SLAPSTICK Ay Bl WD DUMBBELL | | | HILER HARZBERG 4xv ARTHUR MOSS SLAPSTICK DUMBBELL - 9 HILER HARZBERG xv’ARTHUR MOSS ionnesttiocaen AY EMI, Se sap1H Aq Burmeig quejnquiy enb.ry) SLAPSTICK - AND DUMBBELL A CASUAL SURVEY OF CLOWNS and CLOWNING HILER HARZBERG ann ARTHUR MOSS ew of these pages, have appeared, slightly different form, in The Freeman. FAINT NOTE OF INTRODUCTION Slapstick and Dumbell was, | believe, originaliy intended to be an essay on the circus as a whole; but the most vital and enduring factor in the popularity of the circus ran away with the idea, and it became a monograph on clowns. In Paris particularly, the clown is a figure of importance to all sorts of people. In the circus, well known clowns are given star positions on the bill ; many spec- tators arrive just in time for their acts and depart immediately afterwards. Not only does the clown perform in the circus; he plays music hali engagements; does special- ties at smart dance places and all night ‘festivals; entertains children in the big depart- ment stores during the holidays. If it is now and then fashionable in both France and America to indulge in the precious pastime of estimating the universal symbolism and psychological significance of the clown, the real and continued enjoyment of clowning is fundamental and non- analytical. ‘This is clearly evident in Paris, from the patent pleasure of the street mob in some green-wagon entertainment to the sincere delight of the Saturday nighters when the Fratellinis play fire-department at the Medrano or Charlie stands on his ear at the Cirque de Paris. Two virtues the writers may well claim for this discourse on clowning ancient and modern. One is a complete freedom from sentimentalizing, which used to be the inevitable accompaniment of any interest in clowns as human beings. The other is a thorough distaste for those aesthetic maunderings which serve so often to turn a healthy appreciation of buffoonery into a languishing intellectual pose. In this case, the illustrations as well as the text leave no doubt as to the real gusto of the authors. FLORENCE GILLIAM Paris, 1924. THE GETTY CENTER LIBRARY In the last year or two there has been a tremendous revival of intellectual ap- preciation of such humble entertainers as circus and music-hall virtuosi.. Our youngest generation of critics is copying, unwittingly perhaps, the early Eighteen Nineties, when under the influence of the de Goncourts, and Toulouse-Lautrec, writers and painters of that remote period frequented a small circus on the Rue Benouville in Paris. At the moment, we find the critical brotherhood of smart and highbrow magazines in Amer- ica rhapsodizing over Charlie Chaplin, the Rath Brothers, Bird Millmann, and other excellent jongleurs whose names and deeds have been common property for a decade. Our very highbrowest critic gushes about the Fratellinis coincidental with the decor- ation of these popular zannies by the French Academy. The mediocre critic is never more than a short jump ahead of the academy which in turn is seldom more than ten years behind the poor old public. The clown has been a pet character of many writers. Too often he has been pictured as a combination of imbecilities with no more relation to truth than the popular American belief that all Frenchmen above the age of sixteen have mistresses. One of the characteristics of the fiction clown is that though he may be crushed under some overwhelming personal tragedy, he stoically goes about his daily labors. The same may be said of many woolen merchants, bridge-builders, bus-drivers, literary critics, gland-experts, and Shriners. Another clown attribute dear to the hearts of fictioneers is that the humble zanni is usually a good Shakespearian scholar. This bunk has gained in popular belief since the announcement a few years ago that Char- lie Chaplin would one day play Hamlet. Clowns are people. Extraordinary clowns are extraordinary people ; so too are gifted college professors, singers, woodcarvers, physicians, and statesmen, if any. A poor clown is as great a bore as a poor dramatic critic, no more and no less. As a profession, clowning, by reason of its great antiquity and its vast popularity at all times, is as eminently respectable as preaching. ‘That Billy Sunday draws bigger audiences than Grock only proves the former’s superiority as a buffoon. The circus, whether it be called arena or tabernacle, will always, if it offers a good show, fill the pockets of its backers. Though strength, skill, and dexterity are important elements in circus entertain- ment, the clowns have always been the most popular members of the personnel. They represent a phase as old as the theatre itself. i Drawing by Heuzé It is impossible to state with exactitude just when and where the clown came into being. It is reasonable to assume that the first clowning was accidental and that the first clowns were sublimely unconscious as to just how funny they were. Many of them are that way today. Probably during Cro-Magnon days, some would- be Strong Man attempted to heave a bear into the air. Up went the animal, but the artist was too slow to get out of his own way. So the bear crashed down and squashed the poor moron to the delight of his simple-minded companions. The pro- fessors assure us that all hearty humor is based on just such pain and discomfort, to the other fellow. (Cain clouting Abel over the bean was an uproariously funny joke. Cain’s subsequent wanderings over the earth may be interpreted as a long engagement to play the Biblical Circuit. This act is the ancestor of all slapstick and custard pie comedy.) For many decades the bear act proved extremely popular, until some tribal chief discovered that his best fighting men were being ruined in their attempts at heavy comedy. So the act was modified and its comic value reduced many calories. It is unfortunate that what records we have of the period prior to Ancient Greece, deal chiefly with the doings of warriors, rulers, poets, soothsayers, philosophers, priests, and other such mortal afflictions. Hardly anything definite is known about the circus acts of the ages before the glory of Athens. And even the Greek records on the subject are so fragmentary as to allow for little more than speculation. ‘There is a passage in the Talmud that points to the existence of clowns in Ancient Judea. It relates that a Rabbi one day met Elijah, the wandering spirit of prophecy in Hebrew lore and asked who was worthy of eternal life. Elijah pointed to two clowns were amusing the bystanders. The Rabbi, a serious fellow, showed great astonishment. “Scorn them not”, said the Prophet, “it is always their habit, even when not perform- ing for hire, to cheer the depressed and sorrowful. By their merry talk they cause sufferers to forget grief.” This Talmudic legend is probably the father of the senti- mentality anent the clown’s merriness at all times. “Under his coat of motley his heart is bursting with grief”. Chord, please, Professor ! The ancient Egyptian god Typhon is believed by some authorities to represent the deification of the clown or grotesque. The characteristic traits of all the Typhon masques were the huge gross face and the large projecting tongue. It appears to be the original of a long series of grotesque faces through Greece and Rome and up through the Middle Ages. Thomas Wright in his History of Caricature, traces the antiquity of souse comedy. At the religious feasts in early Greece, as the performers got more and more liquored up, they became more rowdy, launched nbald insults at each other, and burlesqued each other’s sober characteristics. Among primitive peo- ples such as the South Sea Islanders, North American Indians, etc., the long historical plays and pantomimes got on the nerves of such naive folk. Comic interludes came into being in the same way and for the same reason that they were introduced into the religious perforrnances of the Middle Ages. In Dr. Karl Mantzius’ History of Theatrical Art, that excellent historian says: “At the Polynesian Hura, (family ball) when the young girls were tired of dancing, merry clowns came forward and filled up the pauses with burlesque capers and gesticulations”. In the direct line of descent we have the modern studio dance, where during lulls in the foxtrotting the Life of the Party steps out and pulls conscious or unconscious comedy. The ancient Chinese were too subtle and over-refined to bother much about clowns. The doings of buf- foons are given scant attention in the annals of the Chinese stage. The Japs, imitative of neighboring refinements, naturally felt the same way about it. Egyptian figure showing typhon masque The first definite appearance of the clown or grotesque as an entertainer was on the Greek stage of Aeschylus. The word zany is derived from the Greek. The heavy sombre tragedies were occasionally relieved by the antics of actors wearing comic masques. (This survived to quite a recent period in the ten-twent-thirt melo- drama with its relief of the comic oleo.) In the time of Aristophanes, the best joke of the clown Hermon was to slam a stick against the skulls of his fellow actors, while the comique Parmenon got laughs by imitating the grunting of a hog. Scene from an Early Greek Comedy The Romans acquired the clown along with many other refinements of Greek civilization. Buffoons were in high favor with the Romans and brought comic relief to the otherwise dull and heavy banquets. The mandacus or joculator was a clown who wore a grotesque masque with a large mouth and protruding tongue ; some- what the Typhon make up. He portrayed a gluttonous eater and burlesqued vul- garian manners. Suetonius tells of clowns who played in the streets as well as in theatres and at private parties. ~The Roman word for clown was sannio. The Eng- lish word, clown, (French, cloun) is derived from clunaculum which was a short wooden sword employed by the Roman buffoon as a slapstick. The costume was often composed of a multitude of little pieces of cloth of many colors called centun- culus. (It may be that Joseph’s coat was one of these trick costumes and aided him to clown so well as to win high favor with Pharaoh.) Among the Roman clowns were four standardized types who were the ancestors of the principal characters of the Commedia dell’ Arte. These were Maccus with his low flat forehead, monstrous drooping nose, and double hunch on his back, (later, Pulcinella) ; Bucco the jabber- ing insolent swaggering parasite, (Arlechinno) ; Pappus the ridiculous old miser, (Pantalone); and Dossenus the knavish soothsayer, (I] Dottore). “The sannio enjoyed a freedom of speech and action quite impossible in our happy age of censorship. Some authorities think the Romans borrowed the buffoon from the Etruscans because of the workmanship and character of some of the masques employed. Other authorities em- phatically reject this theory for the same reason. Perhaps this violent difference of opinion is what makes them authorities. Etruscan Buffoon carrying in his left hand what was probably the earliest form of slapstick Roman Mandacus (Note Socks) Since early Roman days, Italy has been the cradle of fine buffoonery. Back of the slapstick, whether it is wielded by Bucco or Arlechinno or Alberto Fratellini, we see the fine Italian hand. The slapstick has always been the clown’s principal guffaw-fetcher. It is a versatile weapon. It ends disputes, silences enemies, and even disciplines wives. It is a veritable deus ex machina of all this comic world. It is the most marvelous of all dramatic resources. No spoken joke is half so funny as a slapstick wallop. With the decline of the Roman Empire, the theatre also slid into a state of general debility. About the year 300 A.D. we find records of the Church hurling edicts and bans against the buffoons for singing “impure songs’ and condemning their drolleries as “diabolic and frivolous”. Evidence of clowns at the court of Attila is found in Priscus. Commenting on the embassy from Theodosius II to Attila, he says: “A Moorish and Scythian buffoon in turn excited the mirth of the rude spectators by their deformed figures, ridiculous dress, antic gestures, absurd speeches, and the strange unintelligible confusion of the Latin, the Gothic, and the Hunnish languages. The hall resounded with loud and licentious peals of laughter. In the midst of this intem- perate riot, Attila alone, without change of countenance, maintained his inflexible gravity.” Good picture of a First Nighter. We have few records of the diversions of the ancient Teutons and Scandinav- ians. The protracted drinking bouts of the long winter evenings offered excellent opportunity for singing and story telling. From the amount of hootch which must have been consumed on these occasions, we can safely assume that the boys got boisterous and pulled a lot of wassail comedy. Evidences also indicate that in the chief’s household there usually was a comedian who occupied the position of official wise cracker as did Humferth in Beowulf and Sir Kay in the later Morte d’ Arthur. It is probable that Roman mimes were cordially received by the Barbarians. There are many representations of them in old illuminated manuscripts. The most comprehensive evidence we have of the existence of mimes through the Dark and Middle Ages is in the records of attacks made upon them from time to time by the Church. Countless classic allusions point to the fact that enter- tainers were often extremely popular with monks and nuns. At certain periods they were in such high favor that they were introduced into religious fetes and even tolerated in the churches. The Roman clown was introduced into Saxon England. In Anglo-Saxon vo- cabularies we find the word mimus appearing as gli mon (gleeman). Glig or glin signified any kind of gaiety or play. Illuminated manuscripts reveal that the per- formances of these entertainers consisted of juggling as well as clowning. Among the peoples conserving the Latin tongue, mimus was replaced by other words serving the same idea. Jocus, jocari, joculator, became jeu in French, gioco or giuco in Italian, and joker in English. The verb jocare became jouer in French. Joculator was then employed in the sense of mimus, and became in French jougleur or jongleur and in Chaucer's English, joggelere, (juggler). In the ecclesiastical plays of the Middle Ages the clown again appears, usually in the role of a comic devil. The chief devil is represented as a grand Prince of Dark- ness with the buffoon as a sort of foil, like the low-comedy servant in farce. A pitchfork did valiant duty as a slapstick. Practically all the mystery plays were full of comic scenes. The secular plays were in the main, farces, and the audiences were most interested in the buffoon parts. But the great line of clowns shows principally in the Middle Ages in what were called Fool Companies. These were compact organ- izations with regular constitutions and as many administrative titles as the Shriners and Noble Red Men. The best known company was Les Connards (Cornards, from the two horns, cornes, on the fool’s cap), organized in 1541 at Rouen. The earliest of the Fool Companies called Les Enfants Sans Souci, was supposed to have originated toward the end of the Fourteenth Century and to have lasted till the early part of the Seventeenth Century. Founded on the splendid principle that the world was mad and all men fools, it played an important part in the life of Paris. It was governed by a Prince of Fools. All the members wore the established fool’s costume in public. The traditional fool’s dress included a tight-fitting hood with asses’ ears, coxcomb and bells ; a coat with long pointed flaps which were sometimes tipped with bells ; and long tight trousers. The chief colors were light green and saffron: green standing for youth and vigor, and saffron for gayety as the odor of saffron was sup- posed to be particularly animating. A\n ornate sceptre was carried and employed as a slapstick. Att the time of Francis I, Pontalais was the great fool, high in royal favor. } ) Another famous fool of the period was Jean Serre who excelled in acting comic drunks. The work of French fools of this period shows little of the Italian influence. It is not till the end of the Sixteenth Century that the French comiques take on the appearance of characters of the Commedia dell’ Arte. The strolling jongleur of the Middle Ages combined all the attributes of his Roman predecessor and added others. Women jongleurs frequently took part with the men and with them made grimaces, fell into strange lewd postures, and indulged in all sorts of ribaldries. The medieval public’s lack of sentimentality made almost everything boisterous. There is some reason for the Belloc and Chestertonian glorific- ation of those ribald days. The jongleur’s tricks included rope-walking, dancing, magic, purse-cutting, and other directly useful manifestations of skill. Gradually the jongleurs passed off the landscape. Their feats of skill and dexterity became the properties of the more modern acrobats and jugglers. The singing became the char- acteristic of the minstrel. The jongleur had been an extremely important adjunct to the life of the period. The Feudal Four Hundred were too often bored out of their tin suits with the long-winded recitals of household glories by the family bards. They pined for an occasional good old horse laugh. The heavy slapstick of the traveling buffoon, comedy that was rough and highly-spiced, made these itinerant fellows exceedingly welcome visitors. Through the Crusades, European jongleurs got into touch with their Eastern confreres. They found the Oriental Circuit going strong and undoubtedly pinched many sure-fire acts. a < a ati Vos36 a ° Us bu O ‘ao 6 3 oe; [4 = > peel #28 £ 9 3 6 2 hw) $35 Of a 3} In clowning, as in so many other phases of life, we find the greatest traditionalism amongst Orientals. Present day Arab buffoons use a makeup that is hundreds of years old: head shaven except for one long tuft of hair, and the face painted in certain standardized patterns. The costume is generally a vertically striped loose tunic and short breeches. No slapstick is employed but blows are delivered with the cupped hand. Control of facial muscles is developped to an amazing degree. When one Arab clown strikes another, the swatted one hesitates for several seconds and then falls over. This bit of business is known to be many centuries old and is still a never- failing laugh getter. Late in the Fifteenth Century, the Commedia dell’ Arte came into being. Its exact origin is somewhat obscure, but it is generally thought to have evolved from the strolling bands of clowns, acrobats, jugglers, and musicians. Whatever its actual in- ception, the Comedy of Art was a descendant of the Roman attelana. To give a comprehensive account of this important developement is a job which requires profes- sorial diligence, a quality possessed by neither of the present writers. In the Commedia dell’ Arte, clowning, in the roles of Arlechinno, Pantalone, Il Dottore, First Zanni, and Second Zanni, is brought to its highest pitch of clever- ness and skill. ‘The heritage of the Comedy of Art has come down to us in a long line of superb circus clowns. Improvization, the chief factor in its greatness, is the distinguishing quality of the best contemporary clowns. ‘This early Italian buffoonery was based on the peculiarities and eccentricities of town councilors, prominent mer- chants, and other such petty pisphosh. In Theatre Arts Magazine for October 1923, Vadim Uraneff makes an interesting comparison of the buffoons of the Commedia dell’ Arte with Charlie Chaplin, Eddie Cantor, Frank Tinney, Jimmy Watts, James i | : ! a o) lik, Buffoons of the comedy of art From an old print Barton, and other contemporary American type comedians. Of course these follows, with the exception of Chaplin, belong more to the category of comedians, than to that of clowns. Probably the best example of a clown on the recent American stage was Fred Stone. Graduating from the circus into musical comedy, he carried with him a whole bag of typical clown tricks. “The decline of the Commedia dell’ Arte came about principally because the boys got upstage. They wanted to appear in “regular” plays with lines written specially for them. The English clown grew up almost contemporaneously with the Comedy of Art, though on the whole English buffoonery was but little influenced by the Italian school. The great Elizabethan clown was Dick Tarlton. He died in 1588 when Shake- speare was twenty four. There is reason to believe that Tarlton acted with Shake- speare in some of the latter’s plays. Tarlton was the buffoon of great versatility. He danced, sang, tumbled, and like the characters in the Comedy of Art, made up most of his stuff as he went along. Shakespeare objected strenuously to this business of extemporizing. It was over this question that he had a tremendous row with his principal clown, William Kemp. It may be that Shakespeare was piqued at Kemp's hogging of the stage. The great dramatist certainly wasn’t reticent in expressing his opinions of clowns. In the rules for the players which Hamlet speaks, he uses the following caustic words: “Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though in the meantime, some ne- cessary question of the play be then to be considered: that’s villainous and shews a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.” (Hamlet, III, 2.) Kemp, incidentally, is the fellow who danced the Morris all the way from Lon- don to Norwich, nine days and a hundred miles of dancing with short nightly rests. That’s something for Twentieth Century jazz marathoners to think about. tf i Vy Dick Tarlton (From a contemporary print) The costume of one type of Elizabethan clown has come down to the modern circus. It consisted of frizzed out hair, frilled neck ruff, and loose baggy tunic and bloomers : it was a burlesque of the dress of the Elizabethan gallant. The influence of the Commedia dell’ Arte spread all over Europe. It particul- arly flourished in France, partly due to the exhibitions by strolling Italian companies and in part to the growth of French organizations. Such an important figure in the history of the French stage as Moliére was an enthusiastic admirer of the Comedy of Art. His ideal of the clown actor was Tiberio Fiorilli, a famous Scaramuccia who became his teacher and instructed him in fine points of Italian buffoonery. Moliére’s first real comedy, L’Etourdi, was built upon a scenario of the Commedia dell’ Arte. However, in France as well as elsewhere, the comedians soon felt themselves too important to indulge in mere improvization and aspired to high comedy parts with nice lines written for them by real playwrights. So the true clown suffered a period of comparative obscurity and appeared on the scene again chiefly as a street performer. A German Hanswurst of the late Seventeenth Century (From a rare print) Eighteenth Century Clowns and Jugglers We have seen in contemporary American magazines such droll terms as hans- wurst and pickelherring. The clown in Germany, as far back as the days of Martin Luther, was called a hanswurst. Later, by way of Holland, pickelherring became his nickname. The hanswursts and pickelherrings of the late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries went in for the heaviest kind of slapstick comedy. The hans- wurst sticking his finger in the pickelherring’s eye, and the latter booting the former abaft of his main hatch, were the ancestors of a long line of German buffoons lead- ing down to our own Weber and Fields. In their music hall days, Weber and Fields depended on intensive clouting as much as much as on the wheeze. But in Germany too, the pompous period began in the theatre, and the clown was relegated to the sidewalk as a mere vagabond entertainer of bumpkins and children. At the beginning of the Eighteenth Century clowning came into favor again in England in the shape of harlequinades at the Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields theatres. The most popular harlequin of the time was John Rich whose father built Covent Garden in 1732. Harlequin, descended directly from Arlechinno, or even from the Roman Bucco, became a fixture in English pantomime and extra- vaganza. The character of the modern circus clown was originated by Joe Grimaldi who was born in London in 1778. Joe was the illegitimate son of Giuseppi Grimaldi, better known as “Iron Legs”, a pantomime dancer of great ability, and Mrs. Rebecca Drucker, a dancer at Drury Lane. The child was literally shoved on the stage at the age of three in the role of a monkey. Trained with the utmost rigor and severity he appeared regularly with his father at Sadler’s Wells Theatre. After the death of his father, which took place in Joe’s eleventh year, and which left the family in extreme poverty, the youngster worked in pantomime for exceedingly meager wages. By his twentieth year he was well up the climb to the top of his profession. He became the star of Drury Lane and the idol of London. His greatness was due chiefly to his inexhaustible inventiveness. Much of the business he originated is used with but little modification by clowns today. A great many myths and legends have been attached to Grimaldi. It is told of him, as it is of most great clowns, that in his dying hours he rallied himself long enough to indulge in a last exhibition of buf- foonery. This and other sob stories are utterly disposed of by Charles Dickens who, under the name of Boz, edited Grimaldi’s memoires. The book itself, while fairly veracious, is dull and long-winded. It reveals a Grimaldi as vain and cheap as a retired bank director. Dickens sadly botched the editorial job, for which he proffers lame excuses in his apologetic preface. Grimaldi had so many followers and imitators that he appears as the founder of a school. He had created the turn of the comic acrobat who does stunts of great dif- ficulty which at the same time seem maladroit. Auriol was the first French clown of the Grimaldi type. He was a mime, juggler, but chiefly a comic acrobat. Mazurier was another of the versatile clowns of the early Nineteenth Century in France. And then there was Jocko who was so known because he was made up as a monkey. He would leap and climb about the balconies, making perilous swings, but tempering them with irresistible drolleries. However, for a long period, England was the nursery of clowning. The great Italian tradition of buffoonery which derived from earliest Roman days, received a very special direction in England, chiefly because Anglo-Saxon audiences were so hard-boiled. The Italian volubility was tempered and restrained, stripped to sure-fire essentials, and the acrobatic side emphasized more than ever before. The naive British public always admired feats of bodily strength and skill more than subtlety and wit. Edmond de Goncourt and Hugues Le Roux in their writings about clowns, see in all this a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon love of brutality and force, and a rather far- fetched sense of satire which is quite different from the Italian spirit. At any rate, England undoubtedly produced the best clowns of the Nineteenth Century. From England came Billy Hayden, Lavater Lee, the Hanlon-Lees, Tony Grice, Bip, and the delightful Footit. Footit was the son of a clown. He started life as a bareback rider but soon worked into the clown game. He perfected a crystalized grin that became his best laugh getter. Footit represents a type of English clown far removed from the Grimaldi OU prene find wa Joe Grimaldi in a Harlequinade Drawing by George Cruikshank character. Though Grimaldi used many spoken jokes, his principal business was comic acrobatics. Footit steadily worked in the opposite direction, and at the height of his greatness, he had entirely discarded acrobatics. He was one of the best examples of the clown parleur who through conversation establishes intimate contact with the audience. Footit and Chocolate (From a drawing owned by Mme Footit) One of the authentic stories about Footit is the tale of how he discovered his © partner. One day, on leaving the circus, he was approached by a down and out negro, a valet who had been left stranded by a traveling actor. He was much impressed by the black man’s droll facial expression and decided that he was good arena material. Due in part to Footit’s careful training, the negro soon became famous under the nom de cirque of Chocolate. Upon his death a few years ago, Footit was succeeded by his son Tommy Footit, a clever enough clown, but minus the old fellow’s touch of greatness.. Choco- late, by the way, was also succeeded by a son who is the droll and original Chocolat Fils, considered by many critics to be the best contemporary clown parleur, and at the moment paired with the clever Porto at the Cirque Medrano. It is a commonplace that clowning runs in families. Perhaps this is more the case with acrobats than with any other class of entertainers. However, our exhaustive and painstaking researches incidental to the compiling of this tremendous tome con- vince us that this family stuff is true, whoever says it. Pierre Mariel argues that to become a real clown one must have inhaled circus odors in one’s youth. Practically every first-rate clown began training at an age when other youngsters were candidates for initiation into the Holy Order of Boy Scouts. George Jean Nathan once remarked that “all children are natural actors—save nine-tenths of those on the stage”. We are wholeheartedly agin clowning by children ; our protest is not actuated by sentimentality or respect for the Child Labor Laws, but by the stupidity of infantile comedy. By all means let the Fratellinis train their young hopefuls to carry on, but let the public appearances of the kids be put off till their elders are too feeble to roll about in the sawdust. Up till lately all the circus infanterie received certain standardized training in the fundamentals of acrobatics, dancing, and the playing of different musical instru- ments. Their apprenticeship was long, trying, and often dangerous. The purpose of all this was the inculcation of the grace and self-confidence that would insure an easy demeanor in the ring. In this day of specialization and novelty in the circus, there are too many mushroom entertainers whose very entrances and exits betray a lamentable lack of general training. But in the circus there has never been a special course of training for clowns, no correspondence school standardization. The clown should present a synthesis of all the elements of the circus. The good clown is an acrobat, a juggler, a prestidigitator, a musician, and above all a good comedian ; because of this true versatility he dares burlesque these various accomplishments. A clown is either first-rate or a dead flop. There is no such thing as a mediocre clown. There is nothing more painful to watch than bum comedy. It is Monsieur — Bergson’s opinion that one might compare a good clown to those caricatures which are reduced to a few lines and a touch of color, but which despite their simplicity are truer than photographs. Pierre Mariel has written: “A good clown caricatures his fellow men; a great one parodies himself. He juggles with ridicule the way St. Denis juggled his head. The clown moves about like a knight on a chessboard: his actions like his dialogue are a series of jumps : his spirit makes more sautes perileux than his body.” Theo- dore de Banville wrote: “Between the adjectives possible and impossible, the mime has made his choice. He chose impossible. It is in the impossible that he trains himself. That which is impossible is that which he performs.” ini Alberto Fratell , € by Heuz ing Draw Perhaps one of the factors in clown success is the gratification of the childhood wish of the spectator. Many of the prize dreams of childhood are accomplished by the clown before one’s very eyes: the breaking of vast quantities of crockery ; the wholesale swallowing of enormous pastries; the discomfiting of policeman and other such pompous asses; and the burlesqueing of parents, classic dancers and mus- icians, strong men, and other pretentious bores. The tremendous stylization in costume and makeup serves to isolate the clown, making him sufficiently impersonal to indulge in great license. He becomes an abstract symbol. The whitening or blackening of the face serves as a protection somewhat in the manner of the domino of the Renaissance ; at that period the person so disguised could almost literally get away with murder. Unwritten law has accorded the mas- que many special privileges and exemptions. Abuse eventually called forth written laws strictly forbidding the use of the masque outside of the theatre. Almost without exception, clowns have appreciated their special position and have seldom overstepped. The iconoclasm of the clown has often through ridicule brought about the down- fall of the tin gods who thrive on dignity. The Charlie Chaplin Bullfighters in Spain are causing a severe slump in the stock of the local toreadors, matadors, picadors, ste- vedores, and other professional heroes. If they prove, as they are threatening to do, that bullfighting is less dangerous than lacrosse, basketball, and such like minor and major pastimes, the ancient Carthaginian sport will soon follow the path of the Bunny Hug and the high-wheel bycycle. The woman clown is almost non-existent in the history of the profession. At the present day, Loulou the parleur who is teamed with the august Atoff, is about the only one of importance. America is familiar with the woman low comedian of the type of Marie Dressler and Kate Elinor. But in general our musical comedy tradition allows the woman to appear ridiculous for no more than two acts, after which she emerges in a blaze of contrasting elegance, as for example Mizzi Hajos in Sari and Charlotte Greenwood in Letty. Clowns are the greatest users of sure-fire stuff, comedy that has been tried and tested throughout the ages. The oldest hokum is employed to give the spectator a feeling of superiority, such as the exhibition of a clumsiness and stupidity far sur- passing similar virtues in the worst dumbell in the audience, and being the victims of practical jokes which every simpleton among the pewholders would like to per- petrate. But if there are ambitious ones among the audience who think they would like to sport about in the arena we bid them pause and reflect that it really has a painful side. One of the most persistent myths attached to the clown business is that the blows delivered, while apparently lusty, are in some mysterious fashion rendered entirely harmless to the receiver. The left cheek of almost every veteran clown is as hard and dry as parchment from the constant reception of blows, and sometimes even one eye is a bit out of plumb. The retail clothing business shouldn't be safer, but it is. The outstanding types among present-day clowns are the speaker (classic white- faced clown), the grotesque, the august, the contra-august and the elegant. The august and the speaker were accidental creations, the first resulting from the drunken actions of a circus stableman, and the second because of the illness of a regular clown and the consequent substitution of an interlocutory personage. The elegant is a typical European circus character, generally presented as a ringmaster, immaculately and faultlessly attired, and unbelievably dignified until a sudden slapstick clout puts him on his back. Mr. Gilbert Seldes, writing in Vanity Fair for July 1923, errone- ously refers to M. Lucien Godart, elegant at the Cirque Medrano as an august. Perhaps the finest example of an august that we ever had in America was the Charlie Chaplin of the music hall and early cinema days. Big feet and ill-fitting clothing are important characteristics in the getup of an august. It is interesting to speculate on what might have happened to Chaplin if he hadn’t found a medium in the movies. Cicuses in America, stemming from the achievements of that immortal boob- catcher P.T.Barnum, grew to such proportions that individual clowns were swamped. A great deal of slush was recently spilled over the death of the veteran American clown, Al Miaco ; it is a question as to whether the blurbers had ever been able to distinguish Miaco from his confreres in a three-ring circus which boasted a score of clowns. Few of the younger generation in America know the one-ring circus. True, there are still a few traveling the bush circuits. But even before the advent of the movie, the small circus was become as unprofitable venture, and there was a tendency toward combination in fruitless endeavor to complete with the half dozen “Greatest Shows on Earth”. On the Continent, particularly in France, the cirque intime has never lost in popularity and is today more strongly entrenched than ever. Paris boasts four permanent small circuses, the Cirque de Paris, Cirque d’ Hiver, Nouveau Cirque, and Cirque Medrano. The cirque intime has many and obvious advantages. There is never more than one act in the ring at a time, though as the acts are changing half a dozen minor A % ae Dre ee A Sen occ e 7s ate ce lage Ar \lane cle cbr, ; Into Rinews, oXencant dwero metro Arlo rtant on burmerre tee - COMM Levy Co Juede = yas Lalor Cou perere rmnathete . Ap EES es as frei Peto ce Mem (i. Gr