Fun at the Midway Funny Foto Studio Playland at the Beach Collection Jim Linderman
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Showing posts with label Carnival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carnival. Show all posts
Wood Carnival Ball Toss Folk Art Sculpture
Carnival Shooting Gallery Target in the Shape of a Cannon
Carnival Sideshow Shooting Gallery Target in the Shape of a Cannon No Date (circa 1930?) 12" across Collection Jim Linderman
Spectacular Circus Banners Hanging in 1963 At the Circus in Black and White (and Color) #34 collection Jim Linderman
Pair of original snapshot photographs dated 1963 Collection Jim Linderman
AT THE CIRCUS IN BLACK AND WHITE is a occasional feature on Dull Tool Dim Bulb. This is number 34 in the series.
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Goofus Glass Carnival Glass FREE Origin of the Collectable RPPC collection Jim Linderman
"FREE" Carnival booth with glass and notions Real Photo Post Card dated on reverse 1908 Collection Jim Linderman
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Antique Carnival Coin Toss Gameboard collection Jim Linderman
Carnival Game Board collection Jim Linderman
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Rack of Carnival Knock-Down Punks and the Great Bicycle Ramp Jump Collection Jim Linderman
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A big chunk of early carnival history on one photograph. A rack of knock-down targets sit underneath the giant wooden ramp of death for a bicycle daredevil above. I suppose one could take the time to squint at the signs and identify the location of this carnival which took over main street for a while, but what I here is already enough for me. Oh...and a nice ball toss target with a big mouth.
King of the Squirrels Sideshow Shooting Gallery Target Squirrel
My "King of the Squirrels" shooting gallery target comes courtesy Candler Arts, a fine web source for unusual American folk art, primitives and curiosities. Run by Kevin Duffy, the site is always a visual treat. The Candler Arts blog shows a wide variety of objects, consistently worth seeing, and the corresponding gallery offers select items for sale. A good reason to look is posted now, as the wonderful sideshow "game of numbers" shown below is there now.
I bought King Squirrel as I have been overrun. The house is surrounded by giant maple trees, and this seems to have been a particularly heavy season for helicopter seeds. You know the kind. Evolution designed them to twirl down to the ground slowly, whirling as they go, to provide the seed a soft landing. They make a feast for squirrels. They have become every bit as annoying as pigeons were to me in the city, but without wings. Unlike pigeons, you see the young, and even they fly from tree to tree like tiny Tarzans with tails. They can expect to live about six years...unless I get good here with King.
Early cast iron shooting gallery targets came in racks and this one has the original mount and cotter which held it on. I suspect the KING tag is probably as that was the manufacturer or name of the touring carnival.
Candler Arts blog is HERE and the.gallery is HERE
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Game of Numbers Courtesy Candler Arts |
Early 20th Century Cast Iron Shooting Gallery Target collection Jim Linderman
Champion Sword Swallower of the World Collection Jim Linderman Cabinet Card
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Baby Adelina Cabinet Card by Frank Wendt Collection Jim Linderman
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| Baby Adelina Cabinet Card Photograph Collection Jim Linderman |
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Jean Lussier Balls the Falls ! Dapper Dry Debonair Devil of Dare
Jean Lussier balled the Niagara Falls only once, but he made a living off it for over 30 years. As you can see here, he sold pictures of himself as a famous daredevil who defeated the mighty falls as a young man all the way into his old age. He is looking pretty dapper in the last one, having apparently awarded himself some kind of "captainship" or something. Dapper but dry as a bone...and dry a long time.
Lussier was smart enough to figure out a rubber ball was the way to survive the fall. So he created a rubber raft inflated with inner tubes. The round contraption with him inside went over in 1928. The rubber beast is seen here poked with flags behind young Jean in the first photo, and it appears he has already started ripping sections out to sell as souvenirs.
I'm not kidding...Jean DID sell off his rubber, one patch at a time. When he ran out, he sold random chunks of tires he purchased claiming they were historic! He also toured the country giving lectures at special screenings of the film made while he bobbed and dropped.
After living off his 30 minute trip for 30 years, Lussier decided it was time to rekindle interest. He claimed he was planning another ball drop, this one three times as big around (no doubt to provide him with enough historic scraps to last him the rest of his life) but it never happened. He passed away in a beat-up boarding house in Niagara Falls, New York.
COLLECTION OF THREE JEAN LUSSIER AUTOGRAPHED REAL PHOTO POSTCARDS circa 1928-1940 Collection JIM LINDERMAN
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Hagenbeck Wallace At The Circus in Black and White #31 The World's Lowest Type Human
Caption on reverse "September 2, 1938 L.A Calif. Afternoon crowd now leaving the circus. Sideshow Band was playing in the midway."
Look close and you will see one of the acts was "The World's Lowest Type Human" and I hate to speculate on that one. Suzie born with the Skin of an Elephant.
If the date on the reverse of this photo is correct, you are seeing the sun go down in the afternoon and the lights go out in the evening. Hagenbeck-Wallace ceased operation the same year.
For those of you animal rights folks out there, in 1913 the circus lost 8 elephants, 21 lions and 8 performing horses in a flood in 1913. That pales in comparison to the train wreck they had five years later, in which an engineer further down the track fell asleep at the throttle and crashed his train into the rear of the Hagenbeck's. Kerosene lamps on the circus train spread fire immediately to the wooden cars, and 86 circus members died, another 127 were injured.
AT THE CIRCUS IN BLACK AND WHITE is a occasional feature on Dull Tool Dim Bulb. This is number 31 in the series.
Original Snapshot 1938 Collection Jim Linderman
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How-dy Bub Racist Lapel Pin Carnival and Sideshow Premium
A MILLION LAUGHS! It's New, It's Different, It's Terrific and It's Racist.
Ad for Carnival and Sideshow premium, 1950 Harris Novelty company
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Carnival Cut-out Standee AKA Faces in Holes People Posing in Plywood
Carnival Cutout Standee. Three lovely woman on a "girls day" at the carnival! (Does this suit make me look hippy?)
Who doesn't have a photo in the basement or the attic of the kids in fake stockades at some western tourist trap? They are back, if they ever left, that is. Here is a company which will make them, disco-style.
Original carnival cutout snapshot circa 1940 Collection Jim Linderman
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Roly - Poly Carnival Sideshow Sign and Tommy Duncan Throttles Bob Wills
I never did find out what sideshow game Roly-Poly was, but if they really did award a prize to every player you can be sure it was from under the counter, not from the wall display in back.
I will, however, take the slightest excuse to share Bob Wills, especially when it is a number performed by the great Tommy Duncan. Tommy was smooth as the expensive whiskey Bob was able to drink to excess every day, but what made the pair work so well was the suppressed, seething tension in Tommy's voice every time the lovable drunk buffoon stepped on his lines with a patented "Aaah Haah" aside. You can tell Tommy wanted to throttle Bob, the biggest country ham in the state of Texas, but it was a good gig.
He finally left...and as the clip below shows, he should have stayed. Still, you have to see a real roly poly play the Bob Wills part. Gnaw on a biscuit.
Roly-Poly Carnival Sideshow Sign. Circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman
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Carnival Punks Folk Art Knock Down Gay Terminology and the Ramones on Joe Franklin!
Years ago, I had the fortunate pleasure of visiting one of the most prominent collectors of American folk art on a regular basis. Besides teaching me much, I was learning at the feet of a master. (Literally...there was no room in his house and I had to sit on the floor.) We traded things back and forth monthly. I would study them, he would study them, and once in a while swaps were made. The stuff didn't have much financial value then, and I'm not sure if it does today.
I once brought the collector three huge carnival knock-down targets, each about 3 feet tall, with effigies of Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo painted on them. I didn't want Hitler in my house, so I hoped to trade them for an equally not valuable whittled miniature cane he had by a carver from Georgia. (Years later I saw Saddam Hussein painted on some carnival punks at the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, so things never change.)
I cabbed them down and presented them saying "check out THESE punks!"
What surprised me was that he immediately asked me why I called them "punks" and I really didn't have an answer. I'd just always known carnival knock-downs as punks. The collector was puzzled, which surprised me, as he had earlier curated museum shows having to do with esoteric material culture from the sideshow and such, and he certainly owned some. I figured no one could puzzle the master.
He told me "punk" was a term used to refer to a younger homosexual man dating an older man. I had no idea. To me at the time, punks were the Ramones. Or as Joe Franklin, perennial host of a local TV show called them "The Ray Mones" while appearing as puzzled by them as my collector friend was at my punks.
I knew gay "punks" were called "twinks" which I believe may still be in common usage. I'm a little isolated here, so I don't know for sure, and we should refer to all without derogatory terms anyway. But that also makes sense, as my collector friend was Eastern big-city based, and I suspect knock-down targets received their punk name in the Midwest.
If you look up punk in a carny lingo dictionary, the slang term has numerous uses. As a rube, a child. a trick, a fake fetus in a bottle, a person primed for a scam, an "easy target" as it were...though the punks here were intended to be a hard target. That's why they had fur...to create the illusion of width, and the carny would also encourage the punk in FRONT of him to lean in "for a good toss" because you would then be throwing off balance. He would watch as ball after ball whiffed through the fur not moving the targets at all.
I found these androgynous punks in an antique mall. My "axis of evil" punks are long gone and I can't find a picture, but I cribbed one of a similar group from an auction website below. Mine were better, as they were entirely made by hand, but these will give you an idea. As a bonus, see Marky and Joey "Ray Mone" jabber it up with Joe!
Group of three unremarkable carnival knock-down ball toss targets (Above) Collection Jim Linderman
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Jolly Ollie of the 101 Circus At the Circus in Black and White #30
Jolly Ollie 538 Pounds Real Photo Postcard Collection Jim Linderman
AT THE CIRCUS in BLACK and WHITE is a continuing series on Dull Tool Dim Bulb This is Entry number 30.
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