Felix Adler, king of the clowns at the greatest show on earth, is Peter Pan come to life again. He is the little boy who will never grow up.
The grotesque and glittering world of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus is his “Never-Never Land.” His fellow clowns are the other lost boys. And the only pirates they fear are those who steal their gags.
Against the background of the “backyard” behind the arena in Madison Square Garden, Felix divulged the secret of his transformation clown. While he spoke the rad light on the tip of his enormous putty nose went off and on continually.
His tufted red hair stood up comically on end, and his figure padded with pillows in front and with immense rubber balls behind, trembled as he laughed. Near him stood a crate with his three trained pigs. They grunted and squealed an accompaniment to his recital.
PRACTICED ON WASHLINE
“I was born in Clinton, Ioway, and saw my first traveling circus at the age of nine,” he said. “That was the beginning of the spell. From then on I only dreamed of being in a circus. My mother’s washline broke daily under the strain of my practice in tight-rope walking. At eleven I ran away with an acrobatic troupe. But I proved to be a flop–I was too clumsy. Everyone laughed at my failures. So I turned clown and scored a howling success.”
He stopped to make his next change in costume donning the mask of the big, bad wolf, together with a large checked overcoat. Then he picked up the three squealing pigs and dashed out to the arena.
He was back in five minutes perspiring profusely his chalky face smeared and his costume clinging close to him.
“Well,” he went on panting heavily, “at fourteen I left the troupe and struck out in an act of my own. I applied to Ringling Brothers and was hired. That was twenty-one years ago. Since then I have been with them off and on all these years.”
SAW WAR SERVICE
The “off and on” occurred during the War, when he joined the army and saw active service on the other side for two whole years. Afterwards he tried his hand at vaudeville and even took a fling with a Shakespearean stock company, where he played Hamlet without the accompaniment of rotten eggs (much to his own astonishment). This period over, he heard the call of the sawdust trail again, and changed from tights to pantaloons.
“There is nothing like the circus,” he enthused. “It gets under your skin and infects you for life. I love the excitement of it–the continual change of scene–the traveling around the country, and best of all, I like playing under canvas in small towns.”
Asked whether he were married, he answered, “No, rheumatism makes me look this way. And any why, what do I want with a family. All the kids in the world belong to me. They send me thousands of letters a day, telling me how much they love me and pouring out all their troubles and their dreams to me.”
“SOUP AND FISHERS” GO FOR HIM
Strange enough though, he finds that “soup and fish” audiences are the most responsive. “They come all set to laugh and have a good time.”
As to his ancestry he is rather vague. His father was partly Jewish and Irish his mother Scotch and Indian, “and all the races in me are having a terrific scramble to come to the top.”
His next change of costume interrupted the conversation for a while. In a few minutes he was transformed from wolf to a doubtful-looking blonde lady, with onions for earrings, a polka-dotted skirt and a striped sweater half concealing his hairy chest. Then he submitted good-humoredly to the reporter’s cross examination. He admitted that he checked Felix Adler in person in the dressing room and became Felix the clown as soon as he changed from street clothes to costume. “You can’t can’t clown mechanically,” he explained. “You’ve got to feel it.”
NO BROKEN HEARTS IN CIRCUS
As to pictures or radio ever replacing a circus, he pooh-poohed the idea disdainfully. “You can’t reproduce a regular circus in pictures,” he declared. “The circus is part of the American people. It is an institution in itself.”
Asked about a hobby outside of circus life, he confessed to a love for drawing and stray animals. He spends part of his spare time in the dog pound.
The curious reporter then made an epochal discovery. There are no ‘Pagliaccis” or “Deburaus” in the circus world! “That’s all bunk,” announced Felix. “People expect to see the ground all strewn with broken hearts wherever there are clowns. They’re really a carefree bunch, jolly good fellows and full of the devil, always playing tricks on one another. In all the years of my life in the ring I have never seen a clown suffering from a broken heart; I’ve seen a lot of them broke though!”
Thus scattering a time honored illusion Felix trotted off serenely to his next number.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
