As I attempt to get my thoroughly researched and complete manuscript of historical fiction about the Ross Sisters—perhaps the most famous contortionists in the United States—in the hands of the correct publisher, I run across interesting stories.
Thus the Frog Lady, who is featured in an exhibition at the New York State Museum. Here’s her story:
“Friede DeMarlo (1890–1980) was a versatile German-born circus performer who toured around the world with her husband, Harry DeMarlo (1882–1971), from 1910 through the 1930s.
Harry was a contortionist, or “bender” in circus parlance, and the two first met in Copenhagen, where Friede (née Gobsch) was performing with a dance troupe. They were soon married, and Harry, an American raised in the circus business, began teaching Friede contortion skills, a difficult task on account of her age. Harry started practicing the art when he was just six years old, and getting limber enough to perform as a contortionist only becomes more difficult as one ages.
But Friede’s perseverance paid off, and in 1912 they introduced a sensational contortion act called the “Frog’s Paradise,” based on a late nineteenth-century tradition in which contortionists performed dressed up like frogs.”
Friede made her own bedazzled frog costume, including a papier-mâché head.
A chapter I had to cut as my book The Contortionists changed from creative nonfiction to historical fiction involved hotel manager Burns Kattenberg, who was obsessed with contortionists. (The Ross Sisters balked at that term, instead preferring acro-ballet.) Kattenberg’s obsession leaned toward male performers, though his vast collection includes a shot of the Ross Sisters. He once interviewed Harry DeMarlo, whose words were re-quoted in The New York Archives, “Contortion…keeps you fit in every way,” he said. “It helps you to stay young and alert. The only way to achieve contortion stunts is by patient and constant training and nothing else.”
He related how, in the Gay Nineties, bakers sold a dark brown concoction called “snake oil” under such names as “Angle Worm Oil” or “Lizard Oil” that supposedly made youthful and ambitious contortionists more limber. “[S]ometimes,” he said, “I wish such an oil would have [an] effect, because it is only by relentless practice and unending limbering that I can accomplish results.”
Interesting