Stars who ran away to join the circus
The circus has often lured people away from static lives to live the life of an itinerant performer
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THE circus has an irresistible lure for many. Those born to the circus life find it hard to get away, while many from other walks of life feel compelled to run away with the circus.
Throughout the 250-year history of modern circus many people have left behind their static existence to take up the itinerant life of a circus performer. Some, like my great grandmother Dollie Lennon (from Lennon Bros Circus), who died this week at the impressive age of 101 after running away with the circus as a young woman, are little known outside the world of the big top, but many became famous in other fields.
When young Ehrich Weisz needed to support his family he joined a circus, making his professional debut in 1883 as a trapeze artist aged nine. He later developed an interest in magic, but did other jobs while learning his craft. Changing his name to Harry Houdini, in honour of his hero French magician Robert Houdin, he took to travelling with a circus again, but later left the big top to make his name as a solo artist with his own show. When he died in 1926 he was the world’s most famous magician.
In the 1880s in Australia one woman tried to run away with the circus to escape her past. Born in Victoria in 1863, Catherine “Kate” Ada Kelly was the sister of bushranger Edward “Ned” Kelly. After his hanging in 1880 she joined a travelling show, going by her middle name of Ada and using the pseudonyms of Hennessy and Ambrose. She made use of the famous Kelly horseriding skills, doing trick riding in wild west-style circus shows. She eventually gave it up due to ill health and in 1888 married William “Brickie” Foster (coincidentally, my grandmother’s uncle), dying in 1898 of what may have been suicide.
The father of former British prime minister John Major, who became famous as a music hall performer, also had a brief career in the circus. He was born Abraham Thomas Ball, in England in 1879, and moved with his family to the US in about 1886. As a young boy he became part of a vaudeville act, then later joined a circus as a trapeze artist. Leaving the circus behind, he returned to England in 1896 and worked up an act as a song and dance man under the name Thomas Major. When his show business career petered out he went into business manufacturing garden ornaments.
In 1920 a boy named Yuliy Borisovich Briner was born in Vladivostok, the son of a mining engineer who abandoned the family in 1923. Briner’s mother moved the family to Paris in 1932 where the young Briner, going by the name Yul Brynner, made a living playing guitar and singing in nightclubs.
At 13 he met performers from the French show Cirque d’Hiver and boasted that he had once been on the trapeze. They invited him to audition and was hired three months later.
Brynner was one of their young stars until a serious accident at 17 left him with 49 fractures. After his recovery he returned to the show as a clown but later decided to pursue an acting career, starring in movies such as The King and I, and The Magnificent Seven.
Fellow actor and The Magnificent Seven co-star Steve McQueen, also had a brief circus career. In 1944, at the age of 14 he ran away from his uncle’s farm in Missouri to join a circus, primarily as a means of making his way back to his mother’s place in Los Angeles. It would not be until the ’50s that he made a more permanent foray into show business as an actor.
Growing up in a working class area of Manhattan, Burton Lancaster, born in 1913, took part in theatre and circus workshops at Union Settlement, which ran programs for people from low income backgrounds. At 19 he formed an acrobatic performing partnership with Nick Cravat and they later joined Kay Brother’s Circus, calling themselves Lang and Cravat.
Injury forced Lancaster to give up his circus career but after serving as an entertainer in the army in World War II he later became an actor under the name Burt Lancaster. He often used his circus skills in films like The Crimson Pirate in 1952, in which he co-starred with Cravat, and Trapeze in 1956.
In 1923 Tommy Gene Thomason was born to vaudeville performer parents in the US. After a career as a teenage magician and actor in the US he came to Australia in 1959 with his nightclub act, under his stage name Tommy Hanlon Jr. He later got work in TV, but in the late ’60s bought a share of Ashton’s Circus and fell in love with the lifestyle. In 1978 he quit TV to run away as ringmaster of Silvers Circus.
As a teenager Pierce Brosnan, while busking as a fire eater, was hired by a circus. He stayed for three years before deciding he’d prefer to work in the theatre. Brosnan later worked in TV and film, and became famous for his role as James Bond.
Sydney Festival, includes circus-themed events, sydneyfestival.org.au/2018
Originally published as Stars who ran away to join the circus
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