Truevine
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Gertrude Stein review mentioning Eko and Iko: John Chamberlain, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, Nov. 7, 1934.
Photo from Christmas 1926: According to handwritten notes on the back of the picture, the snapshot originated with Langley Charlan, who in 1940 was renting out a room in his Miami house to Candy’s ex-wife, Cora “Frankie” Shelton, then a fifty-six-year-old restaurant waitress, according to U.S. Census documents.
“home planet was in the ascendancy”: “Bearded Lady Pays Debt to Lady Luck,” New York Times, April 21, 1927.
Krao Farini’s funeral wishes: “Shy Bearded Lady of Circus Orders Hairy Body Cremated,” Associated Press, April 17, 1926.
civic leaders had fretted that Roanoke: “Circus Pleases Huge Audience,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 15, 1927.
Reunion of “Miss Leslie” with brothers at fairgrounds: Author interview, Jerry Jones, Leslie Crawford’s nephew, Nov. 25, 2014.
Segregation often broke down inside sideshow tent: Author interview (via e-mail), Rand Dotson, Feb. 9, 2015, citing Gregory J. Renoff, The Big Tent: The Traveling Circus in Georgia, 1820–1930 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008).
Description of tug-of-war over brothers: “Circus United a Negro Family,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 15, 1927.
Black and white incarceration rates: “Ratio of proportion admitted to prison to share of population, by race, 1926–1993,” Figure H, and other analyses, Robynn J. A. Cox, “Where Do We Go from Here? Mass Incarceration and the Struggle for Civil Rights,” Economic Policy Institute, Jan. 16, 2015: http://www.epi.org/publication/where-do-we-go-from-here-mass-incarceration-and-the-struggle-for-civil-rights/.
“disturbed showmen tore their hair”: Scott Hart, “Vexing Problem Develops over Two Circus Albinos,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 17, 1927.
Chapter Ten. Not One Single, Solitary, Red Penny
Interviews: Nancy Saunders, Al Stencell, Greg Renoff, Harvey Lutins, Nancy Barbour, Melville “Buster” Carico, T. Roger Messick, Fred Dahlinger, Neil Parsons, Jane Nicholas, Ralph Reddick, A. L. Holland, Bernth Lindfors
he thought Baby Dot had died: Author interview, Nancy Saunders, Feb. 11, 2015.
Roanoke Times reported in its usual racist language: Scott Hart, “Vexing Problem Develops over Two Circus Albinos,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 17, 1927.
Reunion account mocked by reporter: Ibid.
Decline of sideshow: A prediction for sideshow banishment was made by the president of the American Association of Fairs and Expositions in 1921, according to A. W. Stencell, Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo: Sideshow Freaks, Jabbers and Blade Box Queens (Toronto: ECW Press, 2010), 199.
“Nothing now makes anyone wonder or exhibit interest”: Quoted in ibid., 199.
Sideshow customers as do-gooders: Rachel Adams, Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 14.
Sideshow was “right thing to do”: Author interview, Al Stencell, March 1, 2015.
Ringlings as captains of industry: Author interview, Greg Renoff, Feb. 17, 2015.
Female lynching victims: “The Anti-Lynching Crusaders: The Lynching of Women,” NAACP Papers, 1922, http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/lynch/doc7.htm; overall lynching numbers, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” compiled by the Equal Justice Initiative, 2015, http://www.eji.org/files/EJI%20Lynching%20in%20America%20SUMMARY.pdf.
“It all reverts to one simple question”: Hart, “Vexing Problem Develops over Two Circus Albinos,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 17, 1927.
Square footage and description of Muse property: Recorded on a building appraisal permit, on file at Roanoke City Hall. The property was worth $395 in 1970. The lot registered 26 by 52 feet, according to an engineering survey and map recorded in 1943. Harriett’s sister-in-law’s residence there is documented in the 1927 city directory.
Messick’s oratorical flair: Author interview and follow-up letter, T. Roger Messick, Nov. 3, 2014.
Messick’s work habits: Author interview, Harvey Lutins, Feb. 5, 2015.
Messick’s home and office life: Author interview, Nancy Barbour, Nov. 12, 2015.
Messick’s suicide: Cause of death was “gunshot wound of abdomen,” according to his February 1962 death certificate. The wound was self-inflicted, according to his obituary.
“Next time I’m gonna steal enough”: Author interview, Melville “Buster” Carico, Jan. 20, 2015.
Messick represented the defendant: “Why Did Lee Scott Kill Dana Weaver?,” True Detective, October 1949.
Messick’s closing arguments on behalf of Lee Scott: Clarence Whittaker, “Lee Scott Convicted of First Degree Murder, Given 99-Year Sentence,” Roanoke Times, July 3, 1949.
remarkably unremarkable and upstanding life: In 2002, I spent several weeks researching the murder of Dana Marie Weaver for a history article in the Roanoke Times but ultimately did not publish it, at the request of the murderer’s widow, who said it would devastate her, and her children, who knew nothing of their father’s criminal past.
The reporter cited Roanoke police officers, not Harriett: “Circus United a Negro Family,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 15, 1927, front page.
“not paid them one single, solitary, red penny”: Filed in Law and Equity Court of City of Richmond, VA: Georgie Muse v. Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Combined Shows, Incorporated, and Herman Shelton; on file at Library of Virginia. Willie’s lawsuit is similarly named, only it’s filed on behalf of “Willie Muse, an infant under the age of twenty-one years who sues by Cabell Muse, his next friend,” Oct. 17, 1927.
“They were tired of being considered wild men”: “Mother of Freaks Sues Big Circus,” Daily News-Record (VA), Oct. 19, 1927.
no one could pinpoint with certainty their dates of birth: “Their Mother does not know the day they were born, and as far as I know, they were born in a County that does not have a record of their births,” wrote their attorney, Wilbur Austin, in a 1937 letter to Ringling pertaining to their lack of Social Security numbers. Indeed, neither Franklin nor nearby Pittsylvania County birth records have the brothers’ birth records under the Cook or Muse surname. Most family records, including obituaries and death certificates, list Willie’s birth year as 1893 and George’s as 1890, although George’s death certificate says he was born Dec. 24, 1901. Various ship and plane manifests list their birth years as between 1893 and 1902.
Kelley’s legal strategies: Joe Botsford, “Legal Eagle of Circus Spins Yarn,” Milwaukee Sentinel, May 30, 1963.
John Ringling’s forays into real estate, railways, and oil: David C. Weeks, Ringling: The Florida Years, 1911–1936 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993), 62.
Ringling’s snobbishness: Henry Ringling North and Alden Hatch, The Circus Kings: Our Ringling Family Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 62.
Kelley’s power grab against Ringling: Ibid., 226–228.
Kelley’s insistence on prenuptial agreements: Weeks, Ringling, 227–229.
Kelley’s attention to detail: Letter of tribute written by Circus World Museum Director Chappie Fox, on Kelley’s death, on file in Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI, November 1963.
“The Ringlings paid their people ten percent less”: Author interview, Fred Dahlinger, Jan. 29, 2015.
Abuse of Clicko by Paddy Hepston: Neil Parsons, Clicko: The Wild Dancing Bushman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Clicko was embraced by Frank Cook and family: Ibid., 96.
Cook adopts Clicko: North and Hatch, Circus Kings, 18.
Clicko’s hair and limited vocabulary: Ibid.
“Cook ensured Taibosh had all creature comforts”: Parsons, Clicko, 129–132.
Brothers performing for colleagues in circus backyard: Billboard, Easter 1922.
“good examples of contented freaks”: “Strange People,” Talk of the Town, The New Yorker, Nov. 5, 1927.
Incorporation papers for RB&BB Circus: On file at Circus World Museum, filed by John M. Kelley, July 1932.
&n
bsp; Lawsuit suspended for a time: “Move to Quash Circus Cases,” Associated Press, Oct. 27, 1927.
it was a hard blow to patrons: “The Way of the Circus,” Manitowoc (WI) Herald-Tribune, Nov. 10, 1927.
an editorial writer reframed the story: “Circus and Other Ethics,” Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Nov. 6, 1927.
seemed lonesome for the crowds: “Ambassadors From Mars, Stolen Twins, Return Home to Their Ma After 12 Years,” Belleville (KS) Telescope, Nov. 17, 1927.
Roanoke papers’ response to settlement: “Eko and Iko, Ambassadors, Have Received Financial Settlement,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 20, 1928.
“There are so many stories missing”: Jane Nicholas, “A Debt to the Dead? Ethics, Photography, History, and the Study of Freakery,” Social History/Histoire Sociale 47, no. 93 (May 2014): 139–155.
“piece together your evidence with empathy and conjecture”: Author interview, Jane Nicholas, Feb. 26, 2015.
“Eko and Iko sit snugly”: “Eko and Iko, Ambassadors, Have Received Financial Settlement,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 20, 1928.
That winter, the brothers found themselves engaged: Author interview, A. L. Holland, Oct. 16, 2014.
Neighbors afraid to get too close: Author interview, Ralph Reddick, May 2001.
Brief New York Times mention of reunion: “Habu Still Scowls Even on the Radio,” New York Times, April 8, 1928.
The New Yorker credits brothers’ return to circus to gluttony: Alva Johnston, “Sideshow People—III,” The New Yorker, April 28, 1934.
the brothers seemed captivated only by the menagerie: “The Phillies Might Watch Those Circus Midgets Sock,” New York Evening Post, May 1, 1928.
“bearded twins from someplace or other”: Clement V. Curry, “Circus Antics Renews Youth with Thrills,” Buffalo (NY) Courier Journal, June 7, 1928.
“foreign rarities scouts” and “savage” displays meant to reinforce racial inferiority: Janet M. Davis, The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under the American Big Top (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 223, and Bernth Lindfors, Early African Entertainments Abroad: From the Hottentot Venus to Africa’s First Olympians (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 158–175.
Brothers “look like Boy Scouts” in comparison: Author interview, Bernth Lindfors, March 30, 2015.
Black rousties earned less than whites: Davis, Circus Age, 70–71.
Chapter Eleven. Adultery’s Siamese Twin
Interviews: A. L. Holland, Reginald Shareef, Nancy Saunders
Cabell “overbearing and brutish”: Ralph D. Matthews, “Tragedy in Wake of Circus Freaks,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 1, 1929.
“We made cotton”: Author interviews, A. L. Holland, Oct. 27, 2014, and May 2001; Sheree Scarborough, African American Railroad Workers of Roanoke: Oral Histories of the Norfolk and Western (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2014), 29–37.
The injured man died: “Injuries Fatal to Roanoke Man,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 4, 1927.
Importance and status of car in America: David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1940: How Americans Lived Through the “Roaring Twenties” and the Great Depression (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 27–52.
Billboard promoting cars: Ibid., 47.
Drought conditions in 1928: Raymond Barnes, A History of the City of Roanoke (Radford, VA: Commonwealth Press, 1968), 686.
Economic conditions in 1928: “Banksters” was a term that came out of the Senate hearings to regulate the American banking system: Gilbert King, “The Man Who Busted the ‘Banksters,’” Smithsonian, Nov. 29, 2011.
Prohibition-era car bombing: Barnes, History of the City of Roanoke, 686–688.
Account of Hope Wooden’s murder of Cabell Muse: Roanoke World-News, July 24, 1928. (The newspaper incorrectly reported his name as Calvin Muse.)
Peonage accounts from elsewhere in the South: “Five Peons Escape,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 1, 1929.
Alabama slave mines: Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Anchor, 2008), 369.
Spiller liked to be called to crime scenes: “19 Convicted on Murder Charge: Average Is One a Month,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 5, 1928.
Stab wounds causing Cabell’s death: Ibid. and “Father of Circus Freaks Is Killed,” Roanoke Times, July 25, 1928.
“adultery and murder were Siamese twins”: Author interview, Reginald Shareef, Sept. 10, 2014.
Willie thought Cabell “wasn’t no good”: Author interview, Nancy Saunders, Sept. 14, 2014.
Cabell’s burial: Certificate of Death, State Board of Health, filed July 25, 1928. Muse was buried in Pin Hook (most likely a misspelling of Penhook, just up the road from Truevine) on July 25, 1928. Directories for Truevine Baptist Church Cemetery and Muse Cemetery show a total of six unmarked graves, and Cabell Muse is likely buried in one of those; cemetery maps and inventories courtesy of Virgil Goode.
“So that served him right”: Author interview, Saunders, Aug. 6, 2015.
It would be eight more years: According to Ringling route books on file at Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI, the circus next returned to Virginia in 1933, when it performed at stops in Norfolk, Newport News, and Richmond. It didn’t play again in Roanoke until 1935.
Chapter Twelve. Housekeeping!
Interviews: Louise Burrell, Nancy Saunders, Nadja Durbach, Jane Nicholas, Al Stencell, Andy Erlich, Erika Turner, Ward Hall, Mary “Sug” Davis
Size and history of ship: The Majestic, built before World War I, was passed into the possession of England and then the United States, respectively, as part of the German indemnities: “Belfast Will Build World’s Biggest Ship,” New York Times, Feb. 12, 1926, and whitestarhistory.com.
Accommodations aboard ship: “2,593 on Majestic, a Record Since War,” New York Times, Sept. 12, 1928, and “Vintage brochure—S. S. Majestic”: second-class accommodations boasted a “light and airy” dining room and bunk-style beds with double sinks, third-class description not included, http://www.gjenvick.com/HistoricalBrochures/WhiteStarLine/RMS-Majestic/1922/StateroomsAndSuites.html#axzz3iW2E3fXJ.
“Housekeeping!”: Author interview, Louise Burrell, Sept. 14, 2014.
Bertram Mills had cultivated a relationship: “The Renovator of the British Circus,” http://www.circopedia.org/Bertram_Mills.
“the disappearance of freaks”: Kenneth Grahame, Fun o’ the Fair (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1929), 27.
“we are anxious to understand them”: “With Bertram Mills,” Times (London), Jan. 21, 1938.
The British were more sensitive: Author interview, Nadja Durbach, March 16, 2015. Britain had been in the war five years as opposed to America’s one (1917–1918); it also had eight times as many soldiers return from the war wounded; and the British military counted 107,000 civilian deaths and 1.01 million total deaths versus 117,465 American military-only deaths. The British population experienced more than double the percentage of per capita deaths than the United States did in World War I. Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (London: Macmillan, 1933) offers a sobering personal account of World War I losses in Britain, particularly among middle-class military and civilian families.
British response to Freaks: David J. Skal and Elias Savada, Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning (New York: Anchor, 1995), 181.
Ministry of Labor denied the application: “Aliens Branch File,” document no. 574881, with minutes of meetings gathered at British National Archives, box marked “Misc. 5189,” letter dated Sept. 11, 1927.
Mills appeals ruling: Ibid., from a letter by Bertram Mills to Sir W. Haldane Porter, Home Office, Ministry of Labor, Queen Anne’s Chambers, London, Nov. 22, 1927.
Mills drew on both humanitarian and labor arguments: Nadja Durbach, Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Show and Modern British Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 177.
Sideshow performers granted entry: Approval letter, as noted in minutes, collected in “Aliens Branch File,”
British National Archives, Nov. 23, 1927.
traveling fairground sideshows in Britain diminish: “Travelling Showmen and Taxation,” Times (London), Jan. 16, 1935.
Cyril Bertram Mills: Author of his father’s biography, Bertram Mills Circus: Its Story (London: Hutchinson of London, 1967), 27. Mills was the case officer who for a time controlled the double British-German agent Joan Pujol Garcia—whom he code-named Garbo, for Greta Garbo—during World War II.
Mills offers £20,000: Circus performance notes, Times (London), June 29, 1934.
Mills’s fondness for Tiny Town: Frank Foster, Pink Coat, Spangles and Sawdust: Reminiscences of Circus Life with Sanger’s Bertram Mills and Other Circuses (London: Stanley Paul, 1948), 109.
Leitzel chopping Ingalls’s finger: Henry Ringling North and Alden Hatch, The Circus Kings: Our Ringling Family Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 187.
Jack Earle’s British foray: Author interview, Andrew Erlich, nephew of Jack Earle, who said Earle was particularly close to Graf and the Doll family.
Film clip of Earle and Lya Graf: Queer and Quaint, 1931, filmed at Olympia London and archived by British Pathé, http://www.britishpathe.com.
“It’s part of my job”: Circus Scrap Book no. 10 (April 1931).
keep tabs on his best-earning acts: “Hartman’s Broadcast,” Billboard, Jan. 27, 1934.
“Deformity gave them good jobs”: Foster, Pink Coat, 111–113.
“really [did] look like visitors from a strange planet”: Letter from Cyril B. Mills to Bernth Lindfors, Aug. 1, 1984, shared with the author from Lindfors’s collection.
Ubangi Duck-Billed Savages’ backstory: Janet M. Davis, The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under the American Big Top (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 135.
Scouring maps for exotic names: Dexter Fellows and Andrew A. Freeman, This Way to the Big Show: The Life of Dexter Fellows (New York: Viking, 1936), 295–296, and “African ‘Beauties’ Here to Join Circus,” New York Times, April 1, 1930.