Flying Funny: My Life without a Net

by Dudley Riggs

  My parents, lacking a regular babysitter, decided to keep track of me by putting me in the show. Management outfitted a little wagon pulled by a tiny canyon pony (a horse breed thirty-four inches high) that was led around the hippodrome track in the opening spectacle. Before the season was over, my parents upgraded my tour of the track, replacing the pony with a muzzled polar bear cub pulling a wheeled sleigh, and I was dressed in a fur cape and a crown. I was presented, in circus hyperbole, as the Polar Prince from the North Pole. When we hit hot weather, the polar bear, which couldn’t tolerate the ninety-degree weather, went nuts! So we went back to using the pony—but they kept me in the hot fur robe. All I remember is what I was told—and that the polar bear deserved better treatment.

  Russell Brothers was a national show, but like many of the motorized shows, tended not to go farther west than Denver because of the difficulty of getting heavy trucks and elephants over the Rocky Mountains. In 1940 we owned our own show—the Riggs Brothers Circus—which ironically grew larger as economic times got leaner. When Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey closed early in the bottom of the Depression, many of their acts joined the Riggs Brothers Circus in order to survive. We provided unemployed performers with a “cookhouse” and feed for their animals. (Otherwise, exotic livestock from failing circus companies would have had to be given to a zoo, or shot.)

  We toured from Cleveland to Denver, Michigan to Texas, and sometimes down to Mexico in the winter. The Riggs Brothers Circus had a longer season and, unlike other circuses, we had no “winter quarters.” A homeless Riggs BrothersCircus operated year-round, providing jobs and entertain‑ment nonstop because we simply never had enough cash to close. This was a policy I would draw upon later with the Brave New Workshop, when we kept our doors open fifty-two weeks a year.

  Doc always said, “We do not cancel performances.” I quicklylearned that if you stop moving, the cash stops flowing. That may be the real reason show people always say “the show must go on.”

  I did not call my father “Dad” or “Father” until the last years of his life. Dudley Henry Riggs Sr. was always known as “Doc,” and my mother as “Lil.” Doc got that name when a confused Texas state trooper misread the enlarged “D” and “R” on a circus promotional flyer and of course assumed that “DR” meant that my dad was a doctor. He had also appeared in a risqué doctor sketch in vaudeville, the “Oh, Doctor!” sketch that had been part of the Riggs family repertoire for three generations. Fans of the act often called out the punch line “Oh, Doctor!” to my dad on the street. The name stuck, and as a result I was sometimes referred to as “Little Doc.”

  Doc Riggs worked in the circus for at least part of every season from his teens until his death. In his last years he was developing young comic talents at the Clown College in Florida, and still inventing funny props. Throughout his life he kept working on showbiz skills that he said he could fall back on during slow times or the off-season. He had been a machinist, a carpenter, a sign painter, an actor, a talent salesman, and even a movie stand-in for Clark Gable. Show people tend to gripe a lot, always threatening to quit the business, but no matter what they say, most do strive to stay in “the show business.” They hate having to work civilian jobs. Non-show work was not something you bragged about, but sometimes it was necessary to pay for food or the dentist.

  “Show business is ephemeral,” said Grandmother Riggs. “We live for that great moment of excitement and pleasure when the applause is in balance with the sacrifice and years of hard work spent preparing for that moment. That’s why we love show business.”

  A life in show business seemed to be what everyone around me wanted, and I wanted it too. But it wasn’t that easy. As Grandmother Riggs would tell me: “You need to maintain and polish your special gift of talent.” Her statements over the years were almost scriptural.

  And Doc always said, “Everyone should have a suitcase act, in case an opportunity to entertain should arise.”

  Circus tradition demands having something to fall back on: a second act immediately available if or when the audience (or an agent) asks, “What else can you do?” I have personally never felt safe enough to discard my old “suitcase act.” Even now, in supposed retirement, a full dress suit, top hat, and fire juggling torches are here in the little red suitcase.

  My dad had also been born to a show business family. His grandfather, James Riggs, had served in the British Cavalry, and after his discharge had become a trainer of horses for the circus. His son, Frank, my grandfather, also worked in the circus as a hand balancer, contortionist, and acrobat. Some years later, Frank left British show business and emigrated through Canada to the United States, where the original Riggs family revue was founded. The original act started with Frank; his wife, Emma Peabody Riggs; and their three sons, Arthur, Albert, and my father, Dudley Sr. By 1915, the act was billed as The Riggs Brothers no matter which of the three “brothers” were in it. Over the years, the act would become just my father, by then known as Doc, and my mother Lil, billed as Riggs & Riggs: Those Different Acrobats. But the original name would live on—years later, when my dad and I had our own act, we were still called The Riggs Brothers.

  My parents met when Lillian, who was just out of business college, took a summer job as a magician’s assistant with The Great Cardini’s traveling magic show. Cardini, a popular magician in vaudeville, was best known for his card tricks but could also make an elephant disappear from the stage. My mom was featured in Cardini’s popular Dollhouse act. At four feet eleven inches and ninety pounds, and very limber, she was a perfect subject, able to bend and contort her body enough to secretly fit into the two-foot-square glass “dollhouse” that appeared to be empty. At the end of the act, Cardini would say, “Such a lovely dollhouse needs a little doll,” whereupon my mother (having waited so patiently and compactly for an hour) would pop out of the house on cue—a visual punch line to Cardini’s act.

  Cardini’s bookings overlapped with the Riggs family’s bookings in the late 1920s, and my parents met when their shows “day and dated”—which meant both had shows at the same time and city—in this case, New York City. Doc courted Lil for the better part of the season, while Grandmother Riggs maintained a firm, Victorian hand to assure propriety. They were married in 1927—he was twenty-four, she was eighteen—a banner era for vaudeville, but that ended when the stock market crashed two years later.

  Although my mother was called Lillian, her real name was Martha Julily Harker. She said she was born in Missouri in 1911, although it must have been earlier. She had a tendency to be vague about her age and her background. Her parents died when she was very young, and she was brought up by her older brothers and sisters. She was the youngest by far in an immigrant family that left in Germany in the nineteenth century.

  Lil was tiny but strong, with what was then called a “perfect thirty-six” figure (thirty-six-inch bust, tiny waist, and thirty-six-inch hips). In the hand-balancing act, she would do a backbend, her hands and feet within one square foot on the floor, thereby creating a platform for my father’s handstand. This was their startling opening move—the statuesque man balanced on the tiny woman—that always got great applause and top billing.

  My mother had what was then called Jean Harlow hair—wavy platinum blond, which was the current fashion—and she liked diamonds. She was even billed for a while as Diamond Lil. She always dressed fashionably with as much gold and as many diamonds as she could afford, which varied with the state of the family economy.

  Grandmother Riggs was my closest friend and confidant, always wise and loving. She taught me what it meant to “be a Riggs.” Grandmother Riggs was always rather formally dressed—Victorian long dresses, tall collars—and she traveled with a padded, black leather case with a full Wedgwood tea service. Oddly, while she always insisted on a high standard of good and proper behavior, she was amazingly candid and open-minded. “Remember: Noblesse oblige—we must have respect for the others.”

  Grandmother Rig
gs would often take me to Caffé Reggio, an espresso shop in Greenwich Village, for a treat. She taught me how to spoon a little coffee over my ice cream and would offer advice on how to handle my parents, such as the time when I had just turned eight, had lost my job in the family vaudeville act, and was getting cranky. She also used such occasions to teach me further lessons in what it meant to “be a Riggs,” such as explaining why we always dressed up for dinner. “We have a standard of comportment: A young gentleman stands when a lady enters the room. Know that you are always in the public spotlight, so you must remember at all times to choose an honorable path. Have respect for the problems of others. You cannot control what others do, but we have our standards. Remember: Noblesse oblige.”

  Grandmother Riggs also performed for the family vaudeville act. She denied being a clairvoyant, but she did have some abilities that authenticated her to work as a “stage mentalist.” She was very shy about her gifts and would perform reluctantly, only when the family needed money.

  “I do not make predictions. I’m not Nostradamus. But sometimes I seem to know when an event happens without benefit of any real information. I’m not sure how, but I knew instantly when my son, Al, had been hurt in an automobile crash a thousand miles away.”

  When family finances required her performance, she would allow our agent to book her “mentalist” act. Onstage, she would hold up a crystal ball and say in a commanding voice, “I own but do not use a crystal ball because I do not believe in magic. I show it to you only because you all expect to see a crystal ball.” (She loved sending up the crowd.) “I am not a gypsy, I am not a fortune-teller, I am not a magician. What I do, I do without trickery and without any help from the devil.” An Episcopalian by birth, she said she was a rationalist by choice.

  Using the stage name Madame Emma, my grandmother would then astonish the audience by what she called mathematical memory skills. For example, she would ask for twenty-five volunteers to join her onstage and ask each of them to recite their date of birth, one after the other, like a roll call. She would then walk past each person and state what day of the week they were born. As the subjects verified that she got that one right, she would then turn to the audience and announce numbers that were the total years and days that the twenty-five people had lived so far. A certified public accountant, recruited from the local bank, would use his adding machine to verify each segment of her performance.

  Grandmother—Madame Emma—would then ask the audience members to shout out their names and Social Security numbers. (It was a more innocent time.) As the numbers were called out, she would write them on the blackboard, stacking the numbers wherever there was room on the board. On the twenty-fifth number she would, with a grand flourish, instantly write down a number that was the sum total of all twenty-five Social Security numbers. The CPA with his adding machine would take an extra minute or two to catch up with the same total.

  She was authoritative but also privately humble. “My only gift is that I have a good memory,” she would say afterward, and she meant it. That only heightened the sense of mystery and the aura of invisible power she conveyed. In her last days on her dying bed, she rejected the hospital chaplain’s offer of prayer, saying, “Heaven and hell exist only in the minds of the uncurious.” She passed the crystal ball down to me when she died, but none of her powers came with it.

  When I was little, my dad decided to cast me in a perch act. It was a relatively easy act to build—an inch-and-a-half steel tube with a tricycle seat on top. So when I was quite young, I think three years old, he put me up on a fourteen-footer. Later, as I got bigger, we went up to twenty-one feet, then thirty. I could shimmy up to the top of the pole, sit in the trike seat, and do a shoulder stand as Doc balanced the pole on his shoulder, his arms relaxed at his sides.

  During one layover between shows, he arranged rehearsal time during the off-hours at a cement block factory, a building that had the necessary high ceiling. Seated on top of the pole, after a while, I became childishly fascinated with all of the belts and motors bolted to the ceiling of the factory. I became so absorbed that I lost my concentration, leaned out to touch a bright belt, and tilted the pole dangerously. As the pole fell, Doc caught me safely and held me tight for a long time. “You must learn from falling, Son,” he said. “Never forget how hard the cement is.” I never forgot what Doc said: “Remember what you learn from falling.” Gravity is reliable. Falling is possible. But I’d felt safe and protected even after this first experience with falling.

  When Doc and I had the perch act, a few people commented that my parents were putting a child at risk up on top of a tall pole. But I performed under high scrutiny, spotted by my mother, and while it’s conceivable that I could have been hurt, the risk was pretty minimal. My dad was very strong and capable of keeping me safe. If he had chosen to balance a dozen eggs up there, everyone would have said, “Gee, he didn’t break any of the eggs.” Nor did he break his little son. For a season or two, it was one of the family’s regular acts.

  I never doubted my father’s love and his ability to protect me. When I was six, he punched out and fired a clown who made a predatory move toward me. At ten, I grew into the flying trapeze act, and he never missed a catch. He always spotted my comedy pratfalls and eased my teenage doubts. Once I could pass as an adult, we billed ourselves professionally as “The Riggs Brothers,” dressed alike, and presented ourselves, professionally and socially, as fun-loving bachelors. I thought it made me sound older and made Doc seem younger.

  We were in an uncertain business, although the good times always seemed to rescue the bad. As a kid, I was never very aware of money problems because the adults didn’t want to bother me with something I wouldn’t understand. But sometimes there were signs that even a kid could figure out, like when we started reusing makeup towels, put fewer flowers in the dressing room, or started eating “in” instead of going to the usual restaurants.

  In slow times, when the audiences were small, Doc would often go off alone with his trombone, find a back room someplace, and do a solo concert for himself. He would play “Paper Doll” over and over.

  “If things don’t pick up pretty soon, your dad will have to get a new song,” my mother would say. “He’s got that one down perfectly.”

  “Your dad is a self-taught musician,” Grandmother would add. “Ten instruments and never a single lesson.” She was such a solid woman, always serene and apparently happy—she always managed to see the bright side, even when times were bad.

  Doc was different. When things were booming, he’d get worried, and when times got tight, he remained optimistic. He saw the same picture as Grandmother Riggs, but backwards. If we had a standing-room-only business, he would run out, all over the theater, checking the exits. “You never know when someone might panic and yell ‘Fire!’ when they see the fire jugglers’ finale!” He was always anticipating trouble, always looking out for potential grief.

  This drove my mother frantic. She would savor a down mood for an hour and then “be up and at ’em,” looking for an active thing to do.

  For show people, cash was always a problem. Our contracts always stated that “the fee must be paid to the performers no later than intermission.” No fee, no second act. Because performers couldn’t always depend on being paid—the check might not be good—it was common for the fee to be demanded in cash. When you’re on the road all the time, and not developing much trust or credit, and lacking a friendly hometown bank, you end up being forced to carry greenbacks. Transporting cash has its risks, but sometimes cash does talk. When times were good, Lil bought a new car each fall, and almost always paid the wholesale price for it with hundred-dollar bills.

  When we traveled by train, she required three steamer trunks, one just for shoes—a bone of contention with my father when money was thin. Grandmother Riggs always taught the Victorian philosophy of “nothing to excess.” She encouraged “moderation in all things,” and this included shoes, alcohol, and ice cream. These two ver
y strong, very different women always got along well, however, because they shared what they called a common problem—my father. He could never satisfy them both, but he never stopped trying.

  When they were first married and in vaudeville, Doc and Lil performed as Riggs & Riggs. They had equal billing and equal pay—there was no hierarchy between them. The idea of equality was important to my folks early on, and the division of labor was pretty well shared. Doc took a great deal of pride in the fact that we were an “American act,” distinguishing ourselves from the European acts, where brothers having control over sisters, and husbands over wives was the norm. In our family, that was bad form. Years later, I was proud to run one of the first theaters committed to equal opportunity.

  After a half century of performing, of diving off seventy-foot-high boards, flying through the air, and supporting my mother on the palm of his hand, Doc remained physically strong into his old age. In the circus aerial work, he and I developed strong shoulders and upper bodies more so than our legs.

  My Uncle Art, on the other hand, was a ballet dancer with marvelously developed legs. My mother always said that Art had better-looking legs than most of the women in the show. When Art appeared with my parents, he performed some very muscular tricks—dressed as a woman. After an especially strenuous series of steps, he would take a ladylike bow, then remove his wig and pull down his top to take a second bow as a hairy-chested man. The audience howled.

  In the fall and winter—the circus off-season—we were often booked into nightclubs or vaudeville theaters like the Oriental in Chicago or the Music Hall in New York. The vaudeville theater season started in the fall—because in those days there was little to no air conditioning, and theaters were too hot in the summer. My parents did a “low” version of their circus aerial act in these theaters, fifteen or twenty feet high instead of the forty to fifty feet in the circus tent. If you had a circus act and you wanted to get work year-round, you had to make the act available to work indoors, as well as in a tent.