banana mouths with little hearts and flowers all over their face. It gets too cluttered. It doesn’t read.”
When he talked about the purpose of a face, Elmo kept using words like “read,” as in “How will the face read from the back of the tent?”; “catch,” as in “How will that feature catch the attention of a child?”; and “sell,” as in “How will you sell an emotion during a gag?” A good clown face, he explained, has the ability to expand and contract, like Charlie Chaplin spreading his legs when he gets kicked from behind. Indeed, when we stopped to review the progress of my face it appeared to be quite flexible. The cheeks moved well. The negative space between my eyes and my eyebrows truly seemed to dance. But something was missing. We had two dominant elements that would be black—rounded eye-brows and curved cheeks-but nothing striking to bring the face together. I tried a star on my chin. “Too much like a party clown.” I tried an exclamation point between my eyebrows. “Too busy.” Finally I tried a triangle on my chin. Suddenly the face seemed to vibrate, to move the eye around more quickly, as if jolted by a bolt of electricity. The triangle, so unassuming, provided two elements: contrast to the loopy curves and opposition to the tapering lines. The triangle stayed. We were ready for color. Elmo went back to his story.
While talking, whiteface clowns thrived in the one-ring circuses of the early nineteenth century; when the circus expanded to three rings, they could no longer be heard in all seats of the tent. A new type of clown—more physical, less talky—was needed. It was about that time that American Tom Belig, who was performing a riding routine in Germany, changed clowning forever. According to lore, one day when Belig was late for his act he threw on a baggy costume and wig, rubbed brick dust on his cheeks and soot over his eyes, and went out to do his routine. He was so frazzled he kept falling off the horse and jumping back on. The crowd roared with laughter, calling out the name of the popular comic-book character Der Dumme Auguste, Dumb Gus. This new persona quickly spread and eventually came to dominate clowning in America (nine of the clowns in our Alley were this type—with redder makeup and brightly colored wigs—while only two were whiteface). Forever after, whitefaces would endure as the new straight men, the foils, but their look would have to be sophisticated compared to their more frivolous and bumpkin cousins, the country-comes-to-town “Auguste.”
After bathing my face in baby powder that was stored in a girl’s ankle sock and brushing off the excess with a badger-hair shaving brush, Elmo began to paint the black lines and red nose. Even without looking I could feel the lines changing the dimensions of my face. Unlike the white, which was sloppy and greasy, the black was sharp and crisp, sealing the pores on my face like a fixed expression under wax. The red was equally vibrant and sure, an exclamation point on my lips and nose in contrast to the black clefs on my cheeks.
“So why is the mouth always red?” I asked.
“Tradition,” he said. “Also, you don’t have to touch it up as often.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Well, try not to eat fried chicken.” I laughed. First it was Ronald McDonald, now Colonel Sanders. Was any American icon safe from the wrath of circus clowns? “No, I’m serious,” he said. “We used to have a guy on the Ringling show who loved Kentucky Fried Chicken. He called it K Fry. But you can’t have chicken between shows. Eat your chicken for lunch.”
“What else can’t I eat?” I asked.
“Spaghetti sauce, pizza. Anything with grease that will cut the makeup. Also anything eaten with a fork. You can always tell a clown by the way he slides food off a fork without letting the food or the fork touch his lips. Even when the makeup is off. It’s changed the way I eat forever.”
After he finished painting the
When he talked about the purpose of a face, Elmo kept using words like “read,” as in “How will the face read from the back of the tent?”; “catch,” as in “How will that feature catch the attention of a child?”; and “sell,” as in “How will you sell an emotion during a gag?” A good clown face, he explained, has the ability to expand and contract, like Charlie Chaplin spreading his legs when he gets kicked from behind. Indeed, when we stopped to review the progress of my face it appeared to be quite flexible. The cheeks moved well. The negative space between my eyes and my eyebrows truly seemed to dance. But something was missing. We had two dominant elements that would be black—rounded eye-brows and curved cheeks-but nothing striking to bring the face together. I tried a star on my chin. “Too much like a party clown.” I tried an exclamation point between my eyebrows. “Too busy.” Finally I tried a triangle on my chin. Suddenly the face seemed to vibrate, to move the eye around more quickly, as if jolted by a bolt of electricity. The triangle, so unassuming, provided two elements: contrast to the loopy curves and opposition to the tapering lines. The triangle stayed. We were ready for color. Elmo went back to his story.
While talking, whiteface clowns thrived in the one-ring circuses of the early nineteenth century; when the circus expanded to three rings, they could no longer be heard in all seats of the tent. A new type of clown—more physical, less talky—was needed. It was about that time that American Tom Belig, who was performing a riding routine in Germany, changed clowning forever. According to lore, one day when Belig was late for his act he threw on a baggy costume and wig, rubbed brick dust on his cheeks and soot over his eyes, and went out to do his routine. He was so frazzled he kept falling off the horse and jumping back on. The crowd roared with laughter, calling out the name of the popular comic-book character Der Dumme Auguste, Dumb Gus. This new persona quickly spread and eventually came to dominate clowning in America (nine of the clowns in our Alley were this type—with redder makeup and brightly colored wigs—while only two were whiteface). Forever after, whitefaces would endure as the new straight men, the foils, but their look would have to be sophisticated compared to their more frivolous and bumpkin cousins, the country-comes-to-town “Auguste.”
After bathing my face in baby powder that was stored in a girl’s ankle sock and brushing off the excess with a badger-hair shaving brush, Elmo began to paint the black lines and red nose. Even without looking I could feel the lines changing the dimensions of my face. Unlike the white, which was sloppy and greasy, the black was sharp and crisp, sealing the pores on my face like a fixed expression under wax. The red was equally vibrant and sure, an exclamation point on my lips and nose in contrast to the black clefs on my cheeks.
“So why is the mouth always red?” I asked.
“Tradition,” he said. “Also, you don’t have to touch it up as often.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Well, try not to eat fried chicken.” I laughed. First it was Ronald McDonald, now Colonel Sanders. Was any American icon safe from the wrath of circus clowns? “No, I’m serious,” he said. “We used to have a guy on the Ringling show who loved Kentucky Fried Chicken. He called it K Fry. But you can’t have chicken between shows. Eat your chicken for lunch.”
“What else can’t I eat?” I asked.
“Spaghetti sauce, pizza. Anything with grease that will cut the makeup. Also anything eaten with a fork. You can always tell a clown by the way he slides food off a fork without letting the food or the fork touch his lips. Even when the makeup is off. It’s changed the way I eat forever.”
After he finished painting the
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