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:

The Fabulous Flavour of Female Force

Strong women, Sexual Confusion and Telephone Books

With the spread of sports and physical pastimes, around the 1890s circuses and music-hall encouraged and emphasized the ultimate erotic fascination for both sexes: strong women.
The most famous of them was without doubt Katie Brumbach from Austria who, capitalizing on her most celebrate male colleague, christened herself Sandwina with rounds of applause on stages and big tops of both emispheres.
Strong women continued to punctuate the live entertainments, even if the movies mythized them in more actual forms, from Russ Meyer's killer pussycats to George Romero's female chaingangs.

In the age of communication, technology changed undirectly the shape of the strong woman act. In fact, without the invention and the quick success of the telephone, we don't think would have been possible the invention of a rare sub-speciality: the queens of phone book tearing. This slow, sinuous and deep use of arms, hands and feminine fingers became the heaven of fantasy for the last circus and vaudeville goers.

Today's gallery glorifies the rare prominences and the gentle survivors of this ultimate celebration of female strenght.


In the picture, Katie Sandwina.

Peculiar Strongwomen gallery 1: Sandwina

Sylvia Brumbach

We remember Miss Brumbach in the 80s as the brave target of one of the best knife-throwing act.
She recently turned herself into a "strong woman", regenerating a venerable and rare act: the telephone book tearing. She performs in British circuses.

As the careful reader can remark by her name, Miss Brumbach is likely the direct heir of Sandwina.

Johan Rhodes

Johan Rhodes, the perfect burlessque-age phonebook tearer from the 50s British music-hall era.

Joan giving the illusion of male domination few years before the new feminism spread.

Jeanin Lionett (with video)

The lady in this seductive posture, in front of her gentle servant, is Jeanin Lionett, from Denmark (and from the deepest of our archives). She emerged from a page of the Hansa-Theater (Hamburg) program of June 1986, when we saw her.
Hansa-Theatre was a deliciously decadent music-hall, changing program each month by more than a century, introducing aged ladies on trapeze, faded poodle trainers, obscure minor Moroccan gymnasts, out of fashion musical clowns or East German athletes on bicycles. The program with Mr.Lionett was the 893th edition of this monthly show: surely the oldest running on this and other planets. A live band was not missing.
We remember Miss Lionett's act (billed at "20.06 Uhr" on the program's timeline) punctuated in the half-empty audience by the gasps of aged German ladies of uncertain sexual identity.
Few years ago, we surprisingly discovered Miss Lionett still in activity, in the British TV show "Secret Cabaret", happy to see again her act unchanged in each detail (same obedient servant in tuxedo included), after almost twenty years.
More surprisingly, we recently discovered that somebody posted this on Youtube. And here it is (even if mispelled), for your delight and your darkest fantasies on the edges between female and masculine.

The fabulous Cristiani brothers

A gallery remembering one of circus' greatest legends

In our space devoted to the most peculiars among unlikeliest, can seem strange to consacrate a gallery to the most ordinary of the extraordinaries: acrobats.
But the Cristianis, in the 1930s and 1940s, happened to be one the most talented performing circus families of all times. This happened when a branch of this enormous Italian dinasty (hundreds of Cristianis survives in the business in both emispheres) crossed the ocean in the late 30s. This was the family of Ernesto Cristiani, father of ten sons. And this so generous performing progeniture can be the first peculiarity. Each of them was outstanding in their art. Of course, such a large family owned a circus. In the late 30s, invited to perform at the famed Cirque Medrano in Paris, they was remarked by an American agent for Ringling bros., and the legend began. In obscure times preparing for Italy, take the sea seemed an interesting possibility. While it is common in the circus the versatility of performers in the various specialities, the Cristiani excelled in everything they did: teeterboard acrobatics (when this was still a rarely practiced stunt), jumping over elephants, but above all horseback acrobatics. Probably the best horseback acrobats the world ever saw. Among them, the legendary Lucio Cristiani, the only of two men in the world to accomplis a somersault from the firts to the third gallopping horse, and the only one to accomplish a double twist pirouette horseback (see picture).
As if not enough, in the 50s they opened their own circus in America, that became one of the best and largest motorized circuses of the era, with top performers and a large menagerie.
At the novelties and wonders of the Cristiani is devoted this week's gallery.
With a surprise at the end: the complete short movie shooted about them by MGM for the famous Pete Smith's Specialties serie.
You won't believe your eyes.

Cristiani gallery 1

Cristiani gallery 2

Cristiani gallery 3

Cristiani gallery 4: the teeterboard

Cristiani gallery 5