Word: clowning
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Choosing to rate James True not an industrious, leather-conscienced hack but a clown, as dangerous as Nazi Germany's Jew-baiting Julius Streicher, the New Masses telegraphed its findings to President Roosevelt...
...famed Goose Fair, a combination of autumn market, circus and racetrack, left the happiest childhood impression on Laura, had much to do with her delighted discovery of circus subjects soon after the War. She traveled with circuses, became the firm friend of England's late great clown, Whimsical Walker, and a dappled grey circus horse named Hassan, both of whom she repeatedly painted. Of the circus she says: "I love the freedom of it all. . . . The flapping of canvas is like the sound of gunshot- there's nothing in the world to compare with it all. . . . The perfection...
...such scale as in the dangerous days of looping automobiles and diving bicycles. Such ' hair-raising numbers as Clyde Beatty's animal-training act are not popular with all members of the audience, and present knotty transportation difficulties. But the elephants, the trapezists, the trick riding, the clowns are hardy perennials. Of the professional clowns Fellows remembers, one filled in the winters at osteopathy, one was a patent lawyer. Everywhere the circus goes, says Fellows, local bankers, merchants, doctors want to act as a clown for one show. "To accommodate them we keep several extra costumes on hand...
Some publicity stunts that Pressagent Fellows tells about: sending an elephant to lay a wreath on a dead elephant's monument; staging the real wedding of a clown in Madison Square Garden; putting up a gorilla at Manhattan's McAlpin Hotel. One stunt he denies any connection with was plumping the midget (Lia Graf) on J. P. Morgan's knee. Of circus freaks in general Fellows writes with friendly sympathy. He recalls one Jonathan R. Bass, an ossified man: "He seemed well informed, was fond of conversation, and was an atheist." Once a certain fire-eating...
Many a vengeful Boer looked on the outbreak of the World War as a good chance to win back independence from Britain. De Wet and de la Rey led the revolt, roused nearly 12,000 Boers to their flag. But Smuts stood pat. The revolt was put clown at the cost of more than a .thousand casualties. When England urged the Union to mop up German Southwest Africa Smuts took fire again with Rhodes's great idea. Then, with German Southwest Africa mopped up. Smuts was given the harder job of absorbing German East Africa. Here he found...