the world of a clown

Those hilarious clowns were the masters of merriment, mayhem and merriment bringing us larger-than-life exaggerations of our own lives in the canvas-covered, sawdust-floored tents of the circus.

Obviously the circus clown has had many changes over the years. We can trace the origins back to the jesters of medieval times. Even Biblical times speak of artists. So how did these pantomimes and court jesters find their way into those hearts? They mastered the art of everyday life and made a pun out of the simpler things in life.

Clowns as we know them today have evolved from the singer/jester of two hundred years ago to the fantastic art form of comedy pantomime in today’s large auditoriums and arenas. The earliest forms of clowns spoke to the crowd as they were small enough to be heard by all. They even sang the lovely song of the day to all-time greats like “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.”

While the circus clown has been immortalized as the extravagant play on words, movie studios have transformed the clown and his grotesque makeup into creatures of evil and horror. No wonder some people these days are scared to death of a clown.

The clown has evolved into a work of art and those who take on the role of a circus clown, a circus performer, are true artists in every sense of the word. First they have to be creative. Their facial makeup, while it may be patterned after another clown, is a unique fingerprint for each individual clown. It’s an unwritten rule in the world of greasepaint and slapstick that no one wears the same face as someone else.

These facial makeups are then classified into different styles or looks. The basic whiteface clown wore leotards, slippers, and even a pointy hat in the old-fashioned Dan Rice style. The Auguste type usually exaggerates facial features with larger-than-life smiles, BIG eyes, a huge nose, and round, rosy cheeks. His costumes are silly; some have polka dots or stripes and are often accompanied by oversized shoes. The bum type clown is usually a depressed character with a dirty and unkempt appearance, but still uses the traits of other clowns, such as big shoes or a red nose. Clowns can be as simple as an ordinary person sitting in the crowd who is actually part of the act. These are called your Plant or puppet.

While most circuses usually had a clown who would interact with the performance and the crowd, the need to add more clowns arose with the expansion of the circus tent. While the circus was basically a one-ring affair, the quest to expand and offer more than ever added to the delight of the circus press corps by securing notoriety for never-before-seen acts, more than ever the claims and bold and brash statements from “The Greatest Show on Earth”.

As more and more clowns joined the circus ranks, the circus clown’s performances and skills also changed. Soon the ability to speak to the entire audience diminished or disappeared entirely due to the new size of the crowds. In order to get their points across, the clowns resorted to acting out their scenarios in a dramatic and silly way. These pantomimes and slapsticks used a wide variety of props to elicit laughs from the audience, such as a clown going to the dentist or the clown from the Fire Department.

Throngs of clowns now gathered on the canvas arena for a slapstick adventure designed to make you laugh and also act as an amusement while another circus act was being taken down or set up for another featured performer. Whistles, sirens, smoke, firecrackers, and long, long, very long shirts all made us whoop with joy and laugh at the stupidity of what we went through every day.

While the clowns were there every day and were wonderful at what they did, we very rarely remembered a single clown’s name unless we studied the history and events of the circus. Emmett Kelly and Lou Jacobs are probably remembered by more people than any other clown. Emmett Kelly was known as a bum trying to sweep the floor with a spotlight as the pile of dust from him got smaller and smaller and moved this way and that only to explode everywhere. Legendary clown Lou Jacobs is famous for his motorized bathtub, his miniature car and his long made-up face. A very similar likeness to Lou Jacobs even made it onto a U.S. postage stamp in the Cecil B. DeMille epic “The Greatest Show on Earth,” which was filmed at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1951.

Today’s Big Apple Circus has the likes of Barry Lupin’s immortal character “Grandma” who is as well known at the Big Apple Circus as he is on TV and pageants. She was a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performer for five years after graduating from Clown College. She has been wowing crowds at the Big Apple Circus since 1982 and appeared in movies like Pee Wee’s Big Top Adventure. As a member of the International Clown Hall of Fame, she is in good company with other master clowns such as Glenn “Frosty” Little, Otto Greibling, Lou Jacobs and many others.

We remember other clowns in our lives, but we don’t think of them as circus clowns. We can’t talk about clowns without remembering the entertainment genius of Richard “Red” Skelton and the many characters and funny faces he provided. His father was a circus clown and “Red” was also in the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus before entering the television industry. Max Patkin was known as the “Clown Prince of Baseball,” a one-man baseball institution with his hilarious antics on baseball diamonds across America. The cross-eyed expressions, gummy mouth moving all over the place, and flexible double-jointed body movements had us laughing without any clown makeup. Going back a bit further in history was the greatness of a true screen master in the form of Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin delivered a circus theme in his film simply titled Circus.