The Charlivels

The golden days of the night-club era

Before the plethora of Eastern acrobats, wannabe magicians and outdated post-burlesque divas, the origins of the night-clubs were studded by outstanding showstoppers.
One of the very first of them, by the late '40s, was the "Charlivels" act. Valentino, Juanito and Charlie jr. (sons of the legendary clown Charlie Rivel), helped to open the way to variety acts in such places as Latin Quarter in New York, Ciro's at Hollywood and the very early Las Vegas lounges, without forgetting to grace european temples as Medrano, London's Talk of the Town, Copenhagen's Schumann, etc.
Here they are, in a tv show from the 60s (we posted the video in 2 parts).

But what they did in their act? Well, just everything.

See by yourself.

!!!!...CIRCOPEDIA....!!!!!

We've been missing for awhile, being quite busy at the moment.
This not being a vulgar excuse to abandon you or to uderestimate your appetite for memorabilia.

Waiting for our comeback here, you can highly entertain yourself with the ultimate online divertissement for the serious and competent circus history amateur:

www.circopedia.org


It is a project made possible by the grace of Big Apple Circus. It is curated by historian extraordinaire Dominique Jando, with some participation by ours.
You will be treated with an incessantly-growing cornucopia of texts, video, images and much more.
We hope you will enjoy our work. And your feedback will be highly appreciated.

Elvis mokko

The art of surprising and impress the spectator always falls in predictable categories: magicians, clowns, fakirs, hypnotists, etc.
Our readers knows how much we enjoys to ignore those genres, searching for performers whose art doesn't leave us other possibilities than to avoid the taxonomy.
Today we invite you to make the knowledge of Elvis Mokko, from Mozambico (probably the only novelty act ever from this remote country). He was a regular feature of european night-clubs in the 70s, then turning to theme park and events in Germany.
What he does?
See by yourself from this performance in Cirque d'Hiver, Paris, from the late 70s.