The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins (16 page)

Late at night, after the midway was closed, the freaks often gathered in the weedy fields behind the tents where they held torchlight picnics, celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, and baby showers, or simply socialized with one another. Daisy and Violet always received invitations to the gatherings but always had to turn them down. Myer forbade their participation in such outings, telling them the other sideshow attractions were God’s throw-aways who were diseased and mentally deficient. “Edith and I don’t want you corrupted by such elements,” he said. His real worry was that if the other sideshow attractions got close to the twins, they might fill the girls’ heads with ideas of independence. When the midway closed for the night, Myer immediately spirited Daisy and Violet, along with the money sacks filled that day, to the family’s train compartment.

Myer Myers’ callous treatment of the sisters didn’t go unnoticed by the other human curiosities. Most regarded him with contempt. In their eyes, Myer was the most exploitative, most uncaring, and most venal man in the sideshow universe.

At one of those after-hours gatherings in the summer of 1924, somebody spoke up and said it was time all the freaks joined together and did something to show the Royal English United Twins that there were people who really cared about them. The proposal won
unanimous approval from everyone at the gathering, but no one seemed quite sure how to help the sisters.

In the weeks that followed, the freaks held other caucuses on the subject of Daisy and Violet. There were discussions of going on strike until Myer gave them assurances that he would begin treating Daisy and Violet more humanely, but ultimately everyone agreed that if too much pressure was placed on Myer, he would simply move the twins to another carnival. Since 1909, Myer had been rotating the twins between Johnny J. Jones and a number of Wortham carnivals. In the summer of 1924, he had them with Wortham. Clarence Wortham, the beloved head of Wortham’s World’s Best Shows, had died two years earlier. His widow had sold his carnivals, lock, stock, barrel, and snake pits, to two other showmen, Fred Beckmann and Barney Gerety. Because of the money Myer was making for them, not just with the United Twins, but also with his Congress of Human Wonders and Fat Folks Chatauqua, it wasn’t likely Beckmann and Gerety would try making demands on him.

Despite the twins’ move to a new carnival, the meetings continued. In time, the meetings were opened to all of the carnival’s troupers, from the lemonade vendors and carousel operators to the hoochie-coochie dancers, and a plan finally emerged.

The carnies organized “Daisy and Violet Hilton Day,” on July 2, 1924, in Hammond, Indiana. By midmorning, locals were already trying to enter the showgrounds. But on this day, a dozen or more carnival roughnecks were blocking the entranceway. One carny was carrying a megaphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, the World’s Best Shows are closed to the public today. Come back tonight or come back tomorrow. The shows will still be here.”

Myer Myers fumed when he arrived that morning and learned that the carnies were preventing paying guests from entering. Neither Myer nor any of the other managers made any move to upset the plot,
however. All 350 of the shows’ tent performers and workers had been involved in planning this day. There would be an insurrection if management tried to spoil the party.

Daisy and Violet wept when they were told of the tribute their fellow travelers had planned for them. They were to be the carnival’s only guests for the day. The entire midway was to be theirs alone.

Without any chaperones, Daisy and Violet took their very first rides on the ferris wheel, the Whip, and the Ocean Wave. They were treated to performances by the motorcycle daredevils in the motordome and the high divers in the water circus. Their eyes widened and their cheeks reddened when they entered the girlie show tent, and saw, for the first time, why there were always long lines of men and teenage boys waiting to get in. After a performance, a couple of hoochie-coochie girls led the blushing twins up the stairs to the stage platform and gave them some rudimentary instructions in their art.

Outside every tent and before ever thrill ride, there were big, hastily painted signs declaiming, “We Love You, Daisy and Violet!” and “Daisy and Violet Hilton … The Loveliest Girls On the Midway!” Some of the shows’ most grizzled roustabouts became misty at the sight of the sisters really enjoying themselves for the first time in their sixteen years. All of the carnival’s workers were congratulating one another, averring that from that day forward, life was going to be better for the Royal English United Twins.

But it was soon to become evident that “Daisy and Violet Hilton Day” was also a valedictory for the twins, their formal farewell to the tent show performers and workers who, at long last, they had gotten to know.

After touring the sisters on the carnival circuit for nine years, Myer Myers had decided that 1924 was to be their last on the midways. He had other plans.

W
ith Daisy and Violet, Edith, and daughter Theresa Mary in tow, Myer Myers arrived in New York City in November of 1924. He was carrying scrapbooks packed with clippings about his Royal English United Twins; he was intent on conquering Broadway.

Myer’s ego by now had become even more outsized. On the carnival showgrounds, he had grown accustomed to having subalterns carry his attaché case and open a path through the crowds so he could pass through. He was entitled to deferential treatment, he believed. He was prince of the midways. Through his adroit handling of the grown-together girls, he had turned Daisy and Violet into the carnival world’s single biggest attraction. No longer content to be a mere sideshow impresario, he traveled to New York because he wanted to prove to everyone, and especially to himself, that he could turn Daisy and Violet into equally big stars in the theater world.

Myers may have achieved institutional status in the carnival world, but this didn’t count for much with the agents who booked talent for the vaudeville houses. As soon as he announced he was representing Siamese twins, he would usually get a response that went something like this: “Mr. Thwaites is too busy to see anyone new today. He already has appointments with a roller-skating mezzo-soprano, the owner of a tap-dancing monkey, and a husband and
wife bird-calling act. I suggest you try shopping your, um, girls out on Coney Island.”

Violet and Daisy on stage. Although the girls were around seventeen when this photo was taken, their ruffled taffeta dresses, huge hair bows, and long Mary Pickford-style ringlets make then look younger. (Author’s collection)

Myer encountered so much resistance that after a while he started telling bookers that, yes, while it was true the Hilton sisters had bodies that were conjoined, this peculiarity was incidental to the impression they created as performers. Daisy and Violet were superb singers and dazzling dancers. While Myer might not go so far as to call them musicians of concert caliber, they could plunk, bow, or pipe
out tunes on every instrument known to Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. He all but begged the bookers for a chance to present the girls in an audition.

Despite Myer’s most earnest urgings, the agents always had the same response: However much talent the sisters might have, they were freaks first and foremost. There was only one venue for such a pair—the sideshow. One booker said, “Here’s my card. You get some sawbones to cut the girls apart and come back to see me. Then, if they’re as talented as you say, I’ll find them more work than they can handle.”

Of course, many of the acts that were trotted out on the vaudeville stages were every bit as outlandish as the offerings presented in carnival tents. For example, one vaudeville house was headlining an Egyptian entertainer named Hadji Ali whose forte might be called selective regurgitation. As the opener to his act, the professional vomiter swallowed a combination of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters and then somehow brought up the coins according to the denominations called out by the audience. As surprising as this feat was, it was not as astonishing as the finale, when Hadji would guzzle a quart of water chased by a pint of kerosene. After regurgitating the kerosene onto a large wooden dollhouse, he then tossed a burning match onto the structure, turning it into a small inferno of leaping flames and black smoke. After watching the conflagration for a few seconds, Hadji brought up the water from his stomach and, in a high-pressure torrent, spewed it over the flames. Joe Fanton, an acrobat who often appeared on the same bills with the Great Regurgitator, was always left astounded by the audience’s response. “Believe it or not,” Fanton said, “people would applaud this, really applaud.”
¹

As broad as vaudeville’s definition of entertainment was, the house managers drew the line at freaks. They represented themselves as purveyors of wholesome family entertainment and took the position that
most theatergoers, especially children, would be terrified at the sight of human beings who, because of a misfiring by nature, entered the world as monsters. Many vaudeville managers also held the belief that if a pregnant woman saw an “armless wonder” or “lobster boy,” she could, through some mystical form of embryonic imprinting, bring forth a child with a similar deformity. They quailed at the thought of being sued by women who came to their shows while pregnant and then later delivered freak babies.

Myer was becoming ever more disillusioned. After two weeks in New York, he still hadn’t gotten an engagement for his Royal English United Twins. A few bookers told him they might be able to line up appearances for the girls in the Times Square dime museums, and almost all of them mentioned the Coney Island sideshow operators who would fight for the chance to present genuine Siamese twins. As vivacious and as talented as his girls might be, Myer was told over and over, they would spell disaster for any theater that tried to present them.

Finally, Myer got a break. On November 24, 1924, the
New York Evening Journal
ran a lengthy story on Daisy and Violet’s “sightseeing” visit to the city. The reporter who wrote the piece could not have been more enamored of the sisters and characterized them as gifted stage talents and ingénues with “beauty of face, charm and wit.” Accompanying the story was a photograph, and indeed, the Royal Twins did appear to be arrestingly, almost supernaturally, beautiful.

Myer was in his hotel room when a phone call came in from an agent for B. F. Keith, the owner of one of the country’s biggest chains of vaudeville theaters. The agent had seen the
Evening Journal
article. He was willing to give the Hilton sisters an audition. Myer was elated. All he wanted was a single opportunity to present the twins. He was sure they would win over anyone who was willing to give them a chance.

The theater chosen for the audition was the famed Hippodrome. The entire red brick facade was so densely clustered with flashing, multicolored lights that the building appeared to be throwing off fire. The largest theater in the world at the time, the 5,200-seat Hippodrome stretched the entire block of Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets.

By the time Edith had gotten Daisy and Violet into their costumes backstage, the sisters were shaking so violently they could barely stand. Edith hugged them, trying to assure them they would do fine. An accompanist started playing, but the sisters were completely immobilized with stage fright. Edith tried to push them from the wings. Before she knew it, she herself was out on stage. Embarrassed, she quickly retreated, leaving Daisy and Violet stranded on the immense expanse. Because the twins were accustomed to appearing only on small platforms, they had no command of the theater’s monstrous boards. They froze at the very spot Edith had left them. They tried singing, but their voices scarcely carried even as far as the footlights, and when they tried playing their saxophone and clarinet, their horns squawked like geese cornered by a fox.

Sitting in on the audition along with the agent for the B. F. Keith circuit, was the Hippodrome’s manager. Before Daisy and Violet even got halfway into their routine, he sprang from his seat and sprinted up an aisle. Daisy and Violet were left sobbing on the stage.
²

Back at the hotel, Myer cursed the twins for botching their audition and disgracing him. He declared to Daisy and Violet, too, that he and Edith had grown tired of devoting so much of their lives to them. The time had come, he said, for them to do what they should have done long ago: commit them to an asylum for the crippled, blind, and mentally feeble and walk away.

Hours later, Myer was still fuming when the phone rang. He barked a “hello” into the receiver. It was Terry Turner, publicity
director for the Loew theater chain. He told Myers that he had heard about the twins’ disastrous audition at the Hippodrome but said he would be interested in seeing the girls for himself. Myer had not met Terry Turner before, but as a showman who consumed the pages of
Variety
and
The Billboard
each week, he knew Turner’s reputation. Turner was the master of the field. It was commonly understood that when he agreed to promote an artist, it was a
fait accompli
that the performer was on a rapid, nonstop ride to superstardom. So widely esteemed was Turner as a promoter, that not only was he sought out by the up-and-coming stars of the day, but also by all manner of performing screwballs who hoped he could land them on the cover of
Life
magazine. Once he was visited by a bearded lady who offered him a healthy share of the proceeds if he could get her signed as national spokeswoman for the Gillette Razor Company.