer on the Cole Bros, side show through the 1940s and on other circuses in the 1950s. A versatile performer, she could also work in the elephant act and aerial ballet.

meantime, the Professor had drawn the men aside and made a pitch for the cooch dancing. So the music that was entertaining the women and kids played by Mrs. King was also the music that the cooch dancers were dancing to on the other side of the canvas curtain. While the cooch was going on, the two grifters were working away." In the 1940s, the Dailey Bros.' reputation as a grift show was as loud as the posters advertising its features. "Gyspy Red" Jackson, who played trombone in the black minstrel band in the side show, relates that 40

the bandstand was placed at the head of the midway end of the tent, and one of his jobs was to peek over the top of the wall every so often and keep a lookout for police. If he saw cops, the band quickly swung into "Deep in the Heart of Texas" and the grift let their ironing boards fall to the ground, then joined the crowd watching whatever side-show act was in progress. Once the police had left the tent, the grift would go back to work with a cry of "Gather round, gents, and let us show you how they raffle off turkeys in China."

Left: Cooch dancer on the Cole Bros. Circus in Benton Harbor, Michigan, 1937. Center: Cooch dancer Raselyne Wenzel on Cole Bros. Right: Cooch dancer in the blow-off of the Cole Bros. Circus, 1940s. The curtain behind her separates the blow-off from the rest of the tent.

If the grift was at full strength, there would be four men to each mob for the three-shell game and tossing the broads (three-card monte). The shell game was often referred to as the "greasy pig," or the "hixs" in the South. Two sticks, an outside

man, and a dealer were employed for this grift. When a stick won, he would discreetly give his loot to the outside man, who would count it and feed it back to the stick. The stick would gamble along with the mark, egging the mark on to raise the wager, and ultimately they would both lose their money. On Dailey Bros., the side show was curtained off at one end and this area was

divided into two sections. Once the men were given the cooch pitch and stepped behind the curtain, they were confronted with the grift. When the grift got all they could, the men were directed to the other section where the cooch dancers took over. The side-show performance after the main show at night, from the time the side-show manager made his first opening until the girls danced, was about forty minutes. By

Various help-wanted ads in Billboard, late 1940s-early 1950s. Innocent-looking to the uninitiated, these ads were actually recruitment calls for various grifters.

The two dancing girls on the bally have drawn quite a crowd at this side-show opening on the 1945 Austin Bros. Circus, a ten-car show that lasted only one season.

41

the time the girls hit the small stage the tent was almost down, just the last center pole standing and the last round end pieces being held up by a couple of side poles and the side-show working crew holding the guy ropes. Once the last girl flashed, the lone light went out, and the side-show crew released the guy ropes, dropping the canvas onto the heads of the towners. By the time they got out from under the canvas, the girls and the grift were on their way to the train coaches.

In the early 1950s on Johnny Denton's Gold Medal Shows, Bill English, an accomplished banner salesman, side-show operator, and soon-to-be circus owner, operated one of the girl shows. "There were three girl shows on the lot and the office sent down a three-card monte and a shell mob that worked from one to the other of the girl shows," explains English. "The mob was run by Kobe Cole, a very experienced grifter. Besides the operator there were three men on each game: a booster handler, who lined up a couple of local guys as sticks to handle the play; a shade, whose job was simply to lean this way and that way to cover the play from anyone not

The Dailey Bros. Circus side show setup, with the show's big top behind it, Guelph, Ontario, 1949. The circus had well-organized grift, including the "razzle" joint set up near the right end of the bannerline.

The cooch blow-off on the Dailey Bros., late 1940s. Most of the tent is already down, with only the one round end containing the dancers still standing. A "gilly" vehicle waits to take the girls and the grift to the train. The show wanted a big Western star to feature, but had to settle for Gene Autry's cousin Doug. The side of one of the wagons reads "Doug Autry In Person" — it had originally omitted the first name, but Gene got a court order to remedy that.

A cooch performer on the Torchy Lee show. Her outfit features net gloves, fringe pants, and a seethrough panel.

over: 'Hey, guys, while you're waiting for the girls to start, let me show you a little lady I know you're going to like!' He was referring to the Queen in the deck of cards. The towners thought they were going to see a nude photograph or something along that line and hurried over. The first guy to play was quickly closed in by the rest of the mob. "The circus grift looked just like the rest of the towners on the lot. They blended in. Cole's outside man was often dressed in Prell's Broadway Shows, 1951.

directly involved; and the outside man, who encouraged the mark and sometimes scurried around uptown during the day to line up marks. The booster handler nudged the two sticks when it was their turn to bet, and when they were going to win he passes them the money, but they were never allowed to hold on to the money. They were paid a few dollars and got in to see the girl shows free. The grift were usually lined up first by the ticket box and were the first in leading the tip, or audience, after the talker made his turn. They set up in the back of the tent next to the side wall where they could duck out fast. The dealer would call some of the towners

Miami Whitey (center) and his crew working a "nail" joint on Hennies Bros., 1937. "This was the craziest joint of all of them to work," said Whitey. "You're trying to rob the mark and you arm him with a hammer!"

44

railroader coveralls, cap, and railroad watch. When he was working he would withdraw that big watch from his coveralls and check the time every so often. Very convincing. One of the outside man's jobs was to put the crimp or bend in the card when the dealer turned around to spit or bent down to pick up some money he

dropped. The outside man encouraged the mark to put more money up on a sure thing and of course the dealer would straighten out the crimp in the first pass." Once a mark lost a bundle at a game, there was no way of knowing how he'd react. On the front-end flat and alibi stores, some laid their heads down on the counter in anguish, and the little board at the front of the joint that shaded the play became known as the "weeping board." On Wallace Bros, shows the mark was often taken in tow by "Big Nick," a huge friendly Ukrainian outside man who would steer the mark to a local bar, get him drunk, and leave him there. Most times a big loser was followed to see if he was going to the police. If the fix was in — the police had been looked after — there was no problem. When the mark got to the police station, his story was carefully noted. He was then told that the police would go to the show grounds and arrest the game operators. However, the mark was cautioned that, having gambled, he would also be arrested. Perhaps it would be best for him to just go home and forget about it. They usually did.

Miami Whitey (center) works a "blower" joint in the early 1950s. He adopted his moniker after spending his first winter between shows in Florida — Miami Red had already been taken.

Dixie, a dancer on Wolfe Shows, 1952, wears a bra-and-panty set with fringes that exaggerate her movements.

SEX ON THE HALF SHELL Girl Shows of Every Nature

ince the turn of the century, many types of shows have presented the female body to the American public on carnivals. The earliest format outside the regular girl show to draw the attention of the law was the "down in the well" show. In England as early as 1899 showmen were presenting to the public, especially men, the erotic effects of wet clothing on females. That year saw a show at the St. Giles Fair, Oxford, England, called The Collier's Lovely Daughter, which featured a young girl in wet underwear reclining at the bottom of a flooded mine. This presentation

probably served as the blueprint for "down in the well" showmen. This American hybrid featured a high platform that patrons would climb to look down into a circular wooden dry well, in which a scantily clad girl posed. A photo of one on Weider Amusement Co. in 1911 depicts a single banner proclaiming "Beautiful Pauline" in front of a wagon platform show with very high steps. Small letters over the doorway read, "Way down deep in all her glory." Another early attraction that stirred up the local constabulary was the '49 Camp. At 47

CHAPTER

3

Page 46: Legs-A-Weigh Loreli: Sex on the Half Shell was produced by veteran burlesque man George Pranath and appeared on Jack Norman's girl-show on Strates, 1955. Here Loreli (in white) greets the crowd without her shell — although all her pearls seem in order.

Rocky Mountain Cabaret, on Clifton Kelley Shows at Hattisburg, Mississippi, 1917, is a typical '49 Camp show as seen on carnivals in the early 1900s. The talker leans on his megaphone as the show band files back through the doorway after rustling up a tip.

Above: The "down-in-the-well show," such as this one on Weider American Co., Coalton, Ohio, 1911, was among the earliest of girl shows to be censored.

these shows, modeled after early miningtown saloons, customers could rent girls by the dance. Billboard ads for a cabaret show in 1919 on Veal Bros. Shows offered girls ten cents a dance plus tips, while the World's Fair Shows offered a nickel and tips plus accommodations in the show's pullman cars. The crew of Harry Calvert's '49 Camp show, 1916.

A '49 Camp show on an early midway. 48

E. M. Foley of Foley and Burke midway promoted a '49 Camp attraction in 190910, and Wm. "Stretch" Rice and Nat Reiss put one on the Rice and Doris Midway in 1914. The originator was Sam Davis, who produced a whole 49 town for the 1893 Mid Winter Exposition in San Francisco. People were surprised when they entered

Davis's camp. Patrons riding stage coaches were robbed of their loose change by masked riders. Cowboys rode their horses into saloons and shot out the lights. There were staged lynchings, gun fights, mineralclaim riots. A character named Rufe Love originated the Fandango Dance Hall, with Mexican dancing girls, one of the most popular shows. When a fake stabbing took place over a senorita, several women in the audience fainted. Rufe jumped up and said, "Roll the corpse down the back stairs and take partners for the next dance." The '49 Camp operators on midways focused on the saloon and dance girls because it was the most appealing and profitable racket and because most carnivals at that time had large wild west shows on their back ends that presented all the other cowboy activities. The '49 Camps on midways featured a piano player, a bar across one end of the tent, and a dance floor with women waiting to be rented on a per-dance basis. The women earned a fixed rate per dance plus tip. A floor manager was paid on percentage to keep things moving, so on big days the dances got shorter and shorter. Eventually the combination of men, booze, and available women became too big a problem on the fairgrounds and shows dropped the camps.

Lottie Meyer's Watercade show on Royal American, 1956, featured her disappearing water ballet. The girl on the trapeze will soon do a dive into the tank, and the other girls brandish sea-shell props.

A wet swimsuit on a well-formed diving girl had its lusty lure for men on the carnival midways from the teens to the late 1950s. Water shows were basic family entertainment, but the bathing beauties lined up along the water-show bally made Dad open the purse strings and bring the family in. J. Frank Hatch was among the first to present the water show on the midway, basing it on water spectacles in Europe, Paul Boy ton's Sea Lion Park at Coney Island, and at the New York Hippodrome. Hatch's crew would dig a hole for a large lake and enclose it with bleacher seats and side walls. The program consisted of swimming races, high-dive contests, pan-

tomimes, aquatic clowns, trapeze diving, water walkers, and more. In the center of the lake was a stage for variety acts. The main feature was the water ballet of young women called "Les Enfants de la Mer," who

49

The bally of the Neptune's Garden water show on Johnny J. Jones, 1922. The male staff wear marine outfits, while the showgirls sport matching striped hats and capes. Water clowns perch on top of the two ticket booths. The cast of the 1929 Rubin and Cherry Shows water presentation. The tank is surrounded by circus-style bleachers. This standard setup for open-air tank shows features a wagon that doubles as a dressing-room and has a diving ladder fixed to its roof under a scenic arch.

50

were advertised as being able to walk on water using new "water shoes." The finale saw the whole corps disappear underwater, not to resurface. Audiences were astonished. Water showmen and high-diving free acts soon tired of digging huge holes in the ground every spot. On hard lots, where solid rock lay just a few inches under the surface, they had to lay off for the week. The canvas-lined pools leaked and needed constant filling, something you better pay close attention to if you were diving into them from a seventy-fivefoot ladder. To remedy this, solid tanks made of wood and lined with canvas or

metal were manufactured, as were ladders and springboards, so performers didn't have to spend all day nailing two-by-fours together to make them. Walter Sibley, the man credited with developing the modern 10-in-l operation, also was the first to build a water show on two wagons, and soon every carnival carried the massive "tank" show. Showmen pitched the health benefits of the water shows — swimming was good exercise. Many professional and amateur swimmers and divers earned much-needed cash on water shows and provided good publicity for the shows. If the carnival press agent couldn't talk the editorial department

This elaborate front for the Human Mermaids show, on Johnny J. Jones at the Edmonton, Alberta, exhibition, 1920s, features carved mermaids and seals, as well as oversize illustrations. A small canopy covers the performers but not the small tip of men out front. Admission is 25 cents for adults, 10 cents for children.

into doing a water-show story, he could always tie in with a local department store on a swimsuit promotion. Water spectacles saw their best seasons from the teens to the 1930s. They drifted on and off the carnival midways, with revivals at various World's Fairs and large celebrations, until Salvador Bali's Bream of Venus show at the 1939 New York World's Fair renewed interest in them. The patrons paid twenty-five cents to view the Catalan painter's impressions of the subconscious world, where semi-nude girls dove and swam in a large tank with glass sides. In 1939 Raynell Golden presented a Water Follies Show on Royal American

using Meyer's Disappearing Water Ballet unit. The pool was about twenty feet in diameter and special stairs and scenery were constructed around it on the stage. Raynell's nephew Peter Manos explains the mystery of the ballet: "That was another job that Cliff Wilson and I had one summer. We were the 'snap guys.' When the girls came out of the water and lifted themselves onto a little platform at water level behind the stairs, we unhooked the single-eye hook on the back of their skimpy wardrobe. They rapidly changed wardrobe under the stairs and then climbed up a little narrow curved stairs to the top of the big stairs going down to the

A row of swimmers at the Water Follies grandstand show at the Hagerstown Fair, 1958. The vast Amusements of America truck carnival is spread out in the background.

51

1910 Billboard ad for Lottie Meyer advertises her diving skills. From the 1930s to the 1950s she produced water shows on various carnivals.

Gayle Madden, at the start of his long girl-show talking career, on Cetlin and Wilson Shows, 1950s, tells the crowd about the charms of Divena as she leans toward the tip. His fifteen-minute opening was twice as long as the underwater striptease show itself!

pool. The hardest part was that climb up, as the steps were wet, so they wore rubber shoes. Each girl descended down the twelve or so steps into the pool. The last step put the girl in knee-high water and she stepped off and went completely under the water and did a backstroke back up behind the stairs. There were eight girls, four going into the water and four coming out. They appeared to be going into the water and coming down the stairs continuously." Meyer had reported that each girl had only eighteen seconds after going into

the water to reappear at the top of the stairs in a different costume! Royal American Shows in 1950 and 1956 revived Lottie Meyer's Disappearing Water Ballet show in a tent behind a girl-show front titled Watercade. The show was a combination revue and water show. The opening number was "Parade of the Seas" and the second number featured the disappearing ballet. Scene three was the dance of nymphs, and four an acrobatic springboard-diving display. Scene five was the trapeze dive and the finale was the

52

The Divena tank is not completely full — the air space at the top is hidden by an ornate frame on the front of the tank. The performer takes an occasional gulp of air, unseen by the audience.

"water fountain" act. Meyer had been connected to water-ballet presentations since doing her high-dive act at the N.Y. Hippodrome in 1907. In the 1950s underwater striptease became a back-end feature on carnivals. A New York showman named Charles Rayburn introduced his Divena show to nightclubs and theaters. A tank holding 550 gallons of water was placed onstage and a lovely lady would enter the tank and do an underwater strip. Talker Gayle Madden says it was through his experiences learning to pitch on the Divena front that he mastered the art of the "still" bally, since there were only two girls in the show and they alternated

Mr. Rayburn, who swam for Northwestern University in 1928, instructs a Divena girl.

between the underwater strip and the bally. He describes how he pitched the Divena show on Cetlin and Wilson in 1951: "First of all, there were blow-ups of write-ups from the various feature magazines of that time on the front. I would point to these as I talked and at first I read them, using them almost like cue-cards. I would walk over and point to the blow-up of the article in Life and say, 'Look what it says here — "World's loveliest feminine form!" And over here Walter Winchell says, "Divena, one of a kind!"' I would say, 'Now, do you think publications such as those would recommend this girl to the American public if she was not one of a kind? Inside, you are going to see the only girl in the world

The clean-living Divena performers earned about $7,000 a year.

A reporter for the Sf. Paul Dispatch in Minnesota interviews one of the divers in the Aqua Tease Show on Royal American during the fair.

53

doing a strip-tease where her costume is 500 gallons of water from Wachi Springs, Florida.' "It was a fifteen-minute opening for a six-minute show!" Inside the show were low girl-show seats for about two hundred people. At one end of the tent surrounded by black drapes was a glass-fronted tank of water. The fancy frame around the front of the tank hid from the audience the fact that the tank wasn't completely full. Divena entered the water, swam around, and removed her clothes. Actually the tank was too small for

much swimming, and the lovely Divena was mostly doing barrel rolls. Each time she came near the top of the tank she gulped some air out of the audience's field of vision. The big problem was that the water was not crystal clear from Wachi Springs or any other springs. It usually came from a hydrant on the fairgrounds or vacant lot that hadn't been opened since the show's last visit. When the colored spotlights were aimed on the tank you could hardly see the girl in the murky water! Gayle says he often hid on the blow-off

because the show got so many beefs. But carnival owners Izzy Cetlin and Jack Wilson got a lot of press. When the Cetlin and Wilson Shows played Macon, Georgia, the press agent got local firefighters to open a hydrant downtown at noon hour so Divena could bathe in a tub placed in a busy intersection. It made the front page the next day. The Divena show was only on Cetlin and Wilson one season, but various units of it played burlesque theaters and clubs into the late fifties, and various knockoff Divena shows appeared on carnival lots over the next seasons.

Bally girls on Walter Hole's Expose show for Hennies Bros, in 1938 appeared masked. The show, a mixture of spice and morality play, was appauded by ministers and high school teachers.

Photos from the 1938 Hennies Bros. Shows pictorial magazine depict scenes from Walter Male's Expose show.

Curse you, Jack Dalton, unhand that lovely maid lest the ire of Percival Pomengranite rest upon your head!" Showmen were constantly trying to put a new spin on displaying the female body. One of the most unusual presentations was Expose, a show Walter Hale produced for the Hennies Bros, in 1938. It was a series of short skits showing how women could fall into the evil clutches of underworld villains.

Bertie Austin remembers the girls made bally wearing eye masks to heighten the dramatic effect. Her sister Connie, the talker, told the crowd the girls had to be in disguise for their own safety. One scene in the show depicted a high school girl in a cheerleader's costume; the next scene had her meeting a tough-looking guy; and the finale showed her standing under a streetlight, working as a prostitute. Bertie recalls, "The girl would be wearing a flame-red dress and smoking a cigarette. A man would walk by and she would give him the eye. The guy would keep walking and she would throw down her cigarette in disgust and grind it out with her high-heel shoe. "In another scene a girl dressed in a negligee lay on a lounge chair and the narrator would say she was a nymphomaniac waiting for her lover. There would be a sudden knock at the door and the girl would jump up and the spotlight would follow her to the door and just as she threw off her garment there would be a blackout. "You wouldn't believe how many schoolteachers and ministers we had that praised the show. They said it was very educational the way it portrayed what

55

The talker addresses the tip while the show's four models stand on the entrance steps at the Zezebel posing show, Royal American, early 1950s.

The revolving stage of Raynell Golden's 1941-42 posing show on Royal American. It was supposed to be motorized but ended up being turned from underneath by two workmen.

would happen to young girls who took dope or hung out with the wrong kind of man!" Posing shows also lasted for many years on carnivals. The art of girls striking poses of famous statues or paintings while wearing very little clothing went back cen56

turies. Early Renaissance women called "figrantes" welcomed dignitaries to their towns by posing as water nymphs around the main fountains. This inspired shows called "Tableaux Vivants" throughout Europe and in Victorian England. One review of such a show in 1845 read,

"Although the women were not allowed to move, they could certainly breathe warmly!" Nudity in this form seemed acceptable to the puritanical lawmakers as long as it was done tastefully or artistically and the posers didn't move or dance. Most carnival posing shows featured two or three girls, with the big shows adding three or four more posers. The curtain would open on a girl doing a pose which she held for a minute or so before the curtain closed. The pedestals or props were changed and the next girl would take

A large posing show on Hennies Bros., 1937, features a couple of gals wearing very risque wardrobes for a bally of that era. One of the signs boasts "25 models," which the showman would doubtless translate into twenty-five poses by six models.

A posing girl stands on her pedestal. Her wardrobe is far skimpier than that of a revueshow stripper, who would have to wear pasties and a hefty G-string.

her pose and the curtain would open again. A narrator would describe the poses or recite a story line. In some cities the performers could be nude as long as a gauze curtain separated them from the audience, with lights o illuminating them from behind. One oldtimer said he had seen the "ding" used on this type of posing show — for an additional charge the gauze was lifted for the last scene. In some posing acts, the women posed before a backdrop recreating a famous

painting, and the scene was surrounded by a large picture frame. Some London music halls were said to have a huge circular stage on wheels on a circular track. This turning stage was made up of several compartments with the scenery for each "painting" in place. While one painting was being shown to the audience the posers took their places in the other paintings and the show moved along continuously. In burlesque, posing acts were essential in competing with large-scale revue shows offering almost total nudity in their big

The male performer has been painted gold while the women wear bronze-colored body stockings on Brenck's Bronze Models posing statue act on Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, 1913.

An ad in Billboard, 1918, sells tights made of thin; flesh-colored fabric that, properly lighted, made the performer appear to be nude.

58

production numbers. Burlesque shows in the 1920s were getting away with girls nude from the waist up in various poses as long as they were artistic and classically lighted. One reviewer remarked, "The forte of the posing scenes in burlesque was the symmetry of arrangement where beauty and background make them less open to bluenose interference." The 1939 New York World's Fair had a posing show called "Living Magazine Covers." Undraped models posed tableaustyle in front of sets designed to represent leading magazine covers. When New York

police made a sweep of the fair to tone down some of the girl shows, they passed Jack Sheridan's "Magazine Covers" as "Art." Sheridan was disappointed — the art label wouldn't help him draw the average guy into the show. "Maybe it's artistic," admitted Jack, "but where else can you see five such beautiful gals, all professional models, at five cents a head?" When slides and slide projectors became available to showmen, they were used in presenting nude images of posing and bathing women. These shows were often hard to work — they were usually pitched as if the patrons were going to see live models and when men found themselves staring at slides on a white sheet many were not happy. Ward Hall describes a Nude Ranch operating as a blow-off on one of Ray Marsh Brydon's winter storefront shows in 1947: "Upstairs was the Nude Ranch, run by a guy who was a press agent on a carnival in the summer. He would stand on the second step and make the opening. His wife would stand on the third and fourth steps dressed in a very small frock, and she looked nude under it. In his spiel, the guy would mention that she played a very important part in the show upstairs, and her costume wasn't part of it! When the

"Although the women were not allowed to move,

they could certainly breathe warmly!"

A posing performer sports a rather minimal Frenchmaid costume on a carnival show, 1936.

marks paid their money and went upstairs, they found out he wasn't lying — she ran the side projector that showed the slides of the Nude Ranch!" Many fairs tried to govern the quality and decency of the midway shows and games presented by their contracted midway company. Fair officials would randomly slip in and see the shows and report back to the fair committee. The 1941 CNE report of Conklin Shows gives a good description

of the "Artists and Models" posing show produced by Harry Seber: "This show was comprised of poses put on by a group of girls on an improvised elevated stage. In executing these poses the girls sought to depict in a general way the manner in which the Parisian girls would pose in an artist's studio in the Latin Quarter. To convey those impressions the girls were attired in appropriate costumes similar to those worn by legitimate

The Miss America posing show on Royal American in 1950. One of the girls here seems overtaken by a bout of shyness.

Parisian models when posing in a studio for the purpose of being painted by a professional artist. "Shortly after the start of the exhibition we found it necessary to speak with Mr. Seber relative to the scanty material used in the brassieres, although this material when 59

This show, a knockoff of the Stella exhibition as shown on midways and world's fairs, claims to surpass the original. Rita Cortez, "the Brazilian Flame," bailies her show on the Strates midway, 1950s. This South American-style revue was similar to the Hawaiian revues.

examined elsewhere than the strong stage light disclosed sufficient covering to the body to eliminate nudity. It did however give the appearance of nudity when seen from a distance and under the strong colored stage lights as these lights had a tendency to blend the materials with that of the body thereby making contrast void. "All the poses were decently executed," the report continued, "and at no time was there any suggestion of vulgarity or of obscenity. This show was particularly patronized by the male sex, especially noticeable were members of the various

Wm. Aldrich's Hawaiian show on Royal American, 1940s, features Joy Fleenor (far right), who later became one of the premiere girl-show producers on midways into the 1970s. The horizontal line across the backdrop is a wire across which sailed an illuminated model cruise ship during one of the production numbers.

military units. It was also observed by us that soldiers and airmen visiting the show in the evening were inclined to be troublesome by their unwarranted remarks which in itself were inclined to be vulgar, sugges-

Rita Cortez, feature burlesque star and midway revue entertainer, also produced and managed her own Latin revues from the late 1940s through the 1950s.

small carnivals. Times had changed and you could get away with more nudity in the regular girl shows — you no longer had to mask it behind a veil of artistic poses. Hawaiian shows were presented on

tive, and inappropriate. The management

midways from the teens into the 1950s. A

did however, do its utmost to discourage

half-dozen Hawaiian musicians and dancers

this practice and at times found it necessary

could turn out an enjoyable show, with

to stop the show in order to remonstrate

tropical stage settings offering escapism to

with the offenders. We received no com-

the public in a time when few traveled. The

plaints in the manner in which this show

rail shows often presented Hawaiian shows

was presented or conducted."

that rivaled their revue offerings with the

By the fifties these old-style posing

South Sea island presentation having a large

shows were a thing of the past on even the

band that stayed on the stage like the jig 61

"Always leave the mark hungry for more."

A cooch-show bally on a 1950s truck show sees Torchy Lee's name in lights.

A single-O girl show operated by Lou Pease on O.C. Buck Shows at a 1960s fair in Malone, New York.

shows, plus chorus lines, production numbers, and hula dancers. Raynell Golden tried a skating show on Royal one season. Peter Manos says the show was presented in a tent with circusstyle seats on three sides and a solid, themed backdrop that the skaters entered and exited from like today's ice revues. To create the ice, a layer of burlap was first put down, then grey paraffin poured on top. On occasions one of the skater's blades would go too deep, catch the burlap, and pull up a chunk of paraffin. At intermission, during the candy pitch, the ice was repaired by melting the paraffin with a blowtorch and smoothing it out. 62

A performer on the Torchy Lee cooch show.

After the Second World War, touring ice shows became very popular. In 1950 Kennies framed such a show called Ice Classics of 1950, which carried its own ice plant and fifteen performers. A twenty- by thirty-foot stage made it impossible to recreate the agility, speed, and excitement the real ice shows created in their arena venues, and ice shows were shortlived as carnival girl attractions. Both the cooch and the single-O girl shows (any attraction that worked on the carnival midway by itself) usually ended in total nudity and went against one of the basic rules of old-time showmanship —

always leave the mark hungry for more, never totally satisfy his voyeuristic needs. When faced with competition from girl shows featuring several women, the girl in a single-O show had to be particularly attractive, and audience participation and unusual sex act stunts were essential to get a crowd. After all, a man who could only afford one show would be drawn to the show with the most women. One old-timer claims there was a famous single-O show called "Anna" that toured small carnivals in the midwest in the 1940s through the 1950s where sex with a pony provided the "ding." One Eye Tommy Fallen and Mom Fallon ran a single-O girl show called Princess Pat. The girl who worked it would strip naked and grind herself up against the "snorting

pole," simulating sex with an imagined male lover. The "snorting pole," or pole in front of the stage, was often the center tent pole. These cooch and single-O tops were often very small, twenty by thirty feet, so the center pole would be right up against the front of the stage making it available as a "prop." Where the carny term "snorting pole" came from is lost in time. One girl dancer interviewed thought it came from the reaction of the men in the crowd who, she said, "snorted like pigs when they became excited!" The snorting pole went from being a prop in cooch and single-O girl shows to being an architectural accoutrement to most go-go dancing stages. It is still a major prop in nude dance clubs.

Red Rogers talks on the front of a 1940s Cetlin and Wilson posing show. This front went through many transformations, including a stint for Divena in the 1950s.

63

BURLESQUE STARS "tHE wIND bLW oFF mY fIG lEAF"

any carnival girl-show workers whose careers stretched from the 1930s until the end of girl shows in the 1970s came from a background of burlesque, vaudeville, and tab shows. Almost all the strippers, comics, and candy butchers had worked burlesque, just as many of the producers had burlesque and tab experience. The variety acts had circus, vaudeville, and tent repertory experience. Burlesque had been active in American theaters and honky-tonks from the mid1800s and by the 1920s it included dancing acts, large chorus lines, posing numbers,

comedy, vaud acts, and feature girl dancers. Burlesque's rivals were the vaudeville shows pioneered by B. R Keith, whose first theater opened in Boston in 1883, tabloid shows promoted by Gus Sun in 1900, and the revue shows started by Ziegfeld in 1907. Both revue shows and vaudeville were expensive, so burlesque shows, with their low ticket prices, became the "poor man's musical comedy." Burlesque became the most popular form of entertainment during the Depression thanks to these low admissions — and to the G-string. Burlesque's home was in the center of big cities, and New York City was the heart 65

CHAPTER

5

Above: The explosion in rides after the Second World War produced amusements such as the Round-Up, billed here as the Latest Sensation, late 1940s. Right: The war is over and the carnival boom is beginning as Royal American Shows plays the levee lot in Davenport, Iowa, 1946. The show traditionally played this still date before jumping into the Class A circuit of Canadian fairs. The big square top in the foreground is the bingo tent; the two large tents in the background are the girl show (right) and the jig show (left).

Page 64: Sally Rand (lower left) poses with lei-draped dancers for a publicity photo on Royal American, 1948. The big production number featured a play on the word "lei."

66

of the business, with the Minsky brothers the big players. In the late 1930s and 1940s, stripping and comedy became the highlight of the show, and strippers competed hard for feature spots and top money. One might be tempted to write these girls off as mere sex objects, but reviews in the trade papers stressed their talent and versatility. They were actresses, comediennes, talented singers, and dancers, not just anonymous women taking their clothes off. Meanwhile, girl-show operators had gotten by for decades by ballyhooing "Fatima, the original dancer from the

Chicago's World's Fair." But as new dance crazes swept America, time ran out on the Oriental dancers.The 1920s and 1930s saw most of the big girl revues imitating "tab" (tabloid) and burlesque theater shows, and in many cases the producers were themselves the stars. Elsie Calvert's Rainbow Girls or Shirley Francis's Starlets were to the midway business what Earl Carroll Vanities and George White's Scandals were to the theater business. This era also saw many vaud and burlesque talents become stars in radio and film. There were, however, no big-name talents on the midway girl-revue stages. But by the mid-1940s things changed.

Singing sensation Bobby Breen and stripper Margo headline this revue on Hennies Bros., 1948, a year after the show was led by Sally Rand. Producer Jack Norman stands on the bally.

Big girl revue and burlesque headliners Faith Bacon and Sally Rand — whose fan dance at the Chicago Century of Progress Fair a decade earlier had made her a household name — signed with rail carnival girl shows for the summer and fall fair seasons. These burlesque stars — along with the likes of Georgia Sothern and Gypsy Rose Lee — were not only first-class performers but also astute businesswomen. Realizing their names were marketable, they took control of their careers. Burlesque was having a slow ride in NYC, and several other burlesque hub cities were catching the censorship disease. The days of 46-week bookings were over. A stripper working full-time had to rely on a

combination of theater and club dates plus whatever else she could scrounge up. While theater and club business wound down in the summer, the carnival girl shows offered twenty-plus weeks of work at good money, plus an opportunity for a headline strip to keep her name before the public. Midway shows played right across North America, drawing millions of fairgoers annually. Right after the war, business for carnivals was good. Rationing of sugar and gas — which carnivals used a lot of — had ended. Coal shortages, which often curtailed the show-train movements, were over, and railroads had lifted restrictions on private rail cars. Many fairgrounds had been handed back after being used for the billeting of troops and as mobilization centers. Billboard forecast great things for the 1948 carnival season. The only real problem now for carnivals was the competition — there was plenty of it. Truck shows were starting to give big railroad shows a serious run for their money at the fairs, many of which now figured that how the show got to

town didn't always reflect the quality of the midway operation. For decades most carnivals had the same rides on their lots. New technology o/ * mainly developed for war, led to new rides

1940s burlesque headliner Margo was added at the last minute to the Bobby Breen revue on Hennies when management realized they needed some T&A to sell the show.

67

Left: In 1952, Cetlin and Wilson Shows featured singer Peter Garey on Raynell Golden's girl show. The show advertised "special teen-age matinees 6:30 to 7:00 to meet Peter who has starred in the films A Date for Miss Julie, Captain Eddie, My Friend Irma, and in the Broadway musical South Pacific." Here a jammed midway listens to Raynell Golden make the opening.

railroad shows was greeted with outstanding success and more shows this year will offer established names on the midway. The big problem is to get names calculated to have the strength to pull on a midway lot and who will ask the kind of money that a

Bottom left: Peter Garey makes his entrance in Raynell Golden's girl-show revue on Cetlin and Wilson, 1952. Garey was hired as the feature but soon found out that talking the front paid a lot more. Next year he started a talking career that would see him become one of the best talkers on carnival girl-revue shows for the next twenty seasons.

carnival can afford to pay." These headliners were a real shot in the arm, doing even better than expected. On the 1947 Kennies Show midway playing the Des Moines fair, Sally Rand drew 10,833 patrons, netting the show $9,030. This was the biggest single-show daily take

68

being designed and built. The boom in

on a carnival midway! Before the gates

children created a need for more kiddie

opened to the public, the girl show had

rides, and carnival owners for the first time saw fair committees requesting specific

sold 381 tickets at $1, and by the afternoon the showgirls weren't needed on the

rides in their midway lineup. They realized that to hold the fairs and buy new rides

bally to turn the tip. With a couple dozen rides, twenty or so shows, and a hundred

every year or so meant heavy payments, so

or

they had to draw big crowds to their lots.

Kennies show

They needed something new and different

ended the fair

that would generate big grosses. The big-

with a whop-

name strippers seemed the ideal solution,

ping $158,000

especially since carnivals already had girl-

gross — and

show theaters on their midways.

Sally Rand had

more

concessions,

In 1948 Billboard observed: "There was

contributed

a noted trend in the carnival field towards

almost a third!

aggressively selling the public on coming

The next year on

out. The introduction last year of a name

Royal

star (Sally Rand) with one of the largest

she bettered her

American

the

success, attracting more than half a million customers to her show. One of the first big girlie stars featured on a carnival midway was Zorima (Margaret Lehtinen McCloskey). She had appeared in every picture magazine in the country, so midway owners knew she came with instant recognition status and carnival press agents had no trouble generating radio and newspaper coverage. In 1940 over a million patrons flocked to her Zorima and Her Garden of Nudists and Sun Bathers show at the New York World's Fair. In 1941 Beckmann and Gerety hired her as a midway feature show called Zorima Gardens. In an outdoor enclosure with a background of mountain scenery they presented a drama of the mystical maidens of the lost colony of Atlantis. To appease the Sun God who had caused the land to slide into the sea, the people offered up the loveliest virgin, Zorima, as a sacrifice. Besides headlining girl revues at the CNE and PNE in Canada, Zorima was the only feature dancer to appear at four World's Fairs. During the 1940s her California-based Centennial Greater Shows was one of the few woman-owned shows in the carnival business.

The next ten to fifteen seasons would see various burlesque, variety, and movie stars headlining carnival midway shows. It was a good time to perform. There was an all-out war between booking agents to sign acts. Every agent wanted a string of performers to pitch to TV producers, whose weekly variety shows chewed up performers like sausage grinders. Agencies that had dumped variety acts when vaud died and the acts were a dime a dozen were now begging them to come back. The men returning from war also fueled the girlie magazine business. Most of these publications ran articles and photos that focused on strippers and show gals. Stories of the war, Nazi death camps, hunting, fishing, boxing, and gambling addiction were all held together with pinup poses and sex stories. Even crime magazines were saturated with sex crimes,

Zorima, born Margaret Lehtinen, was the only bigname girl-show performer to be featured at four World's Fairs, and was one of the few women to own a carnival show. This publicity photo promoted her 1951 headline appearance on Harry Seber's girl show at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto.

69

Top left Gypsy Rose Lee advertises the Lektrolite lighter in her Ziegfeld Follies dressing room. Bottom left: Gypsy looks on as husband Julio de Diego paints the front of the posing show they operated on Royal American, 1949. For their surrealistic Dream Show, Diego depicted women with the bodies of distorted chickens and fish, as well as snakes and other dream symbols. Definitely not a typical carnival girlshow front!

The midway is packed outside Gypsy's girl show on Royal American, 1949. Talker Duke Wilson makes the opening on the busy bally.

and their covers often featured photos of strippers. Most men couldn't name their local senator, but they all knew Sally Rand and Georgia Sothern. Faith Bacon claimed to have originated the fan and bubble dances that Sally Rand made famous. In 1934, while working in Chicago burly theaters, she signed a contract to appear at the Century Progress Exposition, where Mae West had turned down $10,000 a week. Strippers were given a rough ride at the fair. Faith was arrested at the Hawaiian Gardens and charged with giving an indecent performance. Rosita Royce, also taken into court 70

for appearing in the nude in the Streets of Paris show, told the judge a thief had snatched her costume just before she was to go onstage and she had to make do with a fig leaf — but the wind blew it off. The judge dismissed both cases, but sternly warned the women about using the courts for publicity purposes. Her career may have been behind her — a 1939 reviewer said, "Faith Bacon parades through a moth-eaten fan dance that has lost its punch long ago" — but her name drew enough people that John R. Ward hired her to headline the girl revue on his railroad show as late as 1948. But

Bonnie "Oh Johnny" Baker, seen here as the feature on Royal American in 1950s, never came close to Sally Rand's or Gypsy's grosses, despite her records, films, and stage appearances.

things began to go downhill for her. On the last day of the Rockford, Illinois, stand, she claimed Ward owed her $5,044 in back salary and that she had been a victim of a campaign of terror and violence while trying to work — one of her charges was that tacks had been scattered on the stage before she went on to dance barefoot. She demanded $55,444 for the unfilled portion of her thirty-week contract. Ward made no comment, but posted a bond and moved the show train on without her. Burlesque performer Peter Thomas says, "What a tragic end for this troubled

woman. I worked with her one week in a club in Chicago. Faith Bacon was the feature in a four-girl show. I had been told she was unpleasant and I was prepared. Well, it all came true. She maintained for years that Sally Rand had stolen the fan dance from her . . . that she had done it originally in the Palm Beach Frolics revue and that Sally had been a chorus girl behind her. "Anyway, I never saw La Bacon again! Back in New York an agent wrote me that Faith had jumped out of the window of her hotel apartment, leaving a note and a nickel behind her." Miss Bacon was destitute when she died in September 1956, and the American Guild of Variety Artists arranged funeral services and burial. One of the biggest stars in burlesque to make it onto a carnival girl-show stage was Louise Hovick — better known as Gypsy Rose Lee (born 1914; died 1970). Royal American's big success with Sally Rand in

This streamlined front on Cavalcade of Amusements was used for the Georgia Sothern revue in 1949.

71

Sally Rand (left), Peter Garey, and Georgia Sothern at the Golden Oldies Days of Burlesque benefit at the Roseland Ballroom, NYC, 1973.

A Georgia Sothern window card, 1948

1948 was followed by Gypsy Rose Lee's 1949 engagement. The stature of these two giants — Gypsy and Sally — working on carnival girl shows not only raised the status of the carnival girl show but removed the curse of theater people working carnivals. Gypsy Rose Lee wrote a wonderful article about her carnival days for the June 1950 Flair titled "I Was With It." Here she tells the story of sitting in her dressingroom wagon, which was rocking from side to side in a storm, and hearing Duke Wilson the talker screaming outside the chorus girls' wagon. "'Let's go, girls, bally, b-a-1-l-y!' "I went out to him and I said: 'You mean we are doing another show at this late hour in this storm?' "Duke's answer was: 'The front of the show is jammed and we can't sell tickets 72

A publicity photo for Georgia Sothern, dubbed by Billboard in 1936 "Hotcha Galore, a redhead who's plenty dynamic."

fast enough. The weather is rough so I don't want to ruin the new wardrobe, so tell the girls to bally in swimsuits!' "Three days later, after thirty-six shows, it was tear-down night and Duke came back from the office with our box-office statements. The show had grossed over $33,000. "I did a quick figuring on my adding machine of my percentage plus $612 from program sales and $227 from Coke sales and I became very enthusiastic over this carnival girl show business!" Gypsy liked the carnies because they stuck together. In Saskatoon a windstorm hit the show at 1:30 a.m., flattening all the tents and propelling the joints down the midway like marbles. Word went out to the train and hotels where the show people were sleeping and soon everyone was back on the lot. They worked the rest of the night and morning to be ready to open mid-day. Gypsy said, "I was real proud to be called a carny."

Top: In this early publicity photo, Sally Rand poses with the fans she bought in a second-hand shop when she started doing her fan dance at the Paramount in Chicago, 1932. Center. Sally helping her son, Shean, with his homework outside girl show, Cetlin and Wilson shows, Jacksonville, Florida, 1955. Bottom: Sally moved on to a bubble routine after so many other dancers copied her fan act.

Gypsy was instant headline material for the carnival, and the 1949 season saw her grosses almost catch Rand's; only the ticket price — seventy-five cents, compared to Rand's $ 1 — may have kept her from breaking some of Rand's records. There are few descriptions of how Gypsy worked. A 1946 Billboard review of her show at McVan's supper club in Buffalo observed rf'iShe works with four shapely and attractive showgirls. The girls are brought on in scant attire to sophisticated and often blue comments by Miss Lee. She drapes the four girls with things off her own back until they are

Above: Sally Rand reclines amid the cast of her Girl Revue on Royal American, 1948. Center: Sally works a crowd of carnies in the Royal American girl-show tent, Florida State Fair, 1949. This jamboree raised money to build a clubhouse for the Tampa Showmen's Club. Right Wall-to-wall carnies at the jamboree in Tampa.

fascinatingly gowned. The routine ends with Gypsy going through a reminiscence of her burlesque days where she does a super smooth peel routine down to two tiny nosegays and a floral G-string. It rocks the house." The September 2, 1950, Billboard dropped a bombshell on the industry with its article "Background on Red Drive," in which FBI honcho J. Edgar Hoover told the senate that Communist infiltration in America had permeated all of show biz. Billboard printed a list of some 200 organizations that the Department of Justice's attorney general declared subversive and warned its readers to stay away from these 74

groups. The list included fraternal organizations from just about every foreign country that had earned the wrath of the U.S. during the Second World War, and many black and Jewish organizations were named. The week of September 16 saw the Illinois American Legion members applying pressure to ABC TV network to cancel Gypsy Rose Lee's appearance on "What Makes You Tick," as her name had been on the membership lists of some suspected communist groups. But Bob Kintner, president of ABC, said, "Gypsy stays unless you can definitely prove she is a communist." In response, Billboard ran Gypsy's three-

page anti-Communist statement, listing every good deed she had done the last twenty-five years: She was an acting officer in the American Guild of Variety Artists and a member of countless organizations that stretched from vaud to burlesque to films. She was a member of many animal humane societies and the Bronx Zoo. She had made hundreds of benefit appearances, most in support of handicapped children. During the war she headed drives for aluminum, rubber, and War Bonds. She visited military hospitals and was the head of her local Red Cross. Her gambit worked, and Hoover and his boys backed away. If Gypsy had charm and finesse in her strip act, Georgia Sothern (b. 1913; d. 1981) was at the other end of the scale — or top end of the thermometer. When

she hit the stage, you better hope the theater seats were well anchored, as she shook everything loose. "Georgia Sothern came out like a bundle of dynamite and got an explosion of applause at the end of her act," said Billboard in 1935. The third big-name exponent of the body beautiful to turn to the lush dough offered by carnivals during the spring-tofall slow period for indoor bookings, she was by far the fastest and hardest-working stripper out there. The Georgia-born Georgia was stripping by age 13, and did

Sally Rand designed this front, here shown at the Dallas fair, early 1950s. The portable canvas was draped over scaffolding rented locally, eliminating the need for a semi to haul the front.

not not retire until age 67. The burlesque house in Philadelphia Sally Rand (top) and her fan-bearing chorus girls kick off her show on Royal American, 1948.

Sally's husband and manager, Harry Finkelstein, ran ads for her act, such as this one in Billboard, 1950.

was closed down over her red-hot act, and by the time she was a star for Bill Minsky in NYC she already had a press book full of clippings. When she went big-time, she asked H. L. Mencken to think up a polite name for her profession — from then on she referred to herself as an "ecdysiast," from the Greek for "out of" and "clothing." She was in MikeTodd's Star and Garter Revue along with Gypsy, in the road show version playing Chicago's Blackstone Theater, and she played burlesque theaters on the Hirst wheel. By 1948 she had entered the carny world, signing a thirty-week tour with the James E. Strates Shows. Washington, B.C.,

was the usual spring opener for Strates in that era. The Sothern girl show was to rehearse there and open the following week. But the curiosity of the locals was too much for the carnies to ignore, and they let in 200 at sixty-five cents a head to watch the rehearsals. The bill-posting crew had each city and surrounding countryside blazing with her posters from one-sheets to billboards, and everywhere she performed patrons on the lot were lining up to buy tickets long before the first bally started. Then, in October, Billboard reported, "Georgia Sothern to Fold Tent." 75

Sally Rand visits the Gene Vaughan Girl Revue on Rod Link's Olson Shows, 1960s. Top row, from left: Molly Parkes, Sally, Sandy O'Hara, Darlene Wendt a.k.a. Honey Bee Kennedy, Norma Jean Watts, Mary Anthony, unknown; bottom row, from left: Pam White a.k.a. Pandora, Rod Link, Val Valentine, Terry Venezia.

The blond stripper was asked by a reporter in the Gastonia, N.C., fair if she would return to the carnival. "No, honey," she replied, "not another season. It's not that the season wasn't lucrative and enjoyable, but a 28-week tour was much too long." After eight weeks off, she replaced Lili St. Cyr at the Club Samoa, NYC. While she was working there, a newspaper reported that Georgia Sothern — civilian name Hazel Eurnice Finkelstein (she had married her manager, Harry Finkelstein) — had filed a 76

voluntary petition in bankruptcy court listing liabilities of $7,866 and assets of $107. By early May she had canceled her Hirst circuit bookings and opened on Al Wagner's Cavalcade of Amusements at Evansville, Indiana, producing the girl show and a posing show titled "She." Before Georgia Sothern worked on Cavalcade of Amusements, the show featured one of the best-loved strippers in the business — Carrie Finnell opened her new Harem Revue there in 1948. She had

Sally Rand appears at a showmen's jamboree inside the Raynell girl-show tent, after the carnival has closed for the night, 1950s. Fundraisers such as this, featuring acts from various midway shows, supported various showmen's club activities and charities.

appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies 1916 chorus line and was later billed as the "girl with the million-dollar legs." She made a bundle in burlesque and opened a bar in Louisville, Kentucky, but the Depression forced her back in burlesque. Over 200 pounds and into her forties, she still developed a sensational act that took her all over the world. She was this nice lady who looked every bit like your mom as she sang "Pop Goes My Heart," but suddenly a breast would pop out of her dress. The finale to her act was done to the tune of "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits." On "shave and a haircut" her breasts in unison pointed left then right. On "two" they point down, and on "bits" they pointed up! Carrie Finnell had

the best-trained chest in show business. She always stopped the show. But of all the big performers to work on carnivals, none was a bigger draw than a nonstripper — Harriet Helen Beck, better known as Sally Rand. She grew up in Elkton, Missouri, where she took ballet and dance lessons. Her second attempt at leaving home with a carnival got her to Chicago and a job in the Adolph Bolm Ballet Company. She was acting with a repertory theater company when it went broke in California in the 1920s and she settled in Glendora. After the stage, she moved on to the movies, playing roles in Mack Sennett and Hal Roach comedies. Her film career was bubbling along until "talkies" arrived — she had a lisp. She returned to the stage, toured her own variety show for several seasons, then worked in NYC on shows and in Chicago on the shortlived Sweet Hearts on Parade. In 1932, her life-changing break finally came along. She answered an ad for exotics and dancers at the Paramount Club in Chicago and was hired. Without any wardrobe of her own, she searched secondhand shops, where she found two big ostrich fans. Those feathers would become her trademark.

At the club she hadn't finished putting together her costume when — as the new kid on the block — she was called to open the show. Another dancer mentioned once having done a routine with fans, and so Sally did what soon became her signature fan dance to the strains of "Claire de Lune." She was hired at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair at $1,000 a week, and on the first night was arrested for her fan-dance routine. On another occasion, she was arrested four times in one day. Success and the attention of the law often seemed to go hand-in-hand. 77

Perhaps one of the strangest acts in show biz: Carrie Finnell, the Girl with the Educated Breasts.

78

By the mid 1930s, everyone was emulating her fan dance, so she moved on to dancing with a bubble. Sally's 1939 Golden Gate Exposition girlie show, Miss America 1939, grossed $44,000 and showed to 175,000 customers, mostly men who liked their girl shows hot and spicy. Her Nude Ranch did even better. In 1947 she was hired to headline the girl show on Hennies Bros. Harry Hennies spent $7,000 for new drapes and lighting and had Bobby Wicks design and paint the front. Hennies even hired an airplane to advertise that Sally Rand was on their midway. The next year, she signed on with Royal American Shows, opening at the Memphis Cotton Carnival on the "world's largest traveling midway." The show, con-

sisting of twelve chorus girls, two dance teams, three comics, an organist, and Sally, moved fast without an emcee and the feature number was a blacklight affair using a huge lei as a prop and a naughty play on the word. A lusty note ran through the whole show and on the second night it doubled its gross. That season, in East Peoria, Illinois, the girl-show tent caught fire and much of the canvas, scenery, and stage was destroyed. A quick-thinking tractor crew went into the burning tent and hauled out the dressingroom wagons full of wardrobe. Sally and other carnies worked all day, scrubbing the stage and repainting the seats. Curtains were borrowed from a movie theater downtown, and new scenery was quickly made from material Sally bought at a paper decoration shop. Sally remembered, "I took a quick 'French' bath, pinned on my best switch, stuck on my G-string, which only had a litde ground glass in it and a couple of crushed benzedrines. The talker called bally and the show went on at eight o'clock!"

Dorita (front center) on World of Mirth in Washington, DC, 1951. Otherwise known as Deborah Drukin of Paterson, NJ, Dorita did a sizzling flame dance in a revue called Your Show of Shows.

In 1950 she was back on a rail carny producing a show on Cavalcade of Amusements. The unit had eight chorus girls, a comedy dance team, and her brother Harold Rand and Estrella Montilla in a song-and-dance act. Veteran girl-show talker Connie Austin handled the front. Sally did good business. * In March Billboard called her "Sally (never a dull moment) Rand" as she had cracked the wire service and garnered front-page stories three times that month. One of the items concerned her address to students at Harvard. Previously she had spoken there about advertising, capturing their interest with a talk on the "effectiveness of white space in advertisements."

This time her talk on the "State of the World" didn't go over and the students kept tossing pennies onstage. Sally left crying, and papers all over blasted the students' rude behavior. When Sally went on Royal in 1948, her girl-show operation had pushed out Raynell Golden, the longtime girl producer there. Obviously there were no hard feelings as Raynell featured Sally on her 1957 show and saw her grosses go up 100% on Cetlin and Wilson fairs. Raynell brought Sally back to headline the 1958 girl show, her last season under canvas. In late August 1970, when Sally Rand was 66, she gave her famous ostrich-

"Hubba Hubba Girl" Evelyn West made exotic-dance history when she insured her 39V2-inch chest with Lloyds of London for $50,000. Evelyn West and her Treasure Chest headlined the Amusement Corp. of America midway in 1951, drawing record crowds.

feather fans to the Chicago Historical Society. She had offered them 2 3 years earlier but they were not accepted. Sally told the press, "I always wondered when I stopped being an old bag and became history."

SHEBAS ON TRAMPLED GRASS cOOCH SHOWS ON THE mIDWAY

I hen the subject of nudity comes up, all girl-revue workers have the same reac^ C tion: "The most we went down to was pasties and G-string! Not like those cooch shows!" The term "cooch" in the southern USA refers to the female genitals. The small girl shows touring America's midways certainly fulfilled the Southern expression with their exhibitions of complete nudity. Girl shows on carnivals were classified by carnies as revue shows, which were large burlesque shows featuring chorus lines, comedians, variety acts, and girl dancers, often including a strip-

per who did only go down to G-string and pasties. On the other hand, cooch shows, which usually had only two or three girls, rarely disappointed men who had come out to the midway to see naked women. By the late 1950s all kinds of wild stories were rampant about what went on in carnival cooch shows. By the next decade, the new competition from sexually explicit material in print and films and the rapid growth of "titty bars" may have caused many cooch shows to go beyond offering just nude dances. Touching by the customers and unusual sex performances were added. Most showmen, not just 81

CHAPTER

6

girl-show operators, knew which towns and fairs were cooch spots. Towns with a nearby military base, for example, were naturals. John Moss, who talked on revues, operated revues, and had cooch shows, says certain factors distinguished a cooch-show operation from a regular girl show. One of these was that in nearly all the cooch shows there were no seats; the guys just stood around the small stage. The girls would strip down to just their G-strings. Then it cost more to see them nude. Also, the cooch show rarely had comics or novelty acts. And, while the revues and most girl shows never went totally nude, the cooch always did. One other difference between cooch

Flame, a tassel-twirling sensation, was the draw on this 1950s gal show.

girls were often recruited from towns along

and regular girl shows was that the cooch

the way. Moss recalls the time he had an agency girl working for him at $400 a week.

show didn't use strippers from agencies,

When he approached Al Kuntz's Century 21

unless they were suffering a shortage; the

Shows for a spot, Kuntz demanded 50 per-

Top: A talker makes his opening on the Garden of Alii girl show on Gold Medal, 1957. This has all the markings of a cooch operation. Center. The Bubbles girl show on Thompson Bros., 1956, features a trio of well-endowed dancers on the front as the talker pitches to a group of very young men. The black kid on the left couldn't buy a ticket to a "white girl show," but nobody could stop him from watching the bally. Bottom: A typical canvas-fronted girl show as appeared on small truck carnivals in the 1940s. The Gay New Yorkers title was also seen on several revues of the era. The bass drum next to the ticket box was used to attract attention to the show.

Page 80: Fringes on a cooch dancer's costume fly as she and a talker work the crowd on a 1950s girl-show bally.

Three gals shake it up on the bally of the Beaux Arts girl show on Prell's Broadway, 1951. The front is made to resemble an old Parisian cabaret, with posters peeling off the brick work.

cent of the front money, plus the ding. John protested, saying he was paying an agency stripper big money. Kuntz went into the first show, came out, and told John, "That's the prettiest fucking girl I have ever seen in a girl show. You go right ahead and keep all the ding money." Carnies rarely went into the girl shows themselves. If there was a serious beef about the nudity, show owners could honestly say they didn't know what was going on in that tent. What girl-show operators really wanted on the cooch show was that extra inside money that matched or topped the ticket-box money. On big fair dates when the operator gave up 50% to 60% of the

ticket money to the midway office for rent and sales taxes, inside money was a big factor. On revues, the only inside money the producer got was from soda sales, the candy pitch, or novelty items. But on cooch shows, if he got a $1 or $2 admission, he could then get another $ 1 or $2 off every mark inside. Bill English relates his experiences with cooch shows: "That's what I ran, that's all I ran. The girl shows I knew on shows in the 1940s and 1950s were mostly cooch operations. My deal on Gold Medal Shows was the office got 40% of the ticket money and I kept 60%. I paid all the expenses of operating the show. From the inside money, I had to pay the show patch 10%."

Center: This is as basic as a girl show could get. One of the two girls working the Boot's Gay New Yorkers show poses on a stage made of flat boards laid on the ground. The curtain is a piece of white cloth hung on a rope, and a small floodlight is perched on the edge of the stage. The canvas behind her keeps the marks at a distance. Right A dancer on the Gay New Yorkers show performs nude behind a thin white curtain, providing a silhouette dance for the men out front.

Back then on carnivals you also had shows working on the "commonwealth" basis. After the carnival owner took out his percentage the rest was split up among the people in the show so there were no set salaries per se. Many of the jig shows worked that way. S3

Three of John Moss's workers haul the tent up over the inside stage to secure it to the roof of the truck as they set up his Top Hat girl show.

Moss makes an opening on his Top Hat girl show with the assistance of two dancers.

Moss begins to draw a tip in front of his girl show, 1970s, as the gigantic Sky Diver ride looms above.

Bill English says, "On Gold Medal, both the jig show and the 10-in-l operator got the first $400 that came in before having to give up any percentage to the office and split the money with the people in the show. The carnivals made these deals because the fairs wanted shows. Fairs always attracted lots of grind shows, wildlife shows, snake shows, geek shows, illusion shows, wax shows, crime shows, war shows, you name it. However, what they really wanted the carnivals to bring in were the sit-down revues, the big 10-in1's, the shows with entertainers in them." "The one I presented on Gold Medal in early 1950," English says, "consisted of the girls dancing onstage in front of a curtain.

They would remove their tops and finish topless. Then I would come in and announce our 'special' show, in which the girls would dance totally nude for an extra fifty cents. We would raise the curtain on the first stage and the girls would dance nude on the stage behind. When that was over, the girls would then ding the crowd themselves, saying they would do something extra special for the tips. This turned out to be the same nude dance repeated. "Once in a while you would have trouble on the 'special show' money. Normally every one of the guys in the tent would come up with the fifty cents, but I remember in the coal areas some tough crowds. Once, after I had made the pitch for the

special show, I was going through the crowd of men collecting the money and I came to this guy who I could tell was drunk. He was cleaning his fingernails with a switchblade. He wasn't about to pay fifty cents more . . . and he wasn't leaving! I went back up onstage and told the crowd

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"Thanks for coming . . .

if you did. CALLIE MILLER

the special show would be delayed slightly. 'I have one man in the tent that won't pay the girls and he won't leave.' That was enough. The other guys turned on this guy and threw him out." John Moss saw his first girl show in his home town of Johnstown, Tennessee. The show was Johnny Denton's Gold Medal Shows, set up outside the town limits. There were three or four rides, a lot of joints, and two girl shows. Moss says, "I watched the bally. I was only fourteen or fifteen but I went up to the ticket box and the seller said, 'When were you born, son?' "I said a year that made me just old enough and the seller said, 'OK. A dollar!'

"After the girls had removed their clothes after the second dance, one of the girls announced, 'As dancers we do not get any money from the tickets sold to the show. That goes to the carnival owner. We make our money from tips. If you would like to come down here close to the stage where you can touch us and leave us a piece

Top: John Moss's dancers get ready for the evening's work. When the show is traveling, this dressing room serves as storage for the front panels, ticket box, tent, sound system — every element of the girl show. Bottom: One of Moss's performers touches up her makeup before the girl show begins, using a makeup table that swings down on a hinge from the side of the truck.

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Many consider Callie Miller one of the best talkers and cooch-show operators in the cooch's last few decades on the midway. Callie ran her girl show with her husband, Buzzy.

of silver we will do an extra special dance for you here tonight.' "Most of the guys went up to the stage, including me. A guy handed one of the girls a piece of money and she quickly grabbed the microphone proclaiming, 'This guy just gave me a nickel and squeezed my tit. I hope you got your money's worth, sir!'The next guys, not wanting to be embarrassed or singled out, started giving quarters and fifty-cent pieces!" By the 1970s, of the remaining cooch shows, about 80% were "serving lunch" — touching, feeling, and tasting was all part of the extra show. Girls would accept tips and hop off the stage running naked 86

through the crowd, letting the guys grope and grab them. Buzzy Miller and his wife Callie were masters at the cooch-show operation. They ran a tight show. John Moss says that besides being one of the best cooch-show talkers in the business, Callie also had a special talent for keeping her girls in line, like a house mother at a college dorm. She had a routine that she staunchly followed. "She didn't care if it was the World's Fair or the biggest gal spot of the season," John explains. "Callie always came out to the lot at six o'clock nightly with her girls in one or two cars. She would walk them over to the girl show and up the steps into the trailer to get ready to open at seven. If a girl wanted something to eat or drink they had to send the roughy to the cookhouse for it. They were not allowed on the midway. The girls stayed in the show trailer until the show closed for the night and then Callie escorted them back to the motel. "The girls always complained that the Millers worked them to death. The show was operated without a ding — they gave one bally and then the show. Bally, show, bally, show, all night long. The Millers believed that the time you spent making the pitch

"Just a minute, I'll take it off!" teases one of John Moss's dancers as she struts across the inside stage of his girl show.

for the ding and then collecting the money slowed the operation down. You did more shows nightly without the ding." When John Moss worked for them, Gallic would divide up the girls and switch them around on the different shows from week to week. One week she gave John four girls and she had three girls on her show. At the end of the week she had outgrossed him. She said to John, "Johnny, what the hell happened here? I gave you all the tits and I still outgrossed you!" John said in his defense that even though he had one more girl than she did on the bally, Gallic was always dressed up like one of the dancers, so it was an even situation. John says Gallic also did her own emceeing in the show and always closed with this announcement: "Well, I hope you enjoyed the show, and if you did please tell your friends. If you didn't, please keep your mouth shut! We also have another girl show across the midway that is just as good as this one and you may want to pay it a visit too. Thanks for coming, if you did! If you didn't, better luck next time. Remember, come back and see us." Operating a cooch show, like all the rest of the shows on the midway, was a business of paying attention to details. Many, many details. One of the staple jobs on the cooch

On John Moss's show, a dancer starts with a provocative tease, then another topless dance. After John collects the "extra" inside money, the rest of the wardrobe comes off.

show was to have someone "watch the back" or patrol the outside of the tent so nobody got in without paying. "One year," John says, "I hired two ex truck drivers. One sold tickets and the other patrolled the tent. We had no trouble that year. If anyone tried to harm the girls you had to get in there fast." John explains further, "One thing I 87

"Is this waht you guys want to see?"

"Wait a minute, you haven't see the whole show yet," says John Moss, working into his pitch for the extra money to see his girls dance completely nude. The men almost always anted up to see the whole show. The dancer on on the right seems to be asking, "Is this what you guys want to see?"

learned from Gallic was to have the person on watch duty go in after the show was finished and check and make sure the tent was empty, that all the guys had left. I always made sure that my watchman lifted up the bally cloth of the inside stage and did a good check under there." When he operated cooch shows, Moss would speed things up on busy nights to cram in as many shows as he could. He would start the music halfway through the record, or fade it out before the song ended. "The girls would dance in their gowns and remove them with bras and Gstrings underneath," John recalls. "Then all three girls would dance separately to half a record and remove their tops. I would come onstage and make the pitch for the extra money to see them dance nude. Some operators did this with the girls in the dressing room but I preferred the girls onstage. I

Top: Carnival cooch shows were popular because they got so up-close and personal. The stages weren't as remote as they are in today's peeler bars. Bottom: This girl seems to be patiently guiding a customer's hand to the right spot. Some cooch shows permitted touching in the after-show, but many only reluctantly, when faced with stiff competition from rival shows on the midway.

would have one girl on each end and one in the middle, standing there topless. I did this to hold the guys so nobody left while I was making the pitch." John preferred his girls to wear Gstrings rather than panties. He felt that girls looked awkward stepping out of panties, and the G-strings or briefs that hooked on each side of a girl's hips could be undone and the back part swung forward between their legs in a dramatic fashion that got a rise from the crowd. "We worked pretty strong with the cooch show," John admits, "but I stopped at the touching part that many shows offered. I didn't allow audience participation. Again there are exceptions. In one spot where we had strong competition from another girl show on the lot, I told the girls they could let guys touch them if

they wanted to do it but they didn't have to do it. But no touching between the legs." Things sometimes got bizarre in the world of cooch. John Moss remembers visiting a carnival where a woman he knew was working her own gal show. "Hey, Johnny," she said to him, "I need a break. Come over here and emcee the show for me! Now, the first girl's name is . . .the second girl's name is ... and the third girl is called. . . — she smokes a cigar on the ding!" Moss knew the girl didn't smoke her cigar the usual way. Bob Tanenbaum says there were quite a few different cooch-show blow-offs. One involved the use of baby powder. The girl would let the mark put powder on her back using a big powder puff, then say if he gave her a dollar he could put powder on her front. When she got the dollar she would dab him on the head with the powder puff. You would see guys walking down the midway with powder in their hair and down their necks and you knew where they had been. Sometimes the girls would put an egg inside themselves in the dressing room and come out onstage and squat down and drop the egg from between their legs. Other girls came out onstage, lit a candle, put it on the stage floor, squatted down in O

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front of it, and blew it out. Many girls would get the guys to fold a dollar bill lengthwise and then they would pick it up from the stage with their sex. Former stripper Bambi Lane relates this story about the time she worked a carnival girl show near Newark. "At the end of the performance the things some of the girls did got pretty rough, and I said that I wasn't going to work like that. So I used the peanut butter bit. I took peanut butter and put big globs of it on my breasts and I would pick out some guy in the audience and bring him to the edge of the stage and I would go boom-boom with my tits and leave peanut butter all over his face, nose,

Above: A dancer does a bit of "rug work" at a cooch-show finale. Squats and splits were all part of the blow-off portion of the show. Be/ow: One of John Moss's dancers works on the apron of the stage.

hair. If the guy had a beard or mustache I really messed him up!" Eventually, John Moss says, you couldn't get agency girls out on the carnival shows as they were making a lot more money in clubs and bars. Pretty soon it was hard to get any girls. Sometimes the local paper wouldn't even run an ad for dancers in their classifieds. Moss got around that by running an ad that read, "Truck drivers and dancers wanted." Moss's other problems were more off-

beat. "A lot of guys spend their time trying to get girls to take their clothes off for them. I had the opposite problem. I was one of the few guys who had problems keeping them dressed. On the hot days they would sit between shows in the dressing room in the nude or, with the more modest girls, in a G-string. They hated to get all dolled up in a hot heavy gown and makeup for the bally. As the owner you would be in and out of the dressing room and you never even noticed their nakedness, except a new girl. For a day or so, you would catch yourself looking at her. Then it was all routine again." O

To John Moss, the cooch show is sadly a vanished piece of Americana. We will no longer hear him say from the bally stand, "This show is strictly for the gentlemen. You must be over 18 and under 80 to ogo in this tent. There is a good reason for this rule. If you are under 18 you won't understand it and if you are over 80 you couldn't stand it. This is red-hot burlesque, carnival hoochie coochie. We guarantee you'll leave our show with your hands in your pockets with a new grip on life!"

Everybody's ready to go on the Gold Medal girl show at the Hagerstown, Maryland, fair in 1957. Feature performer Tangerine (left) seems eager as the talker is poised to send the dancers inside and turn the tip.

A cooch show on O.C. Buck Shows at a fair in Potsdam, NY, late 1960s. Veteran back-end show operator Lou Pease also ran single-O and illusion shows.

9f

FEMALE IMPERSONATORS Circuses and carnivals were often homes for people who mainstream folks considered marginal classes — those who'd left bad marriages, broken homes, abusive parents, boring towns, and dead-end jobs. Shows were one place they could almost become lost in. For many gay men and women, too, it was a safe world where you were judged only on the job you did. Jaydee Easton worked some of the largest 10-in-l's on carnivals as a halfand-half, as well as in girl shows and finally as a bearded lady. Jaydee said, "I first worked in a single-o girl show for Lou Pease. I was working at Tony's Talk of the Town Club in Chicago, a cross-dressing club and total tourist trap with B drinkers. All the men were girls and all the girls were men. Lou showed up and propositioned everyone to work in his girl shows. Lou had said that you kept your pasties and G-string on, so I knew it would be no problem for me to do it. "This was before silicon breast implants. You could get what we called 'water tits.' A doctor would inject water into your breasts to enlarge them.They lasted about a month after each shot. It was painful the first few times you did it, but eventually your skin stretched and it stopped hurting. You didn't need tits the size of basketballs back then. Guys were not fixated on tits like they Transsexual burlesque stripper Hedy Jo Star owned carnival girl shows where she employed mostly female impersonators during the 1950s. She later became more famous for her wardrobe design and creation.

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are now. In fact there wasn't a lot in print about female impersonators, either. No tabloids or talk shows like today. If guys came into a girl show they assumed they were watching females dance. "You could flash in drag," Jaydee explains. "You got rid of your male sex by looping an elastic piece around the penis and pulling it back and up. The elastic band holding everything back was attached to a small rubber ball that was inserted in your anus. It sounds simple, but most people got scars from it. I learned the technique from an old side-show worker called Titsy Mitzi. Done properly you could even turn around and show your backside. "Flashing frontwards was very easy to do. I would buy one of Tony Midnight's G-strings and cut the pouch from it, cover the outside with lots of makeup, and let it dry. Then I would get one of my old wigs and cut a patch of hair out of it the size of the pouch. I glued it to the back of the pouch and when it was completely dry I would take a needle hook and pull the hairs through the G-string at the front. The G-string was all flesh-colored, but at the front I would go over it with an eyebrow pencil and make it darker. With a pink spotlight shining on me it was almost impossible to tell I was a guy.

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"I have worked on cooch shows where after all three of us danced one of the girls would take the microphone and say, 'Now, fellas, we would like to do something special for you here tonight. We are going to sell you flashlights and you will have a chance to come down and inspect one of the dancers up close.' One of the dancers would come to the front of the stage and sit down and spread her legs real wide while another girl would start selling the little penlights. The guys when they got their light would line up and take their turn viewing the spread dancer. The other girl had a little bell and she would ring it to indicate the guy's time was up. We would charge the guys $1 on slow nights and $2 on busy nights and after they had all looked with the lights we took the lights back off them. Of course I couldn't spread and work those shows, but I could sure sell flashlights!" "I used a special blow-off for the Saturday-night Ramble show. The girls, three or four, would dance on stage together like a go-go show in just pasties and G-strings.Then I would make the special show announcement that Long Tall Sally had taught me for the bearded lady blow-off, which was, 'We are going to show you how the fat girl gets it, how the skinny girl gets it, and what the old maid does with a Coke bottle on Saturday night. I am going to show you how a French girl smokes a cigarette, as we are going to do a little dance called, Dance of the Reefer or Pot in the Twat.' We would invite the guys up to the edge of the stage to pass up their money to the girls but if it was too rowdy in there the talker would make the pitch and collect the money. Then I would dance, saying, 'The fat lady can give you heat in the winter and shade in the summer and the skinny girl can dance like this. . . . " I'd do a few bump and grinds. Then I'd take the Coke bottle and slide it between my legs while I made a few crude comments. Then I would ask one of the men in the audience to light a cigarette and

pass it up to me, and I would put it between my legs and dance with it, saying, 'I would blow you guys a few smoke rings, but my ringer's broken.'Then pull the cigarette out and say, 'Butts anyone?' That was it. The pitch sounded terrific, but I didn't really do anything, just a bunch of patter and body-language suggestions. Unfortunately, just as time catches up with female strippers, drags too see their performing days end eventually. Jaydee related, "I remember two old drag queens named George West and Cleo Renew who use to work in side shows around New England. They decided in their late fifties to frame a girl show and work it themselves. Just strip down to pasties and G-string. One night they had both finished dancing for a tent full of men and Cleo is down on the ground holding up the side wall to let the guys out. Cleo jokingly says to the last guy, 'If you find someone for me, bring him back to me,' and the mark replies, 'If I find anything for you, Grandma, I will.' Then he points at George and says, 'But not for you, Grandpa!' That was the last time George danced in drag."

One of the small girl shows that Joe Boston and Tirza ran. The lady with the sunglasses, standing beside Tirza (second from right), is a guy. Gays were often found in 10-in-l side shows doing the half-man/half-woman act and working in drag on carnival girl shows. Many of the dancers who worked gay cabarets during the winter went with carnival shows in the summer.

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THE GIRL-SHOW TALKER £&t Me Sottip&f, Sou Site Does aw not Ofo we fftgute MM a, Ma& Pa*^" || first-class girl-show talker can make a listening to his talker, a little old guy with a lasting impression. The talker's voice stirs wrinkled face like a peach pit. He would sto p the imagination, arouses curiosity, per- the small rock combo and motion for one of

A

colates desires, and gets immediate results,

the very well-built dancers to come over and

The art of telling the tale is as old as the

help him out on the bally, saying, "Ladies an d

shows themselves. Not everyone standing

gentlemen, I would like you to meet

before a show front wants to see the show

Caroline." She stood motionless at the top of

inside. Some stop out of curiosity, others to

the bally stairs beside him. He pointed towar d

pass the time or just to be entertained by a

her head with a sweep of his arm and said,

free show. The talker's job is to convince them

"When this young lady dances for you insid e

to buy tickets — right now.

this show tonight, from here on up nothin g

I

remember

hanging

around

Tony

is going to happen."

Mason's revue show on Amusements of

Then he'd point down to her knees dan

America at the Ottawa fair in the early 1970s

say, "And from here on down nothing s i 97

C H A P T E R /

"sEE HER WIGGLE,

see her shake!" PETER GAREY

between Cherry Valley and the Appalachian Mountains all hell is going to break loose. Thank you, Caroline. Take it all the way back, take it all inside. It's show time. Buy tickets here and over there. Follow the lovely' ladies into the tent. Go now." As the evening wore on his ballys

shit, let's bring out the broads. Please give a big Ottawa welcome to the star of our show, Miss Pussy Galore!" Starting from the days talkers leatherlunged it to the era of the megaphone and then tthe microphone, show folks have jackpotted about talkers with legendary voices. The best could talk on any attraction — the side show or 10-in-l, the motordrome, the monkey show, the girl shows, the jig shows, the Hawaiian shows, and the Wild V West shows. Working for five or ten perceni percent of the daily gross, they would prind ;away for hours, extolling the fascigrind o nating stories of their gaffed and waxed

became shorter. At one point near the last

attracti attractions.

Performers on Jock Norman's Broadway to Hollywood

going to happen. "Then, pointing to her

revnue on James E. Strates look a little bored as they

crotch and chest, he finished, "But

wait behind the show front to be called to the bally.

Page 96: While the first Divena does a show inside the tent, Gayle Madden makes an opening with the "other" Divena. This was Madden's first job as a talker. Page 97: Veteran talker "Red" Rogers.

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show he Stopped the band in mid-tune

with a quick chop of his hand, looked into the gathering tip, and said, "Enough of this

Their home was the circle of show fronts and bannerlines along the show midway referred to by carnival people as the the "ba "back end."

Right: A talker shouts through a megaphone, making his pitch to the crowd at Toronto's CNE on Wortham Shows, early 1920s. Girls from the water show and sailors line the bally, and a clown climbs onto the ticket box. 8e/o\v: The talker makes an opening at the Beckmann and Gerety Shows, late 1930s, with twin Ferris wheels looming in the distance. The underage members of the tip seem to have pushed their way to the front!

If you saw Tony Paradise sashaying across the bally on Leon Claxton's Harlem in Havana in the 1960s on Royal American Shows, you witnessed one of the best o girl' and jig-show talkers in the business. Some carnies thought he was on drugs by the way he danced and jumped around the bally but it was just Tony's act. Lugging around a wardrobe of seventy-one suits, dozens of sequined jackets, and scores of colored sequined shoes earned him the nickname "Suits" — he often changed his wardrobe eighteen or twenty times a day. Peter Garey says a newspaper reporter once called him the "Aristocrat of Talkers," which he took to mean that he bathed rego

ularly and didn't murder the King's English. Many show people confirm these sentiments, declaring him one of the best. "I had fans," recalls Garey, "that came back again and again to hear my spiel. One little old lady in Ionia, Michigan, would come to the fair every day and bring a little camp stool and sit out front. It drove me nuts. I offered to pass her in free, but she said, 'No thanks, dear, I just enjoy listening to you!'" Gayle Madden was another great talker — his quick bally, with just one girl outside, grossed a lot of money in a day. Many old-timers would put their money on Joe Boston, who often ducked behind the doorway curtain to have "a wee word with 99

The mike cord draped over his shoulder, talker Peter Garey leans into the tip to make his point. Magician Bill Karlton said of Garey: "What made Peter so interesting was that you never knew what he was going to say. . . . He had a knack for making his openings very entertaining and he seemed to sense each time what the tip wanted to hear."

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Garey talks the front of a Joy Fleenor girl revue, with a row of scantily clad dancers behind him.

Jack" before continuing his opening. Joe and his wife, Tirza, were the last working big girl-show talkers in America. But when you ask talkers who the best was, most exclaim, without hesitation, "The Greek!" Lou "the Greek" Stratton worked the Lorow Bros, side shows for several years before joining their sister Raynell on her girl shows. Lou always came to work prepared. When he arrived on the fairgrounds he would walk around the midway a few times to study the crowd. To him, no two crowds were alike. If the crowd seemed spirited he would tell the dancers to move into high gear once they hit the bally platform, and if the crowd was in a quieter mood he would tell the vocalist and comics to take the spotlight.

Rosa Mack, aka Baby Dumplin', laughs as Garey launches into his spiel about her: "One tassel here, one tassel there, and two more tassels on her derriere. When she gets all four tassels twirling at once in opposite directions, she looks like a DC6 in flight."

The talker is the first person you usually see on the bally stage. He has four jobs during the bally. If he fails in any of them, he blows the bally. First he must get a "tip" (a crowd in front of him). Most people are reluctant to stop in front of a bally platform, so the talker must promise them something. He may say, "Hey, lookee here, we are getting ready to bring out some of the

Lou "the Greek" Stratton, the king of the talkers, makes his opening with his arm around his wife, Betty, on one of Raynell Golden's revues, Cetlin and Wilson circa 1950.

Raynell leans on the ticket box at her Nudism Exposed posing show on Cetlin and Wilson, late 1940s Legendary talker Lou Stratton mans the ticket box, while expert gal talker Elsie Calvet, in the back, wields the microphone.

entertainers, bring out the some of the dancing girls!" Men will usually stop when the girls come out. Once the crowd stops in front of the show, the talker draws them in closer to the bally stand. He might as well quit if he cannot devise a small coin trick or involve some other object in his opening that the tip will have to move closer to see. He may announce, "We have been asked by your

fair committee not to block the midway. Please step up close here so the midway crowd can move past you." A good talker knows not to stop talking here or they will back up even more or walk away. Once again he repeats, "Please move forward so people can walk behind you." The talker might then say something like, "Move your feet, your body will follow — it's called walking." Then he'd turn his back on the 101

Top: Patticmn Sciortino, one of the finest girlshow talkers, makes an opening on a chilly fall night. Pattiann learned her chops on an Unborn Show (Pickled Punk), where she made the front openings and then lectured on the various dead specimens in jars inside. Bottom: Talker Elsie Calvert unloads her spiel in front of her girl revue on Goodman Wonder Shows in the 1940s.

Connie Royal, aka Baby Kid Austin, addresses a crowd on Royal American, circa 1950, flanked by two of the show's performers. Connie was also a talker on one of Sally Rand's girl shows.

"It is hard to believe you had to talk men into spending money to see naked women you would think it was the easiest job in the world." JOHN MOSS

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tip and take four or five steps upstage. When he turned around again, the tip would have moved in. Roland Porter explains his technique: "Now, if you are talking on the front of a show and you have the crowd started, you use psychology to hold them there. They are running here and there, from one ride or game or show to another. You stop them, bring them in close and weed out the good ones from the bad ones. Now if you say to them, 'Would you be so kind as

Gayle Madden makes his appeal on Raynell Golden's Hi Frenchy revue on Cetlin and Wilson Shows, 1951. Madden broke into the girl-show talking business around Raynell, taking his cues from master talker Lou Stratton: "Pretty soon I had him down pat. I did everything Lou did except take a soda bath every night after work."

to take a few steps forward so we don't block the midway' they will know that you want them to come in, so they will stand there! So, you see, the psychology is to do something low. I used to do a thing in which I would bend down and place a dime on the stage and I would tell the tip I was going to ask one of the lovely young ladies to come forward and cover the dime with her foot. Then I told them that before she leaves she will have the dime in her hand. Now, I bend down, put the dime down with one hand and with the other hand wave them closer. The crowd would move in." Now that they are in close the talker must excite the tip about the show. Most

talkers used a little theatrical license in describing how hot and sexy their show was. On a revue the talker will tell you about each act, describe the singer or variety acts, the comics, the strippers, and the feature act. He will paint a word picture of the dances the girls will perform on the inside. On a cooch show the opening may border on the obscene.

A young recruit from the tip has his arm around one of the showgirls as the talker makes his opening on James E. Strates in Danville, Virginia, 1949.

Gayle Madden was the master of the "still" bally. Some talkers had to have all the performers on the bally to turn the tip. Gayle would need only one bally girl, an empty Coke bottle, and a piece of newspaper. "If you're 703

One of the strongest things a talker can do while making an opening is to use a member of the tip. Here Bill Hamilton uses his time-worn patter while a towner gets to hold a dancer at a 1970s show.

Joe Sciortino opens on his posing show on Prell's Broadway Shows, 1952. Prell's was one of the finer truck carnivals of that decade.

the kind of guy that starts the day off with tomato juice and black coffee," he would say, "then this is the show for you. I can hear the music inside and the show is going on now." He would then slide the doorway curtain open and give them a peek when he knew one of the strong acts was working. Then he'd close the curtain, walk to the front of the bally steps, and

"People think I'm crazy when they hear that i quit

South Pacific for a carry Pitch . . . " PETER GAREY

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hand the empty Coke bottle to the bally girl sitting on a high stool near him. Slowly, as he described the great show going on behind them, he would tear the newspaper into small strips and drop them into the Coke bottle. This completely meaningless ritual mesmerized the crowd. California carnival owner Kent Danner recalls another midway company where he saw a girl show operated by a man and his wife and his daughter, both dancers. At the end of the bally the females' skirts always slipped down, revealing very little in the way of undergarments and giving the tip a tantalizing view. Other old-timers recall that Honey Lee Walker often wore no

Before he talked for Raynell Lorow's girl show, Lou Stratton worked several seasons with her brothers on their illusion show. Here he passes a hoop over a floating woman.

panties under a short skirt. Just before she turned the crowd, she would walk over pointing to the ticket boxes. She then raised her leg and put one foot on top of one of the ticket box counters giving every one standing below an eyeful of what she was selling. Girl-show operators had certain policies about their feature attractions. Some preferred to keep them off the bally and others went out of their way to feature them outside as well as inside. Raynell kept her feature off the bally. Jack Norman liked to have them out there big as life. Roland Porter kept the feature off the bally if she was "long in the tooth," implying that her

name as a past burlesque star had more selling power than her present figure and looks. Regardless of policy though, if business was slow or the talker needed a boost in his opening, the feature was called out to the bally. "The key to the girl revue opening," says John Moss, "was making this variety show much racier than it was without making an opening that was more typical of a cooch show. If one of the acts was a magician with an attractive lady assistant the producer would usually ask her to make bally. On Dave Hanson's Revue one year we had Jim and Judy Green doing their illusion act. I would bring Judy out

Red and Helen Marcus on Cetlin and Wilson, 1955. The couple produced and managed revues in the 1940s and 1950s, and were also excellent talkers, especially on black revue shows.

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Rita Cortez is introduced to the crowd on her Latin American Show on Strates, early 1950s. A couple of the show's musicians are on the bally to help draw a tip, but when they're inside playing, the talker uses a record player.

on the front with the other dancers. "'Now, ladies and gentlemen, this shapely young lady standing next to me does an act inside our show that is outstanding. I can't fully describe what she does because of the children in the crowd and on the midway. Let me simply say that she does an act on the inside with a male partner. That's right, a male partner. I can only say this about her act outside. It will amuse and amaze you, confound and confuse you. It will certainly send you out of the show and down the midway scratching your head and wondering if you really saw what you thought you saw, when you thought you saw it!' "This was as strong as I could get in suggesting a sex act onstage in my revue opening which in reality described the magic act."

It's a beautiful early fall night, closing night at the Syracuse, N.Y., fair in 1986. In a few hours James E. Strates Shows will begin the ritual of tear-down. Lights from the giant wheel reflect like turning wagon spokes across the front of the girl show. One of the show's generators is purring away in the background. The smells of fried 106

The talker starts to gather a tip on what appears to be the first show of the day for the Broadway to Hollywood revue on Strates, 1959. Feature stripper Pagan Jones is visible behind the center marquee brace.

sausage and dough drift through the crowd. A tired Joe Boston is about to catch the last night's take. He has just put on a tape by the Bill Black Combo and he has one foot up on the ticket box. One hand is full of microphone cord, and the fingers of his other hand grip an old-style mike with a handkerchief tied over it to cut the outside noise. Joe starts his grind. "All right, it's show time. You don't have to walk around. You can sit down. It's real hot, naughty carnival burlesque. Hey, girls, what about it? You know what happens when you see this show? You want to check into a Holiday Inn, right away! Yes,

sir. Come, guys, let's go. Hoochie-coochie acts. Come in and sit down, fellas. Hey, I'll tell you what. There is nobody out here, just a few people. Here's what we'll do: two for the price of one. Get a partner, come on in. They're getting ready. You're just in time. Naughty low-down carny burlesque. Now hurry up and get in here. Last chance tonight. They won't be here tomorrow. The girls shake it up, take it off, and they're ready to roll. Red-hot carnival burlesque. "We have a male stripper for the ladies that's just as naughty as the girls. Have you seen a male stripper? Get in here. What a time you are going to have in here. Well, we are going to bring out the male stripper in just a minute. Two girls and the male stripper. We'll have them out here in just a minute. This guy's the naughtiest male stripper . . . anywhere! He's the star of the Crazy Horse Saloon in Miami all winter long, that's where they work. Let me get them out here." Three or four dozen people, mostly young couples, stand in front of the bally as the showgirls and the male stripper come onto the bally. Joe has moved closer to the tip. "Well, I tell you what — we're going to have one of the girls give you a sample of what takes place on the inside right over here on the second step. We might as well

George Duggan talks on the bally of Club Lido as his wife Jackie looks on, 1960s.

Joe Boston works the bally with a showgirl on the James E. Strates Shows in the 1980s.

"You can't beat using a guy out the audience when you're making an opening GAYLE MADDEN

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The talker on Sex on the Half Shell ballyhoos Loreli, the "Siren of the Sea," who emerges from the clam shell. This Legs Away Revue on Strates, 1955, was produced by Jack Norman and burlesque veteran George Pronath.

call on that young lady on the end of the line there. Come over here, please, and step down on the second step. "This is something you got to see because it's free of charge. She's going to do a little number that she made up herself, a number she calls Oriental Muscle Dancing. That means she has control of all the muscles in her body, all of them. The only part of her body that won't be mov108

ing when she is dancing is from her shoulders to the top of her head. From her shoulders down is where all the action is going to take place. "We're not allowed to block the midway, come in closer, it's not going to cost you anything. If you buy a ticket right now, it is for the 8:30 show. We are going to have a show at 8:30, 9:30, and 10:30, three shows. Then we are going to tear this down, load it on the train, and go all the way to South Carolina. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you look right through the doorway, you people up front, you will see that you will not be by yourself in there. We have a few hundred of your friends and neighbors inside already and if we don't put on a show right away those people are going to get impatient and that's not good. "There are no extra charges on the inside, whatsoever. Now I'm going to extend a money-back guarantee. Three guarantees. One: you get a seat on the inside. Two: there are no extra charges. And three:

Left: Joe Kara talks on the front of his Esquire Girls show on the Bill Lynch Shows, 1950s. Kara, who worked out of Montreal, Quebec, was one of the principal operators of back-end shows on Canadian midways during that decade. Below: A youthful Gayle Madden works the front of Raynell's Pin-up Girls posing show on Cetlin and Wilson, 1951. The show's finale featured Lady Godiva nude astride a merry-go-round horse.

the show starts within two minutes or you can come out and get your money back. "If you're a broad-minded person and like adult entertainment we start the show right now. There's a ticket box there. Send them back and give them a good show and we start the show like I said, right now. Burlesque entertainment. The male stripper and a half-hour show." The music starts. "Hurry up — show time. Show starts right away. Good old-fashioned burlesque.

Show time, show starts now! Go now, right now, if you want to see the show. The show is starting right now. The last night. Anyone else? They're starting the show right now, you're just in time." Time ran out on the girl shows. If you were one of the lucky people Joe Boston talked into the show that night, you witnessed the last girl show on the Strates midway.

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A PRIZE IN EVERY BOX The Candy Pitch

he candy pitch, as practised in girl shows 1 and burlesque theaters from the 1930s I on, would be called by today's crime experts a "short con." Before the show begins, a salesman offers the audience a new confection "just brought on the market." He explains that as an inducement to try this new candy, the company has provided a number of free gifts that have been inserted into the packages at random. The pitchman reels off the list of superb gifts. The price is only twentyfive cents. The sale starts with the "candy butchers" going into the seats while the pitchman continues his enthusiastic banter.

Soon he offers guaranteed prizes for further purchases by the crowd. By the end of the twenty minutes or so, the pitchman has sold a lot of boxed candy, sometimes three or four boxes to the same customer, and given out nothing but cheap prizes. No big money was taken from each buyer, and he or she did get five to seven candy kisses and a piece of "slum." The pitchman's dialogue was carefully crafted — an analysis would reveal no lies. The origins of the candy pitch are buried in show business lore, but by 1912 the first ads appeared in Billboard offering prizes in confection products. One company offered 1ft

CHAPTER

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Zig Zag, a five-cent package of molasses peanut popcorn with a premium or souvenir in each package. By the late teens and early 1920s, dozens of candy companies offered chocolates, candy kisses, candied nuts, and candied popcorn for sale in prize boxes for pitchmen working circuses, carnivals, theaters, and grandstand shows. Page 110: Leonard Bocci Gallupo (white shirt) — known as "Bach" or "Bachi" around burlesque theaters and girl shows — was one of the best-loved candy pitchmen. Here he is in the front ticket box of Jack Norman's Broadway to Hollywood revue on Strates, Danville, Virginia, 1960.

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The prize candy business on outdoor shows grew along with the manufacturers of the candy. Sidney Anschell's Universal Theatre Concession Co. in Chicago was the big player in the candy sales field. Universal would send a man out to any theater to show the manager how to pitch the candy. In the fall, Universal ran full back-page ads in Billboard directed at burlesque, vaud, and movie theaters announcing that the circus and carnival season would soon be closing and hundreds of high-grade candy pitchmen would be at liberty. The ad said, "Let us put

Anna Belle Lee was produced in Chicago in 1939 by the Casey Concession Co., run by Al and Bill Carsky, candy butchers and pitchmen in burlesque theaters. Al later became a comic and Bill went on to become the premiere supplier of prize candy to carnivals and circuses until the late 1950s. The flap on the right was used for audience members to vote in a contest — for example, for the best-looking town girl.

An ad for prize candy in a 1921 issue of Billboard. The candy was sold by showmen in theaters, movie houses, circuses, repertory tent shows, and carnivals.

you in touch with them. With them and our products the candy sale will soon be paying your rent." The 1920s saw the prize candy racket grow into such a huge business that candy butchers formed their own organization. Billboard ran a weekly column on their doings. Anschell's company in Chicago was a four-story factory. On one floor the sugar and syrups were cooked by steam heat in large retorts, then thickened on steel tables cooled from underneath with circulating ice water. The thick sheets of candy were

Tent repertory theater companies were one of the major users of prize candy. Here, bedspreads — to be given out as prizes — are displayed by the marquee entrance of Sun Players, 1966. They were flash for the candy pitch.

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pulled into ribbons by machines that could turn out five tons of candy every hour. The candy ribbons went into the cutting and wrapping machines and down chutes onto tables where scores of girls put the candy into boxes. The top floor had room for ten railway cars of prizes and one big room by the main office contained the expensive silk gifts. In July of 1934 a complaint was sent in to the Federal Trade Commission against the three big candy prize companies. The commission ruled against them, finding that their style of merchandising contained the elements of a lottery, not permissible in laws governing interstate shipping. The candy companies quickly got around this

Chicago was a major center for prize-candy companies, and one of the biggest was Chicago Concession and Catering, which advertised in Billboard under a variety of names. This ad, from 1922, is aimed at repertory theater companies, which often played brief stands up and down the states bordering the Mississippi River.

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by shipping the boxes, prizes, and candy separately to the operators, who put them all together on the lot or in the theater. On carnivals, candy was pitched in all the sit-down shows and even some of the stand-up shows. Candy companies like Bill Carskey's Casey Candy would send pitchmen and butchers out on shows on which they had the candy concession. On other shows, the pitch was controlled by the show's concession manager. Eventually many producers of the girl and jig shows saw how much money was being made and they wanted the candy sales themselves. Roland Porter worked candy on Goodman Wonder Shows, a rail show owned by Max Goodman in the 1930s. Joe

Goodman, the son, had the bingo and the candy pitches. Roland explains, "I paid him 25% to work in the various shows — jig, girl shows, even in Al Tomani's sideshow and Leo Carroll's monkey show. That monkey show was some show to try and pitch candy in! You would be in the middle of your pitch and some monkey would start screeching and jumping up and down. Another one would be playing with his dick. Everybody in the crowd would start laughing, the ladies would blush and turn their heads away, while I'm trying to tell them about the watches and all the great gifts they might get in these boxes of candy. "That was a favorite pastime with those monkeys, masturbation. I don't know why they didn't all wear eyeglasses! I would keep saying in a startling or high-

An ad from Billboard, 1926.

Left: Bill Carsky, head honcho of Casey Concession Co., out of Chicago. Above: Carsky advertises in Billboard, 1936.

pitched voice, 'Now, hear this,' or 'I forgot to mention,' trying to get their minds off the monkeys and back to my pitch." One of the most popular "giveaways" was miniature dice. "My dice pitch was this," Roland recalls. Then he assumes his booming pitchman's voice. '"Ladies and gentlemen, I have here the world's smallest pair of dice. When you are playing with them, one thing you will notice is how many times they come up seven or eleven.' '"Now, you don't want to use these dice to shoot craps with your 175

Candy pitchman Bachi with dancer Cheri on a Raynell unit playing the girl show on King Reid Shows, Montreal, Quebec, 1955

Carnival candy pitchman Henry Linden placed an ad in Greater Show World in 1948, boasting that even the show owners wore the watches he uses as prizes.

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friends, but your enemies . . . well! These are transparent dice made of glass. They are colored in appearance but when you take them home and soak them in water, preferably a little salt water, you will see the color disappear. Now when you get home, place the dice together. Match the one with the one. You will see that the little man in one will make up to the little female in the other one and what they are doing is nobody's business but their own. Make sure you are holding them up to the light and look through them, putting the young man on top of the young lady. Match the twos and they change positions. Match the threes and even more happens. When you match the sixes something will happen that you won't believe!' "There were other things we pitched, like a picture on very thin cardboard that you put up to the light to watch the girl dance. Of course you had to dip it in water first. You always put some stipulation with it so they couldn't look at it in the tent or theater because there was nothing there. "When I started in the Empress in Milwaukee," he continues, "besides the candy pitch, we had various book pitches. Sex books. I came out onstage in a doctor's

white coat with a painted-on mustache to appear older and gave the lecture. We would say things such as, 'In this book you will find various things that will help your sex life. One of these is a section describing the seven erogenous zones in the female body, so you can touch them and stimulate female desires anytime you want.' You mention pictures and right away the guys in the audience think nude photos. You described the pages that explained how to enlarge the size of the penis. You told them whatever you thought guys wanted to know, it didn't have to be in the book." Veteran candy pitchman Gene Stapleton explains the difference between pitching candy in a burlesque theater and under

Roland Porter talks the front of the Strates girl show, Raleigh, NIC, 1976. Porter, who began as a candy butcher in burlesque theaters at fifteen, was considered one of the finest pitchmen in the business. He married four times — each wife was a stripper.

canvas: "It was tough in the theaters. In the big cities like New York and Chicago you were okay because you had a lot of tourists, but in the little cities you got the same crowd each week. With the carnival we played a lot of towns that didn't have a burlesque theater. Most girl-show patrons hadn't seen a candy pitch before. You could work strong. The main reason the producer let you work the way you wanted was

because it usually took three bailies to fill the tent, and so you entertained the people already in there while the talker worked on the outside. The pitch would take in more money than the ticket boxes." Charles (Chuck) Schlarbaum is without doubt one of the finest circus and show musicians in the last half of this century. During his seasons in the 1950s and early 1960s with the James E. Strates Shows, he and the band doubled as the candy-pitch salesmen. "We used to have candy-packing parties," he explains. "Involved the whole cast, everybody packed candy. In the candy wagon we had this big bin of peanut butter kisses and molasses kisses. We had two crews, one crew filling the boxes with candy and the other putting in the slum prizes. So you put six pieces of candy in the box and a

Candy butchers sold these "pitch books" in burlesque theaters. They often tore these girlie books in half, selling both parts and pocketing the extra 25