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Kevin
What do ancient astronomers, mercenaries, athletes and politicians have in common?
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Caitlin
Join your three lame hosts as they take an irreverent lived in look at disabled figures from ancient Egypt to the 20th century.
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Kevin
Come take a wild and accessible ride exploring a side of history. They probably didn't teach you in school.
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Caitlin
This is Lame History.
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Kevin
Hello, my name is Kevin. I’m an author, photographer and former TV show host who was born without legs. I’m a congenital amputee with double hip disarticulation, which basically just means that no femurs formed in the hip sockets of my pelvis. I live in Montana and typically walk on my hands or use a skateboard to get around.
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Caitlin
I’m Caitlin Michelle. My friends call me Katie, my students call me Ms., And my twin boys call me Mommy. The doctors who delivered me didn’t know what to call me when I was born without a left forearm. And now I guess I can call myself a podcaster.
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Scott
Hello. My name is Scott. I’ve been in the plumbing, construction and service industry for almost 20 years, including owning my own plumbing company. I’m a former competitive paraclimber. I was born with only part of my right hand, and had several surgeries at Shriner’s Children’s Hospital to increase my dexterity. I’m married to a fellow now, former paraclimber. We have twin toddlers who outnumber us in digits and outrun us in general.
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Caitlin
Okay, cool. Welcome to Lame History, the podcast about how disability and disabled people help shape the world as we know it today.
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Kevin
Today we'll be talking about John Eckhart Jr. Or as he's more commonly known as Johnny Eck. He was born in Baltimore on August 27th, 1911 to Emilia and John Eckhart senior, and he was born with what's known most commonly as Caudal Regression syndrome, which it's a birth defect that affects fetal development of the lower spine. And it has kind of has a pretty wide range of of how it can present itself.
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Kevin
Oftentimes, it resorts results in a shortened trunk, and sometimes you'll even have parts of the spinal column not fully forming or fuzing. So when Johnny came out, it looked like, I think the quoted as saying he looked like a broken doll, but he was born, quote unquote, without legs, though he did have some very tiny, like vestigial limbs.
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Kevin
Johnny was actually one of two that came out of his mother. And I guess I probably could have put that in a more pleasant way. She just dropped two out! Uh no he was one of a set of twins. His brother Robert was born 20 minutes before him, I believe, and he was perfectly healthy.
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Caitlin
That sounds like a natural birth. That sounds terrible.
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Kevin
That does sound like a natural birth.
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Scott
That's almost immediately confusing to me because I'm just like our twins were literally one minute apart because it was a C-section.
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Kevin
Oh, yeah. Good point. Yeah. You guys have a little bit more knowledge of this, but. Yeah. No. So Johnny was was the surprise at the back end of what must have been a pretty tough birth. And one of the things that really struck me just as a kid, kind of with not the same birth defect, but at least with that same kind of congenital surprise for their parents is just how, like, cool his parents seem to be with the whole situation.
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Kevin
Like Johnny is included in all the family photos they sent him to public school. A lot of the photos of him when he was a little kid are really like smiley and cheery. And yeah, I wish I could have been able to find more on them because they seem like they're pretty cool.
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Caitlin
Wait were you not in family photos?
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Kevin
No, I was I was in family photos. But during this time, like early 1900s, like disability was not something that was part of social discourse. Like, it wasn't until, I think, the Rehabilitation Act of 1918 that that actually started to become like more like disability. As you know, in this case, a result of World War One became like a more common part of the American conversation. Beroe then,
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Kevin
Yeah like these kids were often put in a public home or an institution, much less being sent to frickin public school. Yeah, it was actually a pretty big deal what they did at the time. --- Oh, you're fine.
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Caitlin
I feel like at that time, it would have been just as shocking, if not more shocking that, hey, there are two kids.
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Kevin
Twins? Yeah. Twins have been born all the time. What are you talking about?
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Caitlin
Well, yeah, but back then.
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Kevin
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Caitlin
They’re not -
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Kevin
Romulus and Remus.
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Caitlin
Yeah, but that's a mythology. Every mythology, every every culture’s mythology has some kind of mystical twins. Because twins are like this rare, weird thing until technology and reproductive technology came into the picture. And now they're super common.
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Kevin
So you think that.
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Caitlin
Before that it was super weird and at a time without imaging or any kind of like, what do you call it? Oh, my God, ultrasounds. It would have been super weird like, Oh my God, I was just pregnant for this long and now there are two babies. I need my-
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Kevin
Oh from the Mother's perspective like being surprised. Okay, I thought you meant like, random passerby being surprised at seeing two twins on the street.
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Caitlin
No...
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Kevin
Like two ships silently passing in the night. There we go.
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Caitlin
One of my friends, she is older than me. She's my Mom’s age I believe, and her older brothers were twins. And she says her mother, when she was pregnant, they were like, oh, you're going to it's like you're going to lose weight. And she was like, I don't know. I'm doing what you told me. And then two babies came out and they were shocked.
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Caitlin
So even like this is I'm not going to do the math, but my friend is mom, her older brothers, and this is way before that. So I think the mom would have been like, what is going on?
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Scott
You know, like they would not have been expecting twins.
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Caitlin
All right. That that's like bizarre.
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Kevin
The only quote they have of the time was that he came out looking, quote unquote, like a broken doll. And the only other commentary they had, I think it was from a news clipping that was like a lot of this is like from Johnny relating these experiences later. And it's like told of a friend of a friend's. So there's not a ton of like super reliable autobiographical information from what I've seen.
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Kevin
And as we'll get into it later, the autobiography that he was working on hasn't unfortunately gotten to see the light of day. So some of this stuff will be a little bit hearsay ish, I would say. But one of the things was that his neighbors spoke about how he couldn't have been born to better parents. I guess so whether, you know, through sheer luck or just, you know, their their chosen disposition, they seemed to really want to kind of give him a pretty normal childhood.
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Caitlin
This is a really weird thought. But like, I, I do think there's a higher incidence of disabilities, especially some kind of missing limb in multiple births. So, like, my mom was pregnant with triplets, and I've heard of a lot of people born either without a hand or without lower limbs having a twin. I don't know about the exact science of it.
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Caitlin
Maybe it is just correlation, but I just think it's interesting.
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Kevin
Yeah. So Johnny was and you know, there's actually a fair number of photos of him when he was growing up and he started walking on his hands before his brother could stand. And they were both able to read by the age of four. So, I mean, there is a fairly involved childhood. A lot of the credit goes to his older sister named Caroline, who I guess provided the boys with some home education before they're both enrolled in public school at the age of seven.
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Caitlin
How much older she are?
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Kevin
I don't know, actually. And that's the thing. It's really tough to find anything on his family that's not, you know, an incidental picture of Robert or photos of him at his youngest. But if I find anything, I'll do a little follow up on that. And if I find anything, I'll add for the show notes. But in 1918, that's when they started school.
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Kevin
This is just kind of toward the close of World War One. So, I mean, despite the huge I don't know, in my opinion, it seemed like a pretty big deal. Like my parents were even getting recommended to send me to a special school when I was, you know, going. And that was like late eighties. So I don't know, I think it was still a fairly big deal.
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Kevin
But that said, it was late.
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Scott
Eighties, early nineties, right on that turning point.
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Kevin
Yeah. And this was kind of almost at the very start of that conversation before then, you know, disabled people were just, you know, an entirely different human class in a lot of respects.
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Caitlin
So nothing to do at all with the ADA being passed in 1990.
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Kevin
Right. Yeah. Something will get to, I have no doubt. So Johnny kind of recounted a little bit of his school times and while he puts a really good spin on everything, you can definitely kind of tell there's some hints of frustration there. So I think, let's see, one of the things he talks about is one of the some of the larger students would apparently fight for the honor of lifting him up the stairs to school, which I think is kind of the showmanship kind of description of things as something that you'll probably become accustomed to as we go through more of this stuff.
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Kevin
But then you'll hear stuff like they apparently had to block out some of the school windows to stop onlookers from looking in the classroom and like, I can't imagine that was like a super pleasant experience.
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Caitlin
That's creepy. That's so creepy on all counts really.
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Kevin
Right. It also makes me wonder where their classroom was. But I digress. And so one of the most common responses he had when people would ask, like, would you wish do you wish if you had legs? She said, Why would I want those? Then I would have pants to press, which I think is probably a learned response from maybe his parents or teachers or so, like a defense mechanism, basically.
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Caitlin
I don't know. Pants are annoying because.
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Scott
That's true.
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Caitlin
Two days ago.
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Kevin
During the press, but I feel like I can speak with authority on this. They are more annoying to sew up. like I have to make custom pants for myself and that is a pain in the ass. And I would say if we're boiling them down to minutes of work time, I would say, you know, how long is pressing pants?
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Kevin
7 to 10 minutes, maybe if you're very slow. I would say.
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Caitlin
Why don’t you just wear a kilt?
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Kevin
Because then I would have a perinneum like a tortoiseshell.
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Caitlin
Okay.
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Kevin
I can't imagine. Okay...you asked.
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Caitlin
I did. Sorry.
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Kevin
Some of their early times outside of school was working. Johnny and Robert took a job, and I'm going to probably mispronounce this, but I'll do my best Ocktavecs Art Shop, which is around the corner from their house. They were employed as painters, painting like screens for plays, signs, local stuff around church, and it was actually doing some painting for church restoration work that Johnny and his brother were first kind of introduced to the world of show business a little bit.
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Kevin
When Johnny was 12, he and Robert attended a stage magician show at a local church during the segment, the magician, who's known as John McCaslin, asked for volunteers and jumped onto stage on just on his hands. It's pretty clear that he'd been doing this for a long time as well, like walking around on his hands, doing handstands. Like it's a lot easier than I think people with legs give it credit for.
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Kevin
Once again, speaking with a small amount of authority. But this impressed McCaslin so much that after the show he asked Johnny to join his sideshow and act as his manager.
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Caitlin
There's something there's something to be said about being discovered for a sideshow at a church function. I don't know what that is, but there's something there.
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Kevin
I was thinking about this earlier, so there's kind of this. So Helena doesn't really get any any entertainment options that Helena is where I grew up. And I once a year at the end of July, beginning of August, you'll get the state fair will come through town. And I think I was like six or seven when we ended up meeting the manager of the local state fair.
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Kevin
And he all I remember was him inviting us into his office, which is just like a mobile home thing, and gave me a stack of free tickets. And then I went up outside and Dad started yelling and apparently offered me to like, come work for them or something. And this is like 89. So I can't imagine that like there was actually now after doing the research, I know for a fact that there was no outlet for this.
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Kevin
So God knows what the idea ultimately was for having this little like, you know, six year old kid join his show. But at the very least, I have the tiny reptilian brain memory of being like super stoked that an adult thinks you're important. And I think that, you know.
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Caitlin
That's so dark.
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Kevin
I know, right? But being met through the avenue of a church rather than like, you know, I'm just thinking from his parents perspective, we met them in a church rather than meeting them on like a roadside carnival that might have totally different vibes in terms of how we got initially attracted into the industry.
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Caitlin
I don't know. I feel like it's all like a big white van with free candy vibes here, even in the church. Well, I mean, especially in the church.
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Kevin
It didn't go well. And Johnny, apparently there was some legal troubles. He originally signed with him, with McCaslin for a one year tour and later claimed that McCaslin added a zero to it, requiring ten years of touring. And so after right. So he didn't get to see the contract through to completion, needless to say.
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Caitlin
Wasn’t he a child?
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Kevin
I think he was 13 when he signed. So he was still a child, but he had some help from his brother and I think he.
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Caitlin
Who was also 13.
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Kevin
Yeah.
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Caitlin
Oi. Oh, okay.
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Kevin
I think they'd gotten a little bit older at this point because when he stars in Freaks, I want to say he is 21. Yeah. So he's probably closer to like 16 or 17. But like, definitely being manipulated, like, very clearly manipulated and yeah.
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Caitlin
Exploited.
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Kevin
Exploited through by pretty much everyone he interacted with in the industry to one degree or another. So after he parted ways with McCaslin, Johnny bounced between Carnival outfits working for some of the the top outfits Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, some of the Barnum and Bailey, some of the other smaller shows that more regional shows. He was usually billed as a solo show, and the show was titled Johnny Eck the Half Boy, The Greatest Living Curiosity.
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Kevin
And he did you know, I don't know when the Matty B episodes going to air, but he had a very similar show as as ol’ Matthias Buchinger where he would do sleight of hand tricks, little acrobatic feats and juggling tightrope walking. And then his pretty famous, I think if you've ever seen a photo of Johnny Eck, this is probably the one you've seen where he's doing a one armed handstand in a tuxedo and ...
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Scott
Don't think I've seen that.
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Caitlin
Yeah, I don't think I have either.
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Scott
Gonna look it up right now.
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Kevin
Yeah. Type in Johnny Eck and it should be one of the first Google images.
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Scott
Yup there it is. It's pretty cool.
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Caitlin
I mean, see, Johnny? Yeah, that is cool. That's a cool image, too.
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Kevin
Well, it's interesting like that, and it shows a little bit of the how weight, displacement and disability intersect to allow you to pull off some pretty amazing things. So like, I couldn't pull that trick off and I've tried I've tried to do a one armed handstand a ton of times, but I was born with what was called double hip dis articulation.
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Kevin
So in contrast to caudal regression syndrome as I know it, like my spinal column is fully formed, fully formed pelvis, I just don't have femurs clicking into those empty sockets. Yeah, his disability goes up higher into his spinal column, but that also means that his center of gravity is more centered in between his shoulder blades, and that's what allows him to pull off that handstand.
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Kevin
I mean, the short of it is like I got too fat an ass to be able to hold it up.
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Scott
Yeah, just to create a visual. If you didn't know what was going on underneath his clothes at all and you were just looking at what a full bodied individual, what he looks like is from basically almost like bellybutton down. There's nothing there. Yeah.
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Caitlin
Which there definitely is, because that's not how anatomy works. But for the purposes of billing him as an enterainer.
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Scott
And then the way he looks when dressed.
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Caitlin
Yeah. Yeah.
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Kevin
And he had custom pants sewn to kind of hide the small vestigial limbs that he did have. So there was definitely like acknowledgment of that. These things are there. And how do we hide them to best, you know, articulate this illusion. Like I'm sure that the nicely tailored suit I mean if you look at the the silhouette of that one armed handstand like that suit is tailored specifically to show him as as half as possible, I guess you would say, you know, or, you know, try to illustrate that illusion.
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Caitlin
Yeah, it's very fitted so that nothing is there's no like fabric hanging or anything like that. It's just meant to be fitted to the bottom. Yeah. At least fitted to the uh I dunno delete that. delete me.
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Scott
No.
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Kevin
So he was getting quite a bit of work and it seemed like a lot of the photos from around this time. He does genuinely seem to be pretty happy in between the business troubles that he had. He did seem to be genuinely happy on the road at a lot of these moving carnival type shows. There are a fair few photos of him, you know, hanging out with people, getting to kind of just be outside outdoors.
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Kevin
He had a custom racecar made for himself. That's cool. There's some photos of him with ladies. You know, it just seems like he was kind of out living his life. And that's not to say that there's, like, a downfall or anything coming, but, you know, it definitely just he just seemed very happy in between a lot of this kind of, I don't know, frustrating business venture stuff.
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Caitlin
Yeah, he's pretty classically handsome. He and his brother. If that's his brother in the pictures.
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Kevin
Oh, yeah. Dude, he's. Yeah, he's a looker. He's very handsome. And so it was in the summer of 1931 doing a show up in Montreal that was approached by a rep from MGM Film Studios and asked to appear in Tod Browning's movie Freaks and Tod Browning, fairly famous director at the time he'd gotten his start as an actor working with D.W. Griffith for the Advent of Sound.
00;20;43;20 - 00;21;11;04
Kevin
And he was apparently, Johnny wasn't fully in formed that this was an actual feature film. So it was filmed in Los Angeles in the fall of 13 or 1931, and Johnny didn't know that he was actually going to be in a movie until he showed up on set. He thought he was going to work in an L.A. based show, live show Circus thing, and he didn't realize until he showed up on a soundstage that this was a different case.
00;21;11;06 - 00;21;12;01
Scott
Wow.
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Caitlin
That right sounds terrible.
00;21;13;13 - 00;21;36;06
Kevin
And so that gives you an idea of the. And the thing is, is that like, it's not like you have your choice of jobs, right? Like you take the work that's offered to you and that gets leveraged in such horrible ways as just you know, continue to see here. But yeah, no. And his manager was, you know, completely culpable for that miscommunication.
00;21;36;06 - 00;22;06;03
Kevin
And it's on the same token, it's like, well, what are you going to do? This is the only Hollywood role for someone with that's an amputee. And quite I mean, this is still probably the most famous Hollywood role for aside from Lieutenant Dan. Yeah, right. So in 100 years, 150 years of cinema, you can't really argue that it's you know, there's a plethora of new roles cropping up every, you know, now and then.
00;22;06;05 - 00;22;34;15
Kevin
So on a budget of $209,000, it eventually ballooned to 300,000. They shot for 24 days. And there's some differing accounts like he was quoted kind of early on saying that he didn't really get along well with his cast mates. And then later, looking back, he talks about, you know, how much fun he had with the Siamese twins, the caterpillar man and the bearded woman.
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Caitlin
What's what is a Caterpillar man?
00;22;37;14 - 00;22;51;27
Kevin
Well, we'll get to that here in a day. In terms of these are all characters from the movie freaks, right? So, okay. Referring to who they were. So in the movie Freaks, I think he is. His official title is Half Man. Right?
00;22;52;00 - 00;23;01;27
Caitlin
Right. Well, I was wondering if you met, like, their disability makes them look like a caterpillar. And I was like, what? I'm just confused and sorry, you.
00;23;01;29 - 00;23;05;19
Kevin
Know, And I don't even remember which one. The caterpillar man was.
00;23;05;20 - 00;23;08;14
Scott
I'm not sure if I'm going through it right now myself.
00;23;08;16 - 00;23;29;00
Kevin
Yeah. So basically the plot of the film is about this. The group of titular freaks who have their own kind of insular community and this traveling carnival. And, you know, they're they have their own definition of normal, kind of in their own little bubble world here. And there's two little people who have been in love for a while, one of which has been saving up to buy a ring.
00;23;29;02 - 00;23;50;26
Kevin
And during this time, you're kind of meet the villain, a lady named Cleopatra, who I think is were like on the trapeze side of the the carnival act. But she's able bodied and you find out that she's seducing him to kind of get the ring. Eventually he does marry her. She gets the ring and I think she gets drunk and starts making fun of him.
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Kevin
And that's when, like the freaks turn to revenge.
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Caitlin
So he marries Cleopatra?
00;23;59;00 - 00;24;32;02
Kevin
Yeah. Horns is the name of the little person who is kind of one of the main characters who gets kind of seduced into marrying Cleopatra. Okay, Eventually, horns like he does confront her after she's been, like, making fun of him, and they end up turning a circus wagon over and torches the wagon. And only after that point, the freaks then capture Cleopatra and they don't really show it, but somehow they manage to turn her into a human duck.
00;24;32;04 - 00;24;34;16
Kevin
You really get my brain behind that. And so they.
00;24;34;18 - 00;24;36;02
Caitlin
Like Tusk? Oh my God.
00;24;36;05 - 00;24;58;20
Kevin
A little bit. Yeah. Actually, that's a pretty good reference. Like, obviously not as graphic, but like, that's the weird thing is that like at the start of this film, there's like, I wouldn't call it sweet necessarily, but like there's these fairly nice, like mise en scene moments of like just these, you know, people with disabilities interacting together without the outside world, like staring in.
00;24;58;26 - 00;25;37;16
Kevin
And it feels fairly normal and healthy. But then, you know, you go to the other end when they're going to get revenge and they're all lit in like horror film. Frankenstein's monster type scenarios. It has a very different kind of the air of of acceptance. I guess I was sitting here as I'm reading this, being like, I'm going to get so many angry emails because I know that there are definitely people out there who are really big Johnny Eck fans and know much more than I could have, you know, than I can get across in the month, six weeks or so that I was able to research on this.
00;25;37;18 - 00;25;40;10
Kevin
So, yeah, no, I'm already bracing myself. Please be gentle.
00;25;40;11 - 00;25;44;12
Caitlin
And there Johnny Eck stans out there.
00;25;44;15 - 00;26;07;11
Kevin
Oh yeah, yeah. And I'll talk a little bit about it toward the end in the sources. But like there's a Johnny Eck like online museum and there's a couple articles about not only, you know, Johnny Eck aficionados, but a little bit of conflict between them as between these aficionados as as they're trying to curate their own collection of his memorabilia.
00;26;07;11 - 00;26;18;18
Kevin
It's a little frustrating and sad because we'll get into it. But his Johnny's later life is pretty embroiled in poverty and just tough times.
00;26;18;21 - 00;26;52;07
Kevin
So going all the way back to freaks 1932 Tod Browning One of the things Johnny claimed was he got along great with the director, was often seated beside him during filming at Browning's own request. Despite his accounts though, there were and this is this is true. Some employees at MGM were uncomfortable with the presence of the actors portraying the freaks on set, and so they made a special tent for them to kind of eat and hang out on the performers were not allowed to be on the studio lot.
00;26;52;07 - 00;26;56;21
Kevin
Instead, they're relegated to just outside the main filming area and then.
00;26;56;28 - 00;26;57;06
Caitlin
What...
00;26;57;09 - 00;27;01;22
Kevin
bring them in when it was time to shoot. Yeah, yeah. Separate but equal.
00;27;01;25 - 00;27;05;23
Caitlin
Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ohhkay.
00;27;05;25 - 00;27;33;14
Kevin
That’s the thing like. I guess I should add, like, more context to this. Like every- like any time I mentioned something kind of positive of this, it is the thinnest of silver linings to what is inarguably like a really ugly product and uglier process. So, like, let's just get that out there. I'm just trying to find the little moments of humanity because like he talks really nicely about his history going through this time.
00;27;33;14 - 00;27;46;25
Kevin
So there were slivers of humanity and happiness that would propel him to the next thing that he was doing. I would imagine. But yeah, looking back on it, you're like, Holy shit. Not fun.
00;27;46;27 - 00;27;51;02
Scott
I mean, remember right now is the 1930’s as well.
00;27;51;04 - 00;28;01;00
Kevin
Yeah. So Freaks released a major controversy in 1932. It was heavily edited by censors and given an X rating was even banned in the UK.
00;28;01;03 - 00;28;04;06
Caitlin
Was it pornographic?
00;28;04;08 - 00;28;05;28
Kevin
Uh, no.
00;28;06;00 - 00;28;08;03
Caitlin
Was it especially violent?
00;28;08;06 - 00;28;12;24
Kevin
Nope. It was just hard on the eyes.
00;28;12;26 - 00;28;17;06
Caitlin
Um okay.
00;28;17;06 - 00;28;39;25
Kevin
There are reports of people running out of the theater. Others reportedly became ill or fainted. One woman who attended the screening threatened to sue MGM, claiming the film had caused her to suffer a miscarriage. And due to the extremely unfavorable response, the studio cut the picture down from its original 90 minute runtime to just over an hour. And that was the version I saw was the one that was like, you know, it's like 55 minutes or something.
00;28;39;27 - 00;28;42;09
Caitlin
Oh, people. Oh.
00;28;42;12 - 00;29;05;09
Kevin
Yeah. So it's tough really to end. Like, I mean, I think you see it in the brief. If not, I'll post it in the discord here later. But like the, the tagline for the theater poster was Can a full grown woman truly love a midget? And it's like.
00;29;05;11 - 00;29;07;23
Caitlin
Oh, no, no, no. This is, hmmm
00;29;07;25 - 00;29;09;01
Kevin
That's what we're leading with.
00;29;09;04 - 00;29;14;28
Caitlin
I don't think people really understand how wild this time period was for disabled people.
00;29;15;00 - 00;29;39;13
Kevin
I Yeah, I really don't think people understand well, and part of it was because a lot of them were still in institutions. But yeah, like, so a slightly larger postcard from the same stuff. Basically all their press material it has. Do Siamese twins make love? What sex is the half man, half woman? For sure sensationalism, Freaks tops any picture yet produced.
00;29;39;18 - 00;30;04;24
Kevin
It's more fantastic and grotesque than any shocker ever written. So that kind of gives you the idea of like where they're going with the release of this, you know? And no matter how well you're treated on set, you're gonna see that marketing material and there's got to be, you know, some really unhealthy disconnects between what people are telling you and your professional setting and what you're seeing your product manifest into.
00;30;04;26 - 00;30;21;10
Caitlin
Yeah, but I also think we're looking at this from a 21st century perspective where, like I mean, who would choose not to say that they were not getting that treatment already by everyone else, especially if they were that as some of them were already in the carnival world and the sideshow world.
00;30;21;12 - 00;30;23;09
Kevin
And it was already bad anyway.
00;30;23;12 - 00;30;31;06
Caitlin
Yeah, it was already bad. So when you’re already being treated badly, it's just more bad.
00;30;31;08 - 00;30;37;11
Kevin
You're not wrong. That sucks that you're not wrong. But yeah. No, I can. I can see that. Absolutely.
00;30;37;11 - 00;30;43;24
Caitlin
Yeah. First time I hated being right. The first time.
00;30;43;26 - 00;30;47;28
Scott
I can totally.
00;30;48;00 - 00;31;04;22
Kevin
And so it did. I mean, it did. It was a bomb. The movie was a bomb. Todd Browning's reputation as a reliable filmmaker among the Hollywood establishment was tarnished, and he only completed four more pictures before retiring from the industry around 1939.
00;31;04;24 - 00;31;11;21
Caitlin
Why was it a bomb? Was it because was so sensational that people were reacting really negatively and it was getting a lot of flak?
00;31;11;23 - 00;31;12;10
Kevin
I think he.
00;31;12;10 - 00;31;12;29
Caitlin
Or was it because -
00;31;13;06 - 00;31;14;24
Kevin
Of. Oh, go ahead.
00;31;14;24 - 00;31;22;19
Caitlin
Sorry. Or was it because it was very low brow in a sense?
00;31;22;25 - 00;31;39;28
Kevin
It’s money. I mean, it's it's money. That's what it comes down to. So I'm sure it was very negative word of mouth. I mean, if they were cutting 30 minutes out of it, there was definitely like a strong enough audience reaction for them to be altering their content. So, yeah, I would say that it was just.
00;31;40;00 - 00;31;51;14
Scott
At the end of the day, they put 300 grand into it and they want to get their money out of it and they will do whatever they have to in order to blow that money back. If they feel like the audience is not going to be there for it.
00;31;51;16 - 00;32;10;02
Kevin
Yeah, I think people just do it for one reason or another. I mean, maybe one of the reasons is that the poster that I mentioned earlier has a very poor drawing of the little person. So what? It looks like a woman kissing a child on her lap. There's something wrong with all of this.
00;32;10;04 - 00;32;18;19
Caitlin
Like keep that sitting on the lap. The whole infantalization Oh, yeah, that.
00;32;18;19 - 00;32;25;14
Kevin
So anyway, all the box office failure, not a big deal. I feel fine with it.
00;32;25;17 - 00;32;26;11
Caitlin
Yeah. Agreed.
00;32;28;05 - 00;32;47;15
Kevin
And, you know, while I'm sure it might have been maybe a blow to his career, Johnny's career trajectory, it's tough to say. Like, even what attitudes at the time might have allowed for a really like, it's just have to say where that might have gone. He did continue to get work, though. So after Freaks, he continued to work in Hollywood.
00;32;47;15 - 00;32;58;04
Kevin
He was featured as a quote unquote Goony Bird, which I had to look up. And that's a an old timey name for an albatross. And he played a goony bird and.
00;32;58;06 - 00;33;01;15
Caitlin
Albatross was an old timey name for an albatross.
00;33;01;18 - 00;33;17;03
Kevin
Fuck you. It is. I I'm like, I'm like layers of elderly. So anyway, well, now, now I'm. Yeah, it's just a big seagull, right?
00;33;17;05 - 00;33;24;26
Caitlin
I think so. And I'm looking it up right now. I thought they were. Apparently they're not extinct. What am I confusing this with? You're just.
00;33;24;26 - 00;33;30;23
Kevin
You’re just out here rattling my fucking cage while I’m trying to keep my eye on the ball.
00;33;30;25 - 00;33;33;17
Caitlin
Did I confuse Dodo birds? Do they look like dodo birds?
00;33;33;18 - 00;33;38;24
Kevin
You are 100% confused with Dodo birds. If you're even 1% thinking dodo bird. They’re dead as hell.
00;33;38;24 - 00;33;40;00
Caitlin
But they look alike. They look alike!
00;33;40;27 - 00;33;42;14
Kevin
I mean, they're birds.
00;33;42;17 - 00;33;47;15
Caitlin
That's that's alike. all birds look alike, don't quote me. Don't, don't come for me.
00;33;47;17 - 00;33;55;13
Kevin
They're within a hand grenade shot of each other. I'll give you that. But anyway, what you guys should be doing with your Google right now is typing in-
00;33;55;13 - 00;33;56;20
Caitlin
Looking up Goony Birds.
00;33;56;22 - 00;34;03;09
Kevin
Looking up Johnny Eck dressed as a Goony Bird because like it’s pretty great.
00;34;03;11 - 00;34;08;03
Scott
I’m not there yet.
00;34;08;06 - 00;34;17;24
Kevin
The only thing I imagine is I'm just like that. It looks so hot. I mean, they just like he is in a full feather suit. Like, imagine someone made a big bird suit.
00;34;17;26 - 00;34;18;06
Caitlin
Oh no
00;34;18;06 - 00;34;20;02
Kevin
For a legless guy deal. Do you see it?
00;34;20;05 - 00;34;22;10
Caitlin
Looks like a dod- It looks like a Dodo bird.
00;34;22;13 - 00;34;31;29
Kevin
Yeah. Yeah, he does look like a dodo bird. And that well, because he has his arms are way bigger than you know and albatrosses, little bird feet.
00;34;32;01 - 00;34;42;14
Caitlin
Why couldn’t they just, I don't know, make a bird, make it, make it. I don't know. I'm , now I'm thinking, I'm like they don't have a green screen but I don't -
00;34;42;14 - 00;34;58;01
Kevin
They don’t have green screen and I don't this is the one where I'm like, this would actually be kind of cool. I feel like because you're not like, you're not playing a freak. You're not yourself. You're like a cool monster in a frickin Tarzan movie. This to me, anyway, I got no problems with this stage.
00;34;58;04 - 00;35;00;26
Caitlin
But okay, well, that's kind of.
00;35;00;26 - 00;35;14;12
Kevin
But it's more performance. Like you're still, like, at a certain level, like your value is your ability to do stuff other people can't. So, like, you kind of have to accept it a little bit. Yeah, not that I'm saying it's it's easy, to, but.
00;35;14;12 - 00;35;16;10
Caitlin
Did he have lines?
00;35;16;12 - 00;35;18;06
Kevin
No, I don't believe so.
00;35;18;06 - 00;35;21;10
Caitlin
So they could have had a puppet doing this.
00;35;21;13 - 00;35;27;22
Scott
Yeah, but you're getting so much more utility out of him doing it than a puppet. I mean.
00;35;27;24 - 00;35;44;25
Kevin
And it does sound like he had cultivated some good relationships in Hollywood. It does sound like he had made some actual friends. And there's enough set photos and stuff where, like, it wouldn't surprise me if, you know, that's what a lot of work in l.a. Is, is like the people that you know, and the network that you have.
00;35;44;25 - 00;35;59;29
Kevin
And, like, I could see someone speaking up on his behalf in the Tarzan series. However, that was, you know, produced at the time to get him on set. You know, I can't I don't know for sure, but this seems like it would have been a pretty good gig.
00;36;00;03 - 00;36;07;22
Scott
It was an enterprise. I mean, even in 77, they still stuffed little person into it, tiny little R2-D2, You know.
00;36;07;25 - 00;36;11;20
Kevin
I’d rather be a Goony bird, then a robot robot like that.
00;36;11;25 - 00;36;15;08
Caitlin
I don't know. I think I'd rather be a robot.
00;36;15;10 - 00;36;20;00
Kevin
Nah man goony bird feathers breathe that robot trashcan does not. And I'm a sweaty boy.
00;36;20;02 - 00;36;23;24
Caitlin
I would want to be R2-D2. You wouldn't want to be R2-D2.
00;36;23;26 - 00;36;31;16
Scott
What is 70, 77? You don't know if R2-D2 is going to be what it is now.
00;36;31;18 - 00;36;34;01
Kevin
You absolutely do not.
00;36;34;03 - 00;36;41;16
Caitlin
Okay. I would pick a robot over a bird any day. That's just a person's personal choice.
00;36;41;19 - 00;36;45;26
Scott
With a personal choice. But budget also because you're a cyborg.
00;36;45;29 - 00;36;50;03
Caitlin
And no, I think you do like I like robots before.
00;36;50;06 - 00;36;52;08
Scott
You have a robot arm.
00;36;52;11 - 00;36;55;01
Caitlin
But I like robots. Before I had a robot arm.
00;36;55;03 - 00;36;57;17
Scott
I'm just saying you're biased.
00;36;57;19 - 00;37;04;12
Caitlin
Okay. Okay. I've got three year olds. Boys. What do you like? Better a bird or a robot?
00;37;04;12 - 00;37;07;09
Scott
Nah they love their robots.
00;37;07;14 - 00;37;36;14
Kevin
I think you are doing it a disservice by not saying, Do you like an albatross better than a robot? Because Albatross’ are dope, anyway. So during this time. So the he was in three Tarzan movies between 1932 and 1941. So he had like a decent stint there. And during this time he still did some performing, as evidenced by an appearance he made at the Ripley's Believe It or Not Auditorium in 1933 at the Chicago's World Fair.
00;37;36;16 - 00;38;02;08
Kevin
Now his IMDB profile mentioned that he used his profits to save his family's home from foreclosure out in Baltimore. I wasn't able to find any other on that, but considering, like, that's where they him and his brother spent their retirement years, I'm sure that was the case in 1937. Johnny and Robert recruited by the magician and illusionist Rajah Raboid for his show called Miracles of 1937.
00;38;02;10 - 00;38;06;07
Kevin
It was classic his brother. Yes. And other.
00;38;06;12 - 00;38;07;18
Caitlin
Because they’re twins.
00;38;07;20 - 00;38;22;15
Kevin
Yes. And I'll describe the trick here. It actually and it's actually kind of a funny trick. There's a it was a classic twist on a saw man and half trick that utilized Johnny's brother being selected from the audience and getting secretly switched with his brother in the box and.
00;38;22;17 - 00;38;22;24
Caitlin
So.
00;38;22;24 - 00;38;35;13
Kevin
On and half and running around on stage. He would again be swapped with his brother who had stormed off stage and out of the building. I like the storming off stage and out of the building. That's kind of funny. Hopefully, like covered in blood still like, “aaahhh!”
00;38;35;16 - 00;38;42;16
Scott
Okay. When we've gone full Prestige on this now, I hope I didn't just, if you haven't seen Prestige ignore what I said.
00;38;42;19 - 00;38;45;28
Caitlin
Dare you spoiler alert at the beginning of the episode please.
00;38;46;00 - 00;38;49;28
Kevin
Yeah yeah. You got a spoiler alert, the beginning of the episode.
00;38;50;01 - 00;38;52;18
Caitlin
Also Tusk.
00;38;52;20 - 00;38;53;16
Kevin
Yeah Tusk actually.
00;38;53;19 - 00;38;57;08
Scott
There are no spoiler alert movies that are original.
00;38;57;10 - 00;39;04;24
Caitlin
Don’t watch Tusk. Just don’t please people if anyone’s listening to this particular section because didn't get cut.
00;39;04;26 - 00;39;21;06
Kevin
My vote's canceling out your vote. Do it. So anyway, the act was extremely popular and Eck and his brothers and his brother sorry, just one toured along the east coast for over a year with this specific trick.
00;39;21;09 - 00;39;34;28
Caitlin
That's interesting because I think I used to watch. I remember when the show aired, but it was a show about like the secrets behind magic and magicians, those stupid things. Yes. And they did use twins for a few of the acts.
00;39;35;01 - 00;39;37;14
Scott
Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure.
00;39;37;16 - 00;39;44;06
Caitlin
Yeah. Although I don't know if Johnny and his body looked quite similar enough, but. Okay.
00;39;44;08 - 00;40;06;16
Kevin
I'm sure you could make the difference. Like, I mean, there's quite a few photos of them as they grow older and like, I think you could make up the difference pretty easily. I mean, it is pretty cool. Just like Johnny could have done some like, I don't know how he was in terms of like actual stage, like the reading lines and conveying emotion to, you know, the craft of acting.
00;40;06;16 - 00;40;10;07
Kevin
But like, he definitely had a great look about him, like he wasn't cool.
00;40;10;07 - 00;40;30;21
Caitlin
And I think the faces, the faces are very different. I think I don't know, maybe because I have twins. Yeah, his brother has a longer face. I just maybe it's because I have twins and people are like, How do you tell apart? I'm like, they don't look anything like. So maybe it's that it's a survive, but it can also develop.
00;40;30;23 - 00;40;43;27
Kevin
But you know, you got to keep in mind like the audience, you know, there's a person being brought in and everyone is supposed to assume it's just one human being. You know, there's a certain level of buy in that is required of everyone to watch the show.
00;40;43;29 - 00;40;44;29
Caitlin
True, true.
00;40;45;02 - 00;40;51;14
Kevin
Like no one's go to a magic show and be like, I'm going to watch a bunch of fucking normal shit.
00;40;51;16 - 00;40;55;20
Caitlin
Well, come on. You didn't watch those people. Like, how would they do it? I'll figure it out.
00;40;55;23 - 00;41;18;00
Kevin
No, no, no, I did. Yeah. So during this time, Akin, his brother cultivated some of their other loves. They led a 12 piece orchestra in Baltimore with Jonny conducting and Robert playing the piano while Jonny also had a custom racecar built for himself called the Jonny Eck Special. And I actually saw it - there's photos of this thing and it looks cool as hell.
00;41;18;00 - 00;41;24;28
Kevin
You should Google it. It's super short. And I don't know if Scott, I don't know if you know anything about cars. I don't know enough.
00;41;25;03 - 00;41;33;01
Caitlin
How did you just? Did you just assume I didn't know about cars because I'm female? How dare you? You know, I don't know. It's fine.
00;41;33;04 - 00;41;37;07
Kevin
No, you're right. You've got me. That was a dick move on my part. Oh, my god.
00;41;37;07 - 00;41;39;03
Caitlin
I don't know shit.
00;41;39;05 - 00;41;49;24
Kevin
But it looks like it's just a two stroke in the front. I don't know. It's difficult to tell, and I certainly don't know enough to to know either.
00;41;49;27 - 00;41;58;18
Caitlin
What I'm looking at is a picture of his race car with a bunch of men in sailor outfits. And then there's a live elephant behind them.
00;41;58;20 - 00;42;15;21
Kevin
Yep. That's one of the more popular photos going up. They're all ripped. I like how the clowns are both like jacked bouncers, too. It's a good look. It's a good look. Like they all look like it. Really. I also like the dog down. The totally normal dog down by the..
00;42;15;23 - 00;42;15;26
Caitlin
I love the dog.
00;42;15;26 - 00;42;19;16
Kevin
Dog who's very disinterested in this.
00;42;19;19 - 00;42;30;14
Caitlin
Oh, my God. They must be farther apart. But it looks like the elephant is about to stomp the shit out of that dog. Right? Anyway.
00;42;30;16 - 00;42;50;21
Scott
Yeah, I see the car. I'm not seeing anything as to what is in the car. Good. I mean, you could up or focus on her in there, but whatever it is, it is tiny. It's really it have to be. It wouldn't be surprising if it was like a two stroke.
00;42;50;23 - 00;42;51;20
Kevin
That’s what I was thinking.
00;42;51;23 - 00;42;55;06
Scott
Like almost like a lawnmower engine because it is really small. Well.
00;42;55;08 - 00;43;11;29
Kevin
That's what I was thinking. So like for Travel Channel for one of our episodes in Hawaii, we mounted a two stroke engine on the back of a mountain board. And I'm looking at this thing and I'm like, You take the chassis off that and it would have almost the same look as a mountain board or the two stroke mountain on the back.
00;43;11;29 - 00;43;19;27
Kevin
So now that I'm sitting here thinking about it, that that could get going fast though we got that thing up to like 30, 35. So as long as you're on the right pitch.
00;43;19;29 - 00;43;23;11
Caitlin
So are we building a race car for this podcast?
00;43;23;14 - 00;43;42;29
Kevin
No, no, no. And two stock engines are no fun. But no, I just had a revelation. It's like, Oh, that's what it must have. It is like an old timey mountain board with a little. I don't know, It's cool. Leave me alone. I don't get to see no, like, vehicles that often. So this was also around the time.
00;43;42;29 - 00;43;55;23
Kevin
So miracles of 1937 would kind of prove to be their last real sideshow type performance thing as they kind of started to lose their appeal right around this time so early.
00;43;55;24 - 00;43;56;20
Caitlin
The aged out.
00;43;56;22 - 00;44;20;11
Kevin
They aged out. So it's kind of cool watching as they move back to Baltimore. Like some of the later photos, it's clear that camera has changed. So you get to see Johnny in kind of like 1960s esthetic around like art deco stuff. And it's I don't know, it's kind of cool from those, like more stodgy, you know, black and white carnival years.
00;44;20;14 - 00;44;22;20
Caitlin
He left the tuxedo behind.
00;44;22;23 - 00;44;47;22
Kevin
He did. He did. He he replaced it with a very cool like a vintners hat or I don't know, those straw straw godfather hat. Yeah. So the early part of his retirement does sound pretty nice. He get to entertain the kids around the neighborhood. He was kind of a known character and just seemed like a pretty wholesome time.
00;44;47;29 - 00;45;22;16
Kevin
Unfortunately, it was kind of relatively short lived as a number of things came together to kind of make things harder for him. The, Oh, when did I mention this? That they No, hold on backup. So a number of things have come together, came together that would kind of make things harder for him. One of them was that Johnny and his brother made a train ride in a local park where Johnny acted as a conductor, and I think they tried to turn that along with a penny arcade into a viable business.
00;45;22;19 - 00;45;34;14
Kevin
And it worked for a little while. And it certainly made him like, I mean, he would be the coolest guy in the neighborhood if you're like, you know, the dude with the arcade and the train set. But unfortunately it broke and financially.
00;45;34;16 - 00;45;38;08
Caitlin
So maybe it was the nickel arcade.
00;45;38;11 - 00;45;40;27
Kevin
That’s a low effort burn.
00;45;40;27 - 00;45;42;27
Caitlin
I’m sorry.
00;45;43;00 - 00;46;10;29
Kevin
Jesus. Man So even then he would, he would hang out on his porch with his dog, a Chihuahua named Major, and he and his brother would perform puppet shows for some of the local children who came to visit. There's a I was reading through on the Johnny Eck Museum website. There's some postcards that he's handwritten to people. And like the only direct account I was able to read, I'm like, Oh, that's a complete little story.
00;46;11;02 - 00;46;29;02
Kevin
Was apparently Major got in trouble one time because he ran after the mailman and ran across Johnny's pallet of green paint. And the dog was covered in green paint, but not in too much trouble. I guess that's for you. Put it in your back pocket.
00;46;29;05 - 00;46;35;26
Caitlin
That's Chihuahuas are our little. There's a most of us. They really are.
00;46;35;28 - 00;46;48;00
Kevin
I know. It's just. It's just funny. Any time I read like, an account of any famous person or historical figure talking about their dog, because everyone just sounds exactly the same when they're talking about their precious. Precious.
00;46;48;02 - 00;46;54;25
Caitlin
Yeah. All dogs are great, but mine are the best. Yeah.
00;46;54;27 - 00;47;24;07
Kevin
So around I think it was like 1983 or 1984, the release of Freaks on VHS it's brought new renewed attention to Eck because up until then it'd been kind of like you have to get film prints of it and it had bombed so there weren't that many. It wasn't something that was readily available. And with the VHS distribution capabilities, all of a sudden you had this whole like cult following begin to attach itself and, you know, think about like mid to late eighties.
00;47;24;07 - 00;47;36;05
Kevin
That's like the birth of like media subcultures and stuff that like he probably had no familiarity with, you know, in terms of like live shows and carnivals. He was quoted as saying.
00;47;36;07 - 00;47;41;19
Caitlin
Yeah, do we have to explain VHS to our listeners? Because I'm genuinely curious.
00;47;41;22 - 00;47;47;12
Scott
I don't think we need to.
00;47;47;12 - 00;48;08;11
Kevin
No VHS is cool now. It's having its own heyday. People know what VHS is. But yeah, he was quoted as saying, You'd be surprised to see these quote unquote avid fans. I'd say they're crazy. But despite that, he did express sadness at his finances later in life. And this kind of shows how seriously he treated his like position or what he he felt was his craft.
00;48;08;14 - 00;48;28;18
Kevin
He said, I'm so embarrassed. I'd love to be financially able to entertain these wonderful people in a refined way, a tiny sandwich, a cold cola or something. And that just like I don't know if that just made me so sad because his first thought was like, I want to continue to entertain these people, you know, throughout this life, like where, you know, maybe and always been treated.
00;48;28;21 - 00;48;34;28
Kevin
It just a lot of ups and downs and he was still like, you know, he still kind of had that that way about him.
00;48;35;00 - 00;48;42;15
Caitlin
Still felt somehow like that he owed them something. I don't know. It's like sweet and dark and yeah.
00;48;42;15 - 00;49;06;09
Kevin
It's sweet and dark. That's yeah, I think that's a good description of it. A lot of his postcards and correspondence is on the Johnny Eck website, and I'll read it at the end of the podcast or whatever, but you got a sense of some of the paintings he would draw and they're super, super cute. There's like two, you know, little cartoonish possum sitting on a tree.
00;49;06;09 - 00;49;29;12
Kevin
And they're very simple, but it's, I don't know, you could just tell that he had an incredible warmth for some of his fans and friends that came through and all of his art and writing. And he did going all the way back to his first job. He did manage to sell some paintings on commission after he kind of was fully out of the entertainment showman kind of game.
00;49;29;16 - 00;49;49;20
Kevin
He expressed like a real love of kind of getting back into painting. And I know at one point he wrote about like how stoked he was on actually getting a commission and a little bit of payment for. One of his his pieces. It wasn't ever enough, I think, to fully support himself on it, but I don't know. It was cool reading through all those, you know, all of his postcards.
00;49;49;20 - 00;50;12;02
Kevin
And like at that point he was starting to get pretty beaten down on, you know, the whole show men Hollywood world and then you'd get this little bright spot of like, Oh, but I've discovered this this talent that I used to have. Unfortunately, things had kind of take a turn. In January 1987, the Eck brothers were assaulted and robbed in their home.
00;50;12;05 - 00;50;20;22
Kevin
The ordeal lasted several hours, and one of the thieves even sat on Johnny and mocked him as the others took their valuables.
00;50;20;24 - 00;50;25;26
Scott
So this is when he was 76. 75?
00;50;25;28 - 00;50;28;02
Kevin
Yeah, he would have been 75.
00;50;28;05 - 00;50;28;28
Scott
Oh.
00;50;29;00 - 00;50;32;05
Caitlin
That's people.
00;50;32;07 - 00;51;00;19
Kevin
Right? Yeah. So after that, brothers became recluses, there are no more visitors. Johnny's town definitely took a different, you know, tack. I think he was quoted as saying if I want to see freaks, all I have to do is look out the window. And he passed in his sleep on January 5th, 1991, at the age of 79. His brother Robert survived Johnny, though he eventually passed in February of 95.
00;51;00;21 - 00;51;01;18
Kevin
Oh, go ahead.
00;51;01;20 - 00;51;07;26
Caitlin
Well, I was I was going to ask, did neither of them get married? It sounds like they had a really close bond.
00;51;07;28 - 00;51;31;00
Kevin
No, And I don't have any record of him being married, nor was able to find any kind of romantic attachment. If we have any listeners who want. I would absolutely love to have a follow up because that was one bit that I tried to dig into and tried to find something because there are a lot of pictures of him smiling next to ladies and he is a good looking dude.
00;51;31;02 - 00;51;45;11
Kevin
And so, you know, I am curious about that, but I wasn't able to find anything and, you know, he has correspondence and postcards with some women later in his life. But again, nothing that hints at anything romantically inclined. So.
00;51;45;12 - 00;52;00;26
Caitlin
Well, kind of hard to do when you're in a movie. That's like the tagline is, Oh, how could a woman love this person? Yeah, that was a meant to be about him, but he was included in the lot.
00;52;00;29 - 00;52;15;02
Kevin
Well, more than that, like that tagline, you know, no one's going to remember that tagline specifically. But I think, you know, to a certain degree that tagline provides a mirror into it, into like what society was thinking at the time.
00;52;15;04 - 00;52;15;16
Caitlin
Right?
00;52;15;16 - 00;52;45;12
Kevin
And you're to take it if you're to take it from that that perspective, that, yes, you are going to have an uphill battle in courtship. Yes. There's just like that. I yeah, I see that. But that said, Hollywood's weird man and it ain't always bad. Weird sometimes it can be good. Weird for the right folks. I realize that could be taken way out of context, but I do mean that in terms of like, you know, someone that is as specific and special as Johnny.
00;52;45;15 - 00;53;07;10
Kevin
If there is one place where you might be able to find the exception, you know, someone who who likes, you know, someone that's the exception to the rule of might be there, I don't know. So was purported to have written an autobiography called King of the Freaks, The Johnny Eck Story. He enlisted Robert Bloch to write the intro with Robert Crumb to decide the cover art.
00;53;07;17 - 00;53;17;16
Kevin
And you can actually still find the cover art. I think it was in like a Robert Crumb compendium. He did a lot of the Mad magazine illustrations. If that's that's any sort of reference.
00;53;17;16 - 00;53;19;08
Caitlin
Point rings a bell.
00;53;19;10 - 00;53;25;01
Kevin
Yeah, a big famous illustrator from like the sixties and seventies eighties.
00;53;25;04 - 00;53;27;03
Caitlin
And his life, huh?
00;53;27;06 - 00;53;50;26
Kevin
A lot of Bobs. a lot of Bobs. So the rights were sold to the Anaconda press in his hometown of Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland. But unfortunately, the publisher died before it was printed, so the book ensnare permanently ensnared in legal limbo. You can find the cover artwork from the 1995 book Crumbology The Works of Art Crumb, 1981 to 1994.
00;53;50;29 - 00;54;16;24
Kevin
And then, I mean, if you just go online, there are lots of little tribute websites. There's the Johnny Eck Museum, there's Baltimore Sun articles, some of his other references in popular media. Tom Waits made a song called Tabletop Joe, which is loosely based on the life of Johnny Jack. He was also mentioned in Waits as other song Lucky Day.
00;54;16;27 - 00;54;44;28
Kevin
And then there's been a Hollywood feature film, kind of rumored to be in the works about his life since like the 1990s and on the IMDB. There's a couple of screenplays that are mentioned. I actually was sent one in 2006, I want to say, and it was admittedly kind of sad. I was like, I don't know if I want to be this guy and I don't want to say too much else on it because I don't know what else is, you know, still locked up in rights.
00;54;44;28 - 00;54;46;05
Kevin
But I do know.
00;54;46;05 - 00;54;48;21
Caitlin
That if you would, you have played your own twin.
00;54;48;28 - 00;55;17;10
Kevin
I don't know how it worked. And it's interesting now that I'm older and can like better articulate like the physiological differences between myself and him, because frankly, like, there's so many things he can do with that missing part of his spine in terms of acrobatics that I can't do because I have a full spine and an ass that is weight, that kind of lever levers off of my main center of gravity.
00;55;17;17 - 00;55;43;09
Kevin
So it's like that's what makes it impossible for me to do like one armed handstands and the really, really cool stuff that he was able to pull off. I have other things that are, you know, helpful for me, but I think they would have been served with better served with someone else, though I don't think that many of those people had the of medical expertise to articulate those differences.
00;55;43;09 - 00;55;45;18
Kevin
I don't know. I could be wrong, but.
00;55;45;21 - 00;56;02;11
Scott
You know, I know what you mean. Like even just in how we would portray walking on your hands and yeah, it's vastly different between someone who spent decades doing it versus someone who's trying to figure out how to make it look like they spent decades doing it.
00;56;02;14 - 00;56;24;25
Kevin
Yeah, Yeah. So I mean, I mean, I think I would and, and I think to that point, I would be like, useful in that like, you would need to have some assistance in terms of me doing a one hour and a handstand, etc.. But the basic physiology of walking on your hands and the knowledge that goes with like and placement and musculature and all that still there.
00;56;24;25 - 00;56;32;19
Kevin
So I could see that I could see that point. But nevertheless, it hasn't been made. It's still floating around somewhere.
00;56;32;22 - 00;56;42;20
Scott
Now, I saw that DiCaprio was actually wanting to be executive producer on those on IMDB, you know? Leo Yeah, yeah.
00;56;42;22 - 00;56;43;10
Caitlin
Huh.
00;56;43;13 - 00;56;44;03
Kevin
Yeah.
00;56;44;05 - 00;56;45;15
Scott
Interesting.
00;56;45;17 - 00;56;51;19
Kevin
They should just make it a like a revenge film with him going after the guys who invaded his home.
00;56;51;22 - 00;56;53;17
Caitlin
I would watch.
00;56;53;19 - 00;57;04;07
Kevin
That is that is a semi fun thought experiment though. Like how does a legless guy take down a bunch of home invaders have to get off Kevin McAllister with it instead?
00;57;04;07 - 00;57;08;04
Caitlin
We're in an age of superheroes. Like we can totally make him a superhero.
00;57;08;06 - 00;57;36;03
Kevin
Oh, but no, I am. I am interested. I mean, I could see. I could see it being done well, because it's a it is sad and dark, like you said, but there's a lot of sweetness there as well. So it's a complex thing. So real quick - let's do some source housekeeping. If you are interested in the place that I would probably start.
00;57;36;03 - 00;58;02;22
Kevin
If you want to learn more about Johnny Accuracy photos or anything is go to Johnny Eck Museum dot com. You can also find a ton of stuff on his IMDB profile if you search Johnny Eck and Baltimore Sun, you can find out a lot about people who've collected his memorabilia as well as some conflicts between a couple of people who consider themselves shepherds of his story or his history.
00;58;02;24 - 00;58;12;20
Scott
But that does not mean if you're not family or you're not, someone who knew him. How the hell can you even call yourself that to begin with? Well.
00;58;12;22 - 00;58;38;22
Kevin
One person was a very close relationship. Well, one person claimed to be very close, like neighbor friend, like in-person friend with them. But then another one was just an avid fan. So, yeah, digging into that, there's definitely a little kind of weirdness there. But frankly, I didn't I didn't get that deep into it, too.
00;58;38;25 - 00;58;41;25
Scott
Baltimore is also a really weird place.
00;58;41;27 - 00;58;47;26
Kevin
Oh, there we go. Yeah. Fuck Baltimore. Let's just throw that out there on this episode.
00;58;47;29 - 00;58;52;23
Scott
For for context, I lived in Maryland for 17 years.
00;58;52;25 - 00;58;54;29
Caitlin
Which is the South.
00;58;55;01 - 00;59;21;11
Scott
When I go into that and and I spent a good chunk of time in Baltimore, including deep into some very Baltimore culture. So I would not I'm not speaking from that without experience. Baltimore can be a very weird place, for better and for worse. I love me, Love me. Some John Waters movies.
00;59;21;13 - 00;59;29;07
Kevin
Oh, yeah. Good point, actually. Yeah. John Waters, that really does kind of put a put a pin on it in terms of what you're going.
00;59;29;09 - 00;59;30;04
Scott
Oh, yeah.
00;59;30;06 - 00;59;52;28
Kevin
Lots of John Waters movies and eat some crab. All right. Let me wrap this up real quick. But that is Johnny Eck. Quite the quite the history. Dark, little sad, but I don't know, a lot of fun stuff and cool race cars and smiling people in between those moments. So I don't know, something I thought was pretty cool.
00;59;53;00 - 00;59;56;01
Caitlin
Oh, he gives me- Sorry. I'm sorry.
00;59;56;04 - 00;59;57;04
Kevin
Oh, you're fine.
00;59;57;06 - 01;00;00;28
Caitlin
I was going to say, it gives me like, a little bit of a Mr. Rogers feel to him.
01;00;01;00 - 01;00;32;08
Kevin
A little bit. I mean, especially when he talked about not being able to entertain people and yeah, about that. But yeah, so. Okay, housekeeping stuff real quick, if you want to find us on Facebook or any of our socials, we are at lame history for both Facebook and Twitter and the Lame History podcast at Instagram. If you have any questions, ideas for a show corrections, email us at Lame History podcast at gmail.com.
01;00;32;11 - 01;00;39;03
Kevin
We're always interested in hearing about additional research, corrections or episode ideas. So thanks for listening and please stay Lane everybody.
Kevin
What do ancient astronomers, mercenaries, athletes and politicians have in common?
00;00;06;05 - 00;00;13;28
Caitlin
Join your three lame hosts as they take an irreverent lived in look at disabled figures from ancient Egypt to the 20th century.
00;00;14;00 - 00;00;20;06
Kevin
Come take a wild and accessible ride exploring a side of history. They probably didn't teach you in school.
00;00;20;08 - 00;00;24;04
Caitlin
This is Lame History.
00;00;24;06 - 00;00;41;20
Kevin
Hello, my name is Kevin. I’m an author, photographer and former TV show host who was born without legs. I’m a congenital amputee with double hip disarticulation, which basically just means that no femurs formed in the hip sockets of my pelvis. I live in Montana and typically walk on my hands or use a skateboard to get around.
00;00;41;22 - 00;00;54;04
Caitlin
I’m Caitlin Michelle. My friends call me Katie, my students call me Ms., And my twin boys call me Mommy. The doctors who delivered me didn’t know what to call me when I was born without a left forearm. And now I guess I can call myself a podcaster.
00;00;54;06 - 00;01;19;25
Scott
Hello. My name is Scott. I’ve been in the plumbing, construction and service industry for almost 20 years, including owning my own plumbing company. I’m a former competitive paraclimber. I was born with only part of my right hand, and had several surgeries at Shriner’s Children’s Hospital to increase my dexterity. I’m married to a fellow now, former paraclimber. We have twin toddlers who outnumber us in digits and outrun us in general.
00;01;19;28 - 00;01;27;22
Caitlin
Okay, cool. Welcome to Lame History, the podcast about how disability and disabled people help shape the world as we know it today.
00;01;27;24 - 00;01;52;25
Kevin
Today we'll be talking about John Eckhart Jr. Or as he's more commonly known as Johnny Eck. He was born in Baltimore on August 27th, 1911 to Emilia and John Eckhart senior, and he was born with what's known most commonly as Caudal Regression syndrome, which it's a birth defect that affects fetal development of the lower spine. And it has kind of has a pretty wide range of of how it can present itself.
00;01;52;28 - 00;02;18;05
Kevin
Oftentimes, it resorts results in a shortened trunk, and sometimes you'll even have parts of the spinal column not fully forming or fuzing. So when Johnny came out, it looked like, I think the quoted as saying he looked like a broken doll, but he was born, quote unquote, without legs, though he did have some very tiny, like vestigial limbs.
00;02;18;07 - 00;02;43;22
Kevin
Johnny was actually one of two that came out of his mother. And I guess I probably could have put that in a more pleasant way. She just dropped two out! Uh no he was one of a set of twins. His brother Robert was born 20 minutes before him, I believe, and he was perfectly healthy.
00;02;43;24 - 00;02;47;00
Caitlin
That sounds like a natural birth. That sounds terrible.
00;02;47;03 - 00;02;49;07
Kevin
That does sound like a natural birth.
00;02;49;09 - 00;02;59;24
Scott
That's almost immediately confusing to me because I'm just like our twins were literally one minute apart because it was a C-section.
00;02;59;26 - 00;03;26;23
Kevin
Oh, yeah. Good point. Yeah. You guys have a little bit more knowledge of this, but. Yeah. No. So Johnny was was the surprise at the back end of what must have been a pretty tough birth. And one of the things that really struck me just as a kid, kind of with not the same birth defect, but at least with that same kind of congenital surprise for their parents is just how, like, cool his parents seem to be with the whole situation.
00;03;26;23 - 00;03;43;02
Kevin
Like Johnny is included in all the family photos they sent him to public school. A lot of the photos of him when he was a little kid are really like smiley and cheery. And yeah, I wish I could have been able to find more on them because they seem like they're pretty cool.
00;03;43;05 - 00;03;46;09
Caitlin
Wait were you not in family photos?
00;03;46;11 - 00;04;10;29
Kevin
No, I was I was in family photos. But during this time, like early 1900s, like disability was not something that was part of social discourse. Like, it wasn't until, I think, the Rehabilitation Act of 1918 that that actually started to become like more like disability. As you know, in this case, a result of World War One became like a more common part of the American conversation. Beroe then,
00;04;11;00 - 00;04;28;18
Kevin
Yeah like these kids were often put in a public home or an institution, much less being sent to frickin public school. Yeah, it was actually a pretty big deal what they did at the time. --- Oh, you're fine.
00;04;28;21 - 00;04;36;10
Caitlin
I feel like at that time, it would have been just as shocking, if not more shocking that, hey, there are two kids.
00;04;36;13 - 00;04;41;01
Kevin
Twins? Yeah. Twins have been born all the time. What are you talking about?
00;04;41;04 - 00;04;43;16
Caitlin
Well, yeah, but back then.
00;04;43;18 - 00;04;44;19
Kevin
00;04;44;19 - 00;04;44;22
Caitlin
They’re not -
00;04;44;22 - 00;04;46;04
Kevin
Romulus and Remus.
00;04;46;07 - 00;05;05;23
Caitlin
Yeah, but that's a mythology. Every mythology, every every culture’s mythology has some kind of mystical twins. Because twins are like this rare, weird thing until technology and reproductive technology came into the picture. And now they're super common.
00;05;05;26 - 00;05;06;15
Kevin
So you think that.
00;05;06;15 - 00;05;22;24
Caitlin
Before that it was super weird and at a time without imaging or any kind of like, what do you call it? Oh, my God, ultrasounds. It would have been super weird like, Oh my God, I was just pregnant for this long and now there are two babies. I need my-
00;05;22;24 - 00;05;31;26
Kevin
Oh from the Mother's perspective like being surprised. Okay, I thought you meant like, random passerby being surprised at seeing two twins on the street.
00;05;31;28 - 00;05;33;05
Caitlin
No...
00;05;33;07 - 00;05;36;20
Kevin
Like two ships silently passing in the night. There we go.
00;05;36;22 - 00;05;56;16
Caitlin
One of my friends, she is older than me. She's my Mom’s age I believe, and her older brothers were twins. And she says her mother, when she was pregnant, they were like, oh, you're going to it's like you're going to lose weight. And she was like, I don't know. I'm doing what you told me. And then two babies came out and they were shocked.
00;05;56;18 - 00;06;08;24
Caitlin
So even like this is I'm not going to do the math, but my friend is mom, her older brothers, and this is way before that. So I think the mom would have been like, what is going on?
00;06;08;27 - 00;06;11;07
Scott
You know, like they would not have been expecting twins.
00;06;11;13 - 00;06;15;06
Caitlin
All right. That that's like bizarre.
00;06;15;08 - 00;06;41;02
Kevin
The only quote they have of the time was that he came out looking, quote unquote, like a broken doll. And the only other commentary they had, I think it was from a news clipping that was like a lot of this is like from Johnny relating these experiences later. And it's like told of a friend of a friend's. So there's not a ton of like super reliable autobiographical information from what I've seen.
00;06;41;02 - 00;07;11;23
Kevin
And as we'll get into it later, the autobiography that he was working on hasn't unfortunately gotten to see the light of day. So some of this stuff will be a little bit hearsay ish, I would say. But one of the things was that his neighbors spoke about how he couldn't have been born to better parents. I guess so whether, you know, through sheer luck or just, you know, their their chosen disposition, they seemed to really want to kind of give him a pretty normal childhood.
00;07;11;25 - 00;07;40;07
Caitlin
This is a really weird thought. But like, I, I do think there's a higher incidence of disabilities, especially some kind of missing limb in multiple births. So, like, my mom was pregnant with triplets, and I've heard of a lot of people born either without a hand or without lower limbs having a twin. I don't know about the exact science of it.
00;07;40;07 - 00;07;44;21
Caitlin
Maybe it is just correlation, but I just think it's interesting.
00;07;44;23 - 00;08;09;23
Kevin
Yeah. So Johnny was and you know, there's actually a fair number of photos of him when he was growing up and he started walking on his hands before his brother could stand. And they were both able to read by the age of four. So, I mean, there is a fairly involved childhood. A lot of the credit goes to his older sister named Caroline, who I guess provided the boys with some home education before they're both enrolled in public school at the age of seven.
00;08;09;25 - 00;08;12;20
Caitlin
How much older she are?
00;08;12;21 - 00;08;35;16
Kevin
I don't know, actually. And that's the thing. It's really tough to find anything on his family that's not, you know, an incidental picture of Robert or photos of him at his youngest. But if I find anything, I'll do a little follow up on that. And if I find anything, I'll add for the show notes. But in 1918, that's when they started school.
00;08;35;18 - 00;08;56;14
Kevin
This is just kind of toward the close of World War One. So, I mean, despite the huge I don't know, in my opinion, it seemed like a pretty big deal. Like my parents were even getting recommended to send me to a special school when I was, you know, going. And that was like late eighties. So I don't know, I think it was still a fairly big deal.
00;08;56;15 - 00;08;58;20
Kevin
But that said, it was late.
00;08;58;20 - 00;09;02;02
Scott
Eighties, early nineties, right on that turning point.
00;09;02;04 - 00;09;16;24
Kevin
Yeah. And this was kind of almost at the very start of that conversation before then, you know, disabled people were just, you know, an entirely different human class in a lot of respects.
00;09;16;24 - 00;09;23;14
Caitlin
So nothing to do at all with the ADA being passed in 1990.
00;09;23;16 - 00;09;59;23
Kevin
Right. Yeah. Something will get to, I have no doubt. So Johnny kind of recounted a little bit of his school times and while he puts a really good spin on everything, you can definitely kind of tell there's some hints of frustration there. So I think, let's see, one of the things he talks about is one of the some of the larger students would apparently fight for the honor of lifting him up the stairs to school, which I think is kind of the showmanship kind of description of things as something that you'll probably become accustomed to as we go through more of this stuff.
00;09;59;25 - 00;10;09;27
Kevin
But then you'll hear stuff like they apparently had to block out some of the school windows to stop onlookers from looking in the classroom and like, I can't imagine that was like a super pleasant experience.
00;10;10;03 - 00;10;12;22
Caitlin
That's creepy. That's so creepy on all counts really.
00;10;13;25 - 00;10;38;18
Kevin
Right. It also makes me wonder where their classroom was. But I digress. And so one of the most common responses he had when people would ask, like, would you wish do you wish if you had legs? She said, Why would I want those? Then I would have pants to press, which I think is probably a learned response from maybe his parents or teachers or so, like a defense mechanism, basically.
00;10;38;20 - 00;10;40;17
Caitlin
I don't know. Pants are annoying because.
00;10;40;19 - 00;10;42;26
Scott
That's true.
00;10;42;29 - 00;10;44;10
Caitlin
Two days ago.
00;10;44;13 - 00;11;01;10
Kevin
During the press, but I feel like I can speak with authority on this. They are more annoying to sew up. like I have to make custom pants for myself and that is a pain in the ass. And I would say if we're boiling them down to minutes of work time, I would say, you know, how long is pressing pants?
00;11;01;13 - 00;11;06;22
Kevin
7 to 10 minutes, maybe if you're very slow. I would say.
00;11;06;25 - 00;11;09;26
Caitlin
Why don’t you just wear a kilt?
00;11;09;28 - 00;11;13;14
Kevin
Because then I would have a perinneum like a tortoiseshell.
00;11;13;16 - 00;11;14;05
Caitlin
Okay.
00;11;14;11 - 00;11;18;05
Kevin
I can't imagine. Okay...you asked.
00;11;18;07 - 00;11;22;26
Caitlin
I did. Sorry.
00;11;22;28 - 00;11;54;28
Kevin
Some of their early times outside of school was working. Johnny and Robert took a job, and I'm going to probably mispronounce this, but I'll do my best Ocktavecs Art Shop, which is around the corner from their house. They were employed as painters, painting like screens for plays, signs, local stuff around church, and it was actually doing some painting for church restoration work that Johnny and his brother were first kind of introduced to the world of show business a little bit.
00;11;55;00 - 00;12;20;24
Kevin
When Johnny was 12, he and Robert attended a stage magician show at a local church during the segment, the magician, who's known as John McCaslin, asked for volunteers and jumped onto stage on just on his hands. It's pretty clear that he'd been doing this for a long time as well, like walking around on his hands, doing handstands. Like it's a lot easier than I think people with legs give it credit for.
00;12;20;27 - 00;12;32;07
Kevin
Once again, speaking with a small amount of authority. But this impressed McCaslin so much that after the show he asked Johnny to join his sideshow and act as his manager.
00;12;32;09 - 00;12;42;04
Caitlin
There's something there's something to be said about being discovered for a sideshow at a church function. I don't know what that is, but there's something there.
00;12;42;07 - 00;13;06;08
Kevin
I was thinking about this earlier, so there's kind of this. So Helena doesn't really get any any entertainment options that Helena is where I grew up. And I once a year at the end of July, beginning of August, you'll get the state fair will come through town. And I think I was like six or seven when we ended up meeting the manager of the local state fair.
00;13;06;11 - 00;13;30;13
Kevin
And he all I remember was him inviting us into his office, which is just like a mobile home thing, and gave me a stack of free tickets. And then I went up outside and Dad started yelling and apparently offered me to like, come work for them or something. And this is like 89. So I can't imagine that like there was actually now after doing the research, I know for a fact that there was no outlet for this.
00;13;30;13 - 00;13;49;08
Kevin
So God knows what the idea ultimately was for having this little like, you know, six year old kid join his show. But at the very least, I have the tiny reptilian brain memory of being like super stoked that an adult thinks you're important. And I think that, you know.
00;13;49;10 - 00;13;50;24
Caitlin
That's so dark.
00;13;50;27 - 00;14;11;07
Kevin
I know, right? But being met through the avenue of a church rather than like, you know, I'm just thinking from his parents perspective, we met them in a church rather than meeting them on like a roadside carnival that might have totally different vibes in terms of how we got initially attracted into the industry.
00;14;11;09 - 00;14;22;12
Caitlin
I don't know. I feel like it's all like a big white van with free candy vibes here, even in the church. Well, I mean, especially in the church.
00;14;22;15 - 00;14;46;11
Kevin
It didn't go well. And Johnny, apparently there was some legal troubles. He originally signed with him, with McCaslin for a one year tour and later claimed that McCaslin added a zero to it, requiring ten years of touring. And so after right. So he didn't get to see the contract through to completion, needless to say.
00;14;46;18 - 00;14;49;15
Caitlin
Wasn’t he a child?
00;14;49;17 - 00;15;00;13
Kevin
I think he was 13 when he signed. So he was still a child, but he had some help from his brother and I think he.
00;15;00;16 - 00;15;03;20
Caitlin
Who was also 13.
00;15;03;22 - 00;15;04;22
Kevin
Yeah.
00;15;04;24 - 00;15;07;24
Caitlin
Oi. Oh, okay.
00;15;07;26 - 00;15;28;22
Kevin
I think they'd gotten a little bit older at this point because when he stars in Freaks, I want to say he is 21. Yeah. So he's probably closer to like 16 or 17. But like, definitely being manipulated, like, very clearly manipulated and yeah.
00;15;28;25 - 00;15;30;03
Caitlin
Exploited.
00;15;30;05 - 00;16;01;11
Kevin
Exploited through by pretty much everyone he interacted with in the industry to one degree or another. So after he parted ways with McCaslin, Johnny bounced between Carnival outfits working for some of the the top outfits Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, some of the Barnum and Bailey, some of the other smaller shows that more regional shows. He was usually billed as a solo show, and the show was titled Johnny Eck the Half Boy, The Greatest Living Curiosity.
00;16;01;14 - 00;16;32;28
Kevin
And he did you know, I don't know when the Matty B episodes going to air, but he had a very similar show as as ol’ Matthias Buchinger where he would do sleight of hand tricks, little acrobatic feats and juggling tightrope walking. And then his pretty famous, I think if you've ever seen a photo of Johnny Eck, this is probably the one you've seen where he's doing a one armed handstand in a tuxedo and ...
00;16;33;03 - 00;16;34;24
Scott
Don't think I've seen that.
00;16;34;26 - 00;16;36;22
Caitlin
Yeah, I don't think I have either.
00;16;36;24 - 00;16;39;18
Scott
Gonna look it up right now.
00;16;39;20 - 00;16;44;27
Kevin
Yeah. Type in Johnny Eck and it should be one of the first Google images.
00;16;44;29 - 00;16;48;02
Scott
Yup there it is. It's pretty cool.
00;16;48;05 - 00;16;59;20
Caitlin
I mean, see, Johnny? Yeah, that is cool. That's a cool image, too.
00;16;59;23 - 00;17;22;02
Kevin
Well, it's interesting like that, and it shows a little bit of the how weight, displacement and disability intersect to allow you to pull off some pretty amazing things. So like, I couldn't pull that trick off and I've tried I've tried to do a one armed handstand a ton of times, but I was born with what was called double hip dis articulation.
00;17;22;02 - 00;17;47;03
Kevin
So in contrast to caudal regression syndrome as I know it, like my spinal column is fully formed, fully formed pelvis, I just don't have femurs clicking into those empty sockets. Yeah, his disability goes up higher into his spinal column, but that also means that his center of gravity is more centered in between his shoulder blades, and that's what allows him to pull off that handstand.
00;17;47;03 - 00;17;52;23
Kevin
I mean, the short of it is like I got too fat an ass to be able to hold it up.
00;17;52;25 - 00;18;13;15
Scott
Yeah, just to create a visual. If you didn't know what was going on underneath his clothes at all and you were just looking at what a full bodied individual, what he looks like is from basically almost like bellybutton down. There's nothing there. Yeah.
00;18;13;18 - 00;18;23;13
Caitlin
Which there definitely is, because that's not how anatomy works. But for the purposes of billing him as an enterainer.
00;18;23;15 - 00;18;26;04
Scott
And then the way he looks when dressed.
00;18;26;06 - 00;18;27;15
Caitlin
Yeah. Yeah.
00;18;27;17 - 00;18;59;00
Kevin
And he had custom pants sewn to kind of hide the small vestigial limbs that he did have. So there was definitely like acknowledgment of that. These things are there. And how do we hide them to best, you know, articulate this illusion. Like I'm sure that the nicely tailored suit I mean if you look at the the silhouette of that one armed handstand like that suit is tailored specifically to show him as as half as possible, I guess you would say, you know, or, you know, try to illustrate that illusion.
00;18;59;02 - 00;19;14;15
Caitlin
Yeah, it's very fitted so that nothing is there's no like fabric hanging or anything like that. It's just meant to be fitted to the bottom. Yeah. At least fitted to the uh I dunno delete that. delete me.
00;19;14;17 - 00;19;18;24
Scott
No.
00;19;18;27 - 00;19;46;11
Kevin
So he was getting quite a bit of work and it seemed like a lot of the photos from around this time. He does genuinely seem to be pretty happy in between the business troubles that he had. He did seem to be genuinely happy on the road at a lot of these moving carnival type shows. There are a fair few photos of him, you know, hanging out with people, getting to kind of just be outside outdoors.
00;19;46;13 - 00;20;10;24
Kevin
He had a custom racecar made for himself. That's cool. There's some photos of him with ladies. You know, it just seems like he was kind of out living his life. And that's not to say that there's, like, a downfall or anything coming, but, you know, it definitely just he just seemed very happy in between a lot of this kind of, I don't know, frustrating business venture stuff.
00;20;10;27 - 00;20;15;12
Caitlin
Yeah, he's pretty classically handsome. He and his brother. If that's his brother in the pictures.
00;20;15;14 - 00;20;43;18
Kevin
Oh, yeah. Dude, he's. Yeah, he's a looker. He's very handsome. And so it was in the summer of 1931 doing a show up in Montreal that was approached by a rep from MGM Film Studios and asked to appear in Tod Browning's movie Freaks and Tod Browning, fairly famous director at the time he'd gotten his start as an actor working with D.W. Griffith for the Advent of Sound.
00;20;43;20 - 00;21;11;04
Kevin
And he was apparently, Johnny wasn't fully in formed that this was an actual feature film. So it was filmed in Los Angeles in the fall of 13 or 1931, and Johnny didn't know that he was actually going to be in a movie until he showed up on set. He thought he was going to work in an L.A. based show, live show Circus thing, and he didn't realize until he showed up on a soundstage that this was a different case.
00;21;11;06 - 00;21;12;01
Scott
Wow.
00;21;12;03 - 00;21;13;11
Caitlin
That right sounds terrible.
00;21;13;13 - 00;21;36;06
Kevin
And so that gives you an idea of the. And the thing is, is that like, it's not like you have your choice of jobs, right? Like you take the work that's offered to you and that gets leveraged in such horrible ways as just you know, continue to see here. But yeah, no. And his manager was, you know, completely culpable for that miscommunication.
00;21;36;06 - 00;22;06;03
Kevin
And it's on the same token, it's like, well, what are you going to do? This is the only Hollywood role for someone with that's an amputee. And quite I mean, this is still probably the most famous Hollywood role for aside from Lieutenant Dan. Yeah, right. So in 100 years, 150 years of cinema, you can't really argue that it's you know, there's a plethora of new roles cropping up every, you know, now and then.
00;22;06;05 - 00;22;34;15
Kevin
So on a budget of $209,000, it eventually ballooned to 300,000. They shot for 24 days. And there's some differing accounts like he was quoted kind of early on saying that he didn't really get along well with his cast mates. And then later, looking back, he talks about, you know, how much fun he had with the Siamese twins, the caterpillar man and the bearded woman.
00;22;34;17 - 00;22;37;11
Caitlin
What's what is a Caterpillar man?
00;22;37;14 - 00;22;51;27
Kevin
Well, we'll get to that here in a day. In terms of these are all characters from the movie freaks, right? So, okay. Referring to who they were. So in the movie Freaks, I think he is. His official title is Half Man. Right?
00;22;52;00 - 00;23;01;27
Caitlin
Right. Well, I was wondering if you met, like, their disability makes them look like a caterpillar. And I was like, what? I'm just confused and sorry, you.
00;23;01;29 - 00;23;05;19
Kevin
Know, And I don't even remember which one. The caterpillar man was.
00;23;05;20 - 00;23;08;14
Scott
I'm not sure if I'm going through it right now myself.
00;23;08;16 - 00;23;29;00
Kevin
Yeah. So basically the plot of the film is about this. The group of titular freaks who have their own kind of insular community and this traveling carnival. And, you know, they're they have their own definition of normal, kind of in their own little bubble world here. And there's two little people who have been in love for a while, one of which has been saving up to buy a ring.
00;23;29;02 - 00;23;50;26
Kevin
And during this time, you're kind of meet the villain, a lady named Cleopatra, who I think is were like on the trapeze side of the the carnival act. But she's able bodied and you find out that she's seducing him to kind of get the ring. Eventually he does marry her. She gets the ring and I think she gets drunk and starts making fun of him.
00;23;51;01 - 00;23;56;14
Kevin
And that's when, like the freaks turn to revenge.
00;23;56;17 - 00;23;58;28
Caitlin
So he marries Cleopatra?
00;23;59;00 - 00;24;32;02
Kevin
Yeah. Horns is the name of the little person who is kind of one of the main characters who gets kind of seduced into marrying Cleopatra. Okay, Eventually, horns like he does confront her after she's been, like, making fun of him, and they end up turning a circus wagon over and torches the wagon. And only after that point, the freaks then capture Cleopatra and they don't really show it, but somehow they manage to turn her into a human duck.
00;24;32;04 - 00;24;34;16
Kevin
You really get my brain behind that. And so they.
00;24;34;18 - 00;24;36;02
Caitlin
Like Tusk? Oh my God.
00;24;36;05 - 00;24;58;20
Kevin
A little bit. Yeah. Actually, that's a pretty good reference. Like, obviously not as graphic, but like, that's the weird thing is that like at the start of this film, there's like, I wouldn't call it sweet necessarily, but like there's these fairly nice, like mise en scene moments of like just these, you know, people with disabilities interacting together without the outside world, like staring in.
00;24;58;26 - 00;25;37;16
Kevin
And it feels fairly normal and healthy. But then, you know, you go to the other end when they're going to get revenge and they're all lit in like horror film. Frankenstein's monster type scenarios. It has a very different kind of the air of of acceptance. I guess I was sitting here as I'm reading this, being like, I'm going to get so many angry emails because I know that there are definitely people out there who are really big Johnny Eck fans and know much more than I could have, you know, than I can get across in the month, six weeks or so that I was able to research on this.
00;25;37;18 - 00;25;40;10
Kevin
So, yeah, no, I'm already bracing myself. Please be gentle.
00;25;40;11 - 00;25;44;12
Caitlin
And there Johnny Eck stans out there.
00;25;44;15 - 00;26;07;11
Kevin
Oh yeah, yeah. And I'll talk a little bit about it toward the end in the sources. But like there's a Johnny Eck like online museum and there's a couple articles about not only, you know, Johnny Eck aficionados, but a little bit of conflict between them as between these aficionados as as they're trying to curate their own collection of his memorabilia.
00;26;07;11 - 00;26;18;18
Kevin
It's a little frustrating and sad because we'll get into it. But his Johnny's later life is pretty embroiled in poverty and just tough times.
00;26;18;21 - 00;26;52;07
Kevin
So going all the way back to freaks 1932 Tod Browning One of the things Johnny claimed was he got along great with the director, was often seated beside him during filming at Browning's own request. Despite his accounts though, there were and this is this is true. Some employees at MGM were uncomfortable with the presence of the actors portraying the freaks on set, and so they made a special tent for them to kind of eat and hang out on the performers were not allowed to be on the studio lot.
00;26;52;07 - 00;26;56;21
Kevin
Instead, they're relegated to just outside the main filming area and then.
00;26;56;28 - 00;26;57;06
Caitlin
What...
00;26;57;09 - 00;27;01;22
Kevin
bring them in when it was time to shoot. Yeah, yeah. Separate but equal.
00;27;01;25 - 00;27;05;23
Caitlin
Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ohhkay.
00;27;05;25 - 00;27;33;14
Kevin
That’s the thing like. I guess I should add, like, more context to this. Like every- like any time I mentioned something kind of positive of this, it is the thinnest of silver linings to what is inarguably like a really ugly product and uglier process. So, like, let's just get that out there. I'm just trying to find the little moments of humanity because like he talks really nicely about his history going through this time.
00;27;33;14 - 00;27;46;25
Kevin
So there were slivers of humanity and happiness that would propel him to the next thing that he was doing. I would imagine. But yeah, looking back on it, you're like, Holy shit. Not fun.
00;27;46;27 - 00;27;51;02
Scott
I mean, remember right now is the 1930’s as well.
00;27;51;04 - 00;28;01;00
Kevin
Yeah. So Freaks released a major controversy in 1932. It was heavily edited by censors and given an X rating was even banned in the UK.
00;28;01;03 - 00;28;04;06
Caitlin
Was it pornographic?
00;28;04;08 - 00;28;05;28
Kevin
Uh, no.
00;28;06;00 - 00;28;08;03
Caitlin
Was it especially violent?
00;28;08;06 - 00;28;12;24
Kevin
Nope. It was just hard on the eyes.
00;28;12;26 - 00;28;17;06
Caitlin
Um okay.
00;28;17;06 - 00;28;39;25
Kevin
There are reports of people running out of the theater. Others reportedly became ill or fainted. One woman who attended the screening threatened to sue MGM, claiming the film had caused her to suffer a miscarriage. And due to the extremely unfavorable response, the studio cut the picture down from its original 90 minute runtime to just over an hour. And that was the version I saw was the one that was like, you know, it's like 55 minutes or something.
00;28;39;27 - 00;28;42;09
Caitlin
Oh, people. Oh.
00;28;42;12 - 00;29;05;09
Kevin
Yeah. So it's tough really to end. Like, I mean, I think you see it in the brief. If not, I'll post it in the discord here later. But like the, the tagline for the theater poster was Can a full grown woman truly love a midget? And it's like.
00;29;05;11 - 00;29;07;23
Caitlin
Oh, no, no, no. This is, hmmm
00;29;07;25 - 00;29;09;01
Kevin
That's what we're leading with.
00;29;09;04 - 00;29;14;28
Caitlin
I don't think people really understand how wild this time period was for disabled people.
00;29;15;00 - 00;29;39;13
Kevin
I Yeah, I really don't think people understand well, and part of it was because a lot of them were still in institutions. But yeah, like, so a slightly larger postcard from the same stuff. Basically all their press material it has. Do Siamese twins make love? What sex is the half man, half woman? For sure sensationalism, Freaks tops any picture yet produced.
00;29;39;18 - 00;30;04;24
Kevin
It's more fantastic and grotesque than any shocker ever written. So that kind of gives you the idea of like where they're going with the release of this, you know? And no matter how well you're treated on set, you're gonna see that marketing material and there's got to be, you know, some really unhealthy disconnects between what people are telling you and your professional setting and what you're seeing your product manifest into.
00;30;04;26 - 00;30;21;10
Caitlin
Yeah, but I also think we're looking at this from a 21st century perspective where, like I mean, who would choose not to say that they were not getting that treatment already by everyone else, especially if they were that as some of them were already in the carnival world and the sideshow world.
00;30;21;12 - 00;30;23;09
Kevin
And it was already bad anyway.
00;30;23;12 - 00;30;31;06
Caitlin
Yeah, it was already bad. So when you’re already being treated badly, it's just more bad.
00;30;31;08 - 00;30;37;11
Kevin
You're not wrong. That sucks that you're not wrong. But yeah. No, I can. I can see that. Absolutely.
00;30;37;11 - 00;30;43;24
Caitlin
Yeah. First time I hated being right. The first time.
00;30;43;26 - 00;30;47;28
Scott
I can totally.
00;30;48;00 - 00;31;04;22
Kevin
And so it did. I mean, it did. It was a bomb. The movie was a bomb. Todd Browning's reputation as a reliable filmmaker among the Hollywood establishment was tarnished, and he only completed four more pictures before retiring from the industry around 1939.
00;31;04;24 - 00;31;11;21
Caitlin
Why was it a bomb? Was it because was so sensational that people were reacting really negatively and it was getting a lot of flak?
00;31;11;23 - 00;31;12;10
Kevin
I think he.
00;31;12;10 - 00;31;12;29
Caitlin
Or was it because -
00;31;13;06 - 00;31;14;24
Kevin
Of. Oh, go ahead.
00;31;14;24 - 00;31;22;19
Caitlin
Sorry. Or was it because it was very low brow in a sense?
00;31;22;25 - 00;31;39;28
Kevin
It’s money. I mean, it's it's money. That's what it comes down to. So I'm sure it was very negative word of mouth. I mean, if they were cutting 30 minutes out of it, there was definitely like a strong enough audience reaction for them to be altering their content. So, yeah, I would say that it was just.
00;31;40;00 - 00;31;51;14
Scott
At the end of the day, they put 300 grand into it and they want to get their money out of it and they will do whatever they have to in order to blow that money back. If they feel like the audience is not going to be there for it.
00;31;51;16 - 00;32;10;02
Kevin
Yeah, I think people just do it for one reason or another. I mean, maybe one of the reasons is that the poster that I mentioned earlier has a very poor drawing of the little person. So what? It looks like a woman kissing a child on her lap. There's something wrong with all of this.
00;32;10;04 - 00;32;18;19
Caitlin
Like keep that sitting on the lap. The whole infantalization Oh, yeah, that.
00;32;18;19 - 00;32;25;14
Kevin
So anyway, all the box office failure, not a big deal. I feel fine with it.
00;32;25;17 - 00;32;26;11
Caitlin
Yeah. Agreed.
00;32;28;05 - 00;32;47;15
Kevin
And, you know, while I'm sure it might have been maybe a blow to his career, Johnny's career trajectory, it's tough to say. Like, even what attitudes at the time might have allowed for a really like, it's just have to say where that might have gone. He did continue to get work, though. So after Freaks, he continued to work in Hollywood.
00;32;47;15 - 00;32;58;04
Kevin
He was featured as a quote unquote Goony Bird, which I had to look up. And that's a an old timey name for an albatross. And he played a goony bird and.
00;32;58;06 - 00;33;01;15
Caitlin
Albatross was an old timey name for an albatross.
00;33;01;18 - 00;33;17;03
Kevin
Fuck you. It is. I I'm like, I'm like layers of elderly. So anyway, well, now, now I'm. Yeah, it's just a big seagull, right?
00;33;17;05 - 00;33;24;26
Caitlin
I think so. And I'm looking it up right now. I thought they were. Apparently they're not extinct. What am I confusing this with? You're just.
00;33;24;26 - 00;33;30;23
Kevin
You’re just out here rattling my fucking cage while I’m trying to keep my eye on the ball.
00;33;30;25 - 00;33;33;17
Caitlin
Did I confuse Dodo birds? Do they look like dodo birds?
00;33;33;18 - 00;33;38;24
Kevin
You are 100% confused with Dodo birds. If you're even 1% thinking dodo bird. They’re dead as hell.
00;33;38;24 - 00;33;40;00
Caitlin
But they look alike. They look alike!
00;33;40;27 - 00;33;42;14
Kevin
I mean, they're birds.
00;33;42;17 - 00;33;47;15
Caitlin
That's that's alike. all birds look alike, don't quote me. Don't, don't come for me.
00;33;47;17 - 00;33;55;13
Kevin
They're within a hand grenade shot of each other. I'll give you that. But anyway, what you guys should be doing with your Google right now is typing in-
00;33;55;13 - 00;33;56;20
Caitlin
Looking up Goony Birds.
00;33;56;22 - 00;34;03;09
Kevin
Looking up Johnny Eck dressed as a Goony Bird because like it’s pretty great.
00;34;03;11 - 00;34;08;03
Scott
I’m not there yet.
00;34;08;06 - 00;34;17;24
Kevin
The only thing I imagine is I'm just like that. It looks so hot. I mean, they just like he is in a full feather suit. Like, imagine someone made a big bird suit.
00;34;17;26 - 00;34;18;06
Caitlin
Oh no
00;34;18;06 - 00;34;20;02
Kevin
For a legless guy deal. Do you see it?
00;34;20;05 - 00;34;22;10
Caitlin
Looks like a dod- It looks like a Dodo bird.
00;34;22;13 - 00;34;31;29
Kevin
Yeah. Yeah, he does look like a dodo bird. And that well, because he has his arms are way bigger than you know and albatrosses, little bird feet.
00;34;32;01 - 00;34;42;14
Caitlin
Why couldn’t they just, I don't know, make a bird, make it, make it. I don't know. I'm , now I'm thinking, I'm like they don't have a green screen but I don't -
00;34;42;14 - 00;34;58;01
Kevin
They don’t have green screen and I don't this is the one where I'm like, this would actually be kind of cool. I feel like because you're not like, you're not playing a freak. You're not yourself. You're like a cool monster in a frickin Tarzan movie. This to me, anyway, I got no problems with this stage.
00;34;58;04 - 00;35;00;26
Caitlin
But okay, well, that's kind of.
00;35;00;26 - 00;35;14;12
Kevin
But it's more performance. Like you're still, like, at a certain level, like your value is your ability to do stuff other people can't. So, like, you kind of have to accept it a little bit. Yeah, not that I'm saying it's it's easy, to, but.
00;35;14;12 - 00;35;16;10
Caitlin
Did he have lines?
00;35;16;12 - 00;35;18;06
Kevin
No, I don't believe so.
00;35;18;06 - 00;35;21;10
Caitlin
So they could have had a puppet doing this.
00;35;21;13 - 00;35;27;22
Scott
Yeah, but you're getting so much more utility out of him doing it than a puppet. I mean.
00;35;27;24 - 00;35;44;25
Kevin
And it does sound like he had cultivated some good relationships in Hollywood. It does sound like he had made some actual friends. And there's enough set photos and stuff where, like, it wouldn't surprise me if, you know, that's what a lot of work in l.a. Is, is like the people that you know, and the network that you have.
00;35;44;25 - 00;35;59;29
Kevin
And, like, I could see someone speaking up on his behalf in the Tarzan series. However, that was, you know, produced at the time to get him on set. You know, I can't I don't know for sure, but this seems like it would have been a pretty good gig.
00;36;00;03 - 00;36;07;22
Scott
It was an enterprise. I mean, even in 77, they still stuffed little person into it, tiny little R2-D2, You know.
00;36;07;25 - 00;36;11;20
Kevin
I’d rather be a Goony bird, then a robot robot like that.
00;36;11;25 - 00;36;15;08
Caitlin
I don't know. I think I'd rather be a robot.
00;36;15;10 - 00;36;20;00
Kevin
Nah man goony bird feathers breathe that robot trashcan does not. And I'm a sweaty boy.
00;36;20;02 - 00;36;23;24
Caitlin
I would want to be R2-D2. You wouldn't want to be R2-D2.
00;36;23;26 - 00;36;31;16
Scott
What is 70, 77? You don't know if R2-D2 is going to be what it is now.
00;36;31;18 - 00;36;34;01
Kevin
You absolutely do not.
00;36;34;03 - 00;36;41;16
Caitlin
Okay. I would pick a robot over a bird any day. That's just a person's personal choice.
00;36;41;19 - 00;36;45;26
Scott
With a personal choice. But budget also because you're a cyborg.
00;36;45;29 - 00;36;50;03
Caitlin
And no, I think you do like I like robots before.
00;36;50;06 - 00;36;52;08
Scott
You have a robot arm.
00;36;52;11 - 00;36;55;01
Caitlin
But I like robots. Before I had a robot arm.
00;36;55;03 - 00;36;57;17
Scott
I'm just saying you're biased.
00;36;57;19 - 00;37;04;12
Caitlin
Okay. Okay. I've got three year olds. Boys. What do you like? Better a bird or a robot?
00;37;04;12 - 00;37;07;09
Scott
Nah they love their robots.
00;37;07;14 - 00;37;36;14
Kevin
I think you are doing it a disservice by not saying, Do you like an albatross better than a robot? Because Albatross’ are dope, anyway. So during this time. So the he was in three Tarzan movies between 1932 and 1941. So he had like a decent stint there. And during this time he still did some performing, as evidenced by an appearance he made at the Ripley's Believe It or Not Auditorium in 1933 at the Chicago's World Fair.
00;37;36;16 - 00;38;02;08
Kevin
Now his IMDB profile mentioned that he used his profits to save his family's home from foreclosure out in Baltimore. I wasn't able to find any other on that, but considering, like, that's where they him and his brother spent their retirement years, I'm sure that was the case in 1937. Johnny and Robert recruited by the magician and illusionist Rajah Raboid for his show called Miracles of 1937.
00;38;02;10 - 00;38;06;07
Kevin
It was classic his brother. Yes. And other.
00;38;06;12 - 00;38;07;18
Caitlin
Because they’re twins.
00;38;07;20 - 00;38;22;15
Kevin
Yes. And I'll describe the trick here. It actually and it's actually kind of a funny trick. There's a it was a classic twist on a saw man and half trick that utilized Johnny's brother being selected from the audience and getting secretly switched with his brother in the box and.
00;38;22;17 - 00;38;22;24
Caitlin
So.
00;38;22;24 - 00;38;35;13
Kevin
On and half and running around on stage. He would again be swapped with his brother who had stormed off stage and out of the building. I like the storming off stage and out of the building. That's kind of funny. Hopefully, like covered in blood still like, “aaahhh!”
00;38;35;16 - 00;38;42;16
Scott
Okay. When we've gone full Prestige on this now, I hope I didn't just, if you haven't seen Prestige ignore what I said.
00;38;42;19 - 00;38;45;28
Caitlin
Dare you spoiler alert at the beginning of the episode please.
00;38;46;00 - 00;38;49;28
Kevin
Yeah yeah. You got a spoiler alert, the beginning of the episode.
00;38;50;01 - 00;38;52;18
Caitlin
Also Tusk.
00;38;52;20 - 00;38;53;16
Kevin
Yeah Tusk actually.
00;38;53;19 - 00;38;57;08
Scott
There are no spoiler alert movies that are original.
00;38;57;10 - 00;39;04;24
Caitlin
Don’t watch Tusk. Just don’t please people if anyone’s listening to this particular section because didn't get cut.
00;39;04;26 - 00;39;21;06
Kevin
My vote's canceling out your vote. Do it. So anyway, the act was extremely popular and Eck and his brothers and his brother sorry, just one toured along the east coast for over a year with this specific trick.
00;39;21;09 - 00;39;34;28
Caitlin
That's interesting because I think I used to watch. I remember when the show aired, but it was a show about like the secrets behind magic and magicians, those stupid things. Yes. And they did use twins for a few of the acts.
00;39;35;01 - 00;39;37;14
Scott
Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure.
00;39;37;16 - 00;39;44;06
Caitlin
Yeah. Although I don't know if Johnny and his body looked quite similar enough, but. Okay.
00;39;44;08 - 00;40;06;16
Kevin
I'm sure you could make the difference. Like, I mean, there's quite a few photos of them as they grow older and like, I think you could make up the difference pretty easily. I mean, it is pretty cool. Just like Johnny could have done some like, I don't know how he was in terms of like actual stage, like the reading lines and conveying emotion to, you know, the craft of acting.
00;40;06;16 - 00;40;10;07
Kevin
But like, he definitely had a great look about him, like he wasn't cool.
00;40;10;07 - 00;40;30;21
Caitlin
And I think the faces, the faces are very different. I think I don't know, maybe because I have twins. Yeah, his brother has a longer face. I just maybe it's because I have twins and people are like, How do you tell apart? I'm like, they don't look anything like. So maybe it's that it's a survive, but it can also develop.
00;40;30;23 - 00;40;43;27
Kevin
But you know, you got to keep in mind like the audience, you know, there's a person being brought in and everyone is supposed to assume it's just one human being. You know, there's a certain level of buy in that is required of everyone to watch the show.
00;40;43;29 - 00;40;44;29
Caitlin
True, true.
00;40;45;02 - 00;40;51;14
Kevin
Like no one's go to a magic show and be like, I'm going to watch a bunch of fucking normal shit.
00;40;51;16 - 00;40;55;20
Caitlin
Well, come on. You didn't watch those people. Like, how would they do it? I'll figure it out.
00;40;55;23 - 00;41;18;00
Kevin
No, no, no, I did. Yeah. So during this time, Akin, his brother cultivated some of their other loves. They led a 12 piece orchestra in Baltimore with Jonny conducting and Robert playing the piano while Jonny also had a custom racecar built for himself called the Jonny Eck Special. And I actually saw it - there's photos of this thing and it looks cool as hell.
00;41;18;00 - 00;41;24;28
Kevin
You should Google it. It's super short. And I don't know if Scott, I don't know if you know anything about cars. I don't know enough.
00;41;25;03 - 00;41;33;01
Caitlin
How did you just? Did you just assume I didn't know about cars because I'm female? How dare you? You know, I don't know. It's fine.
00;41;33;04 - 00;41;37;07
Kevin
No, you're right. You've got me. That was a dick move on my part. Oh, my god.
00;41;37;07 - 00;41;39;03
Caitlin
I don't know shit.
00;41;39;05 - 00;41;49;24
Kevin
But it looks like it's just a two stroke in the front. I don't know. It's difficult to tell, and I certainly don't know enough to to know either.
00;41;49;27 - 00;41;58;18
Caitlin
What I'm looking at is a picture of his race car with a bunch of men in sailor outfits. And then there's a live elephant behind them.
00;41;58;20 - 00;42;15;21
Kevin
Yep. That's one of the more popular photos going up. They're all ripped. I like how the clowns are both like jacked bouncers, too. It's a good look. It's a good look. Like they all look like it. Really. I also like the dog down. The totally normal dog down by the..
00;42;15;23 - 00;42;15;26
Caitlin
I love the dog.
00;42;15;26 - 00;42;19;16
Kevin
Dog who's very disinterested in this.
00;42;19;19 - 00;42;30;14
Caitlin
Oh, my God. They must be farther apart. But it looks like the elephant is about to stomp the shit out of that dog. Right? Anyway.
00;42;30;16 - 00;42;50;21
Scott
Yeah, I see the car. I'm not seeing anything as to what is in the car. Good. I mean, you could up or focus on her in there, but whatever it is, it is tiny. It's really it have to be. It wouldn't be surprising if it was like a two stroke.
00;42;50;23 - 00;42;51;20
Kevin
That’s what I was thinking.
00;42;51;23 - 00;42;55;06
Scott
Like almost like a lawnmower engine because it is really small. Well.
00;42;55;08 - 00;43;11;29
Kevin
That's what I was thinking. So like for Travel Channel for one of our episodes in Hawaii, we mounted a two stroke engine on the back of a mountain board. And I'm looking at this thing and I'm like, You take the chassis off that and it would have almost the same look as a mountain board or the two stroke mountain on the back.
00;43;11;29 - 00;43;19;27
Kevin
So now that I'm sitting here thinking about it, that that could get going fast though we got that thing up to like 30, 35. So as long as you're on the right pitch.
00;43;19;29 - 00;43;23;11
Caitlin
So are we building a race car for this podcast?
00;43;23;14 - 00;43;42;29
Kevin
No, no, no. And two stock engines are no fun. But no, I just had a revelation. It's like, Oh, that's what it must have. It is like an old timey mountain board with a little. I don't know, It's cool. Leave me alone. I don't get to see no, like, vehicles that often. So this was also around the time.
00;43;42;29 - 00;43;55;23
Kevin
So miracles of 1937 would kind of prove to be their last real sideshow type performance thing as they kind of started to lose their appeal right around this time so early.
00;43;55;24 - 00;43;56;20
Caitlin
The aged out.
00;43;56;22 - 00;44;20;11
Kevin
They aged out. So it's kind of cool watching as they move back to Baltimore. Like some of the later photos, it's clear that camera has changed. So you get to see Johnny in kind of like 1960s esthetic around like art deco stuff. And it's I don't know, it's kind of cool from those, like more stodgy, you know, black and white carnival years.
00;44;20;14 - 00;44;22;20
Caitlin
He left the tuxedo behind.
00;44;22;23 - 00;44;47;22
Kevin
He did. He did. He he replaced it with a very cool like a vintners hat or I don't know, those straw straw godfather hat. Yeah. So the early part of his retirement does sound pretty nice. He get to entertain the kids around the neighborhood. He was kind of a known character and just seemed like a pretty wholesome time.
00;44;47;29 - 00;45;22;16
Kevin
Unfortunately, it was kind of relatively short lived as a number of things came together to kind of make things harder for him. The, Oh, when did I mention this? That they No, hold on backup. So a number of things have come together, came together that would kind of make things harder for him. One of them was that Johnny and his brother made a train ride in a local park where Johnny acted as a conductor, and I think they tried to turn that along with a penny arcade into a viable business.
00;45;22;19 - 00;45;34;14
Kevin
And it worked for a little while. And it certainly made him like, I mean, he would be the coolest guy in the neighborhood if you're like, you know, the dude with the arcade and the train set. But unfortunately it broke and financially.
00;45;34;16 - 00;45;38;08
Caitlin
So maybe it was the nickel arcade.
00;45;38;11 - 00;45;40;27
Kevin
That’s a low effort burn.
00;45;40;27 - 00;45;42;27
Caitlin
I’m sorry.
00;45;43;00 - 00;46;10;29
Kevin
Jesus. Man So even then he would, he would hang out on his porch with his dog, a Chihuahua named Major, and he and his brother would perform puppet shows for some of the local children who came to visit. There's a I was reading through on the Johnny Eck Museum website. There's some postcards that he's handwritten to people. And like the only direct account I was able to read, I'm like, Oh, that's a complete little story.
00;46;11;02 - 00;46;29;02
Kevin
Was apparently Major got in trouble one time because he ran after the mailman and ran across Johnny's pallet of green paint. And the dog was covered in green paint, but not in too much trouble. I guess that's for you. Put it in your back pocket.
00;46;29;05 - 00;46;35;26
Caitlin
That's Chihuahuas are our little. There's a most of us. They really are.
00;46;35;28 - 00;46;48;00
Kevin
I know. It's just. It's just funny. Any time I read like, an account of any famous person or historical figure talking about their dog, because everyone just sounds exactly the same when they're talking about their precious. Precious.
00;46;48;02 - 00;46;54;25
Caitlin
Yeah. All dogs are great, but mine are the best. Yeah.
00;46;54;27 - 00;47;24;07
Kevin
So around I think it was like 1983 or 1984, the release of Freaks on VHS it's brought new renewed attention to Eck because up until then it'd been kind of like you have to get film prints of it and it had bombed so there weren't that many. It wasn't something that was readily available. And with the VHS distribution capabilities, all of a sudden you had this whole like cult following begin to attach itself and, you know, think about like mid to late eighties.
00;47;24;07 - 00;47;36;05
Kevin
That's like the birth of like media subcultures and stuff that like he probably had no familiarity with, you know, in terms of like live shows and carnivals. He was quoted as saying.
00;47;36;07 - 00;47;41;19
Caitlin
Yeah, do we have to explain VHS to our listeners? Because I'm genuinely curious.
00;47;41;22 - 00;47;47;12
Scott
I don't think we need to.
00;47;47;12 - 00;48;08;11
Kevin
No VHS is cool now. It's having its own heyday. People know what VHS is. But yeah, he was quoted as saying, You'd be surprised to see these quote unquote avid fans. I'd say they're crazy. But despite that, he did express sadness at his finances later in life. And this kind of shows how seriously he treated his like position or what he he felt was his craft.
00;48;08;14 - 00;48;28;18
Kevin
He said, I'm so embarrassed. I'd love to be financially able to entertain these wonderful people in a refined way, a tiny sandwich, a cold cola or something. And that just like I don't know if that just made me so sad because his first thought was like, I want to continue to entertain these people, you know, throughout this life, like where, you know, maybe and always been treated.
00;48;28;21 - 00;48;34;28
Kevin
It just a lot of ups and downs and he was still like, you know, he still kind of had that that way about him.
00;48;35;00 - 00;48;42;15
Caitlin
Still felt somehow like that he owed them something. I don't know. It's like sweet and dark and yeah.
00;48;42;15 - 00;49;06;09
Kevin
It's sweet and dark. That's yeah, I think that's a good description of it. A lot of his postcards and correspondence is on the Johnny Eck website, and I'll read it at the end of the podcast or whatever, but you got a sense of some of the paintings he would draw and they're super, super cute. There's like two, you know, little cartoonish possum sitting on a tree.
00;49;06;09 - 00;49;29;12
Kevin
And they're very simple, but it's, I don't know, you could just tell that he had an incredible warmth for some of his fans and friends that came through and all of his art and writing. And he did going all the way back to his first job. He did manage to sell some paintings on commission after he kind of was fully out of the entertainment showman kind of game.
00;49;29;16 - 00;49;49;20
Kevin
He expressed like a real love of kind of getting back into painting. And I know at one point he wrote about like how stoked he was on actually getting a commission and a little bit of payment for. One of his his pieces. It wasn't ever enough, I think, to fully support himself on it, but I don't know. It was cool reading through all those, you know, all of his postcards.
00;49;49;20 - 00;50;12;02
Kevin
And like at that point he was starting to get pretty beaten down on, you know, the whole show men Hollywood world and then you'd get this little bright spot of like, Oh, but I've discovered this this talent that I used to have. Unfortunately, things had kind of take a turn. In January 1987, the Eck brothers were assaulted and robbed in their home.
00;50;12;05 - 00;50;20;22
Kevin
The ordeal lasted several hours, and one of the thieves even sat on Johnny and mocked him as the others took their valuables.
00;50;20;24 - 00;50;25;26
Scott
So this is when he was 76. 75?
00;50;25;28 - 00;50;28;02
Kevin
Yeah, he would have been 75.
00;50;28;05 - 00;50;28;28
Scott
Oh.
00;50;29;00 - 00;50;32;05
Caitlin
That's people.
00;50;32;07 - 00;51;00;19
Kevin
Right? Yeah. So after that, brothers became recluses, there are no more visitors. Johnny's town definitely took a different, you know, tack. I think he was quoted as saying if I want to see freaks, all I have to do is look out the window. And he passed in his sleep on January 5th, 1991, at the age of 79. His brother Robert survived Johnny, though he eventually passed in February of 95.
00;51;00;21 - 00;51;01;18
Kevin
Oh, go ahead.
00;51;01;20 - 00;51;07;26
Caitlin
Well, I was I was going to ask, did neither of them get married? It sounds like they had a really close bond.
00;51;07;28 - 00;51;31;00
Kevin
No, And I don't have any record of him being married, nor was able to find any kind of romantic attachment. If we have any listeners who want. I would absolutely love to have a follow up because that was one bit that I tried to dig into and tried to find something because there are a lot of pictures of him smiling next to ladies and he is a good looking dude.
00;51;31;02 - 00;51;45;11
Kevin
And so, you know, I am curious about that, but I wasn't able to find anything and, you know, he has correspondence and postcards with some women later in his life. But again, nothing that hints at anything romantically inclined. So.
00;51;45;12 - 00;52;00;26
Caitlin
Well, kind of hard to do when you're in a movie. That's like the tagline is, Oh, how could a woman love this person? Yeah, that was a meant to be about him, but he was included in the lot.
00;52;00;29 - 00;52;15;02
Kevin
Well, more than that, like that tagline, you know, no one's going to remember that tagline specifically. But I think, you know, to a certain degree that tagline provides a mirror into it, into like what society was thinking at the time.
00;52;15;04 - 00;52;15;16
Caitlin
Right?
00;52;15;16 - 00;52;45;12
Kevin
And you're to take it if you're to take it from that that perspective, that, yes, you are going to have an uphill battle in courtship. Yes. There's just like that. I yeah, I see that. But that said, Hollywood's weird man and it ain't always bad. Weird sometimes it can be good. Weird for the right folks. I realize that could be taken way out of context, but I do mean that in terms of like, you know, someone that is as specific and special as Johnny.
00;52;45;15 - 00;53;07;10
Kevin
If there is one place where you might be able to find the exception, you know, someone who who likes, you know, someone that's the exception to the rule of might be there, I don't know. So was purported to have written an autobiography called King of the Freaks, The Johnny Eck Story. He enlisted Robert Bloch to write the intro with Robert Crumb to decide the cover art.
00;53;07;17 - 00;53;17;16
Kevin
And you can actually still find the cover art. I think it was in like a Robert Crumb compendium. He did a lot of the Mad magazine illustrations. If that's that's any sort of reference.
00;53;17;16 - 00;53;19;08
Caitlin
Point rings a bell.
00;53;19;10 - 00;53;25;01
Kevin
Yeah, a big famous illustrator from like the sixties and seventies eighties.
00;53;25;04 - 00;53;27;03
Caitlin
And his life, huh?
00;53;27;06 - 00;53;50;26
Kevin
A lot of Bobs. a lot of Bobs. So the rights were sold to the Anaconda press in his hometown of Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland. But unfortunately, the publisher died before it was printed, so the book ensnare permanently ensnared in legal limbo. You can find the cover artwork from the 1995 book Crumbology The Works of Art Crumb, 1981 to 1994.
00;53;50;29 - 00;54;16;24
Kevin
And then, I mean, if you just go online, there are lots of little tribute websites. There's the Johnny Eck Museum, there's Baltimore Sun articles, some of his other references in popular media. Tom Waits made a song called Tabletop Joe, which is loosely based on the life of Johnny Jack. He was also mentioned in Waits as other song Lucky Day.
00;54;16;27 - 00;54;44;28
Kevin
And then there's been a Hollywood feature film, kind of rumored to be in the works about his life since like the 1990s and on the IMDB. There's a couple of screenplays that are mentioned. I actually was sent one in 2006, I want to say, and it was admittedly kind of sad. I was like, I don't know if I want to be this guy and I don't want to say too much else on it because I don't know what else is, you know, still locked up in rights.
00;54;44;28 - 00;54;46;05
Kevin
But I do know.
00;54;46;05 - 00;54;48;21
Caitlin
That if you would, you have played your own twin.
00;54;48;28 - 00;55;17;10
Kevin
I don't know how it worked. And it's interesting now that I'm older and can like better articulate like the physiological differences between myself and him, because frankly, like, there's so many things he can do with that missing part of his spine in terms of acrobatics that I can't do because I have a full spine and an ass that is weight, that kind of lever levers off of my main center of gravity.
00;55;17;17 - 00;55;43;09
Kevin
So it's like that's what makes it impossible for me to do like one armed handstands and the really, really cool stuff that he was able to pull off. I have other things that are, you know, helpful for me, but I think they would have been served with better served with someone else, though I don't think that many of those people had the of medical expertise to articulate those differences.
00;55;43;09 - 00;55;45;18
Kevin
I don't know. I could be wrong, but.
00;55;45;21 - 00;56;02;11
Scott
You know, I know what you mean. Like even just in how we would portray walking on your hands and yeah, it's vastly different between someone who spent decades doing it versus someone who's trying to figure out how to make it look like they spent decades doing it.
00;56;02;14 - 00;56;24;25
Kevin
Yeah, Yeah. So I mean, I mean, I think I would and, and I think to that point, I would be like, useful in that like, you would need to have some assistance in terms of me doing a one hour and a handstand, etc.. But the basic physiology of walking on your hands and the knowledge that goes with like and placement and musculature and all that still there.
00;56;24;25 - 00;56;32;19
Kevin
So I could see that I could see that point. But nevertheless, it hasn't been made. It's still floating around somewhere.
00;56;32;22 - 00;56;42;20
Scott
Now, I saw that DiCaprio was actually wanting to be executive producer on those on IMDB, you know? Leo Yeah, yeah.
00;56;42;22 - 00;56;43;10
Caitlin
Huh.
00;56;43;13 - 00;56;44;03
Kevin
Yeah.
00;56;44;05 - 00;56;45;15
Scott
Interesting.
00;56;45;17 - 00;56;51;19
Kevin
They should just make it a like a revenge film with him going after the guys who invaded his home.
00;56;51;22 - 00;56;53;17
Caitlin
I would watch.
00;56;53;19 - 00;57;04;07
Kevin
That is that is a semi fun thought experiment though. Like how does a legless guy take down a bunch of home invaders have to get off Kevin McAllister with it instead?
00;57;04;07 - 00;57;08;04
Caitlin
We're in an age of superheroes. Like we can totally make him a superhero.
00;57;08;06 - 00;57;36;03
Kevin
Oh, but no, I am. I am interested. I mean, I could see. I could see it being done well, because it's a it is sad and dark, like you said, but there's a lot of sweetness there as well. So it's a complex thing. So real quick - let's do some source housekeeping. If you are interested in the place that I would probably start.
00;57;36;03 - 00;58;02;22
Kevin
If you want to learn more about Johnny Accuracy photos or anything is go to Johnny Eck Museum dot com. You can also find a ton of stuff on his IMDB profile if you search Johnny Eck and Baltimore Sun, you can find out a lot about people who've collected his memorabilia as well as some conflicts between a couple of people who consider themselves shepherds of his story or his history.
00;58;02;24 - 00;58;12;20
Scott
But that does not mean if you're not family or you're not, someone who knew him. How the hell can you even call yourself that to begin with? Well.
00;58;12;22 - 00;58;38;22
Kevin
One person was a very close relationship. Well, one person claimed to be very close, like neighbor friend, like in-person friend with them. But then another one was just an avid fan. So, yeah, digging into that, there's definitely a little kind of weirdness there. But frankly, I didn't I didn't get that deep into it, too.
00;58;38;25 - 00;58;41;25
Scott
Baltimore is also a really weird place.
00;58;41;27 - 00;58;47;26
Kevin
Oh, there we go. Yeah. Fuck Baltimore. Let's just throw that out there on this episode.
00;58;47;29 - 00;58;52;23
Scott
For for context, I lived in Maryland for 17 years.
00;58;52;25 - 00;58;54;29
Caitlin
Which is the South.
00;58;55;01 - 00;59;21;11
Scott
When I go into that and and I spent a good chunk of time in Baltimore, including deep into some very Baltimore culture. So I would not I'm not speaking from that without experience. Baltimore can be a very weird place, for better and for worse. I love me, Love me. Some John Waters movies.
00;59;21;13 - 00;59;29;07
Kevin
Oh, yeah. Good point, actually. Yeah. John Waters, that really does kind of put a put a pin on it in terms of what you're going.
00;59;29;09 - 00;59;30;04
Scott
Oh, yeah.
00;59;30;06 - 00;59;52;28
Kevin
Lots of John Waters movies and eat some crab. All right. Let me wrap this up real quick. But that is Johnny Eck. Quite the quite the history. Dark, little sad, but I don't know, a lot of fun stuff and cool race cars and smiling people in between those moments. So I don't know, something I thought was pretty cool.
00;59;53;00 - 00;59;56;01
Caitlin
Oh, he gives me- Sorry. I'm sorry.
00;59;56;04 - 00;59;57;04
Kevin
Oh, you're fine.
00;59;57;06 - 01;00;00;28
Caitlin
I was going to say, it gives me like, a little bit of a Mr. Rogers feel to him.
01;00;01;00 - 01;00;32;08
Kevin
A little bit. I mean, especially when he talked about not being able to entertain people and yeah, about that. But yeah, so. Okay, housekeeping stuff real quick, if you want to find us on Facebook or any of our socials, we are at lame history for both Facebook and Twitter and the Lame History podcast at Instagram. If you have any questions, ideas for a show corrections, email us at Lame History podcast at gmail.com.
01;00;32;11 - 01;00;39;03
Kevin
We're always interested in hearing about additional research, corrections or episode ideas. So thanks for listening and please stay Lane everybody.
