Clicko : the wild dancing bushman
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Clicko : the wild dancing bushman
The University of Chicago Press, 2010
- pbk. : alk. paper
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
-
Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto Universityアフリカ専攻
pbk. : alk. paper289.48||Par200018842712
Note
Originally published: Auckland Park, South Africa : Jacana Media, 2009
Includes bibliography
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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.
by "Nielsen BookData"