Circus Freaks and Sideshows (Documentary)

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coming up freak shows harmless entertainment or shameless exploitation [Music] deformed disfigured yet irresistible to millions who paid money to stare at the people known as freaks I was going to be in the freakshow when I come here I feel I felt very good about myself but while many found freak shows amusing others considered them inhumane the whole question comes down to exploitation or non exploitation men standing eight feet tall women covered with tattoos they were among the oddities that made freakshows a major attraction for more than a century but in post-war America social reformers declared that freak shows have no place in a civilized society and should be shut down it set off a dispute between unlikely adversaries with the so-called do-gooders on one side and the very performers they were trying to protect on the other join us for circus freaks and sideshows a century after its heyday crowds still come to Coney Island America's legendary playground by the sea this spit of land off Brooklyn New York is where freak shows reached the height of their popularity hosting as many as 8 separate sites today only two still exist here gained attempting to recapture the glory of summers past ladies and gentlemen here we are in Coney Island in front of the circus museum freaks wonders and curiosities free choose tell us something very important about the human condition especially in this new century everything today is virtual everything's want to screen everything's want to monitor it's email it's it's it's don't get up close and friendly with anybody then sideshow blows past all of that they demand that you be right there that it be right in your face that's the type of entertainment that asad shows it's visceral it gets you in your gut it makes you laugh and makes you applaud it makes you think you're going to puke it's got all of the impact of a big-budget special-effects movie we have to understand this experience as the people who were in it understood it and not from a modern day repulsion ladies and gentlemen get your tickets and go now the show is continuous it's never out it's never over it goes on all the time the origins of the freakshow date back to the 1840s when industrialization in America creates unprecedented leisure time for the masses and spurs Americans to indulge the pursuit of happiness as a result new forms of public entertainment arise including establishments known as dime museums dime museums are the grandparents of all the museums we have today although they wouldn't want to admit it that includes not only Smithsonian but also Ripley's Believe It or Not dime museums offer patrons exhibits of wild animals exotic artifacts wax figures and human curiosities nowhere is that dime museum phenomenon more entrenched than in New York City a burgeoning center of Industry and immigration Phineas Taylor Barnum a showman poised to become the father of the freakshow owns the city's most popular exhibit hall the American Museum although dime museums existed in the country before Barnum's American Museum what he was an absolute genius at was taking an idea gilding it in some manner or another sending out advancement professional fans professional enthusiasts many times into society to generate excitement for a new exhibit that might be coming in so he really embraced a lot of the early early ideas of advertising and advanced promotion PT Barnum's career as a showman began in the 1830s when he bought the rights to exhibit Joice Heth purported to be 161 years old and George Washington's Nurse Joy chef was his first challenge and he found that he could successfully market the concept of a hundred and sixty one-year-old nursemaid to George Washington and get people to come pay a fee to listen to Joy's head sing tell stories about her early rearing of George Washington and people left with something they left sort of fascinated by it they were intrigued by the concept of could this actually be is it a possibility that somebody could live to this age and it was up to you to decide Barnum's exhibition of Joice Heth earned him a handsome profit but when she died doctors examining her determined that she was only 80 years old and a fraud the revelation bothers neither Barnum nor his audience the public would accept humbug or a fraud in the presentation of a curiosity as long as it was entertaining a lot of people think that Barnum was the man who said there's a sucker born every minute anybody who spends more than 5 minutes studying PT Barnum realizes immediately that would never have been aligned across Barnum's lips the essence of Barnum success was the fact that he understood his public very often better than the public understood itself Barnum learns two fundamental principles in his association with Joice Heth first freaks are not born but rather created and secondly the promotion of a curiosity is just as important as the curiosity itself Barnum applies these lessons to the American Museum and establishes the practices and patterns of the freakshow for all to follow Barnum was the one who realized that unless you put as much entertainment as possible in one space it was never going to keep people coming back and the essence of the dime museum just like the essence of the amusement parks today is you have to make people come back and what with all the leisure time in the 1800's that was a cinch for a man like Barnum a man of his genius Barnum transforms the dime museum into a lively entertainment center he advertises through broadsides banners and brass bands but nothing is as effective as word of mouth his most talked-about attractions include the Fiji mermaid pure humbug created by sewing a monkey's torso to a fishtail and live authentic freaks such as Chang and Eng the original Siamese twins who still tour after marrying two sisters and fathering 23 children between them William Henry Johnson a man with a Miss shapen head who Barnum bills as zip though what is it and who enjoys the longest career of any freakshow attraction until his death in 1926 an Anna Swan the 7-foot 11 inch Nova Scotia giant s who marries another giant captain Bates and thus they become the world's tallest married couple the performers that exhibited themselves were paid and actually paid well often they were boarded in on the upper floors of the American museums and not all of Barnum's human curiosities stayed with him a very long time Barnum like change rather regularly so it was that type of change that kept the museum dynamic and kept the public coming back for more they stare in awe as Barnum's freaks perform routines tell their life stories and answer questions in 19th century America gawking at people who are born differently is not only socially acceptable it is considered family entertainment medical science in its infancy as an organized profession has yet to classify freaks as diseased thus allowing people to enjoy the show free of guilt the explanation scientists offer for why freaks exist sound as far-fetched as well humbug in the late 19th century one of the explanations of why somebody might be born different that is with what we might call a disability today was the theory of maternal impression and there were variations of the theory but one was that if a woman was pregnant and saw something that scared her that the abdi the experience that scared her would be revealed in the baby she gave birth to so if she were scared by a stallion for example she might give birth to a child who looked like horse such theories only add to the lurid appeal of Barnum's human curiosities they become the public's favorite exhibits and make the American Museum the first bona fide freak show and New York's most popular attraction Barnum was so successful as a dime museum operator with his American Museum in Manhattan that in the first five years of operation as many people pass through the turnstiles of that collection as there were people in the United States that's a better track record for the first five years of operation that even Disney World had among the freaks that PT Barnum exhibits at the American Museum the most famous one is the midget general Tom Fong Tom Thumb is probably the most famous of Barnum's curiosities because we still can connect to the wondrousness of of a very tiny person in 1842 Barnum discovers a bashful little four-year-old boy named Charles Stratton the child who had stopped growing before he turned one is not even two feet tall unsatisfied with the true story Barnum changes Stratton's age to 11 and alters the boys place of birth from Bridgeport Connecticut to London England to appeal to Americans preference for European attractions finally Barnum changes Stratton's name to Tom Thumb after the legendary dwarf Knight in King Arthur's Court and for good measure gives the boy the rank of general while tutoring him to become an entertainer within weeks Barnum creates what he advertises as a perfect man in miniature not an ill-formed offensive to look at dwarf Tom Thumb didn't challenge the sensibilities of people he was not perceived as grotesque he was horrible and interesting he was a great performer he could capture an audience and sing and dance and he spoke beautifully Tom Thumb becomes an instant sensation and the talk of all New York in 1844 Barnum takes him on the first of several highly successful tours of Europe where he performs to the delight of royalty most notably Queen Victoria who showers him with gifts little Tom Thumb loves every minute of it Stratton took to the business he understood immediately what it was his audience wanted that's why he had such a successful audience with Queen Victoria even as a child he understood how to be a child and what as a child an audience would be impressed with how to act the little man Stratton plays the little man so well he becomes Barnum's partner when the tiny performer dies at the age of 46 he is a millionaire complete with mansion yacht and horses his rise from a shy little boy to a world-class celebrity becomes a freak legend Tom Thumb was the greatest exhibit of the mall mainly because Barnum made him the greatest exhibit of them all Barnum's enormous success at creating Tom Thumb in particular and freaks in general leads him to expand the venues in which they appear in 1871 he forms the first of several alliances with various circus promoters most notably James Bailey to take his museum exhibits and curiosities on tour he sets them up alongside the big top to entertain crowds before the main show begins as a result Barnum invents the sideshow although sideshow much like we'd recognize it today had existed with circuses in a small way prior to Barnum what Barnum realized intimately was that he could transpose that museum experience to circus Barnum in the way he did everything made it much bigger huge compared to what everybody else was doing in fact the the posters from the time always show Barnum's line up a sideshow attraction and just stretching off into the distance dozens and dozens of Acts know audiences in the heartland who had never been to a big city dime museum can stare in wonder at not only zip the what is it and Anna the giantess but also Charles Tripp the armless Wonder and Madame de Vere the bearded lady the Barnum and Bailey Circus the greatest show on earth was coined the sideshow was starting to evolve in 1893 two years after Barnum's death the sideshow makes a significant advance at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago the most popular attraction of this World's Fair is the Midway Plaisance an amusement area featuring the first ferris wheel in the country games of chance concession stands and exhibits of freaks and exotic people's those showman realize you know there's a benefit to concentration there's a benefit to putting it all in one place there's a benefit to in a way learning from Barnum who put it all in one place once they realized the the money in that the benefit to that the sheer joy and outrage and pleasure for the public and themselves in all of that the amusement parks were born traveling carnival was born and it's been history in the future ever since [Music] by the turn of the 20th century amusement parks spring up in America's major cities becoming the newest showcases for freak shows the most prominent ones are on New York's Coney Island audiences there consists mostly of immigrant labor leaders escaping teeming tenements for the breezy pleasures of what the New York Times describes as Sodom by the sea it's an audience where not everybody speaks English so what type of entertainment works well if people don't even understand the language that's being spoken as long as every five minutes somebody eats flyer swallows a sword who hit a boat or hammers a nail into their head believe it or not who cares if you understand the language the first major amusement park at Coney Island to launch a freakshow his dreamland the vision of Samuel Gompers a showman considered the Barnum of the seaside playground dream lands most popular attraction is lilliputian or midget city a village Gumpert builds to scale for the 300 little people who live there year-round complete with their own fire and police departments it's a very popular attraction unfortunately dreamland burns to the ground in 1911 it is all over the politicians who own it decide they're not going to rebuild the manager however the hero of our story Samuel Gompers acquires the property puts up a tent while the smoldering ruins are still there while the ground is almost too hot to walk on and he creates what to this day is the mother of all sideshows the dreamland circus sideshow and that is where that the optical art form of slideshows gets perfected gets developed into the ten-in-one circus sideshow [Music] in 1911 Samuel Gompers Coney Island's answer to PT Barnum opens the dreamland sideshow on the smoldering grounds where the dreamland amusement park had burned dum dum Bert's his show enjoys tremendous success by 1920 as many as 30,000 patrons a day taking the ten cent twenty minutes show of his freaks and curiosities Gump rates constantly adds new attractions and soon has more exhibits than any sideshow in the history of the business inspired by his success other sideshows open on Coney Island transforming this Beach community into a mecca for such entertainment but with an influx of competition the stock of legitimate freaks runs thin David Rosen the owner of the Wonderland circus sideshow here in this building in the 50s is the man who really comes on strong faking the acts he's the guy who takes identical twin sisters puts a girdle on them under a big dress claims they're Siamese twins which they're not gets away with it for a while until one day they get fed up having argument on stage split up on stage and quit the show the Coney Island sideshows perfect what Barnum began establishing the taming one the standard freakshow format that lasts for decades but ten-in-one is an all live show where live performers do ten different acts that perform continuous all day long so the show doesn't have a plot the audience could come in at any point it's continuous admission you stay 45 minutes to an hour until the show you walked in on comes around to gun the same out in corny lingo the classic tenon one begins with a ballyhoo a free exhibition given outside a sideshow to attract a crowd or tip a string of garishly painted canvas is known as a banner line stretches out in front of the sideshow catching the eye of a casual passerby Johnny Mia is the last of the old-time banner painters your two key ingredients when you're cooking up this very colorful cake are sex and violence you have to appeal to the Freudian side of their brand you need to give them something that's creepy and weird and maybe I shouldn't see it at all and that is that's the sell the banners draw the crowds attention to the talker a man mistakenly called a barker by those not in the business he stands at the center of the ballyhoo platform delivering his rapid patter trying to get the crowd to buy tickets the talk is the highest-paid people in the sideshow though a lot of them work on percentage of the gross talkers are the key they get the people in there as a boy Bobby Reynolds was so mesmerized by the talkers he saw on Coney Island that he became one himself for his own sideshows history's mysteries on the inside of our show you're going to see dozens of unusual strange bizarre people Frank Quinn tinny a man with three legs sixteen toes real human shrunken heads Fiji mermaid freaks and curiosities the likes of which no one has ever seen before they're here they are real and they're on the inside to convince the audience that what they'll see on the inside is real some of the working acts like fire eaters or snake charmers join the talker on the ballet platform and perform Johnny Mia swallowed swords to entice the crowd and here we have a sword measuring 27 inches from the hilt down here to the tip when this one swallowed it winds up way down here at the base of the stomach but because this is history's mysteries we're going to do something even stranger and even more mysterious because today for this show I'm going to attempt to double my body directly in half with that piece of steel still inside of me are you ready [Music] I'll have him solid by Pauline Paul he feel the tail boy if you notice the right side of the body of that life-size photograph is that of a muscular male while the left side has all the features of a perfectly formed female after this initial performance the talker turns the tip or persuades the cloud to come in with the help of a shill a sideshow employee planted in the crowd who rushes to buy a ticket encouraging others to follow suit [Music] once inside another talker goes down the stage introducing the spectators to each of the ten acts a crowd favorite was always Melvin Burkhardt now 93 and once billed as the anatomical wonder the original human blockhead I'm gonna show you why they call me the human blockhead I take a common ordinary spike and drive it into my head something like this Oh doll must have forgot to sharpen it Oh hit a bone what can you expect out of a bonehead no I'm not gonna bleed I guarantee if I bleed any blood it'll be red once you get that in there it's really very simple oh you have to do it be simple enough to do it and I'm yet the guy can do it too of course you don't have to be crazy to do this but it helps I chose to go you what some people will do to keep out of work the blow-off an unadvertised attraction offered for the price of an additional ticket ends every show it's meant to clear out one crowd and make way for another by showing them something especially unusual the bow off can be anything from a jar of pickled punks the term for a real or fake two-headed baby resting in formaldehyde - an illusion like the headless body [Music] Brina the ten-in-one sideshow reaches the height of its popularity between the world wars during this period hundreds of sideshows crisscross the country as part of circuses amusement parks and carnivals everywhere the 10 and ones appear they shock and amaze crowds the first question everybody asks is why do you do that they ask it with a born freak and it kind of means one thing they ask it of the working act and it means something else the born freak looks exactly the way you see them on that platform they can do nothing else with the way they look and the fact they've chosen a sideshow to make their living that's their choice the working act is something else entirely that was a good way to make a living without having to go out and be well I always said if I go out and take another job I'm just a bum here I'm a star so here's where I'm going to stay I wanted to do these weird bizarre things I like the idea of being hammy and performing for people and being applauded and laughed at and so on but not everyone is laughing and applauding in 1932 Hollywood releases the movie freaks a drama starring some of the most prominent sideshow acts in the business the movie bombs the negative response reflects a growing change in the public's perception of freak shows one of the reviewers in The New York Times says we're not sure we should show this at the movie theater or at the hospital so they're living at this time when the D legitimization of the freakshow is something that's occurring the D legitimizing of the freakshow results from advances in medical science researchers discover cures and treatments for what causes freaks not only reducing their numbers but changing how the public reacts to them for many pleasure turns to pity once they find out for example that a pinhead has microcephaly a midget suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta and a giant is afflicted with acromegaly this major shift in the public's attitude towards freak shows sparks efforts to close them dumb a move the freaks strongly oppose all of the Bugaboo comes down to one word and the word is freak now what is a freak the whole question comes down to exploitation or non exploitation now not every small person on every deformed person is a freak a freak is somebody with a deformity who chooses to become an entertainer who makes a choice and why do they make that choice well because not every handicapped person wants to stay hidden at home or wants to on the other hand wants to rise above their handicap and become a doctor or lawyer one of the traditional job opportunities open to somebody with a handicap is to become an entertainer becoming an entertainer offers born freaks the means to make a lucrative living their first line of defense against those who seek to close sideshows down the attitude by and large from the showman from not only the managers but all the way down to the performers the born freak performers was almost universalized stay out of the way of my money I have as much right to make a living as you do and if you think I'm being exploited you've obviously never seen my paycheck just as important as a means to make a living the sideshow offers freaks a way of life much more hospitable than any they might find in an institution it provided them a community of people that were in the immortal words of the film freaks one of us one of us was a camaraderie the idea that there were other people out there that had physical peculiarities and and there was this this bonding is wonderful bonding with those people Sam who's gonna be the boss of the family you're all honey it was we can stand on our own two feet we can make a living and we can hold our heads up we're not on welfare we're not on any public assistance and we don't want people to feel sorry for us from the freaks perspective if anyone's being exploited it's the audience my stock analogy for this is simply you walk down the street and you see somebody with three legs I defy you not to turn around and look at them you're going to look there is nothing wrong with looking at that person it's human nature this is why all things unusual including this program have an audience because you want to see something different despite the efforts of many the freak shows were being open but what changes in public perception can't accomplish the grim economic realities of the amusement business rendered inevitable the rising costs of melting a freak show on the last half of the 20th century including transportation housing insurance work permits payroll taxes and fairground fees increasingly make them prohibitive especially when compared to amusement park rides which have much lower overhead and quicker turnover [Music] we've heard it with profit margins slimmer than the living skeleton most freak shows have no choice but to close down the people who were run in sideshows are in show business and facades in the business and if they're not making a profit any more than why do them so sad shows essentially died out across America they're all gone by the 1970s who else wants to do it first the first of all the carnival owners won't let you in there because they got so many lives number one you got the politically incorrect but you got the you maniacs you can't have a freak animal show nowhere I got I got a five legged cow I'm afraid to bring out its a Elsie and they used to all that poor cow five legs I said you realize what that cow would be if it didn't have five legs and they say what McDonald's as the targets of reformers and the victims of economics the number of freak shows steadily decline in the last half of the 20th century until only a few remain today hey the big old ten-in-one circus sideshow and carnival sideshows of all are almost completely gone in their day there would have been hundreds of those shows hundreds of carnivals touring the United States now you're lucky if you can find a handful and most of them are museum shows shows where there are not live performers at all a survey of current sideshows indicates that each in their own way seeks to carry on the traditions of this nearly bygone but bizarre form of American popular culture welcome to Coney Island ladies and gentlemen one of the museum shows still in operation belongs to Bobby Reynolds a sideshow veteran of more than 50 years a quick tour of some of his exhibits echoes back to the freakshows roots ladies and gentlemen this is the original Fiji mermaid the results a Barnum in the early 1800s yes Fiji mermaid a fake but a good one ladies and gentlemen this is a real human shrunken head now the way they shrink heads is they cut your head off take the flesh off of the skull sew it up boil it in water and after they do that they put salt and a hot sand in the neck till they get it down to the desired size and then they smoke it like you would a piece of beef jerky or him this little animal is stranger than the Tasmanian Devil the swamp monster from the Isle of the Halle mala goola but actually it's the ass end of a deer but I say it's stranger and more fearful than it has Manian death Oh what and give up show business never it's my life across the street from Bobby Reynolds Museum stands his spirited rival sideshow by the seashore opened in 1985 with a grant from the NEA and funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs hi I'm eek the geek the man who tattooed his face with space for history's mysteries welcome to the sideshow the intention is to be the only place left in America that runs an authentic ten-in-one circus sideshow not cutting corners not cheating all live acts doing the proper format running continuous admission so it's not just something to read about in the history books that you actually have one place left in America that still does it the way they are meant to be as nearly the last of their kind the freaks of sideshow by the seashore perform as if on a mission embodying the spirit of their predecessors I feel that I was born to be in the freakshow because I'm small develop it helps my self-esteem yeah when I come here I feel I felt very good about myself sideshow is my love it is the love of my life and I view it as my career that's my profession I'm very proud of what I do and I'm also preserving an American tradition that has been going on and interrupted for many many years we got things going in the mid 80s by reviving the whole concept of a ten and one then Jim Rose comes along takes it outside the context of an amusement park or a circus and enters the rock-and-roll circuit thrills chills and dr. bills at tickets good or a seat that you'll only use the edge high-flying bone-jarring excitement and now an exclusive for the History Channel I'm going to fight into a napkin and we're gonna have an H cut into it with a chainsaw jimbros annex street performer from seattle forms his own freak show in 1992 in an attempt to update the format he was very calculated to go after a young audience I wasn't relying on people's nostalgia I had to go for those that had never seen it and the best way to reach them is through rock and roll fire fire Vegas [Applause] rose's odd ensemble of misfits and marbles plays the 92 Lollapalooza tour featuring the best bands in the alternative rock scene and later open for edgy performers like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson I had to have attending service things happen in everywhere you need to swivel on your neck for this show because they were used to MTV edit and I think I'm the first live show theatre or anything that ever understood the MTV Edit and gave a world whippin fast-paced show [Music] rose's circus is an instant hit with the youthful audience but what was innovative and provocative in the early nineties barely raises an eyebrow today Rose personifies the daunting challenge the remaining sideshows face to stay relevant and vital to new and ever more sophisticated audiences what I sold thousands of tickets to and 92 is now your next-door neighbor a pierced and tattooed kid the challenge of framing a show that is relevant is one that I don't know if I'll ever get over marketing changes everything if I tried to sell the show like I did in 92 it wouldn't work so for me it's a constant changing field as you watch and keep an eye on trends for marketing [Music] as a new century begins the sign show faces an uncertain future predicting the future of sideshow is a very dangerous exercise as I think anybody in the sideshow business would be the first to tell you perhaps it's in television or some form of it perhaps it's online perhaps it'll continue in the clubs I think there's definitely a future for live performance it's what attracted humanity to these odd and bizarre acts in the very very beginning as long as there was somebody who was willing to stand up and go look at me look at me for a price that's where sideshows started in and I think that's what it'll always be [Music] [Applause] [Music] freak shows thrived on their ability to showcase performers who couldn't be seen anywhere else but as television expands the boundaries of what's acceptable entertainment the few remaining sideshow operators say it's far more difficult to find original acts like talk show producers and pro wrestling promoters freakshow impresarios are faced with a daunting challenge coming up with new ways to shock audiences that have pretty much seen it all to discover more about this and other topics please visit our search engine at history channel calm [Music] [Music] [Music]

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Channel: DocSpot

Views: 403,659

Rating: 4.7345467 out of 5

Keywords: Circus, Freaks, Sideshows, Freak, Sideshow, Clown, Circus Freak, Circus Freaks, History

Id: rPy6LeUpe7o

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 41min 50sec (2510 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 24 2017

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