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daily nebraskan
thursday, September 7, 1978
arts and entertainment
State fair freaks 'normal in every way except looks'
By Joe Starita
One is middle-aged and happily married. Another's
daughter was a high school homecoming queen. A third
could stroll through the Nebraska Union without anyone
batting an eye.
They go to the polls, pay their taxes, enjoy a good
movie and earn enough money each year to take three of
every 12 months off.
Yet nearly 20,000 Nebraska State Fair goers will cough
up about $10,000 for the privilege of staring at these
three men.
Why?
One is 23 inches high. He was born with a calcium de
ficiency that left his bones looping in figure eights and his
body shaped like a pretzel.
His name is Huey. Huey the Pretzel Man. He is 42
and a 20-year veteran of state fair midways. He is married
to Patricia. Patricia is the magician's assistant and helps
Huey get to and from the shows in a wheelchair.
Two faces
Another is known simply as "The Man with Two
Faces." The left side of his face is fine-featured, handsome
even, perfectly normal. The right side looks like it was
cloned from a cauliflower patch.
The third is billed as Popeye. At will, he pops out one
eyeball, then the other and finally both, his pupils darting
and spinning wildly on the tips of the white bulges.
All three are part of this year's Murphy Brothers' Freak
Show, which for the third straight fall has pitched its tent
on he fair midway.
Inside the red, green and brown tent, there's also a
rword-swallower, fire-eater and an Indian rubber woman,
who appears onstage as a contortionist extraordinaire.
But it is Huey, Popeye and The Man with Two Faces
who are clearly the core of this freak show as the after
noon crowd pays their half-dollar and files slowly inside.
Freaks make bucks
Craig Wanous, owner of the show, stands off to one
side and talks about his job and the people who fill his
tent at state fairs around the country.
These freaks make more than the people who come in
here and think we're exploiting them," says Wanous,
whose Montgomery, Ala., family has maintained control
of the freak show for 35 years.
"They make anywhere from $150 to $400 a week and
they are normal in every way except their looks."
Wanous says his show draws a cross-section of curious
fair-goers who come for one of two reasons: "They either
want to see weirdos or they want to see someone they can
feel sorry for."
The older persons seem to get more out of the show,
he says, because they know the men and women they
paid to see are not fakes.
The men and women and children who paid this
afternoon are huddled close to the stage watching a
sword -swallower who doubles as a fire-eater.
Reads a paperback
Away from the crowd, at the far end of the stage,
Huey sits in an old-fashioned school desk, one arm
propped up reading a dimestore paperback, most of his
23 inches collapsed in disarray atop the seat.
The magician has finished. The crowd edges slowly
over to Huey. They star at Huey as the master of cere
monies describes why Huey looks the way he does. Huey
stares back, smiles politely and returns to his book.
j
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Pftoto by Goo Puikhi
Huey, the human pretzel, spends most of his time reading as a throng of fairgoers parade past the freaks at the
state fair. Huey's condition was caused from a calcium deficiency.
Photo by Bob Pearson
"Popeye" said he first discovered his unusual talent
of popping his eyes out of their sockets when he
was a kid and scared the hell out of his friends.
"I guess the most spectacular freak I ever heard
about," Wanous is saying, "was a woman who had two
bodies. She had an extra set of arms and legs growing out
of her hip."
Popeye, resplendent in gold ruffled shirt, black slacks
and tan elevator shoes, has the crowd's attention at the
far corner of the stage.
Scary as hell
He says his eye-popping discovery came at age four
when he and several playmates were trying to make the
funniest faces. For some reason he tried to pop his eyes
out, found that he could and scared the hell out of his
little friends.
He now pops one out. A few groans. He pops the
other. More groans that become louder. He pops both at
once and makes his pupils spin and whirl. Many up front
turn their heads away.
Popeye says thanks, puts on a pair of shades and strolls
outside.
"Freaks just aren't like they used to be," explains
Wanous. "They just want to stay home now, collect their
welfare and let the government pick up the tab.
"Our people here work for a living and they're
proud of that."
"But it's tough finding people to work here anymore,"
Wanous said.
At stage center, the man with two faces is collecting
donations from the crowd. He has shown them his face
both of them-and is passing out postage-stamp size bibles
in exchange for donations.
"He's perfectly normal except for half of his face.
Like I said, his daughter was a homecoming queen," say
Wanous.
'Mood works its way9 through Sheldon audiences
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Fim maker SaOy Barrett -Page
By Alexander Germame
iLwas a pleasure to preview the first of
the films coming to the UNL campus this
weekend at the Sheldon Film Theater. The
two films to be presented; Like A Rose,
and. Ain't Nobody 's Business But My Own;
are both by Sally Barrett -Page with crews
entirely consisting of women.
In a piece of good theater or a good
film, one can find a mood that works its
way through the audience. Often an actor
can portray a mood more than the lines
would make one believe he can. The plays
of Bertolt Brecht are an ti -entertainment
and stiD manage to entrhaH an audience
with the mood and feelings they create.
The films of Ingmar Bergman can do the
same.
This is .the aura around the first film at
the Sheldon Film Theater, Like A Rose. It
does not look, or pretend to look, like a
spectacular film but instead is a down-to-earth
documentary of the feelings of some
of the women who inhabit the American
prison system. It uses emotionally packed
images to create this desired effect.
Real people
The people who make up the film are
not different from the lady at Baskin
Robbins or some neighbor you don't know
very well. They are real people with real
hopes and real dreams that have been inter
rupted by a real jail term.
Nothing is said about why these women
are in prison but it could be any number of
tilings; things that could happen to a
woman in coDege or the mother of five.
Sally Barrett-Page is a talented young
director with strong feelings about the role
that women play in today's society and the
hardships they encounter trying to be inde
pendent and make thier own way. I would
not consider either film feminist, but more
on the order of awareness of the things
that affect the lives of the women in this
country.
The second film, Ain't Nobody's Bust
nets But My Own, seemed to lack direction
while trying to make a somewhat obscure
point, if a point is to be made.
Centralized view
A color documentary on the liver of a
few prostitutes, this film neither promotes
these women nor condemns them but does
seem to give a centralized view of accep
tance to the fact that the prostitute exists
and probably always will.
Not wanting the film to be sensational
istic, but wanting to breathe life into a
weD-wom subject, I felt that the direction
had wandered away from a goal and flow.
Ms. Barrett-Page kept referring back to
the convention of prostitutes in Washing
ton D.C. during 1976 by using scenarios
of the parties and gatherings of the girls
as they "entertained" the press. "Coyote,"
the organization of prostitutes, also is
mentioned time and again.
The film does merit research and a view
of the ladies of the evening, even if it seems
to be a shortsighted view.
Both films are informative and offer an
experience that most of the people in Lin
coln would normally not come in contact
with. Not slick or sickly, these two films
are a deserving documentation of the lives
and struggles of two groups of women in
today's society.
