Classic American clowning -- which is as extinct as the public telephone booth -- was refreshingly sadistic. Terry Parsons and I once calculated that a typical Ringling performance contained: 2 decapitations; 25 pies in the face; 76 pratfalls; 66 face slaps; 32 blows to the head with a foam rubber mallet; 99 kicks to the keister; 17 black powder explosions; 7 buckets of water in the face or down the pants; and 1 defenestration.
The rough and tumble slapstick of a former generation of clowns was cathartic. I remember as a small child watching the Three Stooges on TV, where I observed with interest Moe blowing a cloud of black pepper into Curly’s face -- with the very gratifying result that he sneezed himself down a flight of stairs. At the time my sister Linda was only nine months old, and I resented her taking up all of mom’s attention. So I took the pepper shaker from the kitchen, poured a generous portion into the palm of my chubby little hand, and blew it into Linda’s face while she was incarcerated in her playpen. She howled and sneezed in a very pleasing manner until mom came rushing in, demanding to know what in god’s name had happened. When I told her, she applied the business side of a hairbrush to my backside -- which continued to glow like a beacon for weeks afterwards, and made sitting a chancy proposition. Still, it was worth it. I couldn’t wait to try out an eye poke on the next person who annoyed me.
Good slapstick is sadistic but never gory. As Felix Adler once said: “Clowns are made of India rubber -- they bounce right back from anything.” And in the screwball romantic comedies of the mid-30’s it always seems that at the end of the movie Irene Dunne would wallop Cary Grant across the chops, he would return the favor, and then there was a dissolve to the two of them getting married while grinning like idiots. What a formula: Fisticuffs = Romance!
While Steve Smith and I leaned more towards the traditional British music hall pantomime when we worked as the advance clowns for Ringling, we always maintained a transparent respect for down and dirty comic violence. We had a swordfight routine in which I finally best Smith, forcing him to fall on top of an empty barrel and then jackknife into it. Mystified as to his whereabouts, I circle the barrel, stooping low to gaze about me -- which allows Smith to skewer me repeatedly through the bunghole. We discovered that the more he impaled my rear end the louder the laughter grew -- until we compressed the whole routine down to me throwing him into the barrel and then getting poked in the butt for the next ten minutes. Without the swordplay -- which we initially thought was pretty darn funny -- the bit became the biggest laugh generator in our two-man show. Go figure.
In reaction to the influx of European musical clowns back in the early 70’s, Smith and I spent a long afternoon trying to figure out how to do a gag where every musical instrument we pick up either explodes, catches on fire, or both explodes and catches on fire. The blow off would be a grand piano devouring us. We abandoned the project, which I still think has great potential, after doing the math and figuring out the constant destruction of musical instruments would bankrupt us pretty fast. Besides, Spike Jones and His CIty Slickers pretty much took care of that concept long before Smith and I started clowning.
My last year with the Ringling clown alley, Terry Parsons and I decided on a reductionist approach to violent slapstick. We each brought a chair out on the track, solemnly bowed to each other, sat down facing each other, and then began slapping each other in the face, tit for tat. Of course we pulled our punches. But that’s all the gag was -- buffeting each other on the cheek. For reasons that remain enigmatic to me, our fearsome Performance Director, Charlie Baumann, thought our little routine was extremely “Urkomisch.” He would pause in his rounds during the show to enjoy us slapping each other silly. He said in Germany this was a traditional clown routine, called “Schlagen Fest.” I think he just enjoyed the cruelty of it. Anyway, the audience didn’t seem to mind -- we never got any catcalls or rotten chayotes thrown at us.
Alas, the gag came to an untimely end one day when Terry and his wife Danuta attended a birthday party between shows at the Polish train car. The vodka flowed a little too freely into Terry. That night when we did the Schlagen Fest he nearly knocked me out of my chair on the first slap. I stood two more overenthusiastic cuffs before staggering off with a nose bleed. The next day Terry apologized profusely, but the damage had been done. I held no grudge against him, but decided that a solo gag would guarantee my face did not become a punching bag again.
Terry Parsons was a slapstick reductionist
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