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Its great when it's over — that Friday the 13thPHILADELPHIA (UP!) — Circus performers have a good reason to fear Friday the 13th.On that day in February 1931, legendary Ringling Bros. Barnum Bailey star acria* list Lillian Lcitzc! fell to her death under the Big Top.“It all started with Lillian/' said Frosty Little, clown director with Ringling, which was to be performing in Philadelphia Friday. “She was a big star/’“Circus people are a little more superstitious than most/’ Little, a circus clown since 1956, said Thursday,And on Friday the 13th “we have to be extra careful. It’s a bad day for us.”Circus people know how to woo Lady Luck. Certain colors are not worn, songs are not sung, traditions are followed scrupulously.Many of the fears center on Clown Alley — the clowns’ dressing room.“Clown Alley has always been a place with the biggest taboos,” said Little.No one on Clown Alley is allowed to eat peanuts, whistle or play the radio without courting bad luck, said Little.For the whole Ringling troupe, there is a never-broken rule that the circus band cannot play “Auld Lang Sne or “Home Sweet Home” on any but the final night of performance. A watch slopped at 8 o’clock was a portent of doom, said Fox.Circus people believe the common superstition that accidents come in threes, said Little. But other things common folk observe arc largely ignored.We break a lot of mirrors on Clown Alley and we have to walk under ladders all the time/* said Little. “But I won't go neara black cat/*Good luck charms used by circus people include a bracelet or ring made of elephant hair, printing the final engagement on the billboard posters upside-down or a piece of red fabric sewn to a costume. Yellow or green fabric are bad luck.Little admitted he doesn’t believe them all, “but I’ll be glad when it’s Saturday.*’Charles P. “Chappy” Fox, vice president and director of circus research for the Greatest Show on Earth in their winter quarters in Winter Haven, Fla., remembers some of the very otd circus superstitions, a few no longer observed.Circus performers would always enter the ring on the right foot, said Fox.One that no one much bothers with anymore, said Fox, is the legend that the circus could expect the worst kind of luck if a woman was sitting in the front row knitting.Mayors plead for federal aidSEATTLE (AP) — With Warnings of violence and growing hunger in the cities, the nation’s mayors pleaded Wednesday foi federal assistance and decried the “budget-cutting fever” in Congress.“This current mania in Washington to balance the federal budget at any cost is hardly a courageous answer to our serious national problems,” Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Ind., said in his inaugural speech as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which ended its annual convention.
Newspaper Details
European Stars and Stripes
Darmstadt, Hesse, DE
Sat, Jun 14, 1980
Page 5
Full Page
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Anonymous
USA 18 May 2020
Other Publications Near Darmstadt, Hesse
Allgemeine Kirchen Zeitung
European Stars and Stripes
