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25 Amazing Photos Of “Freak Shows” From The Past

The idea of a spectacle that exploits people with severe physical deformities and abnormalities, better known as a “freak show,” has existed for centuries. However, these shows only really started to take off as the traveling shows that most of us now recognize in the 1800s, when they traveled to towns with lurid banners advertising examples of nature gone wrong.

After paying their money, spectators would be taken inside dimly-lit tents to gawk in horror and amusement at people suffering from all sorts of rare abnormalities. Conjoined twins and those with deformed limbs or no limbs at all were put on display and labeled as “freaks.”

By the time these people came to be freak show performers, most of them had already had terribly difficult lives as they suffered rejection from family members and peers. In many cases, they were sent to the freak shows as children by their parents to earn the family extra money and because public schools wouldn’t have them.

For others, the freak show was the only employment option available and became a home where they could find some kind of acceptance among others suffering from similar conditions.

Moreover, freak shows were big business, especially during their heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the likes of P.T. Barnum promoted these spectacles. Barnum, who was actually known to pay a fair wage, would comb the globe looking for new people to join his growing show.

But it wasn’t long before the trend stopped growing. By the 1940s, the appeal of the freak show had begun to decline with the medicalization of human abnormalities pulling the curtain back on some of the mystery that lent the show its appeal.

Today, while you can still find the occasional freak show, the performers are generally ones who with extreme body modifications (such as tattoos and piercings) or those that can execute astonishing physical performances like fire-eating and sword-swallowing — all of which represents a welcome departure from the insensitive days of yore.

Known to many as “The Bearded Woman,” Annie Jones toured with P.T. Barnum, becoming the country’s top “bearded lady” and acting as a spokesperson for Barnum’s “Congress of Freaks.” Date unspecified

Born in Thailand in 1811, Chang and Eng Bunker toured as a curiosity act for three years before settling down in North Carolina.
They married a pair of sisters and fathered 21 children.
1865

Known as “The Ohio Big Foot Girl,” Fannie Mills suffered from Milroy disease, which caused her legs and feet to become gigantic.
1890

Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome allowed Felix Wehrle to stretch his skin to great length and take on the name “Elastic Man.”
1902

Better known as the “elephant man,” Joseph Merrick lived a tragic life.
Rejected by his parents, he was left to join a touring freak show act.
1889

Grady Stiles Jr. a.k.a. “Lobster Boy” came from a long line of family members who suffered from the same birth defect that lent him his stage name.
As an adult, he was an alcoholic and would eventually murder his daughter’s fiancee.
1948

Billed as the “Living Human Skeleton,” Isaac Sprague began irreversibly losing weight at age 12 for reasons that remain unclear.
The weight loss continued throughout adulthood until his untimely death. 1866

Russian performer Fedor Jeftichew went by the name “Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy” and became a star performer in P.T. Barnum’s sideshow.
Years later, he was an influence on the physical characteristics of Chewbacca in Star Wars.
1888

Frank Lentini was born with a parasitic twin, ultimately leaving him with a third leg.
When his family moved to the United States from Italy, Lentini entered showbiz as “The Great Lentini,” joining the Ringling Brothers Circus.
1914

George and Willie Muse were black albino identical twin brothers who had the misfortune of being born in the Jim Crow American South.
They were kidnapped, told to grow out their hair and forced into the circus freak show life as “Men From Mars.”
1920s

Daisy and Violet Hilton were fused at the hip and put into a circus freak show at the age of three.
Circa 1927

Martin Laurello, the “Human Owl,” could turn his neck a full 180 degrees. He appeared in Sam Wagner’s freak show on Coney Island.
1938

Dubbed the “Four-Legged Girl From Texas,” Myrtle Corbin was born with a severe congenital deformity that caused her to have two separate pelvises and a smaller set of legs.
1882

Born with a very rare orthopedic condition that caused her knees to bend backward, Ella Harper a.k.a. “Camel Girl,” received a $200 per week salary as the star of a touring freak show act.
Date unspecified

Mirin Dajo became famous for astounding the medical community by piercing his body with all kinds of objects seemingly without injury.
However, this would ultimately prove to be his downfall when he died from swallowing a needle.
Circa 1940s

Madam Gustika, who was billed as being from the “Duckbill tribe,” is seen here smoking a pipe through the large plates in her lip.
1930

The Jaramillo sisters, Natalia and Aurora, were from Albuquerque, New Mexico. It remains unclear how exactly they first got into show business.
1908

Born without the lower half of his torso, Johnny Eck is seen here with Angelo Rossitto in the film Freaks.
He would also make several appearances as a bird creature in Tarzan movies.
1932

Minnie Woolsey, known as “Koo-Koo the Bird Girl,” suffered from Seckel syndrome, giving her both physical and mental disabilities.
She lacked both teeth and hair and worked at a Coney Island sideshow until her death.
Date unspecified

Born into slavery, conjoined twins Millie and Christine McCoy would later be sold to the circus and travel the world for 30 years as a singing novelty act.
1871

Pasqual Pinon toured the United States as the “Two-Headed Mexican,” decorating the tumor growing out of his head with a wax face.
1917

Charles Sherwood Stratton was paid $3 a week as a member of Barnum’s touring act under the name Tom Thumb.
He would eventually marry in 1863 (pictured), before dying at the age of 45 two decades later.

Born with the rare Hypertrichosis or “werewolf syndrome,” Alice Doherty was put in a freak show by her mother at just two years old under the stage name “Wooly Girl.”
1902

Due to acromegalic gigantism, Jack Earle grew to 7’7″ tall.
He traveled with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for 14 years before becoming a salesman.
1930

**Members of The Ringling Brothers’ “Congress of Freaks” lineup for a group portrait. 1924.**

20 Amazing Portraits of French Actresses Taken During the 1950s and 1960s

Though brought up in a family mostly interested in scientific studies, Thérèse Le Prat, born Thérèse Cahen in 1895 in Pantin, was taught literature and music.

When she divorced the publisher Guillaume Le Prat in the early 1930, he offered her a really good camera, and she started photography. Thanks to her dawning talent and to her knowledge of several languages, she was employed by the Compagnie des Messageries maritimes as a reporter, mainly in Asia, Oceania and Africa.

She stopped her career during the war. When it was over, she married Philippe Stern, a well known specialist of the Far East civilizations, and she definitively devoted her time to portrait: artists, writers and scientist and, most of all, famous people of the stage and dancers posed in her studio as models, serving her quest on faces, according to her inner conception of actors, conception tinged with anxiety and solemnity.

Until her death in 1966, Thérèse Le Prat photographed the actors of approximately 250 plays written by the greatest classical as well as modern authors, developing an approach which, in the last years of her life, brought her work closer to an aesthetic creation where faces, thanks to makeup and lightings, constitute a world of mysterious and indefinitely combining signs.

42 Lovely Vintage Photos of Little Girls With Their Kittens in the Early 20th Century

20 Behind-the-Scenes Photos from the Making Film ‘Giant’ in Marfa, Texas in 1955

Giant is a 1956 American epic Western drama film, directed by George Stevens from a screenplay adapted by Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat from Edna Ferber’s 1952 novel.

The film stars Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean and features Carroll Baker, Jane Withers, Chill Wills, Mercedes McCambridge, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, Rod Taylor, Elsa Cárdenas and Earl Holliman.

Giant was the last of James Dean’s three films as a leading actor, and earned him his second and last Academy Award nomination – he was killed in a car crash before the film was released. Nick Adams was called in to do some voice dubbing for Dean’s role.

In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. (Wikipedia)

Here’s a collection of 20 interesting photos of James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rock Hudson filming Giant in Marfa, Texas in 1955.

39 Wonderful Fashion Photos From 1946-1956

29 Cheesy Portraits of David Hasselhoff From the 1980s

David Hasselhoff knows the score and it seems he is always winning. With those baby blue eyes, German perm and Persian rug chest hair, they don’t call him the Night Rider for nothing. The only question is… can you handle this much Hoff? Well can you?

David Hasselhoff is an American actor, singer, and producer, who set a Guinness World Record as the most watched man on TV. He first gained recognition on The Young and The Restless, playing Dr. Snapper Foster. His career continued with his leading role as Michael Knight on Knight Rider and as L.A. County Lifeguard Mitch Buchannon in the series Baywatch. Hasselhoff produced Baywatch from the 1990s until 2001 when the series ended with Baywatch Hawaii. On screen, he appeared in films including Click, Dodgeball, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, and Hop.

Hasselhoff was first married to actress Catherine Hickland in the 1980s, but their union ended in divorce. In 1989 he married actress Pamela Bach, with whom he had daughters Taylor and Hayley. Hasselhoff filed for divorce from Bach in January 2006, which dissolved into a bitter dispute that took some time to finalize.

The actor later began dating model Hayley Roberts. After the two announced their engagement in the spring of 2016, they were married on July 31, 2018, in Italy.

In November 2015 Hasselhoff claimed he officially changed his last name to “Hoff” via social media, but soon after, his rep clarified that the actor was only making such statements for an ad campaign.

The Model in Britain’s Sex-and-Spy Profumo Scandal: 22 Vintage Photos of Christine Keeler in the 1960s

Christine Keeler (1942–2017, Orpington, Kent) was an English model who, as one of the central figures in the Profumo affair, contributed to the collapse of the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan.

At age 16, Keeler left home and moved to London to work as a fashion model. Over the next two years she took a number of different jobs, eventually becoming a dancer at a Soho gentlemen’s club that catered to the upper classes. There she met Charles Ward, a physician who was connected to some of the most politically and socially powerful families in England. Keeler moved in with Ward, and he acted as her patron, introducing her to men who moved in his circle, including Eugene Ivanov, a Russian military attaché and intelligence agent with whom Keeler became romantically involved.

In July 1961 Keeler met John Profumo, the secretary of state for war, at one of Ward’s parties, and the two began a short-lived affair. Rumours of the relationship leaked to the press, but Profumo was quick to deny them, going so far as to lie before Parliament in March 1963. Evidence of the affair quickly accumulated, however, and Profumo resigned in June 1963. Largely due to the scandal, the Macmillan government was voted out of office within a year.

At the height of the media flurry surrounding the Profumo affair, Keeler posed for a series of publicity shots with photographer Lewis Morley. The most famous of those images, featuring a nude Keeler astride a wooden chair, became one of the most iconic photographs of the 1960s. Keeler subsequently retreated to private life, emerging in 2001 with the biography The Truth at Last: My Story. The events of the Profumo affair were dramatized in the film Scandal (1989).

On 5 December 2017, Keeler’s son Seymour Platt announced that his mother “passed away last night at about 11.30 p.m.” at the Princess Royal University Hospital in Locksbottom, Greater London. She had been ill for some months, suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was aged 75.

50 Amazing Vintage Photos From the 1950s Volume 9

**James Dean, Times Square, New York, 1954.**

**7th Avenue toward 47th Street, NYC, 1955.**

**Women walk on the snow covered campus of Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, 1950.**

**Safe Buy Used Cars, Detroit, Michigan, 1952.**

**Marilyn Monroe and her flying skirt making history, NYC, 1954.**

**Grace Kelly enjoying a cup of coffee and getting her hair done while making ‘Rear Window’ in 1953.**

**Jackie Kennedy swings her daughter Caroline in the shallows at Hyannis Port in 1959.**

**ELVIS PRESLEY blows a strand of hair from his hand, while receiving a haircut from a US Army barber, Fort Chaffee, Arkansas in 1958.**

**5-year-old boy carries his puppy in the flood, Pico Rivera, C.A, 1958.**

**Promotional photograph for “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” from 1958.**

**Showgirls playing chess backstage at the Latin Quarter nightclub – New York, 1958.**

**Dancers hover above guests at the Paris Lido show in the Stardust Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1958.**

**A showgirl reading newspaper at the backstage of Moulin Rouge, Paris, 1956.**

**Woman filling her Fiat up in Paris, 1954**

**Boxcar race at children’s festival in Västerås, Sweden, 1953.**

**A police officer issuing a woman a ticket for wearing a bikini on a beach at Rimini, Italy, in 1957.**

**Liverpool Street Station, London, 1952.**

**Girl with early car seat belt, 1950s.**

**Marilyn Monroe in Los Angeles, April 1953.**

**A couple dancing at a nightclub in the 1950s.**

**Millions Like Her – A Shopgirl in Birmingham, 1951.**

**Chuckwagon race, Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, Calgary, Alberta, 1957.**

**Swedish girl smoking a cigarette at Varamobaden, 1951.**

**Two young girls sitting in front of porch, 1950.**

**Young girl sleeping in car, Hawaii, 1950s.**

**Atlantic Avenue & 4th Avenue, Brooklyn, 1956.**

**Father and son on a bike, Asmara, Eritrea, 1955.**

**Salvador Dalí painting with his mustache, 1954.**

**Grace Kelly and her bicycle in St. Tropez, France, 1954.**

**The arrival of the Corvette show cars for The General Motors Motorama, 1953.**

**Heat wave, Santa Monica Beach, California, 1956.**

**Workmen putting stainless steel covering atop Los Angeles City Hall take a lunch break, 1950.**

**Pigeons gather in Times Square on a rainy day, New York City, 1954.**

**A student ‘studies’ in her dorm room, Vassar College, Arlington, New York, 1951.**

**The Grand Canal being drained and cleaned, Venice, 1956.**

42 Amazing Photos Show Life in Cuba in 1981

Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is a country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean meet. Cuba is located at the east of the Yucatán Peninsula (Mexico), south of both the American state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic), and north of both Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Havana is the largest city and capital; other major cities include Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey. The official area of the Republic of Cuba is 109,884 km2 (42,426 sq mi) (without the territorial waters). The main island of Cuba is the largest island in Cuba and in the Caribbean, with an area of 104,556 km2 (40,369 sq mi). Cuba is the second-most populous country in the Caribbean after Haiti, with over 11 million inhabitants.

The territory that is now Cuba was inhabited by the Ciboney Taíno people from the 4th millennium BC until Spanish colonization in the 15th century. From the 15th century, it was a colony of Spain until the Spanish–American War of 1898, when Cuba was occupied by the United States and gained nominal independence as a de facto United States protectorate in 1902. As a fragile republic, in 1940 Cuba attempted to strengthen its democratic system, but mounting political radicalization and social strife culminated in a coup and subsequent dictatorship under Fulgencio Batista in 1952. Open corruption and oppression under Batista’s rule led to his ousting in January 1959 by the 26th of July Movement, which afterwards established communist rule under the leadership of Fidel Castro. Since 1965, the state has been governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. The country was a point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and a nuclear war nearly broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Cuba is one of a few extant Marxist–Leninist socialist states, where the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Under Castro, Cuba was involved in a broad range of military and humanitarian activities throughout both Africa and Asia.

Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America. It is a multiethnic country whose people, culture and customs derive from diverse origins, including the Taíno Ciboney peoples, the long period of Spanish colonialism, the introduction of enslaved Africans and a close relationship with the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Cuba is a founding member of the United Nations, the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, ALBA and the Organization of American States. It has currently one of the world’s only planned economies, and its economy is dominated by the tourism industry and the exports of skilled labor, sugar, tobacco, and coffee. Cuba has historically—both before and during Communist rule—performed better than other countries in the region on several socioeconomic indicators, such as literacy, infant mortality and life expectancy.

Cuba has a single-party authoritarian regime where political opposition is not permitted. There are elections in Cuba, but they are not considered democratic. Censorship of information (including limits to internet access) is extensive, and independent journalism is repressed in Cuba; Reporters Without Borders has characterized Cuba as one of the worst countries in the world for press freedom. (Wikipedia)

**Cienfuegos. Street scenes of Cienfuegos, 1981**

**Cienfuegos. 20th anniversary of the victory at the Bay of Pigs, 1981**

**Cienfuegos. Communist Party offices, 1981**

**Cienfuegos. Leading workers of 1980 at the port of Cienfuegos, 1981**

**Havana. CIA/Dengue fever poster. Cubans said that the dengue fever epidemic in 1981 had been started by the CIA, 1981**

**Havana. Dengue awareness campaign. Cubans said that the dengue fever epidemic in 1981 had been started by the CIA, 1981**

**Havana. Filming in Cathedral Square, 1981**

**Havana. Havana’s smoggy skyline, 1981**

**Havana. The Communist Manifesto, 1981**

**Matanzas. ‘The Party is the intelligence, honour and conscience of our times’, 1981**

**Santa Clara. 20th anniversary of the victory at the Bay of Pigs, 1981**

**Santa Clara. Children’s nursery, 1981**

**Santa Clara. Pre-revolutionary Woolworths, 1981**

**Santa Clara. ‘Yesterday, today and always. Study, work and the rifle’, 1981**

20 Interesting Photos Showing Daytona Bike Week in 1980

For a brief period of time before the over-commercialized vendor spectacle its now become, Daytona Bike Week included a wide variety of spectator activities that revolved around racing – any way, anytime, anywhere.

The sand drags were tolerated by the community of Daytona Shores, while at the Cabbage Patch racing for pinks was a cat and mouse game between deputies and racers.

Matches were set up, then a group of bikers would take off in one direction as a decoy. The cops would follow, while the money race slipped off as a small group to a suitable stretch of pavement for the actual face off.

These fascinating photos show the Daytona Bike Week in March 1980.