Jolunyg hugant
Showman


OLO
JOHNNY NUGENT, SHOWMAN
as told to
Maurice Rowdon
BOLT AND
WATSON
LYD


JOINNY NUGENT is an all-round circus man. He
can eat fire, swallow swords, throw knives, do horse-
back ropetricks.
He clowns and MCs and hypnotises.
He has worked with snakes and trained all kincs of
animal acts.
He can do 'good' and 'cheap' magic,
illusion and levitation. He is now sixty-five years
of age and lives with the last of his animals in a
rambling shack at Colonial Heights near Richmond,
Virginia.
Two busy highways intersect not half a mile
away but he has a clean stream to himself, and the shade
of thé cedar trees he himself planted. He sleeps in
the main cabin next to a tall wood-stove, and around
him are platforms, boxes for carving up ladies, scaffold-
ing, sword-racks, 'Larriet' knives, bull-whips and guns
and posters and much of the varied paraphernalia of his
acts. According to Johnny there are more circuses
coming on the road every day.
This book will be drawn entirely from Johnny's
talk.
It will cover his life as chronologically as
possible, given the easy-going and rambling style of
his chat, and it will comprise something of a one-man
history of the circus this century.
Johnny has enough
stories for five volumes.
Here are a few typical excerpts:
JOHNNY NUGENT, SHOWMAN
as told to
Maurice Rowdon
I have two booking agents and the rule is they
take fifteen percent of the cut and do all the booking
for me. I play carnival, rodeos, fairs, I play every-
thing but a medicine show and a dramatic show.
But
I'm going to tell you where the money is.
It's in
the nightclubs. Now I've played in many a one: in
the Carolines, Georgia, all the western coast of America,
down here on the eastern shore too, and maybe once or
twice in Richmond (but not too much over there).
And
my agents book me in, maybe with a juggling act or a
belly dancer.
You never know what you're going to
get. All I know is what I'm going to do. That's the.
work it works.
Now people come here to Colonial Heights and tell
me how to make a lot of money. You see, it's like
those gypsy folk---if they know the lucky number for
the horses why don't they play it themselves? Do you
think I'd sell it for a buck if I knew it? And then


thev tell you to put a rabbit's foot in your pocket.
It'll give you good luck'
But look what happened to
the rabbit!
And then the same people turn round and want to
borrow a dime for a cup of coffee.
I've got three nieces and two nephews, and not one
of them bothers me. I live all alone. My youngest
nephew Francis is the only one in the family who fell
in my shoes.
He's my brother's boy. Francis has my
horses right now, seven of them. I've got my two
donkeys up at the top of the hill here with some old
folks who look after my dog and all that when I'm away
on a show. And I have a pony down here with me, round
the back.
My brother's retired from the navy and has a gift
shop somewhere in Tennessee, he has some big floor space
there. He never went much for show business, though
he was a pretty good trick roper at one time.
But it
didn't work. After all, it's what you like.
Sometimes this shack of mine is loaded with
equipment.
Apart from what I keep here, Forrest Taylor
has got it all in Circusville, Ohio---my A-sets and the
trumples and driving units and platforms. He's even got
a ring curb of mine up there. Now Columbus, Ohio, is
your largest stand in the United States.
Then comes
Dallas. But Columbus, Ohio, has your biggest fair.
My momma and daddy were show people too.
It's
handed down. from father to son, usually.
I've seen
the little kids cry and their mommas and daddies would
throw them up on the teeter board with the swivel belt
on and all that stuff for the trapeze or tumbling act.
They'd tell them 'Git with it!'
I'm not just a circus man. I'm a sign painter
too, an artist.
I was born with that. I went to no
schools. I like doing letters, circus letters or what
they call the Gay Nineties. You see, a showman likes
a flash. My mother used to paint flowers on dishes
back when times were tight. I used to go out and sell
her little saucers with their hand-painted lilies and
poinsettas for a dime a piece, and that was good money,
in '36 and '31, in the Depression, when the WPA was
going on. THat was when I got three dollars a week,
and I'm not lying. Plus all I could steal but there
was nothing to steal---that was what the circus man
always told me when he hired me!
I cover just about everything in my work. One
of my painted signs says 'Levitation, Forbidden Wisdom'.
I've got the gimmick for that, you see.
It's a secret!
I bring it on big.
If I play the levitation I have a
girl work with me, her name is Charlotte Stalensky,
and she's as stiff as a board when I put her up there
and make her rise. I do my announcing, I say, 'Now
you gentlemen that's highstrung in math, get your slide
rules out because this is going to bug yer! It bugged
my mother in law So bad she's in Central State Hospital
right now!
It serves her right for trying to stick


her nose in my act!
Suspended in mid-air, watch it!'
I get two guys up on the stage and set her up there
on two chairs and a strip of pinewood between, and she'll
go up.
And after it's all over with they start bugging
you, they want to find out your secret.
I work with various girls. Sandra does the
levitation sometimes too. I have a girl by the name of
Fry for the western stuff.
She works bull whips and
we do fancy roping and stuff together.
But the nightclubs are where the money is all right.
I can sell them my 'garbage'---picture postcards, your
souvenirs.
It's like the guys at the races saying,
'Programmes, programmes, you can't tell the damned horse
without programmes!"' The trouble is in the nightclubs
a dirty joke goes over bigger than a high-priced act.
All they want is jokes! And look at TV! Man, they
talk about family hour' but, holy cow, if it ain't
naughty it ain't good! And then you get the hecklers
at the clubs. You've got to shut them up.
There are two kinds of magic, real magic and illusion.
I can do a whole lot---legerdemain, flourishes, back
palming, hex and voodoo.
Doug Henning too---people try
to bribe him to get his secret.
But you can't bribe
him. Glen Campbell once told him, 'I'll teach you
how to play the guitar if you show me how you moved
that knot on the rope.'
Then there's Mark Wilson.
He's good too.
Now I've got some good magic and I've
got cheap magic. What I do in close-up cheap magic
is like inside somebody's home or at a club.
I keep
it clean but I might take something out of man's
pocket that he didn't know he had.
I don't use stooges.
I ask for a volunteer and I use a little technology.
I can tell a couple if they're married or single, or
if they're just dating up.
I get them up there on the
platform.
Where the fun comes in is when you hear
them say to each other, 'I told you not to come up. here,
he's going to make a fool outa yer!' I keep talking
in the mike, and I might tell a guy, 'It looks like
you're holding out on me, what have you got there?'
And I pull a knife and fork out of his pocket.
Nobody's seen me touch him!
They get a big kick out
of that. When you put sométhing in somebody's pocket
it's called a flourish. If I'm working with kids I
take a little boy out of the crowd and give him a water-
bucket and he carriesit round in front of me while I
say 'Half a dollar please!' That's called a 'coin-
catcher'.
When we get: through I count the coins and
there's one missing and I say to the boy, 'Iley, hey
you! What you done? Snitched one of them coins?
Come on now, come on, I gonna pay you but I don't want
you taking my half-dollars, I need 'emt'
'Mister, I wouldn't take your money!'
I say, 'Look, just give. me that half-dollar!'
And he opens his mouth and I shake his jowls, and
it falls right there in the bucket. Or I shake his nose
and it falls out of his nostrils.
Now levitation is illusion, not magic. The big


question is, is she really suspended in mid-air? My
answer to that is if I could do miracles I'd jack up
trucks and let you work on the tyres and take the
universal joint out and make all the money I wanted.
Flame swallowing and sword-acts are dangerous.
Now the sword-act is a nut you just can't crack.
going to tell you something.
This here burns me up
because it's happened on every circus I've been on.
It's the attitude of certain people.
I don't mean
owners or managers or the public but just flunkies,
you know, the labourers round the show.
Every time
I work with the sword they come round and stand in
front of the platform, and everybody out there knows
they're with the show, and they keep seeing it and
they keep it seeing it but they still don't believe
it, they're trying to catch on to the trick.
But
there's no trick to it!
At the end them flunkies
don't know a bit more than at first. One time I told
them straight, I said, 'Holy smoke! You go along to
the office way, I'm fed up with you!
If Hocksey
Tucker believes it's true I don't care if anybody
else believes it because he's the guy paying me!
Where that sword goes is my business!'
The things people say---that we use 'tubular' or
'collapsible' swords and all that!
I couldn't fool
people in the United States with stuff like that!
Some say rubber, some say it went up my sleeve. I
even worked with a tee-shirt on once and they said it
went down my collar.
I always tell them, 'You all
come right close!'
Hocksey Tucker is a nice man to work with. Last
year I played his show in Maryland, Jersey. He came
right here to Colonial Heights two years ago and he
said to me, 'I want you because you don't boose, John.'
He's got a lot of money, he has eleven elephants of his
own.
Twenty-one inches is the longest length of sword
I've swallowed.
I also swallow Spanish bayonets. I
have an antique sword with a brass handle.
Now sword-
swallowing is a top sideshow act. You don't do it in
the circus ring because you're too far from the people.
There's but five of us that's known to be doing this in
the United States at the present time. We all knew
each other once.
Alec Linton drank himself to death--
he was a lush. Patsy Smith died.
Vivien Donnen from
France is now up in Alaska converting Eskimos to some
kind of religion.
She quit the carnival business
altogether.
There's hundreds and hundreds of them circus people
tried to do sword and they can't. So people ask me,
'Well, how do you do it then?' Actually the truth is
sometimes I wish I never had, because when T eat right


now I have to be careful, a biscuit will slip down my
throat and I can't control it, my throat is too big.
It's the contour of my. throat and the involuntary
muscles in there, that's what a doctor once told me.
I've been in the East, all over.
They had a tribe
over there, they call them dark and they look like
niggers or coloured but they're Indians, I swallowed a
bayonet, an army bayonet, and stuck it in a cocoanut
tree afterwards. Oh man, they were scared of me round
there! Now army bayonets are only semi-sharp, they've
got a blood gutter on there but they're not bad.
They're short, too.
What I used to do out there was
for the fun of it, when I was in the.army. I did fire-
eating and stuff like that. You don't eat the fire,
you manipulate it. I tell people, 'Don"t go home and
try this trick because it's not a trick!' I've seen
two or three of them go to hospital. I tell them,
'Monkey see,monkey do, monkey get a whipping too!'
I was round the Hopi Îndians a long time and that's
where I learned that fire-eating stuff. Out in Arizona.
They have a rain-dance with snakes too.
At one time I
had a lot of snakes for my snake-show. People say,
'That snake know you, why he no bite you?' That isn't
true. A snake shows no sign of distinction between you
and me but he do know the sign of how he is handled.
There's a lot of tricks in that too. I used to hypnotise
them, and I'd put up a big front and stand one of them
up on a card table and tell the public, 'Watch!
going to turn him round half of his length!'
And I'd
do it. My nephew Francis has all ry Snake equipment
now. I've worked with all kinds of snake, and I've
been bitten quite a few times. I've fixed many snake-
skins and fangs, and mounted the heads.
I suppose we're different from other people.
That's what Lou Jacobs on the Ringling show says.
He's the world's greatest clown. He's been on that
show fifty years.
He was here once in Colonial Heights,
him and his daughter, and he said to me, 'Johnny, you
lead a kind of a weird life.'
And I said, 'Weli, it's
just what you like.'
I never married, you see. I tell them on the show,
I could have gotten married and made one happy, but I stay
single and make 'em all happy!
I'll tell you why I like the circus. There's no
gyp-game. If you buy a ticket it entitles you to one
comfortable hard board to sit on, then you're through
spending money. If you don't want the popcorn or the
peanuts you don't have to buy them.
But a carnival has got the gyp joints. They call
them the fladdies. They consist of count stores, guns
on a cat-rack and buckets and razzledazzle and all them
shakedowns. And a lot of them is outlawed---they sould


pull the awning down on some of them right away.
The real estate at Richmind Fair goes for fifteen dollars
a foot on the front, so if you've got a good-sized joint
you know what it's going to cost you. A carnival stays
a week, usually, a circus only stays a day, except for
the big outfits like Ringling.
But everything at the
carnival is a Gyp-game-- --the rides and sideshows and the
gambling. They never bother me because I've got a code-
sign I use. When they see that they say, 'You're with
it!' and I say, 'I may be with it but I ain't for it!
I like rodeo and circus.
I still have the horse
I used to trickrope off. His name is Bandito. I spin
the rope and then I hit the saddle and bring the loop
all the way round under his head and over his hips.
I got a certificate for that dated February 2 1953.
And I won a plaque with the Western Riders of Petersburg--
'Presented to John Nugent for his loyal support and
showmanship 1966-68.'
You don't find many circus people drinking. Some
of them take a pill. I used to be a heavy coffee drinker
but I stopped that. The doctor said I had a low blood
count and it came from coffee-drinking.
Twelve cups a
day!
And I'd work with an empty stomach.
When you work
with a horse don't eat and go out there---oh no'
I've got some ruptured muscles on my arm, which means
I'm paying for something I used to do. I tell everybody,
'You can be an athlete, and you can show off, but when you
get above fifty it's going to tell on you!' Those
wrestlers suffer pain when they get a little age on them.
They've been fighting mother nature too long.
I worked
on horizontal bars, where the guy used to holler out,
'Slick tricks on the hickory sticks!' The bar is made
of hickory wood, and you use powder resin and a strap.
I did hand balancing too.
But I'm paying for all that.
Today they give me muscle-pain pills.
When I'm away on a show I pay the family un the hill
to look after my thinrs. They've got a Chevrolet car,
they're very straight, conservative people. He's over
eighty now. He's got a nice garden and he raises a lot
of stuff, I said to him this year, I said, 'Charlie, I
wouldn't plant all them potatoes, you're killing yourself!
You'd better take it easy!' Now if I want potatoes I
go out to a restaurant and sit down and let them serve
me the hash. I never planted a garden in my life.
The only thing I ever planted was my cedar trees out
front. I like the SIIOW., I like to make easy money.
Some people say, 'You seem to be a heck of a good guy,
how come you never got married?'
'Look', I say, 'I been in one war! I
I was born on Thanksgiving morning, November 25th,
but I'm not saying which year.
All I'll say is I
remember the First World War.
I built this wooden shack where I live with two other
showmen, both of them dead now. We used to go out to
the dump with a truck and pick up stuff---two by fours
and all that.
The only thing we paid money for was the


tin on the roof.
There are more circuses coming on the road every
day. But they're small ones.
You can't get big lots
now.
Unless it's indoors and you have a stadium, and
a lot of towns don't have one.
I like the indoor show.
You're out of the weather and the mud and rain, and you
don't have to tear down or put up anything.
Circus people say we go to the Big Lot when we
die. That's a phoby, or rather a theory. Or we call it
the Final Curtain, in circy-talk. Circus people
believe you go to the Big Lot when you die like Indians
believe you go to the Hlappy Hunting Ground. Or like
you say about the cowboy when he died, he 'went west'.
Maybe I believe it.
The circus is a rough life. Yes, it's rough.
I've slept with the animals many a time. You've got
a big wad of money but money ain't everything. You
don't have the time to go to town to spend it-- --that's
why you've got it.
But it's better than the army.
The food's better.
The army pulled all my teeth out,
I took so much quinine when I had malaria my teeth
started falling out. That was in World War Two.
I don't know why, I still have a grudge against
the army. Well, you wouldn't call.it a grudge: I
just hate it.
I got drafted in 1941. A man gave me
ten days to get in the army. I was in Fleetsport,
Louisiana, and he says to me, 'Don't get yourself into
Atalanta Federal prison.'
I hadn't registered.
I'm a disability veteran and I draw a check from
Uncle Sam that's untaxable.
I only have but one eye,
the other's plastic and waters all the time. A piece
of schrapnel from a Jap mortar shell hit me. I was
with 77 Division under General Buckman, and he got
killed. Ile was under General Macarthur.
When I went
in in 1911 I thought I had just a year to pull, I
said, 'I'll be home again next year'. But I couldn't
get out. I sold three of my horses, a dog act and a
bunch of other stuff. Momma kept Mike, a monkey of
mine: he was big but she could handle him.
I stayed
nine months in Miami in hospital, then they sent me
to the Walter Reed hospital and that's where they made
me three plastic eyes. The doctor said, 'You need three
because you blink and they wear out.'
But I've never
touched the other two. I take the eye out and wash
it with boric acid sometimes.
I don't miss the real eye
but I'd miss that check.
I've got a card in my pocket that will take me
into the government hospital in Richmond any time I
want.. When my mother was still alive I gave them two
one-hour benefit shows for nothing. They've got
hundreds and hundreds of guys in there. Previously


the American Legionused to book a lady to play the
piano and another one to go whoa! whoa!, that was a
high opera show.
The guys wanted to throw rocks
at her.
People get tired of that stuff.
They want
something strange. So the American Legion man said,
'You're the guy that can do it.'
'Look, I told him, 'I like a one-man show where
I've got to do everything.
So I told my momma and we went over there one day,
and I made an appointment with the entertainment
officer, a lady.
She was tickled to death!
She
said, 'I don't believe it!'
I said, 'Look, they didn't believe Jesus Christ
when he was on earth.'
So we put on a show from eight till nine. You
can't keep them up butjan hour. They billed it and I
went over there all dressed up. I did five acts--
variety and novelty acts and circus acts, and some
magic and black trick-roping where you turn the lights
off (I've got five ropes painted with slow resin paint,
and it certainly looks weird). I couldn't do any fire
because it's against the law in a building.
There was some pitiful sights over there.
I had
them on stretchers and in wheel-chairs. They all
wanted to see more than an hour, but no, at nine sharp,
out!
They had a beautiful stage and three sets of
curtains, and a nice PA set. Everything was nice and I
had a good prop man who worked for the government.
Saw a WAC with a hand off but I didn't ask any personal
questions. I went out among the crowd with the mike
before the show started: you know, just to meet tham
and shake hands.
I saw a lot of spine trouble, people
lying on their bellies, because it hurts all the time.
I told then, 'This act is mind over matter.
don't mind and that don't matter! 1
Some. of the nurses got in the front row.
Now I
like to carry on some foolishness with nurses. I said,
'Hey, now look, hey, I know you don't belong. here'
Beside, you're going to be sorry if you sit so close!'
Well, the first blade I swallowed---I didn't think
some of those registered nurses who have been around
operating rooms and seen tools rattling like a garage
and knives and blood flying could be squeamish, but
the first blade I swallowed was a long English bayonet
and one of those nurses goes 'Oh! Oh' Oh!' like a
dog yelping.
I said, 'I told you before it started---if you're
on the weak side just peep, if you're sceptical come up
here on the stage where you can get a good look!'
We had a ball that day. I got a letter of apprec-
iation afterwards.
I'd like to have done some other
stuff like a balancing act but you've got to take props
for that and rigging and it's hard work.
I play three
or four charity shows every year. I don't miss them,
and I'll tell you why. I don't mean to be crooked but
you've sot to stay in with the clique. The Lions Club---


they take care of the eyes, I don't know how much
money they didn't donate to the medical college for
pupils of the eyes.
But after I've worked with kids one or two hours
I'm ready to leave.
I'm fed up and wore out'
not much on kids. All I know is I like to entertain
them. You see, I take my false teeth out and I clown.
I put a make-up on and I slick up in some gabardine or
western wardrobe or magic outfit or something weird.
They love mel
I swallow a blade and a little girl
pulls it out for me.
And then I give her a little
souvenir picture postcard. I buy these postcards of
mine so cheap you'd think I stole them-- -fourteen dollars
for five thousand is what the printing costs.
The kids
look forward to me coming again next year.
As for most of the fortune-tellers I ever met,
they'd steal anything they could lay their hands on, tent
stakes and all.
I mean the gypsies. They have what
they call mit-camps, these fortune tellers.
It means
the palm of your hand, they look at the life-line and
all that. They go 'mit-camping' and make a bit of
money. Some circuses won't let them work.
But there's
one thing I'll say about the gypsies. They are Christians.
They are so religious, this is no joke, I've never known
one eet a divorce or somebody'd come along and take his
wife right away from him or nothing. That don't
happen, that don't exist with the gypsies! You're not
going to get a date with them!
No sir!
Round that
show they come and talk but there's no trash-talk, they
won't talk no trash with you! Good looking?
I'll say!
A gypsy boy told me once, 'I'm going to buy me a
wife as soon as I save up enough money, then I go give
it to the father, and the father let me have the daughter'.
That's the way they work it. I say, 'How much you
got to have?'
And he say, 'Well, I don't know, I have to find out
from her father first.'
Rosie was a fortune-telling Eypsy lady. She used
to holler me: 'Johnny!
How's the animals?'
I'd say, 'Well, they're still eating!
The sypsies used to watch my animal show. You could
never make them pay. One of the women might go to hug
you or love you up a bit and go through your pockets while
she's doing it. Now I can't understand that. Still,
they don't divorce, they don't separate, they don't
cheat or run out on one another. Yet they'll slip a
bill from out of your pocket.
As to whether I believe in the fortune-telling I
have a story about that. At one time I had a buddy
who'd say, 'That bunch of baloney they've got!' Ie
didn't believe the hogwash. Now Rosie say to me one


day, 'Johnny, bring your buddy over there tonight at
the mit-camp, I wanna tell his fortune'.
He's a rough guy, and he told her what to do.
'You come over heret' she say.
'You think you're
smart?'
He says, 'Woman, I ain't got no money.'
She say, 'You tell a big lie! You got thirty-six
cents in your pocket, that's what you got!'
Yes, and that's all he did have!
That man, you
could have bought him for a nickel, he was about as low
as a beggar in the street.
When he heard that he told me, 'Come on, let's
get the hell away from here!'
And afterwards he said,
I sure had just thirty-six centst' He had three dimes,
a nickel and a penny.
I told him, 'Now you stay away from them Eypsies
and don't mouth back at 'em---!
I worked with a lady once who gave samples of
mind-reading to the crowd befcre Chey came in the side-
shows, out front. I worked on a circuit with her.
She would say, 'I'm no Eypsy fortune-teller, I'm a
mind-reader.
She would say to the people, 'You, out there,
you live on Warren Street and it's number 36!
Now
if I'm right I want you to acknowledge it and give me
credit for it. If it ain't you just tell me I'm a liar
and it'll be all right.'
Then she'd tell a guy where he'd been the night
before.
And once a lady asked her to tell, her her
phone number and she gave it just like that. She does
all this for a sample out front, then you go round the
back to see her privately.
She had a little curtain
behind her platform and if you wanted to find out some-
thing special you paid her fifty cents or maybe just a
quarter: this was extra, it was free on the sideshows
after you done bought your ticket to come in and see
all the other attractions.
Now I believe in that kind of thing, and I've seen
quite a lot of it. Some people have said to
'Johnny, whose side you on, God's or the
devainea.
People ask me that!
I say, 'That's a terrible accusation!
Just because I do something weird, something unusual!'
But then I just laugh it off." I say, 'Oh, go home and
take a big bite out of the pillow and then go to sleep!
Yes, there are people who can do some weird ungodly
tricks.
But I myself won't try to corrupt nobody.
the last ten years I reckon I've introduced twenty-five
girls to show business.
All of them ended up. the same
way.
If they want a lush, they marry.
One of their
husbands came told me, 'I don't mind you throwing knives
at my wife, just so you don't teach her to throw knives
at me!'


But I don't want trouble on. my act. Every time
a girl does the knife act with me she gets twenty-five
dollars. Twice a day makes a lot of money. Some
were too young. Some were too old. Up on the wall
of my cabin there's written up what I call the German
theory, the truth: I GET PAID FOR MY WORK AND THE
PEOPLE PAY TO SEE ME WORK. LET ME SEE YOU BEAT THAT
ONE.
You can't do the knife-act with volunteers or
members of the public.
It's got to be a girl who
knows you and trusts you and isn't afraid.
Those
knives go pretty close, and some of them are doubles,
I throw two at a time and they reach the target at the
same distance from each other as they leave my hand.
Now these girls I worked with had everything. They
had beauty, they had youth, they was dolls and everything
else. But I don't want rough stuff because when I
play a show I may want to go back there one of these
days. I don't ever sell indecent pictures but I could
sell them easy and get by with it, there's nothing the
law can do, they can't get on me as long as I'm out there
on the street showing them.
Now I may do some naughty
saddle acts, like I shoot a girl off the saddle so the
crowd will roar. And I do fast cartoons, I use chalk
and pencil on the easle-board, and I sell them.
But
I don't play rough or dirty.
I knew a fellow one time who was possessed by the
devil.
That's how he made his money.
Him and his wife
was both ungodly.
He used to hypnotise women volunteers
from the town and bury them alive. Ie'd call out,
'Ilypnotised and paralysed, sleeping six foot underground
in a electro-lighted coffin! -
He charged five cents to
look in there, and he put a guard on night and day.
He'd bury her on Monday night and dig her up Saturday
when the carnival moved on.
He had a fan for sending
air down.
I've seen this man get hold of somebody and hypnotise
them before they could say forty.
He was evil-looking,
he act evil. 1've seen him go to a dry towel on the
wall and squeeze milk out of it, God knows how!
hypnotised a woman one time, she was so fat he couldn't
get her in the box. So he just took her and shook her
and snuffed her out of it. Nobody round the show liked
him. He had no friends.
He was wicked.
He looked
like a devil when you looked at him.
Iis wife was a mind-reader, like the other lady I
mentioned. I used to say to myself, 'If I could do what
she can do I'd go somewhere and dump him!
Then I'd get
me a job around colleges or somewhere, I'd make some
money!'
She could tell you the day you was born and where,
and numbers, and how much money you got in your pocket.
Then if you wanted to get. nasty with her she hurt your
feelings, she'd tell you a thing you were ashaned of.
She'd say, 'I'm going to tell you a name and let conscienc ce
be your guide.'
It might be the name of somebody you'd


done harm to.
About ninety-five percent of the people you can
hypnotise, the rest you can't. I know a little about
that stuff.
It can be used badly, you know.
I took
a course in hypnosis and studied it.
They gave me a
certificate at a school in Philadelphia, a hypnosis
school of technology where I took a correspondence course
and swore an oath I wouldn't abuse. it or use it for
nothing only for entertainment purposes on a high
elevated platform in front of an audience.
Not in
private.
Now I use hypnosis all the time. You can call
it mass hypnosis or sleep or trance. I hypnotised
a girl once and then I got a snake out and he crawled
all over her arm and dress. She's sitting there with
the snake all over her, and. everybody's roaring out
there. Then I take the snake and put it back in the
box and shake the girl. She goes back and everybody
say to her, 'You know what you done?'
She say, 'I ain't done nothing' -
So they tell her what happened and she freaks out.
Now I haven't had a college education.
I've got
too much showman-craft in me. Some of those words
people use I can't even pronounce. Like these doctors,
they have all these different names for things, these
professors. I know what an elephant is, I can tell
you how many toes he's got, and about the musk-glands
on the side of his face and all that stuff. But these
technical names I can't even pronounce.
I can't savvy
all that.
I know something about hypnosis, that's all:
I wonder, do they teach that in colleges?
I didn't set my master-sergeant's stripes in the
army with my brain.
I got them with my mouth. My
colonel said to me, 'You got more mouth than elephant
got behind.'
A good friend of mine is a dentist and he's always
trying to find out something from me. He says, 'I want
you to tell me what you done with that block of wood.'
I get a solid block of wood and run a rope right through
it, and then I get two suys to hold the rope. I walk
ver and just get hold of that block again and throw it
loose, and the guys are standing holding the rope.
My friend says, 'I've thought about that for hours.
Now how do you do it?'
I tell him, 'You just go home and sit on it, and
don't worry.'
He told me he usesa little hypnosis on ladies and
kids.
But he doesn't have the gift of the gab. I hate
to say this, and you may call it bull, but you've got to
have the gift of gab. You've got to talk, you've got
to persuade people. They've got to believe in what
you're doing. Now I work an audience up before I do
an act. I say, 'Now I'm ashamed of this but I'm going to
do it. You all wanna see it?'
'Yeah! they all yell.


'Oh shut up!'
That gets them started, see?
I'd write out a whole series of numbers on a board,
my social security number, and when I turned the board
round it said GO TO HELL.
I had two soldiers one time on a platform (I didn't
get a nickle out of this because I was in the army),
I sat them down in chairs with their feet flat on the
ground and I told one of them he was a monkey in Africa
and he had a nut tied to his tail.
And he started
crying!
I told the other one, 'It's getting hot'' and
he started taking his clothes off. He got all the way
down to his underwear before I snapped him out of it.
There were a thousand people there to witness that thing.
People ask me, 'What if you can't snap 'em out of
I say, 'Just throw a bucket of water over them,
shock'll take 'em out of it!'
The best performer in this kind of thing in the
United States is Mrs Brandon.
She's got strictly a
one-night stand, and plays all the theatres. Man,
she's a good one. She had twenty people in a circle
one time looking at a candle.
I know what she was up to.
She made one of the euys do the hoochy-koochy, the
belly dance.
You ought to have seen him, his pants
stripped down to his ankles, his necktie on and a coat,
it looked so funny!
Anybody might think he was with
the show but he wasn't, he cameout of the crowd.
He'll
never live that down!
I can do a lot of psychic stuff too. I've seen
them pick up a table. I have three books---one of
them came from Germany, on witchcraft, then there are
the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, and the other is
called 'Forbidden Wisdom'.
My mother used to say they
was ungodly.
They're all out of print now.
I have people say to me, 'You can do back-palming and
all that corn-stuff, can you go in a dime store and swipe
something that nobody can catch you?'
I wouldn't even go in that store and take a toothpick
out of there.
The coloured folks are into all thatvoodoo and spell
stuff.
I played Green's Racecourse in Petersburg three
years ago, in Tialloween, and it's owned by a.coloured man.
I'm not prejudiced. I get along with the Indian, the
Chinaman, I get along with any of them as long as they
treat me all right---Russians and Polaks and the lot.
This here coloured fellow, I gave him five or six acts.
And he paid me in twenty-dollar bills before I went to
work. I used to kid him, 'I could cut out on you, now
I've got my money!'
'Oh, Mr Nugent, - he'd say, 'you wouldn't do that.
You're going to hare hundreds of people come here to see


you work.'
And it was true.
I went in for voodoo and hex
and spell. Them niggers' eyes were So big!
You call
them niggers but round the show we call them jigs or
coons. They don't get mad if you call them a jig.
I went in for the rope standing up on end, I got a
piece of sash cord that came out of a Venetian blind
and I'd get to shaking it and making sounds like
Teyenenayoninaninayinano!
Some loudmouth said, 'I'd like to handle that rope!'
So I got him up on the stage and told him, 'You hold
the rope like this.
Take it and see it's soft, it
ain't no spring in it and it ain't no lead in it!
Say, did you know faith could move mountains? Iave
you guys no faith?'
He didn't say a word while he was up there with me.
Then I got to shaking the rope---Teyenenayoninaninayin-
ano!' And I said, 'Now I'm going to hand it to you!
And it was as stiff as a stick. He was all shook up
after that!
I'd tell them, 'Look, there are people in Bombay
India and Calcutta in the land of mystery who can do
this and we've got 'em right here in Petersburg too!
That's what you're going to see here!'
Here's one act I like.I take a handful of sand
and I let you look at it. I work it right close to
you. I call it voodoo, hex or spell.
I say, 'The
sands of the Sahara desert!
Now you watch this real
close!'
I take the sand and put it in a bowl of water,
just enough to make a little hamburger out ofit, like
a kid would make a mud-cake.
Then I show it to them.
I close my hand and holler real loud---and the dry sand
flies all over the stage!
But I don't tell any of my secrets.
I don't have anybody but my one nephew that's on
my side. The other nephew isn't cut out for it.
You
see, it's got to be born in you, like we say, 'You have
sawdust in your veins.'
It gets in there and it don't
get out.
I've told my nephew, he may abuse some power
and get himself into trouble with it, with some voodoo
or hex, but he shouldn't take advantage. You don't
want to abuse anything just because you have a privilege.
I told him I'd give him my swords, and he's got fifteen
trick ropes of mine, and seven bull whips.
A coloured lady asked me once, 'Could you put a
voodoo on a neighbour? I want him to move.'
I told her, 'Yes, sure, I'll fix you up. You get
a piece of fat meat and tie it on a red ribbon and put
some pins in it, straight pins with round heads, you
stick 'em in there, and then you put it in a little box
and you put this under his porch or under the door, then
you won't have no trouble.'


You can get very deep into the animal world.
Training animals is something you can't do overnight.
And no cruelty's involved. You'll notice that if
they jump through the flaming hoop there's no fire
on the bottom. What you do to train them for this is
to get them young.
Say it's tigers: well, you get
the little cub and behind closed doors in winter
quarters you light a few drops of gasoline and just shove
him through. there, then you shove him and you shove him,
it's an everyday grind. And one day he hits the ring
and sits up there on his pedestal while you keep holler-
ing 'Ulla! Ullat' Now the animals know that sound.
The best animal trainers are the Germans. There
was a German woman once---I could never pronounce hor
nome because it sounded Russian---she had some leopards,
two or three tigers, lions and a couple of bears. She
played shrine-dates---that means indoor stuff.
And she
had a wonderful act there.
Those animals work so hard,
there's no such thing as a. day lay-off for them!
But
the crack of that whip doesn't touch them'
No trainer
wants to cut the wool off their fur because he loves
those cats and he lives by them.
Now here's a piece of advice: don't turn your back
on animals in a cage, and don't run away.
The same
with elephants.
I saw in the news last week that an
elephant in a circus grabbed one of the keepers by the
arm and just flogged him on the ground to a mush, with
a hundred people looking on. I never played the fool
with an elephant.
You've sot to keep up the bluff with
all animals.
If you 8O in the steel ring where the cats
are and then you back out, they're going to rush that
door on you!
But when a guy sticks his head in a
lion's mouth he's raised that thing from a little baby.
Some people say, 'Oh, that lion's got no claws nor teeth''
Don't tell that to me, I've seen them.
Wolfgang Osmeyer was another famous lion-tamer.
He went back to Germany, him and his daughter, because
he had played Ringlings So many years they wouldn't book
him any more, he got washed up. He had one lion that
walked the wire.
But the finest lion-tamer of all time
was Alfred Kurt, also from Germany. Ile lived and was
buried at Nice, in Trance. There's a big book out
about him. lie was the greatest.
Now Clive Beatty had a fighting act, not a perform-
ing act. People said, 'You're cruel.'
But it's like
if you tell that to a cowboy: he can show what the bull
did to him' The trainers don't work like that.
Clive
and 'his wife called themselves King and Queen of the
Circus and they had a railroad show of their own-
beautiful tableau wagons and cages. He was a sarcastic
man. He wouldn't talk to you. He walked round with
his nose in the air. He didn't have what I call polite-
ness or personality.
He'd get bored and then go and
sit in the trailer because he didn't want to shake hands
with anybody.
He wanted no congratulations or compliments
after a show.
It was all fighting for him, and the


lions did hardly any tricks.
It was all growling
and clawing and him cracking the whip and shooting a
pistol.
All the European acts were quiet acts.
The
Gunther Williams act had two tigers riding horses,
and another tiger on a swing, and one riding an African
elephant. Everything Gunther did was kind and quiet.
No fighting or thrashing or hitting.
The tigers are
the most intelligent of the cats. That's why there are
more tiger acts. A German girl had a troupe of polar
bears, I remember, eleven of them, and they worked real
good too.
They have to wash bears down every day with
the hose.
But polar bears are getting scarce today.
Clive Beatty had an elephant-riding tiger too.
But his elephant was So scared he had to have another
bull-elephant waiting just outside the ring, as long
as that elephant with the tiger on his back could see
his buddy out there he was OK.
But if that elephant erer Tot hold of the tiger
he'd make hash out of him. Ie'd gore him to death
or else slug him. They call them slugger-bulls.
I've seen one of them hit a guy right across the ring.
The African elephants are different from the Asian ones.
The African is more contemptible, more stubborn,
though every once in a while you'll find a good one.
Gunther Williams had an elephant act in Ohio, five or
six of them. One of them was a big tough animal called
Tommy, but he never gave him any trouble.
The elephant is the only animal in the world where
the male comes in season. Then you've got to shackle
him down or chain him to a tree for three or four days.
The Asian elephants are more docile.
They take on to
the training quicker. Where these elephant-men 8o
wrong, I think, is when they hire cheap help and get some
young flunkey that ruffles the elephant up and plays
with her. You've got to show elephants respect.
Don't tease them. Here is something that happened at
the Ringling outfit in Florida. One of the elephant
keepers had a little son who used to EO round the elephant
barn with him.
This child had some goodies and went in
to feed his favourite, Judy.
She had a good reputation.
The paper-work on her was OK---where she was from, when
born, character, all the history.
Now if an elephant
drops some food while feeding and you crawl under him to
pick it up, just to be nice to him, he thinks you're
going to take it away and he'll hurt you. That's what
happened to this little boy. She squashed him, she did
a headstand on him. The boy's father told Ringling,
'It was the child's fault, I told him a hundred times to
don't go inside of that rope.'
But that elephant had
happened to drop some food and the boy went in there and
picked the stuff up out of the straw to hand it to her,
but she wasn't going to tolerate that, and she killed him.
All you've got to do is holler 'Trunk up!' if you want
to feed an elephant. He knows that sound, it's the
first thing you train him to do.
That and 'Tail up!'


The whole thing in a nutshell was that John Ringling
North said, 'We're going to have to kill Judy'. He
was one of the Ringling brothers, the other was Henry.
Their mother Ida had married a guy called North, which
is how the new name came in. They went and lived over
in Italy when they sold up, in a castle. They've got
money, they must be multi-millionaires.
'I'li tell you
how to kill her,' John said. 'You take her out there
and I'll have a bulldozer dig a big hole and you stand
her by that hole.
Then we give her an apple with some
cyanide poison in it.
If she do it once, killing a
child, she'll do it again!'
Now everything in a circus is insured.
Even if you
scratch yourself on the straw you're insured. They don't
want to get insurance companies involved, though, unless
it's something really big. So they use what they call a
'patch'. He calls you up to the office to reconcile
you if you've had an injury or something, for cash.
Say you tear your dress on a tent-stake or fall. Above
all, they don't want anybody to get hurt by an animal.
They won't take the risk.
The elephant gets closer to you than other animals.
He's smart. Though a dog's more faithful.
As for horses, there's no money in them. You play
a spot and make a couple of hundred dollars but the way
feed is selling now, one bale of hay costs two and a half
dollars, the cheapest, that's regular old timothy hay.
So the horses eat up all the money you make. But I
never made real money with horses even when hay was ten
cents a bale. It's 365-day work with horses. I like
something that don't eat, like knives and swords. All
you have to do at the end of a show is wrap them up and
leave. And they don't talk back.
People don't appreciate a godd animal act. Some-
times I used to look at my animals at the side of the
road and think, 'I'm going to give them to the next guy
that comes along.' Then when I got a good booking I
didn't want to sell'them any more. You get attached to
certain ones. I've got four dogs today. The other three
are on the road. I used to do a high-diving dog act
with them. I broke them in on the scaffolding I still
have here in my cabin. Theycan jump off the roof of a
house.
But, you know, the SPCA has. got So rough. They've
put it on me in about three shopping centres where I was
booked. I used to have thirty kids standing round the
big tarpaulin, about twenty feet square, waiting to see
the jump. Now you don't put any whip on the dog to
drive him up there. He works free.
But the SPCA say
it's cruel. Now the rodeo has been barred in six states
already---no curb-chains, spurs, calf-roping, bull-dogging.
If the SPCA go around and see a horse where the seat needs
trimming they're going to call you down and, buddy, you'd
better get him trimmed! Or if the horse looks poor, say.
They're up on all that!
But a circus man takes care of his animals.
It's


his bread and meat, and he doesn't want anybody bothering
him.
It's like Gunther Williams told the veterinary
inspector who came to see him, he told him under the
federal law in Washington that the snakes-law and the
animal-law and the birds and all that stuff come under,
there's no more importation of animals except of some
monkeys that go to the university for experiment. Now
we don't experiment on our animals! Yet a dog that'll
come out and work free or roll a barrel or jump the hoop,
they say it's cruel. But I don't use a whip on my dogs!
I pay him when he gets through with a chunk of hamburger.
I had one good high-diving dog at one time. His
name was Curly. He used to jump forty-five feet.
had sixteen light cables rigged up, and a ladder and the
American flag at the top, and a tarpaulin with springs
inside for him to jump on. There was a big sign out
front which said CURLY THE HIGH-DIVING DOG WILL JUMP AT
TEN O'CLOCK.
A big crowd started hanging round to see
it. Whèn I turned Curly loose in front of the crowd
he just went! And when he hit that tarpaulin he'd get
off right away and run all round looking for me. And
I had his goodies ready for him. You can't do that any
more. It didn't bother the dog. I never had a dog
hurt doing that kind of thing.
An SPCA guy watched my show with the dogs and he
said, 'You cracked that whip.' Actually the whip was
in mid-air, away from the dogs. And it was to change
the cue. I never brought that whip down on any of my
animals.
The sound is used to change the trick, that's
all.
Alfred Kurt had three rings going at one time, all
in the same show. He had a woman called Josephine with
polar bears, great Dane dogs and Shetland ponies. Now
these animals are strictly enemies to each other, but
there they were inside the same ring. He trained them
all as little babies, and he raised them together So
they knew each other's smells and all that.
Then he
had a guy called Hawthorne with African lions. Yes,
he had three rings going in the Ringling outfit.
I know some cruelty that happened behind the Iron
Curtain when I was a boy: they didn't have the law
then. I know what they did to some bears and cats
when they broke them, and the public didn't know about
It's payoff that trains a animals. You be nice: to : -
me and- I'li be nice to you---that's the basis.
The only dog I have with me now is a tiny mongrel
called Bubu. When I'm working on the platform I tell
her, 'Now you just say your prayers if you want to go to
heaven!' When she hears that she goes over and puts
her feet on the pedestal and her head way down like she
was praying.
'You don't pray enough! - I say. And
she don't break it up until I holler 'Hey man!' at her.
Or she jumps through the hoop when I hold it up.
Then I throw it down on the floor and she goes over
there and roots through it. Tnat's a clown gag.
I tell people, Bubu keeps house when I'm gone.'


She's got a hole in the door she can get in and out
through. I tell her, 'You be a good dog and look
out for the place!' She goes up to the house at the
top of the hill if I'm not here and she robs something.
Every time you train an animal you've got to give
it a home-seat where they feel safe.
Bubu always goes
over to her pedestal in a show, she knows it's hers.
Now some dogs in a litter can think and you can
train them, and others can't. A lot of people like
to go out and buy a high-price dog in a petshop.
'He's a pedigreel' they say. That's why they've got
to put a leash on -him, they can't let him loose because
somebody's going to steal him. Now I can take Bubu
down 52nd Street in New York.
I couldn't escape her
in a crowd even if I wanted to!
That's because she's
got the brains, not because nobody wants to steal her.
She's a half-breed and she's tough. And I take good
care of her.
My Bubu won't high-dive.
I don't keep her for
that.
She's a clown-dog. I like a clown-act.
used to rope a calf at the rodeo and put a pair of
woman's underwear on him.
It was a contract act.
I had to buy a new pair for every performance. I
went to the store every day and I told the lady I wanted
the biggest ones she'd got. One time she looked at me
funny and I got huffy, I said, 'Lady, you can be replaced,
I can go and see the manager, now just you get them
knickers because my wife's real big.' You see, the
calf would buck and hit and he'd break the underwear
easy.
I was wild as a wind in those days. I was a
comedian and nothing could stop me. I like to thrill
the crowd. I used to ride my horse right up to the
reserved seats and make him buck and throw dirt and
mud all over them. That's part of the show. The
announcer would give me an announcement and then I'd
ride out and say, 'Howdey, folks, and welcome to the
international rodeo show from the south west!'
Then
I'd make my horse slide to a stop and sit down, and I'd
just step off.
Then I'd rope a calf from a good horse (the best I
ever had is still with me---he's thirty-five years old)
and another clown would help me on this act.
I'd milk
that calf. The clown would put the bucket down and I
had a tap inside and some corn starch and water came
out that looked like milk.
I remember a little boy
(this was all of thirty years ago), he stood at the
rodeo gates and he called out to me, 'Mister clown,
that was the boy-calf that you milked!' I said,
'I'll milk any of 'em!' -
Then I used to put the bucket under the clown
and milk him.
That kid was smart.
But they're smarter today.
They make them weaker but wiser.


I've worked with a lot of freaks.
Now good freaks
are hard to come by today.
I worked with the midgets
from Holland, they call them the Doll family, and the
Pinheads, five of them from London, England.
Their
heads were shaped like cocoanuts, they belonged to a
doctor, and only stayed one season. I used to tell
the public, 'They ain't got the brains that God give
a monkey!
How do they live? Say, after you witnessed
this, you go home and git on your knees and thank God
you were born perfectly normal!'
I remember one, his hands grew out of his shoulders.
He could hold a quart carton of milk and drink it with
his own hand if I opened it for him first. He got
awful fat because he didn't do any walking.
I have a
lot of admiration for these people because they're willing
to work, they don't get into a handicapped frame of mind
and depend on somebody else. There was Latino from
Italy, who had three legs. He could sit on one of them
like on a stool, and he used to say to the girls, 'You
don't believe it? You want to see it?' It grew out
of his spine. He was featured in the sideshow and he
made good money. And when he moved on his leg went
with him, he didn't have to cage it or feed it. Prince
Phil the monkey girl was a good friend of mine.
She
came from Cuba and married Le Bello, the alligator-skin
boy. They were married at Pittsburg.
He used to say
'I want you to teach me how to swallow a sword.'
me,r can't teach you.'
And I told his wife, 'You'd
better get that out of his head So he don't hurt himself
and go to hospital.'
She had long black hair all over her body, and I
saw her in the nude once. It didn't bother him at all.
Tney loved each other, and they worked together.
They
were tops.
Now Al Tomene was a giant. He quit show business
and became a fire-chief in Florida. His body was so big
for the size of his heart that he died. He married Judy,
and she was cut off at the waist. Everybody wondered
how she lived.
I knew two little black pygmies, they had a chaperone
and a bodyguard, and they were from England, like the
Pinheads. I remember one of these pinheads, Rosa,
somebody gave her a guitar and she tore it open to see
what was in the hole.
They came out under the British
government, as far as I could tell. The doctor in charge
of them packed them all in one trailer.
I like to MC. And I'm hard to beat on the platform.
I can tell them all about it. And that's where the money
is. This is what I tell the crowd when I'm pulling them
in to the sideshows: 'Good afternoon, ladies and gentle-
men, girls and boys, and welcome to the circus! You're
now confronting the big circus sideshow where the strange,


odd and unusual people live!
All combine and gather
together under this one canvas!
Now it would take too
long and too much of your time to call your attention to
each and every one of our attractions, but from way down
here to the far end way up there you'il see them just like
depicted on the pictorial paintings! Twenty-eight in
number and not one alike!
But look, when your eyes
greets the doorway you're gonna see Cleave the Seal Boy,
then look, photographs and pictures sometimes lie but
that don't lie, Gerolyn Jerroll the Boy Girl, born to
live in that natural and curious condition, then you're
going to see the fire-eaters, the glass-blowers, the
mind-readers, the sword-swallowers, the Anatomical
Wonder, the Lady Bag Puncher, you'il see 'em all!
Now one ticket takes you all the way through from cage
to cage and from stage to stage, now there's one pay
box, two pay boxes, three pay"boxes, you're just in time
if you care to go! It's continuous performances going
on all the time in there, it's never out and it's never
over!
The big circus sideshow in the Palace of Wonders!
Look to the doorway---big show, little money! I
Pre-publication publicity:
Johnny Nugent has an excellent voice for radio and
some of the tapes I've made can be used for radio
exposure at the time of publication.
I hope too
there will be a movie record featuring Johnny's
animals and his - appearances at the circus ând the
nightclub, and in training with his nephew. I shall
I be approaching a big circus-outfit like Kaye Entertain-
ment Enterprises of Hollywood for cooperation here.
CHAPTER BREAKDOWN
1. A general introduction to Johnny's acts roughly
in the form of the above excerpts- -sword-swallowing,
fire eating, the knife act, horizontal bar work,
snakes, horses, and ropetricks, the rodeo act, hypnosis,
levitation and close-up magic.
Johnn's early childhood days when his mother and
father had their Libery horse act and played the big
circuits.
Where and how he lived, the training he
was given, with animals and at the horizontal bar.
His mother did long-distance
handsprings
and twisters. We hear, about umblinftemendep the
between


life with the big outfits like Ringling and Barnum
and Bailey, and the smaller outfit of today.
These
were the years when the circus was mechanised.
3. His father had a weakness for the girls who worked
round the show, and Johnny hardly remembers - him with-
out a new chick on his arm. His parents separated
when he was still a child, and his mother continued
with the Liberty horse act. Johnny began to develop
his top sideshow act, sword-swallowing, and trained in
knife-throwing. These were the lean and difficult
years of the Depression.
4. The years before the Second World War, and the
heyday of the amalgamated Ringling-Barnum outfit.
The first John Ringling North era was 1938-42. The
circus magazine The White Tops has recently published
a detailed history of this outfit which will supply
Johnny with numberless hooks for his anecdotes and
memories. By 1939 'the Greatest Show on Earth' was
travelling in no fewer than eighty wagons. Its newly
styled big top was decorated in blue and gold and was
fully air-conditioned for the first time.
The train-
loading order, when the circus had to move town, say
from Chicago to Milwaukee, was as elaborate as the
moving order for a brigade of infantry.
5. The war, and Johnny's reluctance to interrupt
his show career by enroling. He sells some of his.
acts, and his mother continues alone, taking over his
Mike the Monkey act. In the army his gifts are fully
exploited---to his chagrin, as they don 't pay him extra.
This causes some arguments.
He is finally drafted
to the Far East, where he wins his master sergeant's
stripes. But he continues learning new tricks,
and performs for the soldiers. He is wounded and then
drafted back to the US, where he spends six months in
a Miami hospital.
When the war is over he receives
a disabled veteran pension.
6. In the after-war years the mammoth circus began
its gradual decline.
But Johnny was better off than
he'd ever been. The smaller circus, the sideshow,
the nightclub took over, and he found bookings came
his way easily, apart from his work at the rodeo shows.
At this time he began to develop an interest in the
'strange and weird' and to pick up knowhow in the' matter
of levitation, certain psychic acts and more advanced
forms of magic. His mother died at the age of eighty-
two, and he found himself on the circuit alone for the
first time,, but he still refused to marry. Perhaps
he didn't like what he'd seen between his mother and
father.
7. In the 60s and 70s he receives various awards and
plaques, and his booking agents find him regular, varied
and farflung work. He looks round his family for some-


one to inherit his equipment and his secrets, as he himself
did from his parents, and he finds his nephew Francis.
A close and trusting relationship develops between
them and they begin working together. Francis takes
over his snake equipment and many of his animals and
props. Johnny decides to settle in one place and
chooses Colonial Heights.
Together with two other
showmen, also lonely men without family attachments,
he builds the large wooden shack where he now spends
the winter months between bookings.
Length: 80/90000 words.
100 photographs, colour and B/W.