Antropomorphic Amenities

Naumann’s incredible tiger

The circus ring is always been the temple for every possible anthropomorphic feat for every kind of animal creature.

Sharpshooter parrots, boxing kangaroos, athletic porcupines, hockey player bears, military monkeys, panthers riding yaks, horse riding bears, pyramids of panthers, soothsayer poneys, poker player poodles, clarvoyant pigs, tigers dancing with elephants, crocodiles wrestling with men, scorpions insidiating women, lions balancing on trapeze, hippopotamus ordering meals, rats driving a train, a rabbit fire brigade estinguishing the flames at a cat’s house, giraffes running along with rhinoceros, guitarrist gorillas, polar bears firing with rifles, elephants descending toboggans, girls fighting piranhas.

You, as faithful followers of this blog, are likely subject to be exposed to few of those feats and more in the future.

Today, we wish to remember one of the most impressive and spectacular feats ever obtained by the man with the animal.

It is the case of the german trainer Heinz Naumann, that in the 60s presented around Europe and in the Usa his high-diving jump along with his tiger Rajah. Naumann was a former U-boot German marine. After being war prisoner, by 1945 he turned himself tiger trainer in South America. With a patient approach in growing tiger cubs, he was able to obtain exceptional results. We unhearthed an existing clip of his diving stunt, performed in Berlin Deutschlandhalle: it is very brief, just 19 seconds. As short and intense as a human cannonball performance, but worth to witness.

In the picture: Naumann with Rajah

Borra, the king of thieves

Today, back on the subject of pickpocket, with new exciting discoveries.



















Few acts in the last century had the success and reputation of Borra, the king of the pickpocket.
Austrian-born Borilslav Miljolkovich, perfectly speaking 12 languages, with his exceptional personality amused and surprised the world, headlining the créme of circuses and varieties in both the emispheres, often with special poster art.

We have been lucky enough to know him and to witness his miracles around the world.








We recently unearthed a peculiar proof of Borra's perplexing pickpocket powers: a private press performance for Scotland Yard, while appearing at Bertram Mills circus in London.
We punctually posted it on Youtube for your pleasure.

We love when entertainers deals with the most primal and dramatic elements of human's poor existence: fear, death, blood, sex, deformity, sadism, mysticism, crime, money, trickery. All is about survive, and we witness performers to be reassured. Or troubled. We love when a great performance is able do do that, and their talents representing a potential real risk for the umanity. And we love when they are able to do this with laughs.
Borra was of this class.
And this is just the beginning. More about him in future.
For now, Borra's film at Scotland Yard.

N.B.: it is a silent footage. But not for this deprived of charme.

New Blacaman Gallery

A further and exhaustive (but not definitive) chapter on the infinite subject of crocodile hypnotism (with a turn on lions).

Reiterating and interlacing topics is one of our preferred entertainment in assuring our discoveries to the world. This not to deny that new and surprising subject will be assured.
We knows: crocodiles and fakirs are one of our preeminent obsessions. Promising you to soon divert from this area, please let us submit you this innocent gallery pertaining Blacaman second area of activity: the hypnotism over lions and crocodiles.
At the end of his act, he had a square cage built on stage, and with his obscure hypnotic powers, in a complicate italian jargon, he reduced the turbolent kings of the forest to his will, without whips, hoops or others circensis paraphernalia.
And this was anticipated by this same power over crocodiles: after all, he was the teacher of Koringa, who acted as a "nurse" in the master's act, before to take her way.

Please admire in today's gallery the poster art for those Blacaman's animal submission feats.


















Now compare the European graphics with the American posters below.
In fact, in 1939, Blacaman was contracted in the U.S.A. at the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus (a secondary but prestigious operation owned by Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey).




During this period, the master fakir appeared on the Universal movie "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man", directed by George Marshall and filmed in that circus. This vehicle for W.C.Fields and Ed Bergen dedicated few minutes to Blacaman helping Al McCarthy to get out of a crocodile mouth, and a splendid excerpt of his lion act. If some good soul can post the segments on Youtube, we will highly appreciate.

Water Spouter Extraordinaire

The legendary Hadji Ali act

As promised, we are back on the theme of "human hydrants" and regurgitators, and his most prestigious exponent: Hadji Ali.
In the 20s, when vaudeville was in the endless search of the unique to amaze audience in both emisphere, he was in the perfect context sharing the bill with talking heads, mice eaters, human gazometers, syrian soothsayers, living calculators and autobolide jumpers.
His act is one of the phisically most extremes that ever left recorded from this era. We have found it, promptly posted and we offer it to you today. It was filmed as part of "Politiquerias", a Spanish-language extended version of the Laurel and Hardy movie "Chicken comes Home".
Following the announcement of the very special emcee, spanish-speaking Oliver Hardy, you will a seven standard minute classic act. And you will not admire just the stunts and feats of the performer. You will admire them polished and routined in what was truly inteded an act: with all the grace, style, subtle humour, little tips, personality, elegance and the experienced rythm that music-hall showmanship used to be.

The Pleasure of Piercing Performances

The great Kirokaya and few forgotten fakirs

While today body piercing is an accepted social and artistic practice (as it used to be in earlier civilizations), fifty years ago it was still a novelty for circus goers.
In the late 60s, circuses started to book fakirs who, beside cataleptic creativity and fire funambolisms, pierced their bodies with a plethora of penetrating pins.
It happened in France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, under small and large big tops or on the theatre stages of big and rural towns. Producers used to set vaudeville touring units called "festival of mistery" or such; and circuses called the audience replacing on posters clowns and elephants with fakirs.


Among those was Johnson, "the gentleman fakir", emphasizing his stage dandyesque elegance with his repulsive feats.

But the most impressive was Kirokaya: billed from Nepal but probably european. After some feats of piercing, he invited spectator in the ring to have fun throwing darts into his back. At the end of his act, having inserted hooks in his chest, he pulled a small cart with four men on the top, with the only driving force of his skin.


Kirokaya became a star in Italy in the late 60s and early 70s, during his succesful tours with the famous Darix Togni circus. We have lost his traces today.

Below, there is a newsreel clip of one of the many "occult festivals" organized in France in the 60s. It was a surreal conclave of performers happily inflicting themselves all kind of tortures.
We discovered that one of them, the fakir wearing glasses, is Kirokaya in person.

Today the world is more used to the sport of piercing and to the aficionado gatherings. Tatoo shops are at every corner.
Let's remember for few instants to a time, just few decades ago, when all that still stimulated the wonderful conflict between pleasure and repulsion.

Picking Pockets for Performance Profit

The subtle art of stealing


Theatrical pickpocketing is one of the most fascinating forms of drama in magic.
As in hypnosis, mentalism, impossible escape, miraculous mutilations, or daring card cheating, this branch of conjuring abilities keep a subtle, thrilling link between the obvious entertaimnent purpose and the catharsis of danger in our daily lives. Every attempt to the normal order of things approaches us to death. And the pre-theatrical ancestors of pickpocketing were usually hanged.
In the golden night-club era, the cabaret pickpoketing reached a level of class, thrill, fun and entertainment as few other forms in theatre.
We wish to inaugurate today a first tribute to the pickpockets with a very special subject: the young Kassagi (one of the pioneers of the art) in the legendary "Pickpocket" movie of Robert Bresson, in his immaculate black and white glory. We love this movie for giving us the perfect balance between the admiration of talent and the suspence of danger. All what good magic should always be.
And we have more amazing surprises about the subject for the future.

Pathological Circuses

A celebration of sleeping wax wonders

Great was the time when pure entertainment was interlaced with pretended education, explicit horror and uncertain marvel.
Between XIX and XX centuries, at the peak of the confusion between new and old medias, between mechanical wonders and human stage talents, the fairgrounds pullulated with the anatomical cabinets. Following a long Renaissance tradition, some exhibitors developed an unparalled talent in the fabrication of wax simulacra. Not just of historical celebrities, nor of famous battles or life of Saints. But the reproductions of the mysteries inside our bodies, and of the most abherrated plagues. In the same afternoon, you could have attended with your children at a magician show sawing a woman in half without see a gut of blood; then admire the booth of a talking severed head without any anathomical trace under his neck. Later, if you dared to visit kings of the fairs as the “Musée Anathomique, Ethnologique et Pathologique du Docteur Spitzner”, you had the vision of the real thing. The morbid, sculpted, painted wax carefully reproducing all the colorful cornucopia of our sacred bodies interiors. Softly sleeping venuses in glass cases, as dismembered Madonnas in some profane temples; elegantly dressed babies with their stomaches gently opened as the windows of a fairy tale house; masterfully arranged diorama to illustrate the effects of syphilis in all the epics of the classic masters of painting. Today this is not anymore part of the show business.
And we devote a gallery to this world.

Koringa: new discoveries

The only film in the world about "the only woman fakir in the world"

Among the bizarre novelties we have been speculating about in the last two years, we got a remakable feedback on Koringa, "the only woman fakir in the world" (see posts November 27 2006 and December 16 2006).
While we are not finish at all with Blacaman (more to come in future), we accumulated other memorabilias about his former lady assistant, then turned in a rival cloning his act. And we are pleased to reveal some of it in today's gallery.
Koringa worked in Blacaman's act as a "nurse", learning all the work behind the mysteries to finally develop her own unit. In one of the pictures below, you can also admire her in the famous Blacaman's sword suspension trick that we mentioned in recent past.
But, what is most peculiar, at the bottom of the gallery you will find an exceptional finding: being likely the only existing filmed document about Koringa's skills. Nobody knew, I think, about its existence. It was forgotten and buried in a British newsreel of the 30s, between a novelty item to fix the fold on pants and a golf skill demonstration. We was lucky to dig it out of the past and to deliver it to the amazed eyes of the world.
Have a pleasant week.

Charlton Heston

The death of an actor, in times of extinction of the great spectacular.

Charlton Heston, the movie actor, disappeared tonight. The last screen impression we have of him is unpleasant, being his interview in Michael Moore's "Bowling a Columbine", where he arrogantly and proudly defended the use and cult of guns. We don't like weapons: so, we prefer remember the king of epic in his most enjoyable and bizarre performances, as the postmodern sideshow "Planet of Apes", the bigger than life "Ben Hur" with his horse spectaculars, and the delirant triumph of old-time cheap stage effect and rethorics of "Ten Commandments".

And, of course, "The Greatest Show on Earth". Not because we are especially in love with this circus melodrama, having an incredible poor value as a movie (but misteriously Academy Award winner of 1952). But because this movie perfectly depicts a now extinct circus world. Braden, the Heston character (inspired by Art Concello), is the last prototype of the classic circus director. A man able to juggle with storms, midgets, giraffes, mud, criminality, women, labor, artist's egos, authorities and audiences. Probably, the great intuition of director Cecil B.De Mille was in the fact that the 20th century circus director was the last prototype of the hero icon. And, in fact, all this quickly disappeared. Just three years after the movie, the very same big top universe depicted by De Mille folded forever, canceling from the earth the mithology of the travelling city.
Today, the notion of great circus is not anymore an alchemy of blood and sawdust, going towards a cold Broadway surrogate in its best cases. Death and danger, unpleasant smells and precariety, bestiality and eroticism are slowly disappearing. If sideshows and monstruosities abandoned the big top in the late 50s, now the big top itself is disappearing from the landscape, with all his cornucopia of animals and acrobats' dinasties. Political correctness is a menace for the circus. Maybe because the circus, so crude and brutal, so different and devastating, used to emphasize on mistery instead that on reality, to confuse instead to reassure.
But reassuring never was the aim of great art and entertainment. For that reason, the fictionary Braden and the once real "Greatest Show on Earth", witness from the screen of an era when stage or circus novelties and wonders were all about the fight with death and the hope of survival. What the great theatre always was and has to be. What our poor lives are about, after all.

More on Blacaman

A further (and not final) glimpse on the man who died twice.

In the mid-20, the vaudeville and music-hall was fighting the movies, eager for new sensations: physical, mysterious, primal emotions. These mainly came from the poorest and oldest of street performances. Hypnotists were dignified as theatre stars among velvets and limelights; magicians turned to the macabre side of torture with half-sawn women, nurses on stage and stage blood; or into the heroism of impossible escapes with ambulances on the marquee; and the fakirism reached the glory of the stage. More and more european performers plunged into the repertory of the miserable oriental street worker to became the most mysterious kings of the stage.

One of those was Blacaman.
He suddenly appeared on the European stages in the mid-20s, nobody knowing from where. Said at once indian, brazilian, or from some savage unknown race, he was the most talked fakir of the time. As shown in our past gallery, he displayed the now standard repertory of the fakirs, being one of the firsts to popularize with great emphasis the walk on the ladder of swords, on top of which he hanged few seconds with his throat: to clean at the end the traces of blood, demonstrating nightly the victory on his modern guillotine.

He amazed from the Berlin Wintergarten to Paris Empire, with long tours in South America and a lot of success in Spain, in variety temples such Barcelona’s Olympia or Madrid’s Price. But his piéce de resistance was the “buried alive” stunt, in the full epic of houdinesque dramaturgy.

Is because that stunt, that we like to call him “the man who died twice”. In fact, being sure that Blacaman left this world in 1949 (his career is fully demonstrated into the 40s), with surprise we recently discovered a cutting from the respectable Billboard Magazine (Sept.14, 1929), announcing the death of the celebrated self-thaumaturge in Argentina, where the “hindu” happened to struggle under the earth without dominate the death. It was a journalist’s mistake, a clever publicity stunt or a true resurrection miracle?

Unable to solve the mistery, we can at least guarantee you about the identity of the fakir: he was the italian Pietro Blacaman, from the region of Calabria, born here in 1902. And in the times we are describing he still had a lot to do in his career, as we will demonstrate soon to you. But, for now, thank you to be patient once more...

Burlesque Bycicling

Joe Jackson and his cycling clone

Mastering a talent can often be the secret of a comedy genius. Juggling, dancing, magic, music, singing, tumbling, drinking galons of water or balancing billiard tables have been the excuses at the roots of the greatest clowns. Mastering a technique to destroy it for comic purpose.
In this way, austrian performer Joe Jackson become one of the most requested vaudeville headliners at the turn of the century. His son followed up to the 70s with the same act. Joe Jackson's technique was to destroy our basic skills of going on a bike to turn them in a string of unconveniences.




So genial was the idea, he was forced to bill himself as "the original", as on this poster we recently came across:


While recorded memories of Jackson act don't seem to exixts (but his son's verson have been televised), one of his antagonists was luckier in the preservation to eternity: is the case of Sam Barton, a Jackson clone (even if with some difference) that glowed for awhile in the British music hall.
So, for your enjoyment today, a poster of the original Joe Jackson and a film of Jackson's emule Sam Barton:

Wonders to Come...

The blog is not dead...
We are travelling a lot those days, but we promise you to be back with new surprises before Easter...
Thanks for not forgetting us...

The Man who died twice

Our first glimpse into the myth of Blacaman.

Who was Blacaman?
From where he came from?
And why we call him "the man who died twice"?
He even inspired a novel of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but his life is surrounded by mystery.
Or almost.
You will discover more soon, in a future investigation. For the moment, please appreciate this rare gallery of Blacaman's early career, from a series of his french publicity of the 20s, designed by the parisian Lorette Studio.

Human Hydrants

Our first glimpse into an extinct specialty.

We know to be a little late this week, but always remember that we don't forget you.
In the last days we've been scouting the world for some surviving eminences of the specialty called "human hydrant". This is a very old branch of the entertainment, very well known to aficionados of circus, sideshows and magic, and widely covered by the specific literature in the last five centuries.
The only living active performer surviving at our knowledge is Anatoli Yukhov, from Moscow Circus. As is colleague ancestor Aly Adji, he is able to engurgitate gallons of water, then gallons of kerosene, and finally set a fire a miniature house then to safely extinguish safely flames. We saw it few years ago, without believing our eyes. If we are correct, he should be performing this season in Germany touring with Siemoneit-Barum Circus.




In the future, we promise you both the moving images of both Adji Aly and Mr.Yukhov.







For the moment, enjoy Winston, from an unknown corner of darkest Africa: