Read Online The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins by Dean Jensen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dean Jensen
Ads: Link
horrified at having brought such a creature into the world. But because of the curiosity her baby aroused in the farming community of Blufton, Bernice’s mother soon came to the realization that her child could help keep food on the table. This was a responsibility about which her husband, a drinker, had always been indifferent. Mr. Smith launched Bernice’s show business career when Jeanie was just three, exhibiting her at local pumpkin fairs. Soon after, Jeanie Smith was touring with a major carnival, Dodson Brothers World’s Fair, where she was billed as the World’s Only Living Half-Girl. Jeanie never appeared on the same midways with Daisy and Violet, but she knew them well. She saw parallels between her life as a carnival stray and those of the twins.
“Would Daisy and Vi have been better off if, instead of appearing on the sideshow stages as youngsters, they had grown up behind the locked steel doors of some institution?” she asked. “That’s not a life I would have wanted for myself. Even as young girls, the Hiltons were exceptionally well-educated, worldly and poised.
They did everything—sang, danced, played the piano, violin and reeds—and they were gorgeous to look at. I never saw them put on a performance when they didn’t leave their audience absolutely spellbound. I would say they were world-class entertainers, and they gained all their polish and charm because they traveled in the sideshows. They couldn’t have gotten any more polish if they had been educated in the most exclusive boarding schools.” 4
As great a sensation as Daisy and Violet had been during their first round on the American carnival circuit, that experience turned out to be but a dress rehearsal for the frenzy they were to set off the following season. News of the grown-together sisters had already started spreading far and wide, broadcast mostly by people who knew a man who knew a man who had already seen the pair.
For the 1917 tour, Clarence Wortham had switched the Royal English United Twins from the midway of his World’s Greatest Shows to that of the most lollapaloosan of his half-dozen carnivals, his flagship C. A. Wortham Shows. 5 The carnival’s first appearance of the season was in San Antonio, Texas, where, for ten days and ten nights, its rides and tented attractions were set up on the downtown plaza for the War of the Flowers Fiesta, a festival held in the city each April to commemorate the state’s independence from Mexico.
In all, twenty-six separate tent shows were featured in the carnival, and Wortham had reserved the choicest place on the midway for the Royal English United Twins. Their theater was situated directly across from San Antonio’s most hallowed site, the Alamo. Eighty years earlier, Davy Crockett and a hundred freedom fighters had holed up for twelve days, trying to fend off the attacks of a Mexican army of thousands, before each of them was slaughtered. 6
The crowds flocked to the twins: families of ten or twelve with just enough coins knotted in a handkerchief to buy tickets for everyone; dandies with pretty women on their arms, who arrived in newOldsmobiles and Essexes; men who worked in oil fields, and women who worked in shirt factories; and, of course, the men who owned the oil fields and shirt factories.
Myer Myers hadn’t merely been cooing promises to his newborn daughter over the winter months. Ever an expansionist, he had drawn together the components for a second attraction to present on the midway, a show called Myer Myers’ Congress of Human Wonders. The production advertised such attractions as the Half-Man, Half-Horse; Walter Cole, the Skeleton Dude; an eight-piece Darkies Band, and a feature he imported from his native Australia, the 772 Pound Queen Lil and Her Tribe of Whistling Aborigines. 7
Myer was poorly educated, crude, and rude, but there could be no denying that he was a showman of audacity and farsightedness. Most sideshow managers were content to present their
“Would Daisy and Vi have been better off if, instead of appearing on the sideshow stages as youngsters, they had grown up behind the locked steel doors of some institution?” she asked. “That’s not a life I would have wanted for myself. Even as young girls, the Hiltons were exceptionally well-educated, worldly and poised.
They did everything—sang, danced, played the piano, violin and reeds—and they were gorgeous to look at. I never saw them put on a performance when they didn’t leave their audience absolutely spellbound. I would say they were world-class entertainers, and they gained all their polish and charm because they traveled in the sideshows. They couldn’t have gotten any more polish if they had been educated in the most exclusive boarding schools.” 4
As great a sensation as Daisy and Violet had been during their first round on the American carnival circuit, that experience turned out to be but a dress rehearsal for the frenzy they were to set off the following season. News of the grown-together sisters had already started spreading far and wide, broadcast mostly by people who knew a man who knew a man who had already seen the pair.
For the 1917 tour, Clarence Wortham had switched the Royal English United Twins from the midway of his World’s Greatest Shows to that of the most lollapaloosan of his half-dozen carnivals, his flagship C. A. Wortham Shows. 5 The carnival’s first appearance of the season was in San Antonio, Texas, where, for ten days and ten nights, its rides and tented attractions were set up on the downtown plaza for the War of the Flowers Fiesta, a festival held in the city each April to commemorate the state’s independence from Mexico.
In all, twenty-six separate tent shows were featured in the carnival, and Wortham had reserved the choicest place on the midway for the Royal English United Twins. Their theater was situated directly across from San Antonio’s most hallowed site, the Alamo. Eighty years earlier, Davy Crockett and a hundred freedom fighters had holed up for twelve days, trying to fend off the attacks of a Mexican army of thousands, before each of them was slaughtered. 6
The crowds flocked to the twins: families of ten or twelve with just enough coins knotted in a handkerchief to buy tickets for everyone; dandies with pretty women on their arms, who arrived in newOldsmobiles and Essexes; men who worked in oil fields, and women who worked in shirt factories; and, of course, the men who owned the oil fields and shirt factories.
Myer Myers hadn’t merely been cooing promises to his newborn daughter over the winter months. Ever an expansionist, he had drawn together the components for a second attraction to present on the midway, a show called Myer Myers’ Congress of Human Wonders. The production advertised such attractions as the Half-Man, Half-Horse; Walter Cole, the Skeleton Dude; an eight-piece Darkies Band, and a feature he imported from his native Australia, the 772 Pound Queen Lil and Her Tribe of Whistling Aborigines. 7
Myer was poorly educated, crude, and rude, but there could be no denying that he was a showman of audacity and farsightedness. Most sideshow managers were content to present their
Similar Books
