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.
