Clicko: The Wild Dancing Bushman

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University of Chicago Press, 2010 - Biography & Autobiography - 254 pages

During the 1920s and ’30s, Franz Taibosh—whose stage name was Clicko—performed in front of millions as one of the stars of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Prior to his fame in the United States, Taibosh toured the world as the “Wild Dancing Bushman,” showing off his frenzied dance moves in freak shows, sideshows, and music halls from Australia to Cuba. When he died in 1940, the New York Times called him “the only African bushman ever exhibited in this country.” In Clicko, Neil Parsons unearths the untold story of Taibosh’s journey from boyhood on a small farm in South Africa to top billing as one of the travelling World’s Fair Freaks.

Through Taibosh’s tale, Parsons brings to life the bizarre golden age of entertainment as well as the role that the dubious new science of race played in it. Beginning with Taibosh’s early life, Clicko untangles the real story of his ancestry from the web of myths spun around him on his rise to international stardom. Parsons then chronicles the unhappy middle period of Taibosh’s career, when he suffered under the heel of a vicious manager. Left to freeze and nearly starve in an unheated apartment, Taibosh was rescued by Frank Cook, Barnum & Bailey’s lawyer. The Cooks adopted Taibosh as a member of their family of circus managers and performers, and his happy—if far from average—years with them make up the final chapter of this remarkable story.

Equal parts entertaining and disturbing, Clicko vividly evokes a forgotten era when vaudeville drew massive crowds and circus freaks were featured in Billboard and Variety. Parsons introduces us to colorful characters such as George Auger the giant and the original Zip the Pinhead, but above all, he gives us an unforgettable portrait of Franz Taibosh, rescued at last from the racists and the romantics and revealed here as an ordinary man with an extraordinary life.

 

Contents

1 Growing Up in the Snow Mountains
1
2 Recruited at Kimberley
16
3 Enter Paddy Hepston
23
4 Disappearance to Australasia or the Far East?
30
5 The Dancing Bushman in London
34
6 Dancing in Cambridge and Paris
45
7 Hiding from Humanitarians
56
8 Margate Rendezvous
64
14 Sam Gumpertz Takes Over
134
15 High Life with Frank and Evelyn
150
16 I Inherited a Bushman
166
17 California Interlude
176
18 The Great Terminal Dance
188
Conclusion
197
Appendix
207
Notes
210

9 From Dublin to Havana
77
10 Coney Island and Havana Again
84
11 Joining Barnum and Baileys Circus
91
12 Kidnap in Connecticut
106
13 I am an American Gentleman
121
Bibliography
224
Acknowledgement
243
Index
246
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About the author (2010)

Neil Parsons, a former professor of history at the University of Botswana, Gaborone, is the author of King Khama, Emperor Joe, and the Great White Queen: Victorian Britain through African Eyes, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Alexander McCall Smith was born on August 24, 1948 in Zimbabwe. He was a professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh, but he left in 2005 to focus on his writing. He has written over 60 books, including specialist academic titles including Forensic Aspects of Sleep and The Criminal Law of Botswana, short story collections including Portuguese Irregular Verbs, and children's books including The Perfect Hamburger. He is best known for the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. He also writes the Corduroy Mansions, Isabel Dalhousie and 44 Scotland Street series. He has received numerous awards, including The Crime Writers' Association Dagger in the Library Award and the 2004 United Kingdom's Author of the Year Award. His book, The Full Cupboard of Life, received the Saga Award for Wit in the United Kingdom. In 2007, he received a CBE for his services in literature.

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