We couldn’t have had a better honeymoon than riding with the sideshow folks on the circus train.
By Loomis Dean
After graduating from the Eastman School of Photography, Loomis Dean (1917-2005) returned to his hometown of Sarasota in 1938, and, as he liked to say, “ran away with the circus,” spending several years as a press agent and photographer for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey “Greatest Show on Earth.” With its exotic cast of animals and characters, nonstop travel and incessant deadlines, the circus was a fantastic training ground for a photographer, and Dean, a gregarious and cheerful spirit, relished the experience.
His first of what would be 52 covers for Life Magazine, that pictorial showcase of midcentury American life that millions of readers pored over every week, featured a circus giraffe and famous clown Lou Jacobs. Dean went on to shoot celebrities, wars and world affairs, and his work has been exhibited around the world. He was also a talented writer, and this never-before-published essay about his 1940 honeymoon aboard the Ringling Circus train, accompanied by Dean’s legendary images, not only captures the spectacle of circus life, but offers a rare personal view of the sideshow performers, human beings with physical abnormalities who were exhibited to gaping audiences as “freaks.” To Dean and his new bride, who were berthed with them in the sideshow car, they were not freaks, but unique individuals and friends, and Dean brings them alive as fellow travelers, not only on the train, but on humanity’s shared journey through life.
My honeymoon took place in a sideshow freak car in the spring of 1941 on the way from Sarasota to New York.
I was married on November 19, 1940, one day after the circus reached our winter quarters in Sarasota, Florida, after having traveled 17,848 miles around the country.
Mary Sue, my wife-to-be, and I decided that she should enter into our marriage in a blaze of glory, riding an elephant in the opening parade the night before. We dressed her in a harem costume and propped her up on the head of an elephant. Everyone in town knew Mary Sue, as she was a talented pianist and played at all the local fetes and at the Presbyterian church on Sundays. The crowd recognized her and waved madly.
I had reserved seats for Mary Sue’s parents directly in front of the center ring, and they were unaware that Mary Sue was going to ride an elephant. Her father had poor eyesight, but as she wobbled by, clowning and waving, Mr. Freeman said; “Norma, that looks surprisingly like our daughter up there riding that elephant.” She replied: “Ernest, it is!” They were horrified, as they were already convinced that I was practically kidnapping their daughter and would force her to be a showgirl with all those strange circus people.
For the next few months, I continued working for the press office in Sarasota, and Mary Sue worked for a public accountant. So when the circus headed out for New York the next spring, we decided she would go with me for a belated honeymoon. We were to stay in New York for a month, then one week in Boston and four or five days in Washington, D.C. Then Mary Sue would have to go back home. She was not a showgirl, and there was no position for her in the circus.
The only double berth that we could get on the circus train going from Sarasota to New York was in the car reserved for the so-called “freaks” in the sideshow, and we seized on the opportunity.
The day the show left Sarasota was always the most exciting day of the year. All the railroad cars were freshly painted, and the new wagons had sunburst wheels beautifully gilded in red and gold. As they loaded the elephants and horses, the entire populace gathered at the winter quarters for the departure.
We were on the first section with all the acts and everything it took to put on a show except for the tent. That followed about six weeks later when we opened up “under canvas,” either in Brooklyn or Long Island City. But all the performers, the props, the costumes and performing animals, other than the draft horses, were on this train as it left Sarasota. The Catholic priest came out and blessed everyone with holy water. The performers were about 90 percent Catholics, and they gave a benefit performance for Saint Martha’s Parish every year. Father Elslander practically built an entire new church with the profits from these benefits, and he poured holy water on everyone and almost everything on the day of departure.
The departure was a festive occasion; a lot of booze was passed around, and all the top performers had parties in their drawing rooms, almost like a bon voyage celebration aboard a ship with everything except the confetti and streamers.
When that gaudy, spangled train passed through Newtown, the Black residential area of Sarasota, many youngsters and adults had an irresistible urge to jump on those open flat cars and join our world apart. Anyone could scramble on and hide, at least until we got out of town.
There was almost no work, with the Depression still lingering, and the stowaways hoped to get jobs as roustabouts when the show went under canvas.
The berth was “double” in the sense that we had an upper and lower, but we put all our belongings in the upper and both of us slept in the lower. On the roustabouts’ car, the men slept two deep and three high and also double in the ushers’ car. Our berth was about the size of a large single bed and not that uncomfortable. The secret was to have a hard mattress, not a bouncy one, which would toss you clean out of the sack on those rattling old road beds, which were particularly bad through Georgia and South Carolina.
They gave us a couple of “dukies,” an unappetizing species of a box lunch every day, but everyone also took along all sorts of packaged food, plus a good supply of magazines and paperback books. You had to have a lot of reading material and clean clothes, both nonexistent enroute to New York. Each car had what is known as a “grease joint,” reigned over by the car porter, who had a little stove. He could make you a hamburger or hot dog and also sold cold beer and booze.
It took five or six days to reach New York because we had to stop frequently to feed the animals. Otherwise, we rattled along at 25 miles per hour. As we traveled as fourth-class freight, we were always sidetracked for the fast passenger trains.
Feeding and watering the animals was a bizarre scene, usually staged on the outskirts of a small town with enough space to unload 52 elephants and two or three hundred horses, plus all those camels, giraffes and various other beasts. The trainers led them off, and it all took at least two hours.
While they did that, we got the hell off that train and rushed out to try and find a proper hot meal. But what we really wanted most was a hot bath.
Wherever the train stopped, everyone in town seemed to be there, including all the taxis. Mary Sue and I would grab a cab downtown to the first hotel, where we took a day-rate room, had a bath and a meal, picked up the latest newspapers and magazines, and dashed back to the train. You never knew when the train was going to pull out. There was no signal except a short whistle blast before leaving some dreary little rural community, and the whole crowd of circus folk, like creatures from outer space, would leap back into their cars and wave goodbye.
The mid-Europeans were so thrifty they wouldn’t spend a dime to get a decent meal, a bath or anything else. They ate those dukies and saved their money. Many performers were Czechoslovakian, Romanian, Arabian or from even more exotic countries. All the gypsies had accordions or guitars, and as soon as the train came to a halt, they jumped off to unwind and started playing music and dancing.
There were several dogs aboard, belonging to various performers who had taught them amazing tricks, and they joined the commotion, showing off their newest feats. It was a marvelous free show for all the hayseeds congregated along the tracks, especially at night, when they set up lights and flaming torches.
The interior of the sideshow “freak” car where Mary Ann and I were riding was a world all its own, and Fellini, the great Italian director, would have gone crazy over our fellow travelers.
There were Eiko and Iko, two albino twins about 60 years old. Their hair was bright-pink and stood out at right angles almost two feet on either side of their heads. We billed them as the men from Mars. They were sweet, friendly guys who could not read or write and had the dual mentality of a 10-year-old. The twins were great fun, and we would all sit around and chat for hours.
Next came Jack Earl, the giant who was 8-feet 6-inches tall and had a special berth to accommodate his height. I had already met this extremely intelligent man, who had gone to the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota at the same time as my sister. He was a talented sculptor and worked in miniatures with his enormous fingers
Jack was a familiar figure around Sarasota, always beautifully tailored, as he bought all his clothes from a specialized sartorial emporium whenever we were in Chicago. His size-24 high-heeled cowboy boots and 10-gallon hat lent him another foot in height. Frequently Sarasotans would see Jack fishing on the causeways and bridges, and the sight of this apparition would back up traffic for miles. Besides being an artist, Jack was a photo nut, and we often compared notes.
The entire Doll family were midgets, unique in the world. There was Harry, patriarch of the family, and his four sisters. The youngest, Daisy, was billed as the “miniature Mae West” because she had an hourglass figure, and we dressed her like the glamour queen. Daisy was the only one who was married. Her husband, an enormous Cherokee Indian called Tiny, was a ticket seller and rode herd on all the family during winter quarters. He would drive them all over in a big Dodge car with all those midgets chattering in German in the back seat.
Another midget was billed as the smallest guy in the world. His name was Major Mite and he traveled with his mother. The “Major” was a bad- tempered man who had normal-sized parents and brother and sister. The brother was a big red-headed man, a talker on the sideshow, and his sister was a showgirl.
Next came Wilbur, the wide-mouthed boy, who came from some obscure place in Central Florida. He could put nine golf balls in his mouth at the same time, but if he laid off for a few months during the winter his mouth would shrink. He practiced on the train all the way to New York in order to reach “nine” by the time we got there. He sat on the edge of his bunk popping balls into his mouth and bleating; “Well, I got another one in. That makes five today.” His tag line was, “It’s silly, but it’s a living.”
The sword swallower, Alec Linton, was practicing, too. He had been off for over three months, lying on the beach, and his esophagus had retracted slightly during the layoff. He swallowed a neon tube because everyone thought sword swallowers faked their act by drawing the sword up into the handle. He was the first to come up with the idea of swallowing a neon tube. Alec would take off his shirt as the lights were turned out in the sideshow and poke the neon tube down his throat. You could see it light up in his stomach, and he would wiggle it around to prove he had really swallowed the tube.
The Hilton sisters were Siamese twins, very pretty girls attached at the hips who slept double in a single berth. They were both extremely intelligent and fun to talk to. We got more publicity out of the Hilton sisters than almost anyone else. Gardner Wilson, one of the press agents, was alleged to be sleeping with the twins, and he conceived the idea of pretending to get them married. We would unearth a sideshow roustabout, who would duly claim that he wanted to marry one of them. Then we’d all go down to the courthouse in some country town to try and get a marriage license. Of course, the city fathers would be appalled. We always made sure that there was an AP photographer there so the picture and story would hit the wires that day. Gardner could only work this every couple of weeks and only in a small town, as we were terrified that a big city might actually issue a license for one of them to be married. They were marvelous girls and went along with the gag.
I was slightly worried about innocent Mary Sue being squeezed into this outrageous company for six days, but she didn’t seem to mind at all and got along with the whole crowd.
The fat girls were usually great fun and we got a new one all the time. “Baby Irene” was only 19 years old, weighed 620 pounds and giggled constantly. The “baby” had to have a custom-built berth and like many fat ladies, she had a very active sex life, entertaining a stream of male visitors, but she always kept the Pullman curtain discreetly drawn across her berth.
Often we would just pick up our “thin man” on the road or occasionally find an ad in Billboard Magazine: “Thin man for hire and available.” Those poor guys died frequently. One weighed just 45 pounds. We dressed him in black long johns with a top hat. He looked like a British chimney sweep from the 18th century. He didn’t say much—just sat around grinning. We really never got to know any of our thin men.
Josephine, an Indigenous Mexican girl, was the snake trainer. These snakes were enormous and they were always with her, all five of them measuring between eight and 16 feet. Josephine kept them inside the car with her rather than on the flat cars because they had to stay warm. But at least the snakes did not have to be fed at every stop. They had all been well nourished before we left winter quarters and only needed food once a week.
She would take an entire crate of live white rabbits and chuck one of them to each of the snakes. They would gobble down the bunnies, and that would keep them quiet during the entire trip. Josephine was lively and her love life was never inactive. But anyone who wanted to sleep with her had to put up with the snakes, because they all shared the same bed. The mere thought of stepping on one of her pets enroute to the bathroom during the night kept most of the performers’ kidneys in high control.
There was also a fire eater, but we did not let him practice inside that car. Fire eaters are like the thin men; they come and go. Thin men may die but the fire eaters tend to drift off; and like itinerant fry cooks, there were hundreds of them everywhere. In Paris, a dozen worked in front of the Georges Pompidou Museum.
On circus days, the sideshows commenced at 10 a.m. and kept going until almost 10 in the evening, and sometimes they brought in as much as $20,000 a day. The sideshow barkers liked to bring out a few performers to hustle the crowd, and a fire eater was always a big come-on.
We also had our tattooed lady, Betty Broadbent, a little girl from Arkansas. According to hearsay, she was tattooed from her neck to the soles of her feet. I always wanted to get a nude photograph of Betty, but she was too shy to pose and wore a bikini during her act. I pleaded, “Come on, Betty, let me take a nude shot. It would be a great art photo.” But she insisted that she really was tattooed all the way down and across everything. Charlie O’Rourke, her husband, the ventriloquist, confirmed it: “That’s true, by God, and I’m crazy about them moving pictures.”
The year before, one of the major attractions had been the Ubangis, straight from the wilds of Central Africa. They had huge pie-plate lips stretched around flat wooden disks, and many of the sideshow regulars refused to have anything to do with them. On the road, they were allocated half a car and carried on with blood rites and other mysterious practices. They spoke only their tribal language, but they were smart enough to realize that they were being cheated by their manager. To retaliate, they started committing obscenities right on stage. The manager quickly came around.
There were also the stretch-neck women from Burma—tiny girls with necks almost 18 inches long. The natives put bamboo rings on the babies from the time of birth to elongate their necks, just as the Chinese used to bind feet. This group also had private quarters on the train, as they were unable to communicate with their fellow performers.
The Great Waldo, who swallowed live mice, only joined up in New York. We would not have enjoyed seeing him practice in the confines of that railroad car.
Koo Koo, the “bird girl,” also joined the circus in New York, and we became great pals. She was a “pinhead,” with a head about the size of an orange and decorated with a long frothy plume worn over her feathered costume and clawfoot clown shoes. Koo Koo was very bright and would make all sorts of jokes with the spectators to tout her pictures. She liked to go out and get drunk almost every night, and we often took her to the cheap bars around the railroad yards, where she scared the liver out of people. Koo Koo would sidle up to a brakeman and twitter, “How about buying a drink for a pretty girl, buddy?” Then she’d give him a kiss on the cheek and he would almost faint.
Actually, the Ringling Bros. sideshow was nicknamed the “Sunday School Show,” as most of our attractions were innocuous oddities, never revolting, like snake eaters and some other weird attractions. We hired most of them in New York City, where they worked in various arcades on 42nd Street.
We arrived in New York at freight yards up in the Bronx. We had to unload and make the long haul down to Madison Square Garden. The minute we pulled in I started to work. My chore was to take care of the local photographers and see that they got some good arrival pictures, especially the sideshow car with snaps of the fat lady and the giant.
The old Piccadilly Hotel was headquarters for our entire press staff. This true show-business hotel was located at the back end of Schubert Alley, which led to the stage door entrance of the Paramount Theater. Benny Goodman’s band was playing there and Gene Krupa was living in the hotel with half a dozen musicians and all the show girls.
Broadway Sam, the ticket hustler, was right next door; and Roger, the porter, was reputed to be a millionaire. He apparently dealt in stolen furs and all sorts of contraband. The hotel room was paid on my expense account and I had a small amount of per diem for food, but that did not include Mary Sue. We two literally had to live as cheaply as one.
There was a Child’s Restaurant on the corner of 45th Street and Broadway, and if we were feeling flush, we would dine there for 65 cents. Otherwise, it was the Italian joint with spaghetti, meatballs and a glass of sour red wine for a quarter each. You could also get chop suey and a cup of tea for a quarter at the Chinese restaurant.
There were 14 theaters on 45th Street and on 44th Street there were that many more. We knew all the Broadway press agents and got free or discounted tickets to most of those shows. Even for a dollar you could get a seat someplace in the house. I saw “Porgy and Bess” with the original cast 10 times.
Mary Sue and I agreed that our time in the sideshow car and those weeks in New York were the best honeymoon anyone ever had. The friends I made and the lessons I learned with the circus stayed with me for life. I can still shave in cold water, and I never worry about inconsequential things, because as my fellow travelers in the sideshow car used to tell us, “Tomorrow is another town.”