Jerry Bangs
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey 1930
Sometimes an amateur clown can have real trouble with makeup design. The application, the lines, the shapes, their proportion and color are all difficult skills to master. Add to that the fact that you are painting on your own face and you can understand how it would take a person quite awhile to come up with an appealing face to present to their audience.
Which brings us to the photo above. It was taken on RBB&B in 1930. I know that after Ringling Jerry had a long career on the Shrine circuit so I'll ask some of the more seasoned performers here...
WAS THIS JERRY'S REAL MAKEUP OR IS THIS SOME GAG PHOTO?!?
This has got to be, hands down, the single most hauntingly disturbing image of a professional circus clown that I have ever seen! WOW! He's got a lot going on for one head. As Mitch Hedberg put it "Man! You have a lot of cranial accessories!"
Let's review:
1) He's wearing a wig with at least two different colors of yak hair. They must be pretty different because the fact that they are clearly different is obvious even in a faded black and white picture. It doesn't look as though the wig is built onto a skullcap as much as it looks like it is hot glued to a white leather yamulke.
Which brings us to the photo above. It was taken on RBB&B in 1930. I know that after Ringling Jerry had a long career on the Shrine circuit so I'll ask some of the more seasoned performers here...
WAS THIS JERRY'S REAL MAKEUP OR IS THIS SOME GAG PHOTO?!?
This has got to be, hands down, the single most hauntingly disturbing image of a professional circus clown that I have ever seen! WOW! He's got a lot going on for one head. As Mitch Hedberg put it "Man! You have a lot of cranial accessories!"
Let's review:
1) He's wearing a wig with at least two different colors of yak hair. They must be pretty different because the fact that they are clearly different is obvious even in a faded black and white picture. It doesn't look as though the wig is built onto a skullcap as much as it looks like it is hot glued to a white leather yamulke.
(Incidently, "White Leather Yamulke" was the name of my garage band in high school)
2) He's wearing some kind of sunglasses or welder's goggles. They'd be kind of cool in a retro-futuristic Fritz Lang/George Jetson kind of way if they weren't being worn by a clown.
3) He's got some kind of oversized ears thing going on but they look like they are painted onto cardboard or wood.
4) The attempt at a Chaplinesque painted mustache. Other than Rocco Paris or Scott Linker, this never really seems to work as well as you think it will.
5) The "Billy Bob" teeth. These are now available commercially and several pro clowns use them to great effect, but those people aren't also wearing hairy yalmukles, welder's goggles, wooden ears and a Hilter moustache with them.
(Incidently, "Harry Yamulke" was my radio name during my college radio years.)
6) He looks like he's being lit by a police flashlight and seems to be posed with his hands in "surrender". Remember kids, when having your professional headshots done, be sure not to use the one that makes you look like you've just been found in a potting shed on an episode of COPS!
Put them all together and you have something that doen't look quiet so much like a circus clown as it looks like a Chubacabra that has been terrorizing a Mexican fishing village.
Now I'm not saying that Jerry wasn't talented or that he wasn't funny. For all I know this was his makeup for his entire career, he used it to great effect, audiences and Alley-mates alike hailed him as a genius and he was showered with riches by appreciative producers and the love of adoring groupies before finally settling down to a castle on the Riviera.
All I'm saying is that this makeup is SO crazy, so extreme, so out-of-the-ordinary that Jerry Bangs makes Chesty Mortimer look like Lou Jacobs by comparison. Imagine Jerry Bangs popping out of a dark alley at you. Or even a well lit alley for that matter!
Put them all together and you have something that doen't look quiet so much like a circus clown as it looks like a Chubacabra that has been terrorizing a Mexican fishing village.
Now I'm not saying that Jerry wasn't talented or that he wasn't funny. For all I know this was his makeup for his entire career, he used it to great effect, audiences and Alley-mates alike hailed him as a genius and he was showered with riches by appreciative producers and the love of adoring groupies before finally settling down to a castle on the Riviera.
All I'm saying is that this makeup is SO crazy, so extreme, so out-of-the-ordinary that Jerry Bangs makes Chesty Mortimer look like Lou Jacobs by comparison. Imagine Jerry Bangs popping out of a dark alley at you. Or even a well lit alley for that matter!
~ Photo courtesy of the Pfening Archive
The first time I worked with Jerry, was on Hamid-Morton in 1957. He wore no makeup, refused to, maybe this photo is the reason.
ReplyDeleteOne day everyone in the Alley decided it was time for him to make up they got him,and held him down to put a makeup on him, he literally fought for his life. They finally gave up and the subject never came up again.
The man was obviously influenced by the work of Salvador Dali and Picasso!
ReplyDeleteTrudy & her sisters called him "Gerald McBoing Boing"
ReplyDeleteJerry was a great prop builder. he had one walk around that was an Ostrich with a revolving Barber Pole neck and a monkey riding on it's back. No one wanted to do it because it was very uncomfortable but it was funny. The other was a drunk dummy designed after Bumpsy Anthony, with a cop carrying it by the back of his collar, what made it exceptionally funny on the Hamid Show was the cop was Bumpsy. When Jerry retired he sold his gags to the Hadi Funsters in Evansville.
I seem to remember Jackie LeClaire or Duane Thorpe saying Jerry never wore make-up (if that picture is for real...I can see why!), but was a top producing clown/prop-builder. In addition to the long neck barber pole cartoon visuals, he produced versions of the Firehouse, clown cars and assorted other ring material.
ReplyDelete-Greg
Is there ANY evidence that he EVER was allowed to appear before the public looking like that?
ReplyDeleteWe want to see what he looked like out of makeup...
Are you sure this isn't really Ron Jarvis?
ReplyDeleteHEY! I resemble that remark!!!
ReplyDeletePS This guy is starting to grow on me.
PPS I actually look more like George Layfette Fox.
Finally I have decided that it must be yak hair if for no other reason than the fact that when I looked at the photo my immediate reaction was
ReplyDeleteYYYYYYYY-A-K.
I worked with Jerry in 1970 for Polack Bros. If memory serves correctly Jerry said he never wore make-up, but was satisfied to build props and be the producing clown. He used the 'Diaper changing' gag, and the 'Love in bloom' gag, as the mainstays for the 70 season,..both very funny. He sent me a big trunk full of old used gags back in 72 or 73, which I used for awhile, but have long since worn out and been discarded. The 'Siamese twins" was one of the many he sent. He talked of having written a screenplay, and a book, but I've never seen or heard of any success about them if he did indeed get them to market.
ReplyDelete" played in most towns in the North East. Using local talent his shows raised money dedicated to building swimming pools. He wrote a book that was later written as a stage play, then re-written as a screen play. It ended up in a bottom drawer, Hollywood wouldn't come up with another $20K so Jerry stopped negotiations. The book was titled "The Duky Book Run", it was about life on the Ringling train in the 30's and 40's, a great read but a cast of thousands!
ReplyDeleteJerry died in his home in Lisbon NH of a stroke, he had planned to move to Santa Rosa CA.
The picture you refer to was an embarrasment and he didn't like to talk about it. After a week of this embarrasment the Brothers Ringling let him off the hook and he became the most successful producing clown ever. His costumes and props were called "horribles" they were made from spring wire, paper machee and various fabrics. His teacher made floats for the Macy parade. His most proud accomplishment during his tenure with Ringling was he had 40 "little people" that he made costumes for and took good advantage of the way they moved. One that he kept till tne end was a 2' tall hippo with a "Steamboat Willie" & "Minnie Mouse" riding on it's back. The ostrich with the barber pole neck and monkey on his back was a little difficult to get into and you couldn't scratch your nose, but was very effective with a youthful and animated performer.
I may have a one sheet Jerry used as a send-out and the museum in Baribu WS has a postcard with Jerry and Emit Kelly, Jerry was not named on the card.
I came across this website because my daughter is doing a project on family history and Jerry Bangs is my husbands great uncle, the family remembers very little about his life in the circus and has wanted to find a copy of his book for years. The last person to post said they had read the book, do you know how we could find a copy?
ReplyDeleteIn reply to "anonymous":
ReplyDeleteDuky Book Run was never published. Last known whereabouts of the manuscript was in the bottom of a drawer in Lisbon New Hambshire. Any possibility that it survives would be with Beverly Amadon Boston Mass, a cousin. Dusty Dillion, you can contact me directly by email at
worldsend@saber.net