I have a memory of going to a circus with my father when I was pretty young, so maybe around 1955. I remember going into a separate tent and sort of passing along an aisle with sets of exhibits of some kind on each side (I think). I don’t remember anything about any of the specific things that were there to see, so they can’t have been all that freaky I suppose. But I wonder if that was what it was advertised as. My father was pretty careful with a penny and also a pretty canny fellow, so it’s hard for me to imagine him spending extra to go in, presumably knowing by that time in his life (age early 30’s) that these kinds of shows were generally disappointing.
So did they still have “freak shows” (sorry for the insensitive language, I don’t know how else to put it) in the mid-50’s? Does anyone else remember anything like this? This would have been on the west coast, if it matters.
Freak shows persist to this day; they just don’t use people with birth defects or abnormal anatomy anymore. They now rely on special effects, costuming, unique skills, and tall tales. The last one I saw had a mermaid and a living disembodied head as well as a "geek’’ piercing himself in numerous ways.
Yes. I’ve read about carnivals in the 50s and also saw a freak show at a carnival in the 60s. I didn’t go inside but the advertised ‘freaks’ and a few who stood outside for a while were unimpressive.
Golly, I saw this kind of thing in the late 60s. Two-headed cows in jars galore, and a real-life Lobster Boy. (His fingers were fused, or perhaps glued.)
My understanding is that a number of the “bearded lady”, “tattooed lady”, “woman with a snake”, etc. acts were effectively just strip shows. I think they’d give a hint of what the goods looked like in the initial themed show and then take anyone interested in the total reveal into a back area for more money.
If you don’t remember anything interesting, I’d guess that either your dad passed on the private show or he parked you and disappeared for a bit, and you’ve forgotten that.
In the US, some fairs and carnivals had them in as late as the 1970s. The only ones that I actually remember seeing, though were a “little person,” and “Jojo, the Snail Man.” Jojo, as I recall, had normal legs, but short, flipper-like arms.
You might’ve seen a freak show in the fifties. The county fair in the 2000’s still had a freak show attraction. But it was pretty tame iirc the headliners were a leg less man and a woman with primordial dwarfism Little Linda. Actually the real freaky people were attendees of the free fair.
I remember paying 50 cents or a buck to see “the world’s smallest horse” at a fair in the early '80s. It was a relatively small horse, but it was really nothing worth paying money to see.
I can recall going to the “freak show” at the county fair in the late 1960s / early 1970s as a tween or almost tween.
Seeing mostly what were probably thalidomide babies then in their late 20s to mid 30s. With badly defective limbs advertised as “Seal Man”, “Walrus Boy”, or whatever. And bearded women, midgets (“little people” now), etc. Nothing overtly sexual, just physically malformed.
I recall them being played mostly for sympathy, not as objects of ridicule. Still utterly dehumanizing compared to current attitudes, but probably better than 50 years previously. Although truth be told, we may have a better attitude towards malformity today, but we’re not exactly breaking our bank ensuring these sorts of folks have the support they need to have a full life. We (mostly) talk a good fight, but we don’t deliver.
The traveling carnival that set up next to the shopping mall in the early 1960s definitely had a Freak Show. There was also one associated with Ringling Brother and Barnum and Bailey Circus about the same time. But there were no extreme human freaks like The Elephant Man. I remember a Fat Lady, a very tall human Giant. There were several animal freaks, both living and dead (three-eyed cows, four-legged chickens, and the like). There were also non-freak things like a fire eater and an electric lady. And a mysterious featureless blob in a plastic box that just sort of breathed. I think that was just plastic with a motor inside.
Never been to a freak show, but when I was in the 4th grade I went to a movie theatre for the $1 afternoon matinee. The movie was FREAKS. I saw the first showing of it and realized it was weird. They pulled it after the one showing.
I barely remember my parents taking me to a local carnival that had a freak show we visited when I was a small child. I was born in late '64, so this would have had to be the very end of the 60s at the earliest for me to remember it at all. Possibly early 70s.
As I say I don’t remember much about it, but I do have a clear memory of a little person or dwarf (I hope I’m using the proper terminology) on display, answering questions and chatting conversationally with the visitors to the show. So it wasn’t just a ‘weird things in jars’ type of freak show, it had live people on display right on the cusp of the 70s.
I have a hazy memory of going to a carnival as a preschooler in the late 60’s where I saw a ‘fat lady’ and a man who I now recognize as having some form of achondroplasia, who was chatting conversationally with visitors much as solost described. Concerning the fat lady, I would estimate fair odds one might see one or more people her size today simply by shopping at Walmart.
I wasn’t impressed with the fat lady. I’d seen some pretty large women before. She nay have been the largest I’d seen at that point but not exceptionally so. I’ve seen pictures of much larger women and men. I assume it was difficult for freak shows to sign top quality freaks by the 60s. There is lore concerning carnival fat ladies that I’d rather not get into and don’t recall the source but it’s unpleasant stuff.
The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow toured a lot in the 1990s.
I saw them a couple of times when the played Edinburgh but they were more sideshow acts than freaks. The link to wiki gives a list of performers.
They used to come into my shop back then and browse the weirder books & magazines I used to sell! Amok and so on. One of them (possibly Enigma but my memories are fading) used to drop off copies of his fanzine Pills-a-go-go, I think it was called. Mainly his experiences doing all sorts of pills, etc! Somewhere at home I’ll still have a copy or two…