classic film – Empowering women through fiction and history.

Thieves, Pickpockets, and Sex: The Dark Side of Circus Life

While today we think of the circus as something fun, colorful, and family-oriented, it wasn’t always that way. In fact, before the Progressive Era, the circus was considered adult entertainment and not very savory entertainment at that. Even in later years, Hollywood liked to portray the circus as a place filled with vice and crime. For example, the film noir Nightmare Alley (the 1947 version, not the 2021 version) opens with a view of some typical circus side shows with thieves lurking in the crowds and a swindling spiritualist. The police suddenly raid the circus, making accusations of soliciting crime and claiming one of the performers’ costumes is indecent (as defined by the standards of the 1940s). Of course, the circus manager has an explanation for everything, but the police order them to move to another town anyway.

The circus worked hard to clean up its act (no pun intended) in the 20th century. The circus in America really began in the 18th century and for two centuries, was considered the place for crime, vice, and sexual titillation. Circuses were rumored to have made deals with pickpockets who roamed the crowd and then gave the circus manager a cut of whatever they got. Men could come and ogle women in tights and leotards in eras where women kept their entire bodies covered and even a curvacious table leg could be considered risque. There were rumors of prostitution, though there is no evidence that this actually occurred.

This cartoon is taken from a book called Peck’s Bad Boy at the Circus by George W. (Wilbur). According to the caption, the boy Peck’s father is run out of the circus by the police because he was caught standing behind the lion’s cage creating the animal’s roar when the lion had a sore throat. This is an example of how even in the early 20th century, circuses were still seen as dishonest places that were always trying to swindle the public.

Photo Credit: Image from page 108 of “Peck’s bad boy with the circus [microform]” by George W (Wilbur), 1907, University of California Libraries: Internet Archive Book Images/Flickr/ CC0 1.0 Universal

Circuses started to reassess their image in the late 19th century and move toward the more family-oriented entertainment we know today. Circus managers became very strict about things like drinking and men and women socializing together. They included more children-friendly acts such as animals and clowns. The more adult entertainment moved away to the side shows rather than the main circus tent.

Why did the circuses change their image in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? First, these eras marked a period of change and reform in America. America had prospered in the Gilded Age but with it came the baggage of greed, corruption, and extravagance. These reformers wanted a cleaner, better America and pushed for reform in the entertainment field as well, including burlesque, vaudeville, and circuses. And second, they changed for the same reason Las Vegas changed in the 1990s: money. This era also was the birth of leisure and family fun and circus managers shrewdly realized, just as the Vegas hotel managers did, that children were a lucrative market they were missing by entertaining only adults.

Book 5 of the Adele Gossling Mysteries, which turns a year old this month, is all about the circus. The conflict between the circus as vice and the circus as decent entertainment unfolds within the mystery of the death of the star performer. If you want to grab your copy, you can do so here.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, you’ll enjoy The Missing Ruby Necklace! It’s available exclusively to newsletter subscribers here. By signing up, you’ll also get news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history, classic true-crime tidbits, and more!

The Spanish Lady and the Mexican Spitfire: Hispanic Heritage Month

Today is the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month and cause for celebration!

I’ve been watching a lot of silent films from the 1920s lately as research for a new historical cozy mystery series I’ll be working on next year and launching in 2025 (keep an eye out for more on that in the future). I’ve found classic films to be one of the best means of getting a sense of the atmosphere and everyday life from those eras.

I was pleased to find that Hispanic actors and actresses did exist during this early Hollywood era. Even more interesting, two Hispanic women dominated the screen during the 1920s and early 1930s, presenting two very different, and sometimes controversial, images of Latina women during this time.

Photo Credit: Dolores Del Rio, 1927, gelatin silver print, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institute: Intellectualpropri/Wikimedia Commons/CC-Zero (public domain)

Photo Credit: Lupe Velez in Sailors Beware, 1927: Mahar27777/Wikimedia Commons/PD US expired

Dolores Del Rio came from Mexican aristocracy and was dubbed “The Spanish Lady” in the press. Her roles in this early period of Hollywood often centered around dignified and refined ladies of Hispanic origin. She blended the acceptable behavior of elegant women with a touch of exoticism that audiences loved. But during the 1940s, her roles grew more stereotypical and it was harder for her to control her scripts and how her Latina characters were portrayed. She abandoned Hollywood and went back to Mexico and became a very successful film star in the Mexican cinema.

Lupe Velez was completely the opposite. Nicknamed “The Mexican Spitfire,” she wasn’t afraid to present herself as the hot and sexy Latina lady who said what she felt, shrugged off conventions, and even yelled and screamed when the situation called for it, both on screen and off. Audiences loved her vivacious and high-spirited personality and her Mexican Spitfire comedies were a big hit with audiences. Her life ended tragically in the mid-1940s when rejected by her fiance, she took her own life.

Today many critics dismiss Del Rio as having played into the hands of white producers and directors in an Anglo version of “the Spanish lady” and Velez for having played the stereotype of the uncontrollable Mexican woman. But it’s important to remember that in the 1920s and 1930s, the Hispanic community was very much isolated and ostracized. For Hispanic women especially, there were few opportunities to see themselves represented by Hispanic actresses. Dolores Del Rio and Lupe Velez gave voice to the existence of the Latina-American woman not only in film but in real life.

Fact and Fiction: Charlie Chapin’s The Circus (1928)

The circus has always been a favorite topic of books and films. There’s something dynamic and fascinating about reading or watching a story take place within the crucible of the circus. There’s so much mystery and intrigue surrounding the circus that it makes a great setting for a mystery (which is one reason why Book 5 of my Adele Gossling Mysteries is set in the circus).

But when it comes to accuracy, we know films and books don’t always make the grade (though I would argue books do better with this since authors tend to love researching and we like to “get it right”). This is natural since films are more concerned with providing a good story and entertaining an audience than they are with getting the details straight.

Photo Credit: Poster for Chaplin’s film The Circus from 1928 by United Artists, scanned 1 April 2013: Sir Julian Esteban/Wikimedia Commons/PD US no notice

Charlie Chaplin’s silent film The Circus (1928) is no exception. Although Chaplin films weren’t exactly known for their realism, the setting matters in some of his films (like The Gold Rush from 1925 which takes place during the infamous gold rush in the Klondikes of the late 19th century). Chaplin’s The Circus makes us feel the energy and chaos the circus held for audiences in the 1920s. That’s not an easy thing to do when we’re talking about a silent film since the sounds of the circus are as important as its sights (the 1956 film Trapeze is a good illustration of this).

There are some things about the circus Chaplin’s film does admirably well. For one, the film shows how being a circus performer required extreme discipline. The opening of the film shows the manager’s daughter Merna (played by Merna Kennedy) listlessly swinging on a bar trying to practice her act (she’s an equestrian performer). Later on, we see her in her act where she misses jumping through a hoop from a horse. Her manager’s father (played by Al Ernest Garcia) gets on her case backstage and even hits her and throws her to the ground.

Circuses also depended on audience reaction (just like vaudeville) for the success or failure of an act. In The Circus, the clown act is not up to par and the audience shows it. One boy yawns while a man opens a newspaper while the act is going on. Later, when Chaplin as The Little Tramp stumbles into the ring trying to escape the police (and gets into all sorts of funny scrapes, of course), the audience roars with laughter and applauds like crazy. Then, when the clown act comes on again, the audience boos it off, shouting for “the funny man” instead.

The film also shows how not all circus acts were treated equally and there was a hierarchy of respect among circus performers. As you might imagine, the more daring the act, the more honor the performer received (because of the more money he or she brought in). The storyline in the film shows this. Chaplin’s tramp falls in love with Merna, who returns his affection. Then, a tightrope walker named Rex (played by Henry Bergman) comes onto the scene and Merna immediately falls in love with him. Why? Because his act is daring and dangerous while Chaplin’s clown act has less prestige.

Also, the performers that were the most successful could make the highest demands. In the film, the innocent tramp Chaplin plays has, at first, no idea he’s the star of the circus and, in fact, keeping the circus from going bankrupt. When Merna tells him, he realizes his worth and begins to make demands of the manager, including a huge raise in salary. This was something many circus performers did in real life.

In true Chaplinesque humor, though, there are some elements in the film added more because they make a better story than the fact that they portray the circus in a realistic light and they don’t do the image of the circus any favors. For example, Chaplin makes the manager of the circus an abusive tyrant. He constantly slaps his daughter around and even punishes her for not going through the hoop during her act by starving her. He yells at his performers and makes fun of them and orders them around. While circus managers were known to be tough taskmasters, the portrayal of them as abusive and bullying is a little extreme (though Barnum and the Ringling Brothers didn’t exactly have a reputation for being nice guys.)

In addition, the film brings in one of the stereotypes we see a lot in circus films: crime. When we first meet The Little Tramp, he’s watching a sideshow with a large crowd while a man beside him picks the pocket of a wealthy spectator, then tries to throw the blame on Chaplin by quickly moving the wallet he stole into the tramp’s pocket when the police aren’t looking. Many films show the circus as being dishonest and even collaborating with pickpockets and thieves (like Nightmare Alley and The Unholy Three). In reality, early circuses were diligent about their reputation and keeping their performers out of trouble. Big circuses like Barnum & Bailey and The Ringling Brothers had strict rules about the conduct of their performers and many circus people kept close to the circus grounds rather than mingled with the crowds or the towns in which they stayed.

Still, The Circus is a fun film to watch and very Chaplinesque in its tropes (the sentimental Little Tramp, the situational gags, the triumph of love). Interestingly, many film critics consider it one of Chaplin’s underrated films because Chaplin himself underrated it. It was a difficult film for him to make, taking two years to complete and fraught with tragedy (including Chaplin’s own messy divorce at the time and a fire that burned down all the sets which had to be rebuilt). Though it did well on its release, Chaplin chose to shelve it for years and didn’t bring it out again until the 1960s, when it received the credit it deserved as both a great Chaplin comedy and a fun circus film.

If you want to see more fun (and mayhem and murder) in the circus, check out Murder Under a Twilight Roof, coming out next month. It’s on preorder now at a special price so take a peek at it here.

More Than Brando’s Mouthpiece: Sacheen Littlefeather

This month is American Indian Heritage Month so I wanted to celebrate a classic Indian American actress. I came across this article from the Vintage News website in my Facebook feed last month about Sacheen Littlefeather who passed away on October 2. However, Littlefeather was known as an activist for American Indian rights more than for her acting. But what fascinated me about her story was how in 1973 she made headlines when, in Marlon Brando’s name, she went onstage to decline the Oscar he won for his role in The Godfather.

Photo Credit: Sacheen Littlefeather standing in front of the Oscar statue holding Marlon Brando’s statement declining the Oscar for The Godfather, 45th Annual Academy Awards ceremony, 27 March 1973, UCLA Library Special Collections: TarkusAB/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0

The story behind her appearance at the Oscars has now become legendary. Before the 1973 Oscars, an incident occurred at Wounded Knee where Oglala Dakota and the American Indian Movement entered the town and took over in protest of Native American inequality and were eventually driven out by law enforcement. This incident sparked Marlon Brando’s rage and prompted him to declare that if he won the Oscar for The Godfather, he would decline it in protest of how American Indians were portrayed in films and television and treated by the film industry.

When the announcement that Brando had won came, people were surprised to see a young woman appear on the stage in traditional Apache dress, holding up her hand to decline the Oscar statuette. The story goes that Brando prepared a long speech for Littlefeather to deliver but the producers of the show threatened to have her forcefully removed from the stage if she didn’t keep it to thirty seconds. Put in a difficult position, Littlefeather handled it with dignity and grace. She condensed Brando’s wordy speech to a few eloquent and respectful words as to why he was declining the Oscar (you can watch that here). She endured booing and racial slurs from the audience, and John Wayne had to be restrained from attacking her onstage. The incident got her blacklisted from Hollywood and she never worked as an actress again.

Many have criticized Brando, accusing him of being a coward and sending a young woman to do his dirty work. There’s no doubt Littlefeather showed more courage and grace than Brando in facing the hostile Oscar crowd and backstage reporters. But Littlefeather maintained it was her idea to go in place of Brando and she did it to put across her message of inequality and prejudice that many American Indians working in Hollywood had to endure at the time and she never regretted what she did.

Let’s celebrate the courage and dignity of American Indians like Sacheen Littlefeather to stand up for their equality and heritage this month!

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Creative License: Sherlock Holmes During World War II

May is National Mystery Month, so what better way for us mystery lovers to celebrate than to take a look at one of the most, perhaps the most, famous sleuths in history: Sherlock Holmes?

I have to be honest here. I am not a great lover of the Holmes character. I find him too egotistical and woman-hating for my taste. However, there’s no denying Conan Doyle had something when he created this sleuth whose deductive reasoning and attention to detail wove intricate (and sometimes hard to believe) plots. I personally prefer sleuths who appreciate the value of intuition and psychology along with reasoning, such as Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, and, of course, the protagonist of my Adele Gossling Mysteries.

Last month, I binge-watched the Sherlock Holmes films, but not the contemporary ones. I binge-watched the twelve Universal films and the two 20th Century Fox films. All were made in the late 1930s and 1940s and feature Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson.

The series is pretty distinctive in several ways. Classic crime buffs are familiar with Rathbone playing many villainous characters so the series gave him a chance to play a good guy. Bruce, whose name might not be familiar to you, created the Watson character as the lovable but somewhat bumbling sidekick which set a precedence for the Watson character (and many sleuth sidekicks) for books, TV, and film after that.

Photo Credit: Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, cropped screenshot from Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, 1943, Universal Pictures: Patrick CecilF/Wikimedia Commons/PD US not renewed

But the most distinctive feature of the series is that most of them are not set in the late 19th or early 20th century when Conan Doyle wrote the Holmes books. They are set in the late 1930s and 1940s (that is, in times contemporary to when they were made). The series has an interesting history. Fox made the first 2 films which were actually set in the 19th century like the original books. These films weren’t very successful so Fox dropped the series. Universal picked it up and decided to change the setting to contemporary times. It was then the series became a huge hit and went on for twelve more films.

Why did Universal decide to change the time period? When the third film in the series (and Universal’s first), Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, came out, it was 1942 and World War II was raging. They thought the audience would identify more with a contemporary Holmes than a Holmes far removed from the war’s troubling times by fifty years. Audiences identified with the scenery of London and Europe featuring bombed-out buildings, air raids, and blackouts.

Universal took it a step further. The screenwriters revamped many of Conan Doyle’s plots to make them fit with the war. Instead of London underworld criminals. Holmes was fighting Nazi spies. For example, the fourth film in the series, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon is based on a Conan Doyle short story but features a secret code Holmes is trying to keep from falling into German hands.

Universal’s creative license was very effective not only in making the series more successful than Fox’s version but also in inserting messages to boost the morale of British and American audiences. Many of the films end with Holmes imparting philosophical messages to Watson that are essentially telling audiences not to lose faith and good will triumph over evil in the end.

I’ll admit I’m a purist when it comes to films based on literature. I initially resisted seeing the series because so many of the films were set in contemporary (relative) times instead of when the books take place. But once I started to watch them, I got hooked on how the films show the life and struggle of citizens living during World War II. I highly recommend giving them a chance. You can find most of them on YouTube here.

And if you want more mystery, check out my Adele Gossling Mysteries here. The first book in the series, The Carnation Murder, is out! You can find out all about it and pick up your copy here.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, sign up for my newsletter to receive a free book, news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history and mystery, and more freebies! You can sign up here.