Internet reviews of Two Important Books On Freak Show Banner Art

Freaks, Geeks & Strange Girls

Sideshow Banners of the Great American Midway

By Randy Johnson, Jim Secreto, Teddy Varnell 1995 by Hardy Marks Publications, Honolulu Hardcover, 170 pages, color $40.00

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Review by Bob Staake

Copyright 2000 by Bob Staake -- All Rights Reserved

If you think the age of political-correctness killed the Freak Show, guess again.

Simply tune into Jerry Springer, Geraldo Rivera or Jenny Jones and behold their guests. While they may not exhibit faces deformed by birth defects, bodies covered nose to knee in tattoos, or a second head growing from their collarbone, their freakish status is confirmed once they open their mouths to speak.

450 pound housewives who insist they're "all that" in leopard skin bathing suits, a girl who laughingly announces to millions that the boyfriend seated next to her only has one testicle, or how about a guy (self-named 'Danny The Wonder Pony') who straps a saddle onto his back and gives women erotic rides in dance clubs? Even David Letterman has given air time to people who who drink milk and then projectile squirt it out of their tear ducts. Stupid Human Trick? More like 100% Freak Show.

By comparison, America's carnival sideshows of the not so distant past pale in contrast. Sure, the banners outside the mildewed big top boasted that they harbored a frightening array of living anomalies, but once inside the tent, the real truth was revealed: More often than not, The Frog Boy simply resembled Mel Torme, The Human Cyclops was blind in one eye, and The Alligator Girl merely had a case of excema. False advertising to be sure, but then Maytag has insinuated for years that their washing machines never require repairs either. It's just the way the game is played.

Freaks, Geeks & Strange Girls (1995, Hardy Marks Publications) is the first major book to document the American Freak Show by telling the story of the peculiar artists who painted the gargantuan canvas banners that hyped the pinheads, legless women and two-headed babies of the carnival midway.

Artistically primitive, the banners span seventy years -- from the turn of the century to 1970 -- and while some of the canvases may induce nightmares, most are simply mesmerizing for their surreal, ethereal qualities. The Rubber Man posing and stretching his derma four feet, a pinhead named Schlitzie whose head (if you believe the banner) is the size of an orange, Little Stephen The Seal Boy who uses his flipper-like appendages to frolic in the ocean. Spooky imagery, not soon forgotten.

Yet if you think the images are strange, consider the fact that the original banners sell as high as $2000 a piece. Ironically, it would be easier to acquire the money to buy the banner than to hang it. At 10 feet by 10 feet, few household walls can accommodate one of the canvases, which certainly makes mounting one above the fireplace out of the question.

Snap Wyatt, Fred Johnson, Jack Sigler and Jack Cripe are universally acknowledged to be the preeminent sideshow banner artists of all time, though all are now deceased. Wyatt possessed a brash, cartoony design sense that enabled his

no-nonsense canvases to communicate in visual staccato, while Johnson's artistic uncertainty caused him to overwork his banners for varied results - - sometimes fair, sometimes amateurish. Sigler and Cripe also lacked artistic consistency, though the former's banner of a Blockhead hammering nails up his nose and pushing sewing needles through his tongue, is one of the more stunning (if not weird) examples in the book.

Regarded more as dispensable signage rather than serious art, many of the huge banners were cut into scrap by carnival promoters, left to rot in warehouses, or used to catch the dripping oil of a tractor. Given the wholesale lack of respect paid to the banners, it's amazing that there were survivors at all, but the book exhibits an impressive lot. Albino Women, Fat Men, Armless Ladies, Skinny Men, Ubangi-Lipped Girls, Three-Legged Boys --- each were depicted on their own billowy banner along with a conspicuously placed "ALIVE!" tag line asserting that they weren't pickled in jars of formaldehyde.

Loaded with over 200 photographs (most in color), the book is rounded out by 13 short stories and vignettes written by banner aficionados, fans of carnival lore, and assorted artistic types. Of particular appeal is a memoir by "The Great" Johnny Meah, a third rate banner artist at best, who should be advised to burn his brushes and spend more time at the typewriter. Meah wonders, among other things, if "those who produced these advertisements (were) merely hacks who cranked them out cookie cutter-style in some dingy loft, or were they inspired artisans who pondered the effectiveness of each brushstroke? Were any of them sufficiently familiar with the (performers) that they patently oversold to feel a wry sense of lighthearted larceny? A blanket 'yes' to the above."

As fascinating as the writings are, it would have been refreshing to hear the perspective of a card-carrying sideshow "freak". Time and time again, it's the sideshow owners, promoters, and carnies who suggest that many performers vehemently resent the efforts of the socially-conscious public action groups who helped make the Freak Show become extinct, thereby destroying the freak's ability to make a better than average living. Freaks supporting their exploitation on a wholesale basis? I've never bought it.

Beautifully designed by Randy Johnson (grandson of Fred Johnson), who wisely decided to reproduce the banners one per page and as large as possible, the book also includes archival, black and white photos of midway sideshows that give the reader a delightful sense of historical context. A particularly fascinating shot from the 1950's shows a panoramic Freak Show entrance -- -- complete with irritated mother and child walking past in a hazy blur, two teenage girls sheepishly entering, and yet another man who silently studies the banners wondering if he should give in to his prurient curiosity and pay his 25 cents. Certainly he will.

Long overlooked as a viable, important form of folk art, Freaks, Geeks and Strange Women will indubitably heighten the appreciation of the American sideshow banner. Even if you lack the wall for the banner, you surely have the coffee table for the book.

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Freak Show: Sideshow Banner Art

 

                  

                    
by Carl Hammer
                    and Gideon Bosker
                    
1996 by Chronicle
                    Books
                    
Softcover,
                    96 pages, Color
                    
$14.95
                  

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Review by Bob Staake

Copyright 2000 by Bob Staake -- All Rights Reserved

Like a good carnival barker, Freak Show: Sideshow Banner Art, promises plenty, but delivers less.

Offering up at best a smattering of delectable examples of freak show banners, the book presents beautifully the requisite images of fat ladies, alligator girls and two-headed boys, yet fails to build on Freaks, Geeks and Strange Girls' well-deserved reputation as sideshow freakdom's authorative volume.

Not that Hammer and Bosker didn't give it the old carnival midway try. They include some never before seen examples of Al Renton, who renders crazed Jungle Girl Eeka with Rosseauean flair. In fact, when Eeka bites off a sailor's arm, Renton makes it look downight beautiful. Yet breathtaking Snap Wyatt cinemascope-wide banners that could be stunningly presented as two page marvels, are only given four inches of horizontal acreage. We'd forgive the authors and assume art direction by a designer insisting most people read by magnifying glass, but their choice to feature Johnny Meah's banner art at all (the same mistake was made by the authors of Freaks, Geeks and Strange Girls) causes even the most open minded bibliophile to wonder if book burning is really such a bad thing.

Don't get me wrong. As the pre-eminent-sideshow-banner-artist-by-default actually working today, Meah often waxes philosophically and interestingly on the issues of "freaks", advertising and political correctiveness, but as an "artist" (think sign painter) his pictures simply can't hang in the same room, let alone a big top, with Wyatt's. To add insult to injury, the book incorrectly attributes Meah to pieces by Fred Johnson and Jack Sigler. A mistake? Hell, yes!

The book smiles and takes your money -- all the time assuring you there's a real "rubber man" inside the tent. Once inside, you realize its only a guy with flabby skin.

But then things are always stretched along the Midway. Freak Show: Sideshow Banner Art simply carries on the tradition.

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Bob Staake's humorous illustrations and writings have appeared in The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Miami Herald, Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times. His new book is entitled, The Complete Guide To Humorous Illustration (North Light). He lives in St.Louis.

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Bob Staake Article: Freaking Out! Vintage Sideshow Banner Art Finds An Audience