Ask and ye shall receive... here is a photo of John Toy. John had a long career on the Shrine circuit and taught one year at Clown College, which is chronicled in Bill Ballentine's book CLOWN COLLEGE.Thanks go out once again to Robin Estes for providing the following info from Jackie LeClaire...
Photo was taken by Ralph Vincent who was a news photographer for the Journal in Portland Oregon.
The clown in the photo is John Toy or Johnny Toy. He clowned with me on the Orin Davenport dates in the 50's. He was from Minneapolis, Minn. His mother I think owned a dramatic school or taught there. Pardon my spelling but I think it was The McPhail School of Dramatic Arts. I visited it once myself. John Toy had instant memory. We could go to a musical movie and he would come out knowing all the words to the tunes. He had worked, and here I go with the spelling again in the ( probably 40's) dramatic presentations called Chetalkwas (?) He was a very brilliant man and loved clowning. He later married and for all I know may still be alive today. He has a mind that was hard to keep up with. Excellent, hard working clown with a definite individual style of his own.—Jackie LeClaire
When I find the time I am going to count the clown pictures of clowns tieing a pretty showgirls shoes.
ReplyDeleteJohn Toy has passed away and much of his wardrobe and props were donated to Circus World Museum's library collection.
ReplyDelete-Greg DeSanto
Maybe Jackie can tell me if I'm right, do I remember Johnny having shoes with big ball toes, and he could turn his feet till his toes pointed straight sideways or more. I envy people with total recall because I have none at all!
ReplyDelete