Shocked and Amazed - On and Off the Midway

MN: My dad got sick in a little town - Pamplin, VA - and we were worried because he was the medicine lecturer and the comedian. And it was my dad and me putting on a whole show except for a little music that my brother played. We were stranded, more or less, wondering what we were going to do for the show without the comedian and lecturer because we knew the crowd was going to be there. They had been there the night before and now Daddy had bursitis so bad he couldn't get out of bed. I'm out on the lot trying to figure out what are we going to do and I looked and here came a car with a house trailer - which was very rare in those days - and it said "Free Show" on the side of the trailer. And I said, "Oh boy, there's another medicine show!" So I ran to the house trailer and I said, "Daddy, there's a free-show trailer coming over the railroad track." And he says, "Oh Lord, I wonder who that is?"

Anyhow, when Bob drove up on the lot he said, "Where's the boss?" I told him, "He's sick in bed and I don't think we're going to have a show tonight." He said, "Can I go in and talk to him?" And I said, "Let me see." I went in and I said, "Daddy, they want to come in and talk to you." He said, "Bring them in, bring them in. I'm sick and I need someone." So they came in. It was an old man and a young man, a very young man. Bob. They sat down and they talked and immediately I liked him. I looked at him, and I'd never had a boyfriend; didn't want one. I wasn't oriented that way at all. I wasn't interested in them at all. My parents had kind of queered me on boys, which I'm glad they did because I might not have been around there otherwise. So, I just looked him over and didn't think too much about it. He was a nice looking guy and he told my dad, "Just you lay in that bed and don't you worry about it. We're going to put the show on for you tonight and we're not going to charge you a dime. We'll take care of it." Troupers used to do that. Today, it's dog eat dog. In those days... it shows you how different people were. In fact, we met Bob before that on the highway. Bob and Doc Etling came up, one of our trucks was on the fritz, and we had taken it down to the mechanic and the mechanic was working on it when they drove up and they said, "Where's the boss?" And I said, "He's downtown having something done to the truck." At that time Bob looked like a ghost. He had been sick. I didn't pay too much attention to him at the time; the old man was doing all the talking. So they went downtown and couldn't find my father, and they came back and waited until he got back and they started talking. And this is typical show business conversation in that day and age. "I see you have a medicine show. That's what we have. Where are you going next?" You wouldn't dare do that today! You wouldn't dare ask somebody that. Daddy said, "Well, right now I'm headed for Pamplin." And Doc Etling said, "We were thinking about Pamplin. Now we had a good week over at this spot last year and we'll be far enough apart that it won't hurt each other." So they figured when we got done there we were done with Pamplin. So they came over and we were staying over because Daddy was so sick, and when they came over they were surprised to see us still sitting there. So they put the show on for us for the rest of the week! They put the show on, but they incorporated my services because we all do the same acts. Everybody did the same acts; we always did. But before we got married, Bob had a little show of his own. He attached himself to the Silver Brothers Circus, and he handled the sideshow. I guess he had all of his routines in there, but he did have something that belonged to the show. It was an annex to the sideshow. I guess it was made out of clay. It wasn't a baby. It was like it had grown up and had gotten old before its time and had died. Very young but an old man - one of those deals. Bob would laugh and say, "Many is the time I'd make that pitiful speech that people would take their hats off and put them over their hearts." They felt so sorry for that piece of clay! He was nineteen when we married, so he couldn't have been more than about 17 when he was doing that. Then he went out on his own and, poor guy, he went through hell. He really did. Back then people were mean as hell, back then it was like Huckleberry Finn when you tried to put on a show. They rode him out of town tarred and feathered and such. They threw rotten eggs at him.

MN: One place we showed in when I was a kid my dad went to book the theatre and the man said, "No more live acts. Just movies." "Well why?" "Well, because every show we've ever had here, a group of men and boys who sit in the front row throw rotten eggs and tomatoes and everything else at the performers, and I have such a time cleaning the place up after that I'm just not going to do it anymore." So Daddy said, "I'll make you a deal. You let me put my show on in your theatre, I promise you it will not cost you a dime. I will clean everything up if that happens. I promise you it is not going to happen." The man says, "Well, I don't know about that," but he finally persuaded him. We came in and set everything up and Daddy set the [ventriloquist] dummy in the middle of the stage and beside the dummy he set a soda and acid fire extinguisher. At showtime we slowly opened the curtain, real slow. Everybody is setting there and there's a dummy setting there and a fire extinguisher. Daddy stepped out and he said, "Now ladies and gentlemen, we usually open the show with Terry," and he pointed to the dummy, "and I'll make him talk for you in a few minutes. First, I want to make an announcement. This is not important to you ladies and gentlemen in the back. It is important to these two rows right here where I see all these paper bags. Let me read something to you." He picked up the fire extinguisher. "It says on here 'Soda and Acid.' I'd hate to have that squirted on my face. I hope I won't have to use it. I think you're going to enjoy the show, and if you don't you'll be the first crowd who didn't. Thank you for your attention. Now I repeat: Only these first two rows have to worry about this. All the rest of you nice people don't have to worry. I know I can take accurate aim." We put the whole damn show on and the whole night not a damn thing happened! The fire extinguisher was the star of the show for the rest of the week! We were happy and people kept coming up and saying what a good show it was. But the first night, when we went out of the back door, in the alleyway was a retaining wall on that side with a picket fence on top of it. The bottom of the picket fence hit about your knee and they had gone along that picket fence and rigged it with wire so that when we ran out there after we had gotten egged we would break our legs. Mean people. Mean, mean, mean. So this is what we experienced one time. We didn't experience too much of it, but Bob did, because he was a young boy all by himself. He would put his little show on, he had his little tent set up and he'd go to bed in the tent and they'd roll wagon wheels down on the tent. The town people would throw bottles down on it.

S&A: It's surprising he lived through all that. What got you into doing the Gorilla Show?

MN: Well, both of us were always crazy about animals. Bob was in the sideshow and he had the idea of getting about four, five or six animals so he could have animals in the sideshow. He said things like raccoons and stuff like that. Then, he got rid of the sideshow. When we put our first animal show on, we had badgers, armadillos and stuff that people in the East had never seen. We called them "Strange animals." They are strange to this territory. When we got married he didn't have any, but when Bob and I went to the World's Fair in 1934 in Chicago, if we had $300 we could have bought Gargantua. He was a little baby with a badly burned face.

MN: I don't know if he was really or not. The guy might have been kidding us, but in the shape he was in he was apt to die at any minute. It might have been a legitimate offer. When the man said, "$300," we said, "For a monkey?" Because we didn't know anything about great apes at the time. So we saw a pit show at the Chicago fair. It was below the level where the public was and it was a chimp about the size of my Mickey and he was playing. Very mechanical but doing some wonderful stuff, and Bob said, "I'm going to have me one of those things before I die." I said, "You don't want something like that. That thing is strong and big." He wasn't big, but to me that was a big monkey, but I didn't know anything about apes then! We went to the New York fair later and I had my son who was about 5 years old and the baby I left with my grandmother in the Bronx. We saw Reuben Castangas. He was a German man who lost a lot of his animals during the Second World War and came to this country and started again. He was fantastic. The man wasn't as big as his chimps! He had three chimps on a leash. And one of the things I never forgot, he had this great big male that was sitting on a stool swinging his foot, nonchalant, and Castangas was telling him different things to do with his facial expressions. It was fantastic.

MN: Yeah, like, "Smile." He did four or five faces that he asked him to do and the last thing he told him to do...Do you remember George Arliss, the actor? Long face with a monocle. Castanga hands the chimp a disc - like a monocle - and tells him to do George Arliss. First the chimp put the damn thing in his mouth. The guy's coaxing him going, "Do George Arliss for me. Do George Arliss, c'mon." The chimps shaking his head around like, "I'll do it when I get damn good and ready." What went through my mind at the time was, "Why does he tolerate this? Why doesn't he make him do it?" I know now. You don't make them do anything. Finally the chimp puts it in his eye and rolls his face, and it looked just like Arliss. It cracked everybody up and Bob said, "I gotta have one of those things before I die." Now I've got two kids and I said, "Uh-uh. That thing could kill my kids. I don't want any part of a big monkey like that." So then we went down further and Bob saw a brand new little automobile and he says, "I'm going to have me one of those." So in two years we wound up with both the chimp - Snookie - and the car. Guess who rode in the front seat?