Monday, November 27, 2006

Forgotten Acts: KORINGA (1)




There was a time when
the experience of live entertainment assured the same thrills and fascination of the movies. Look at those posters: in the early 20s they gave you the same expectation of a Tarzan flick, but with the promise that Koringa was supposed to be alive, and all her beasts too.
Who was Koringa? Where she came from? She could have been the daughter of a maharajah abandoned in the jungle and raised by reptiles; why not the last empress of a lost amazon tribe; or a true goddess fallen from the olympus of magnetists offering to the earth the gift of her supernatural powers.
How she left the lost doomed temple where she used to live, arriving to the small vaudeville house just around the drugstore?
Little is known about the origins of the “only fakir woman in the world”. All what we were able to unveil, is that in the real world she was probably French. She started as an assistant of Blacaman (another kind of a legend), interpretating one of the nurses during his fakir acts. We believe that the Koringa reptiles act was put toghether as a sort of second unit of the Blacaman company.
More on Koringa in the next few days.


9 comments:

Dug North said...
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Dug North said...
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Anonymous said...

It's very intersting how today, we forget a lot of artists that have had a good success in their life.
It' important that somebody remember us about them.
Thanks Raffaele.
Dario

Anonymous said...

We had a very similar act here in America a few years ago. It looks like an exact copy of the lady pictured, hair atyle and all. She was an aftershow and sometime big show feature and went by the name TANET IKAO.

Rudy Lacchin said...

Pietro Blacaman was a cousin of circus and showbiz impresario Pasquale Schettini, both from Castrovillari in Calabria, Southern Italy. After spending some time in South America (early 1930's) they came back to Europe. Pasquale married Gwenda Keary (my Godmother) who was a Millimetre Girl (acrobatic dancer) in Bertram Mills Circus (late 1930's). There's more, but I won't bore you!

Rudy Lacchin said...

Pietro Blacaman was a cousin of circus and showbiz impresario Pasquale Schettini, both from Castrovillari in Calabria, Southern Italy. After spending some time in South America (early 1930's) they came back to Europe. Pasquale married Gwenda Keary (my Godmother) who was a Millimetre Girl (acrobatic dancer) in Bertram Mills Circus (late 1930's). There's more, but I won't bore you!

Rudy Lacchin said...

Pietro Blacaman was a cousin of circus and showbiz impresario Pasquale Schettini, both from Castrovillari in Calabria, Southern Italy. After spending some time in South America (early 1930's) they came back to Europe. Pasquale married Gwenda Keary (my Godmother) who was a Millimetre Girl (acrobatic dancer) in Bertram Mills Circus (late 1930's). There's more, but I won't bore you!

Anonymous said...

I am sorry, english is not my native language :
I have read Blacaman was in Paris in 1925, in Berlin in 1928, and so in Europe.
He was announced like Indian Fakir.
He performed in my City, Rosario Argentina in 1926.
I don't know the real name of Blacaman, and his date of birth. We are talking about the same Blacaman ?
It was his name Pietro ?
Thanks a lot
Regards
eduardo

Unknown said...

Hi Eduardo. Yes, this must be the very same Pietro Blacaman - the description fits him exactly. He must have been born around 1900-1910. There's a photograph of him at http://schettini.com/Images/PascalBlackerman2.jpg which you might like to look at. I think Blacaman was his real name.

He was in a film with W C Fields called "You Can't Cheat an Honest man". Search for this with Google for more information. I would love to get my hands on a copy of this film!

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