Queen of the Air
Page 31
13 “Over and over, Papa warned”: Author’s phone interview with Victoria Codona, October 2, 1976.
14 “I think this was all a game”: Shives.
15 “What Leamy didn’t know”: Brann.
16 Alfredo could be moody: Ibid.
17 “He even talked to me”: Ibid.
18 There were accounts: Fraser, 28, and C. G. Sturtevant, “The Clarke Family,” The White Tops (December–January 1938–39), 12.
19 “If he could perform”: Author’s phone interview with Victoria Codona, October 2, 1976.
20 “No,” he said: Ibid.
21 “Nothing in the entire list:” George Brinton Beal, “They Lived the Greatest Circus Love Story of All Time, Codona and Leitzel, the King and Queen of the Aerialists,” Boston Sunday Post, color feature section, May 3, 1931.
22 “Alfredo could always throw”: Brann.
23 “I think she saw”: Shives.
24 “He would get teary”: Brann.
25 Their romance: Ibid.
CHAPTER 11
1 From the time: Pelikan.
2 “My mother always felt”: Ibid.
3 Nellie sailed to Berlin: Ibid.
4 “She was elegantly attired”: Leontini.
5 “In Europe, at least”: Ibid.
6 Edward Leamy lay near death: “Silver King’s Hurt, $2000 Pin Gone, Friends Believe Edward Leamy, Old Showman, Was Beaten to Death,” New York Times, August 2, 1914.
7 George DeFeo, a theatrical producer: Deposition taken April 24, 1915, introduced at divorce proceeding in Cook County Court, Chicago.
8 “She wanted him to go to work”: Ibid.
9 “My wife and I visited”: Ibid.
10 “People got the idea”: Taylor, Center Ring, 221.
11 Standing before Leitzel: “Lillian Leitzel,” Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus website.
12 The circus could offer: Ibid.
CHAPTER 12
1 It looked like a municipality: “Here Is a Study of Circus Contrasts,” Mansfield (OH) News, June 24, 1915.
2 “Do you know”: Wirth.
3 “Oh, forgive me”: Ibid.
4 “With all due respect”: Ibid.
5 “Our jaws had dropped”: Ibid.
6 “The three met”: Ibid.
7 “We have always had a rule”: Telegram sent to Leitzel, a copy of which is in collection of Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI.
8 Colonel Howard was the founder: National Cyclopedia of American Biography.
9 Several of his ponies: Hillenbrand, 178–80.
10 The colonel was not just a millionaire: Literary Digest, April 26, 1927.
11 “Now I just took the liberty”: Taylor, Center Ring, 233.
12 “Money, money,” she snapped: Ibid.
13 Always unaccompanied: McCloskey.
14 “Leitzel never answered”: Ibid.
15 “Because of the show’s rules”: Brann.
CHAPTER 13
1 “Come in, please”: Leitzel in a letter to her brother, Alfred, Christmastime, 1918.
2 “My arms turned to gooseflesh”: Ibid.
3 “Like a god and goddess hugging”: Ibid.
4 “I’ll never forget it”: Ibid.
5 “I had to keep pinching”: Ibid.
6 According to one magazine writer: Taylor, “Star I,” 58.
7 She had spent much of her girlhood: Hayter-Menzies, 17.
8 “Lillian Leitzel, ‘Aerial Frolic’ ”: New York World, December 10, 1918.
9 “What a grand, grand night”: Leitzel in letter to Alfred.
10 As she rolled: Ibid.
CHAPTER 14
1 “The pairing of Clyde and Leitzel”: Evans.
2 Ingalls, in the words of Merle Evans: Ibid.
3 “His voice was so booming”: Freeman.
4 “I looked at these tunes”: Evans.
5 “One early morning”: Ibid.
6 “Zip was lying”: Ibid.
7 “On the circus”: Ibid.
8 The New York Mail, for one: New York Mail, February 1, 1920.
9 The New York Sun: New York Sun, February 1, 1920.
10 On average, Leitzel fired: Cooper.
11 “Where were you, Mabel?”: Ibid.
12 “Leitzel and Clyde appeared cold”: Wirth.
13 “Flo and Billie”: McCloskey.
14 “He must be ever there”: Leitzel, quoted in Mary Rennel’s “What Type of Men Make Best Husbands?” Thomson Features, 1923, a newspaper clipping in a Leitzel scrapbook.
15 “Oh, they were at it again last night”: Evans.
16 During one especially pitched battle: North, 156.
17 “Leitzel and I got so seasick”: Evans.
18 Mills’s International Circus: The Times of London, December 17, 1921.
19 “There’d be times”: Jahn.
20 “She considered my drummers”: Evans.
21 Evans was paid twenty-five dollars: Ibid.
22 “Here’s a tenner”: Taylor, “Star II,” New Yorker, 61.
23 Leitzel was awarded a divorce from Ingalls: Divorce decree, Shreveport, LA.
CHAPTER 15
1 Sometime after midnight: “Sells-Floto Circus Has Auspicious Opening,” Billboard, April 26, 1919, 3, 14.
2 There was another distinctive subculture: Ibid.
3 Alfredo was married now, too: James L. Adams “She Flew through the Air … with Tragedy,” Cincinnati (OH) Post, May 23, 1964.
4 He wormed himself into a gunnysack: Boston Globe, May 27, 1919, 9.
5 She had become: “Big Circus Day, Tuesday, Aug. 3,” Fort Wayne (IN) Journal-Gazette, August 3, 1915, 18.
6 Alfredo found: Farmer, 56.
7 “I had adopted a fatalistic attitude”: Codona, Cooper, 76.
8 He experienced, he said: Tait, 27.
9 “If any other people”: Anita Codona.
CHAPTER 16
1 When Alfredo turned up: Anita Codona.
2 Ernie Lane, the flyer who had been competing: At least a few circus scholars have made the claim in writing that Lane had begun performing The Triple before Alfredo was able to accomplish it. This was absolutely not true, according to trapeze performer Mayme Ward, who, with her husband, Eddie, headed the Flying Wards, the troupe in which Lane flew. Ward told Charles Philip (Chappie) Fox, former head of the Circus World Museum and the author of numerous circus books, that Alfredo began performing the feat “well before” Lane. Fox’s undated written record of his interview with Mayme on the subject is currently in a file identified as the “Tom Parkinson Papers” at the museum.
3 He was pronounced dead: “Happenings of the World Tersely Told,” Riverdale (IL) Pointer, April 15, 1921, 3, and also “Plunges Headlong to Death in the Theater Auditorium,” San Antonio (TX) Light, January 4, 1928, 74.
4 “Well, look at you”: Anita Codona.
5 “absolutely charming”: Ibid.
6 “Because he treated Clara so shamefully”: Ibid.
7 “No married woman would trust her”: Parkinson citing a Marilyn Parkinson interview with Victoria Codona in Palm Springs, CA, 1974.
8 “When he and Alfredo were arguing”: Anita Codona.
9 She had started engaging in a nightly ritual: Austen Lake, “Doping to Win: Humans and Horses,” The American Weekly, April 15, 1948.
10 “A fighter steps into the ring”: McCloskey.
11 “Why don’t you let go?”: Codona, Cooper, 76.
12 “The mind seems to let go”: Ibid.
13 “She could have had the life”: McCloskey.
CHAPTER 17
1 The party, a fete, really: “Impressed by the Circus,” New York Times, October 30, 1927, sect. IX, 9.
2 For much of the day and night: Evans.
3 “The circus”: F. W. Murnau quoted in “Impressed by the Circus,” New York Times, October 20, 1927, sect. ix, 9.
4 “If I had remained another day”: Ibid.
5 The final straw: Petition for divorce filed December 10, 1927, in Ham
ilton County Court, Cincinnati, OH.
6 Clara did not identify: Ibid.
7 After traveling to 119 cities: www.circushistory.org/Routes/Route.htm. Circus routes page at CircusHistory.org, online site maintained by the Circus Historical Society.
8 Clara did not accompany: James L. Adams, “She Flew through the Air … with Tragedy,” Cincinnati (OH) Post and Times, May 23, 1964.
9 It was January 3, 1928: Bergstrom, “Murnau in America,” 439.
10 “We expected to see”: Anita Codona.
11 Because the narrative: Janet Bergstrom in e-mail to author, February 20, 2009.
12 “This is impossible, Mr. Murnau”: “Reminiscences of Janet Gaynor,” Oral History Department, Columbia University, New York, 1956.
13 “This is the way”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 18
1 “Because Leitzel and Alfredo”: Freeman.
2 “Her dressing tent,” said Bradna: Bradna, 190.
3 “We’d be drinking coffee”: Evans.
4 One Chicago writer: Bradna, 192.
5 “I hadn’t seen Uncle Adolph”: Pelikan.
6 Finally she did appear: Ibid.
7 Colonel Howard took a seat: Ibid.
8 “You see anything of Mrs. Codona?”: Taylor, “Star II,” 66.
9 “The resultant tantrum”: Bradna, 193.
CHAPTER 19
1 “Probably every woman”: McCloskey.
2 McCloskey remembered an afternoon: Ibid.
3 Said Merle Evans: Evans.
4 The fights between Leitzel and Alfredo: Bradna, 191.
5 “I don’t care how much”: Concello.
6 “I got goose bumps”: Ibid.
7 “Alfredo was not only the greatest flyer”: Ibid.
8 “You heinie sons of bitches”: Wallenda.
9 “Maybe you heinies”: Ibid.
10 “Ladies and gentlemen, the sensations”: “Detailed Review of Display and Features of the R-B Circus,” Billboard, April 21, 1928, 56, 58.
11 “Well, we really stunk up the place”: Wallenda.
12 “I shall never forget their debut”: Bradna, 265.
13 “She never really seemed”: McCloskey.
14 “Sometimes Leitzel’s temper”: Bruce, 58.
CHAPTER 20
1 After years of being gnawed at: Cooper, Literary Digest, 4.
2 Leitzel likely smiled wryly: Bull, 2.
3 “Easily,” she said: Cooper, Literary Digest, 4.
4 “Then it seems to me”: Ibid.
5 “All right”: Ibid.
6 “I understand … but you don’t”: Ibid.
7 While the circus had been playing Boston: Alfredo letter to Pat Valdo, Ringling personnel manager, in Circus World Museum collection.
8 It was also far more: Data from Brookings Institute, Washington, D.C.
9 In all, the Great Codona Circus: Billboard, July 29 and August 3, 1929.
10 “ ‘Laugh, clown, laugh’ ”: Burlington (IA) Hawkeye, November 13, 1929.
11 “Miss Leitzel, The Queen of the Air”: Illustrated advertisement in Laredo (TX) Morning Times, November 19, 1929.
12 “It was a disaster”: Antes.
13 A Billboard correspondent: Billboard, November 16, 1929.
14 “We had four or five clowns”: Antes.
15 “Alfredo was my brother-in-law”: Anita Codona.
16 “The train was nothing like”: Ibid.
17 “All the time we moved”: Anita Codona.
18 “We were afraid”: Arley.
19 “Dear Sir”: Original letter in Paul Arley collection.
20 “We were home again”: McCloskey.
21 The Great Codona Circus, “The Show Beautiful”: Laredo (TX) Morning Times, January 1, 1930.
CHAPTER 21
1 “My sister never told me”: Pelikan.
2 He slammed into Carl: “Circus Acrobat Killed at Bronx in Pole-Balancing Act,” New York Times, March 30, 1931, 1.
3 Leitzel embraced Gretchen: Gretchen Jahn and Dolly Copeland (née Jahn).
4 “What could have happened?”: Ibid.
5 “Why don’t you let go?”: Codona, Cooper, 76.
6 “Some mornings”: Copeland.
7 It was during these partings: Bruce, 38.
8 “Vera was always scrupulously honest”: Ibid.
9 “My sister had taken in Vera”: Pelikan.
10 “Someday,” she remarked: Beal, George Brinton, Boston (MA) Sunday Post, March 3, 1931.
CHAPTER 22
1 “I never before had a chance”: Nellie in letter to Melba Pelikan, dated March 9, 1931, from author’s collection.
2 “She loved Alfredo perhaps too much”: Ibid.
3 “It was a bad wish”: Ibid.
4 “Do you know who this woman is?”: Pelikan.
5 He said he had been miserable: Ibid.
6 “I still remember the Tivoli Gardens”: Milde.
7 Milde joked with Leitzel: Ibid.
8 “Well, for a while it was diamonds”: Ibid.
9 “What are you interested in at the moment”: Ibid.
10 “Only my husband”: Ibid.
11 “Are you ever nervous?”: Ibid.
12 “I can wake up”: Ibid.
13 “And then what?”: Ibid.
14 “A wonderful house in California”: Ibid.
15 She rasped, “It’s what I told you”: Fanny McCloskey, quoting her husband, Frank.
16 “I’m all right”: North, 158.
17 McCloskey and Mabel laced their arms: McCloskey.
18 A doctor injected Nellie: Nellie in a letter to Alfred and Melba Pelikan, dated March 9, 1931.
19 “Poor Leitzel hardly recognized me”: Ibid.
20 “My doll.” He wept: Fanny McCloskey, quoting Frank.
21 By the afternoon: Ibid.
22 “Why hadn’t I been with her”: Ibid.
23 The hospital rang up: Ibid.
24 She was wearing the same crème de menthe: Saxburger, Verden.
25 Before the start of a hockey game: “Garden Crowd That Once Cheered Bows in Silence for Lillian Leitzel,” New York Times, February 18, 1931.
26 “To the memory of Lillian Leitzel”: Ibid.
27 As the rope was slowly drawn upward: Ibid.
28 “I AM BARREN OF WORDS”: Colonel Howard in telegram to Alfred Pelikan. Copy of wire in collection of Circus World Museum.
29 Heinz Saxburger, a Danish magician: Saxburger in phone interview at his home in Copenhagen with author, December 10, 2002, and also in his book, Verden rundt med flagrende kjoleskoder (Around the World in a Fluttering Frock Coat).
30 “It was a night sometime around 1960 or 1961”: Saxburger interview with author.
31 “You saw her, Heinz”: Ibid.
32 The Valencia Music Hall was razed: Ole Simonsen, Danish circus scholar in Copenhagen, in e-mail to author.
CHAPTER 23
1 Alfredo saw it in a dream the first time: New York Journal-American, August 29, 1937.
2 Someone told him of Professor Escoli: Ibid.
3 It bore a $38,000 price tag: Pelikan.
4 The wood-crated monument: “Leitzel Monument to Reach Harbor Tuesday,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, December 1, 1931, 1.
5 “Nothing on but a fig leaf”: Alfredo in a letter to Pat Valdo, Ringling personnel director, the original of which is in Circus World Museum collection.
6 “Dad and I”: Ibid.
7 All the time: Long Beach Press-Telegram, date unknown.
8 Not surprisingly: “Final Tribute Paid Lillian Leitzel,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, December 10, 1931, 1.
9 After the services: Ibid.
CHAPTER 24
1 “Mother, Alfredo wants to marry me”: Bruce, 60.
2 On these occasions: Ibid.
3 “The more she practices”: Alfredo in a letter to Frank McCloskey, dated February 4, 1931, from Fanny McCloskey collection.
4 Like numerous great artists before him: Jensen, 25, 26.
5 Throu
gh arrangements made by Alfredo: Junker, 157.
6 “You did something that was strange”: Donovan.
7 “I saw Leitzel’s hands”: Ibid.
8 Alfredo went to see Paul Arley: Arley.
9 He massaged Alfredo’s back daily: Ibid.
10 By November of 1933: “Codona Clan Meets Crisis/Father Takes Command as Family Starts Training to Aid Alfredo in Comeback Effort,” Los Angeles (CA) Times, November 18, 1933.
11 Alfredo damned the gods: Ibid.
12 Even there: Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus official program, 1935.
13 The “King of the Cowboys”: Pfening, Jr., 17–20.
14 Years earlier: H. D. Sterling, “A Wayside Garage That Draws ’Em,” Motor Maintenance, June 1932, 22–23.
15 “Maybe in another year”: Anita Codona, quoting Vera.
16 Alfredo begged Vera not to leave: Ibid.
17 “Dear Wife Vera”: Bruce, 64.
18 In another letter: Ibid.
CHAPTER 25
1 He had just finished: Fanny McCloskey, based on her conversation with Clary Bruce.
2 “Alfredo,” she said firmly: Ibid.
3 “during the past year”: Copy of divorce petition, filed in Los Angeles County Court, June 28, 1937.
4 In petitioning the court: Ibid.
5 “He was a man living in the past”: George Lait, “Loved Her as Pupil—Killed Her as Star,” Sunday Mirror Magazine, September 5, 1937, 5.
6 “He seemed to resent”: Ibid.
7 She pushed the curtain: McCloskey.
8 “Frank, Am in plenty of trouble”: Note from Vera, author’s collection.
9 “Mexicali Rose”: music by Jack B. Tenney, with lyrics by Helen Stone, M. M. Cole Publishing Co., Chicago, 1923.
10 His talks with his brother and sister: Anita Codona.
11 “Those were the days”: Ibid.
12 “Hello, Mother”: Ibid.
13 “Vera,” he said: Ibid.
14 “Are you all right, Mother?”: Bruce, 64.
15 A minister said a few words about Alfredo: Anita Codona.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY