Meet the People – How did you become a clown?
[Editor’s note: How did you become a clown? Taken from Look Magazine, 1947. I’ve changed the formatting for better readability, but the photos and text are the same. I’ll likely create a more “modern” version in the near future.]
Look asks six sawdust comedians how and why they decided to go into the strange business of being a circus clown. It finds that their answers are as different as their faces.
Harry Dann
Harry Dann: “I felt that it was one of the few genuine professions left, so I decided to become a clown. Right after I got out of high school, I applied for a job and I got it. I’ve been with the show for seven years. The kind of clown I portray is known as the white-face or picture clown.”
Emmett Kelly Sr.
Emmett Kelly: “My first try at clowning grew out of my cartoonist training. I took my face from a pen-and-ink drawing I made back in 1920. First I used it in a chalk talk act, and finally I took it into the circus in 1921. Mine’s a pantomimic tramp clown. Wistful Willy, I call him.”
Lou Jacobs
Lou Jacobs: “I studied clowning in Germany, practicing after school. My teacher was a great performer, and I learned comedy style, contortion work and balancing. I worked for a while in small vaudeville in Germany. And then in 1924, I was invited to join Ringling Brothers.”
John Nelson
John Nelson: “I started training for the job from the day I was born. My brother Harry and I are third-generation clowns. My father, who came to this country from England 87 years ago, owned a circus in South America, where he began training himself — and the whole family, too!”
Polydore Mortier
Polydore Mortier: “I started as an acrobat, but switched to clowning later. Why? I had to make a living somehow and this was as good a way as any I knew of. I have been working away at it for about 30 years. I’m much better known as Chesty, because of my chest development.”
Paul Jung
Paul Jung: “I actually started as an acrobat in girl’s clothes back in 1908. But when I grew up, I became too well-developed for that type of thing and branched off into comedy. Now I’m a producing clown. I’m responsible for the Song of the South costumes in this season’s circus.”