One of the greatest gifts the Ringling clown alley gave to me was the chance to pal around with some great guys. I’ve written extensively of how much fun it was to be around Tim Holst, and how much I gained from his friendship. But there were many others. Like Steve Smith, the Little Guy.
From Zanesville, Ohio, Smith was a theater major in college when the Ringling bug bit him. Short of stature and attired exclusively in bib overalls from J.C. Penney, he was an excellent percussionist. We both went down to the Venice Bank when rehearsals started that first season nearly fifty years ago to open up checking and saving accounts. Because now we were part of the gainfully employed bourgeoisie. The first check he and I wrote was to each other -- in the amount of one million dollars. I still have his check to me squirreled away somewhere -- you never know when it might come in handy . . .
As related elsewhere, I had a tough time coming up with a decent clown makeup. It worried me greatly. Smith, on the other hand, with a true artist’s feeling, slowly and painstakingly built his clown makeup to fit his face and personality to a T. He had no reason to befriend me during Clown College, since we were all literally competing for a limited number of openings so it was every clown for himself and devil take the hindmost. But he did.
It’s funny how selective my memory is about those far-gone days, but one thing I’ll always remember is that on graduation night, when I was still struggling with my makeup for the crucial audition show, Smith shyly handed me a card and said “Good luck, Tork!” The card, of course, contained a fart joke. Smith has always been a sucker for fart jokes. He went through whoopee cushions like other people go through pistachio nuts.
Once we both got on the road with the Blue Unit Smith was always one of the first to arrive in clown alley each day. That’s because although his august makeup was a classic of simplicity, he would take up to an hour and a half to get it on just right. Unlike me; I could slap mine on in less than ten minutes -- and it showed! If he made the slightest mistake, the smallest deviation, while applying his face, he would immediately take it off with baby oil and start over again. When you look in the dictionary under ‘Perfectionist’ you will find his picture.
He was addicted to Oreo cookies and Coca Cola. We had many a late night carouse in his roomette on the ‘Iron Lung’ train car, guzzling and chomping until sucrose dribbled out of our ears. Since he has remained as thin as a rail all these many years I assume that somewhere down the line after our paths ceased to cross he gave that particular diet up.
We played Madison Square Garden that first season for three months. Smith managed to rig up a TV antenna on top of the Iron Lung so he could watch reruns of 'You Bet Your Life' with Groucho Marks. And late at night one of the New York stations would run a Pete Smith specialty short. We both relished his dry narrative wit. And the Little Guy learned to do a dead-on impression of Pete Smith's nasal delivery.
We were both addicted to practical jokes. One particular performance we snuck into the Men’s Wardrobe to inflate balloons in the sleeves and pant legs of all our fellow First of Mays. When it came time to hurriedly change into the show costumes there was a wild burst of profanity from them as they tried to pop the obstructing balloons in time to make the production number. We never ratted each other out on that one.
As a percussionist, Smith was fascinated with sound effects. He put steel taps on his clown shoes and learned how to do a tap dance routine in them. The noise of this on a concrete floor was deafening -- a Morse Code from the nether regions. He put together a sound tree -- a pogo stick encumbered with whistles, bells, kazoos, and a sprinkling of klaxon horns, on which he could play a truncated version of the William Tell Overture. He had natural grace and rhythm and did all the dance steps during production numbers with a panache that superannuated showgirls still remember with affection. I, on the other hand, would stumble over a cobweb.
We spent several seasons together on Ringling, and a year in Mexico studying pantomime together. He was a great letter writer, as was I back in those pre-Internet days. We kept in touch that way as our paths diverged.
The last time I saw the Little Guy was in Chicago in 1983. He had his own childrens televion show, called Kidding Around. My wife Amy and I were enroute to Florida, where I had taken a clowning job at Circus World in Haines City. We spent the night at his apartment, and he took us out to an ethnic restaurant the antecedents of which I have never figured out. It featured a great many artichoke dishes and a haunch of mutton the size of a coffee table, served up by scowling mustachioed waiters who spoke only in grunts and monosyllables.
Amy was pregnant with our first child at the time, and Smith fussed over her like she was his wife instead of mine. Was the bed soft enough? Did she need any snacks to tide her over during the night? He offered to bring in a masseuse to give her a soothing back rub. Amy had met some of my other old cronies from Ringling Brothers, and frankly she had not been too impressed with their manners or their morals. But she found in Smith a true gentleman of the Midwest, the kind of guy she felt comfortable with.
“I hope we get to see him again” she told me, as we got ready to hit the road again. We never did see the Little Guy again. Today I only hear from him on social media. I doubt he’ll ever swing by Provo for a visit, and chances are slim that I’ll be going to San Francisco, his current home, anytime soon.
“Good luck, Tork” he said as I started up the old blue Ford station wagon. Then he handed me a whoopee cushion.
