A Panoramic History of Fools and Jesters • Medieval Mimes, Jongleurs and Minstrels* Pueblo Indian Delight Makers and Cheyenne Contraries • Harlequins and Pierrots • Theatrical Buffoons and Zanies • Circus Tramps,Whitef aces,and Augustes JOHN H.TOWSEN $1 JOHN H.TOWSEN ILLUSTRATED WITH RARE PHOTOGRAPHS AND PRINTS Throughout the centuries, clowns have kept alive the vital tradition of comedy, providing laughter for a wide and varied audience that has always included both children and adults. Although, today, clowns are usually associated with the cir¬ cus, they have also played important roles in other kinds of entertainment, such as theater, music hall, rodeo, and folk dance and ritual. Recently, there has been a remarkable upsurge of interest in this ancient form of entertainment. Nearly 4,000 applicants compete each year to become one of the forty-five students at Clown College, run by Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and more and more workshops in clowning are being offered each year in universities and community colleges. This new fascination with clowns is part of a growing interest in all popular forms of entertainment, including magic, juggling, and mime. Until now, no one has attempted a com¬ prehensive survey of the clown throughout history and throughout the world. In Clowns, John H. Towsen provides a lively and amusing account of clowns from their earliest appearances up to and including some of the best contemporary clowns. Each chapter focuses on one or two of the (Continued on bac1' >ELEY (Blazons (Blazons *3ofin c JC. dbzDsen X \ ' dCazotfiorn <fiooEsr*3nc Publishers / new yokk V for my brother Randy CLOWNS Copyright © 1976 by John H. Towsen. Copyright under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All in¬ quiries should be addressed to Hawthorn Books, Inc., 260 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016. This book was manufactured in the United States of America and pub¬ lished simultaneously in Canada by Prentice-Hall of Canada, Limited, 1870 Birchmount Road, Scarborough, Ontario. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-41793 ISBN: 0-8015-3962-5 123456789 10 731.3 Tlcbt A clown is a poet who is also an orangutan. Steve Linsner JL&y S » Salients 1 2 3 6 Acknowledgments Introduction Fools, Natural and Artificial The Clown on Stage The Clown to the Ring The American One-Ring Clown Knockabouts and Cascadeurs Stand-up Clowns ix xi 3 31 83 105 140 189 Vll 6 He Who Gets Slapped 206 a The Clown Entree 224 9 The Three-Ring Clown 256 10 Tramps—Sad and Sassy 282 11 Jester to His Majesty the People 306 12 The Clown-Mime 338 Notes 357 Glossary 371 Selected Bibliography 383 Index 389 Vlll Jl c fine zoic dg meats Writing a history book is such an enormous undertaking that the author soon finds himself enlisting the help of all available friends and relatives. This book was certainly no exception. It was a group effort all the way. I would like, first of all, to thank my par¬ ents for their much-needed encouragement over what has proved to be a long and very trying period. The same thanks are due Barry, Carolyn, Dorothy, and their entire families. Five good friends contributed a large amount of their valuable time to this project and their input can hardly be exaggerated: Hovey Burgess, whose help with all aspects of the research saved several months' time and considerably enriched the text; Judy Burgess, whose photographic skills and Russian translations are in evidence throughout the book; Diane L. Goodman, whose ed¬ iting, research, French translations, and knowledge of music proved invaluable; Brooks McNamara, whose many hours of editing are chiefly responsible for whatever clarity and polish the writing may have; and Fred Yockers, whose encouragement and suggestions over the past four years have helped make this book a reality. I would also like to thank my editors at Hawthorn, Elizabeth Backman, Ellane Hoose, Naomi Ornest, and Carol Paradis, who likewise spent many long hours on the manuscript, doing a fine IX Acknowledgments job under great pressure. The research could not have been com¬ pleted without the generous cooperation of Robert Sokan, of the Illinois State University Library, Normal, Illinois. Also very help¬ ful were Paul Meyers of the New York Library for the Performing Arts and Robert Parkinson of Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin. No historian creates out of a vacuum, and so special gratitude must go to all who have written about clowns before me, but especially to the following authors: Allardyce Nicoll (Masks, Mimes and Miracles); Enid Welsford (The Fool: His Social and Literary History); Maurice Willson Disher (Clowns and Pantomimes); Tristan Remy (Les Clowns and Entrees Clownesques); and Raymond Tool^-Stott (Circus and Allied Arts: A World Bibliography). Dozens of others also made essential contributions: Doug Ash¬ ton, Michael Baird, Frank Bock, Louise Curtis, Marshall Dodge, Matt Dolkey, Rosalie Donatelli, Ken Feit, Mona Friedman, Ron Gantz, Henry Gee, Alan Geik, Paulette Haller, Lulu Hedgbeth, Walter and Uwe Hegend, Ted Hoffman, Michael Kirby, Stans Koizumi, Judy Landon, Paul Levine, Alfred Lewis, Fred and Beth Lown, Celia McCarthy, John McNaughton, Paulette Manzo, Carlo Mazzone-Clementi, Dick Merz, Vincent Monzo, Mark Needleman, Jody Norton, Edith Rice, Richard Schechner, Marty Schwartz, Noel Selegzi, Stephanie Silverman, Barry Sloate, Don¬ na Spatafora, Marc Stolzenberg, Jay Taikeff, Tad Tosky, Evelyn Vitz, Victor Wakefield, Mary Wise, Lorre Wyatt, and Jerry Yulsman. x introduction The University of Bologna is one of the world's oldest and most venerable institutions of higher learning. In the wall of its Ana¬ tomical Lecture Hall, just a few feet above the speaker's rostrum, there is a curious little door, not much larger than a man's head. Its function had to do with an old custom: when the professor found his students growing inattentive, the door would open and a clown would show his face, crack a few jokes to make the au¬ dience laugh, then disappear. No doubt clowns have been appearing and disappearing since time began, and their traditional shout of “Here we are again!" evokes the arrival of a whole world of clowns. This world is as di¬ versified as life itself, for the hero of our story is to be found in a surprising number of guises, from the class clown to the court fool; from the Pueblo Indian “delight maker" to the Cheyenne "contrary;" in the theater, the rodeo, and the circus. They are all clowns, yet the differences between them are fully as fascinating as the similarities. Perhaps there is no such animal as the clown. There are, instead, only clowns. Certainly, to allow a single image of the clown, positive or negative, to prevail would needlessly limit our enjoyment of a phenomenon as variegated as the patches on a Harlequin costume. Although in recent years Madison Avenue has attempted to transform one particular image of the clown into a profitable ad- xi Introduction vertising tool—a Ronald McDonald or a Bozo the Clown, for ex¬ ample—new clowns are continually creating their own images independent of the mass media. And while Federico Fellini has de¬ voted an entire film to the clown's supposed demise, a resurgence of interest in the art of clowning has become more and more evi¬ dent, and the tradition of the clown, in all of its fascinating manifestations, suddenly seems more vital than ever. Until now, however, no one has attempted a comprehensive survey of the clown throughout history and throughout the world: in “primi¬ tive'' cultures and technological societies, in one-ring and three- ring circuses, in theaters and on the streets. X Much of the previous writing on clowns consists either of pure nostalgia or of lyrical tributes to the clown's sparkling personal¬ ity. There is certainly nothing wrong with this, but unfortunately it fails to tell us very much about what the clowns actually did as performers. As a partial remedy, all twelve chapters of this book contain detailed descriptions and rare photographs of popular clown acts. If the bulk of the material is from the past 300 years, that is because more descriptions are available from this period than from earlier times. The book is, however, limited to live per¬ formance and consequently does not deal with film or television. The notes, glossary, and bibliography at the back of the book are there as a service to those readers who may want to explore a specific aspect of the subject in greater detail. They are not essen¬ tial to one's understanding of the text, and it is to be hoped that the reader will feel free to ignore them and simply read the book for pleasure. Likewise, the book makes no pretense of answering such ultimate questions as the philosophical significance of comedy or the psychology of laughter. Such theoretical matters are not necessarily without interest, but there is no reason why the reader, given all the facts, cannot devise his own interpretation if he feels the need for one. While no previous book has attempted the scope of the present work, it cannot be claimed that Clowns is by any means definitive. In fact, this clearly would be impossible. Rather, it is a survey of clowning, an optimistic attempt to trace the evolution of a phenomenon, and not just a series of clown biographies. But whatever its success, the printed word can never replace the ex- Xll Introduction perience of seeing a good clown perform. If, however, the reader is inspired to see more clowns, all kinds of clowns, in the circus, on the streets, in the theater, and in everyday life, this book will certainly have served its purpose. Xlll ■ ■ Qlozons * 9