The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins (17 page)

Violet and Daisy, mid-1920s. (Author’s collection)

Turner wasn’t prepared for the effect Daisy and Violet would have on him when, accompanied by Myer, they entered his office for the first time. He could hardly believe what he seemed to be seeing: two girls, maybe lovelier to look at than any he had ever seen, who were fused together as one and so at ease with their oneness.

Daisy and Violet were sixteen at the time, but they still had the appearance of moppets. They were small for their years, a few inches short of five feet. They spoke in chirpy, British-accented voices and were so animated that their long bottle curls bounced like coiled springs. Because all their life experiences had been shared, one sister began relating a story and midway through, the other would pick up the narrative and take it to its finish. Right there in his office, the sisters reprised their act, performing on their horns and violin, singing and dancing. Turner was charmed from the start. The Royal English United Twins had all the qualities needed to be stars of the stage, he told Myer Myers, but their act would “need some classing up.”

Turner went right to work on the project. He arranged for new voice and dancing coaches; he hired a pianist, Ray Traynor, to serve as the sisters’ musical director, accompanist, and emcee; he even shopped the costume stores, drawing together a new wardrobe for the pair. After working two months with Daisy and Violet, rehearsing them daily, Turner was satisfied with every detail of their stage routine. He was ready to approach his boss.

Marcus Loew controlled a network of 350 vaudeville and movie houses that stretched from Maine to California to Egypt, France, and England. He also headed the complex system that produced and distributed all Cosmopolitan and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movies. Loew was one of the richest men in America. So sprawling was his estate on Glen Cove, Long Island, that some believed the property should be split away from New York and declared a separate state.

Turner enjoyed favored status with Loew. The mogul had often confided that much of the Loew chain’s growth was attributable to Turner’s brilliance as a publicist and talent scout. Turner felt sure he could convince his boss to send the Hilton twins on a national tour of the Loew vaudeville halls. But when he outlined the plan for a Hilton sisters tour, the mogul’s reaction was swift—and not at all the one Turner had been expecting.

“Absolutely not!” Loew exploded. His face was twisted in revulsion. “Siamese twins? All Siamese twins are monstrosities.”

Turner was quick with a rejoinder. He congratulated his employer “on being greater than the Deity.”

The entertainment baron looked at him in puzzlement.

“Well,” said Turner. “God made the Siamese twins, but you’re too high-class to let the public see them.”
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In the next moment, Loew may have taken mental inventory of all the successes Turner had scored for the theater chain’s operations. In the same instant, he may also have taken account of his own blessings. Loew himself was the proud father of young twins who, thank God, were normal in all respects. He seemed to have been chastened by Turner’s response.

Okay, okay, Loew finally sighed, he would show the Hilton sisters.

Terry Turner’s promotional machine went into high gear from the day Marcus Loew gave him his uneasy assent. Turner wanted, first of all, to obliterate any identification that the sisters had with the tawdry world of the carnival. Their original honorific as the “Royal
English United Twins” was scrapped. Daisy and Violet Hilton were born again, this time as “The San Antonio Siamese Twins.”

Arrangements were made for the sisters to make their debut at the State Theater in Newark, one of the larger Loew playhouses outside Manhattan. Turner was especially concerned with impressing his boss. It was important that the twins’ first theatrical appearance attract not just a respectable audience, but a sold-out crowd. He faced a challenge. Daisy and Violet may have been widely familiar to the folks that strolled the carnival midways, but they were unknown to the patrons of the vaudeville houses. Turner had to engineer a publicity stunt that would bring the sisters instant, popular, and stunning attention.

A couple weeks before the sisters’ scheduled, but still unannounced, theater debut, Turner accompanied Daisy and Violet, along with the Myers family, to New York’s Pennsylvania Station.
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Train tickets were bought for the group to travel to Newark. All had been well rehearsed on how to advance Turner’s scheme. The instant the train entered the tunnel beneath the Hudson River, Daisy started screaming with the torment of a child having her teeth yanked out, one by one. So unnerving was the commotion to the other passengers that they asked the conductor to investigate. The trainman barged into the Myers’ stateroom, expecting to discover a child being tortured on a rack. Instead he saw two grown-together sisters on a bed, one of them wildly flailing her arms and legs and shrieking. Myers told the conductor that the child was suffering severe stomach pains.

The conductor phoned ahead to the Newark terminal. He told the station manager that there were monsters aboard the train, Siamese twins, and that one of them appeared to be possessed by the devil. He said he was not sure whether the girl needed a doctor or an exorcist but requested that an ambulance be on hand when the train pulled into Newark. Daisy was still caterwauling when white-coated attendants carried the twins off the train on a stretcher.

Daisy was given a thorough going-over at Newark’s City Hospital. The attending physician later announced to reporters that while the patient and her sister were by then resting quietly, he was unable to provide any explanation for what might have caused the attack the poor child suffered. The twins’ entry into Newark cornered front page treatment in the local newspapers and was the lead item on the radio. Daisy’s performance, especially, had been a star turn. No event in Newark had ever generated as much media coverage.

The vaudeville debut of the San Antonio Siamese Twins was set for 2
P.M.
the afternoon of February 16, 1925, a Monday. Terry Turner was in self-congratulatory spirits well before show time. He had only had to step outside the State Theater for evidence that he had engineered another smashingly successful promotional campaign. So great were the throngs streaming to the playhouse that they were causing massive traffic jams all over the area. The Newark Police Department had to rush in reserve forces to control the crowds and unsnarl the tie-ups of streetcars and automobiles.
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There were signs in the theater’s ticket windows: Afternoon Show Sold Out!

In the moments before the twins’ turn was to begin, Ray Traynor, their musical director and emcee, walked onto the stage. He told the audience they should feel privileged: They were about to see the most exciting debut presented on any American stage in years. “Both love movies, flowers, and bon-bons, just like any other girls.”
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He revealed, too, that the sisters had a combined weight of 190 pounds and, perhaps to prompt some patrons to wonder whether it might be possible to be intimate with Siamese twins, declared that Daisy and Violet were both “capable of motherhood.”
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Finally, before exiting the stage, Traynor said there was no need for anyone to feel sorry for the two. “The young ladies themselves do not have a trace of self-pity,” he assured, “and even consider their condition to be a blessing because it has brought them close to so many wonderful people.”

Publicity photo promoting a beauty pageant in Palisades Park, New Jersey, 1925. (Author’s collection)

When the curtain lifted, Daisy and Violet, dressed in white, were seated center stage on a divan. The theater rattled with applause. The twins stood up, smiled demurely, and curtsied. In the words of a
Newark Evening News
theater critic who was present, they showed “none of the nervousness usually attending a stage debut.”

Accompanied by Traynor’s piano, they began by singing “Tea for Two,” the most popular tune of the day and the hit song of the Broadway show
No, No Nanette
, which had opened earlier in the season. Next they showed off some of their talents as musicians. Daisy played her gold-plated clarinet and then someone in the orchestra pit handed up a violin to Violet. She began bowing a
legato
line and then, without interruption in their duet, the twins gracefully moved across the stage and took places on the piano bench beside Traynor. Daisy placed her clarinet in a stand and, with a toss of her curls, signaled to Traynor that his services were no longer needed. The musical director rose and Daisy seamlessly picked up his piano accompaniment to Violet’s violin.

After a time, Daisy and Violet were ready for the finale. Appearing from the wings on either side of the stage were two sixteen-year-old boys in black tuxedos. Each approached a twin, bowed, took her hand, and stepped forward. Instantly, the foursome were interlocked in a
pas de quatre
that glided over the stage with the lightness of air. A massive tide of adoration swelled from the audience, almost sweeping Daisy and Violet off their flying feet. Everyone in the house was standing, applauding, and cheering. Some spectators were crying tears of joy. Quite a few patrons dashed from the auditorium to the box office to buy tickets for the next show.

The Newark State Theater had barely stopped reverberating from the twins’ repeated curtain calls when Myer Myers was sought out by the Loew representatives who had been present for the debut. Marcus Loew had initially engaged Daisy and Violet at $1,000 a week.
Fearful that another vaudeville circuit might try to pirate the act, the agents tore up the first contract and handed Myer a second one to sign, this one for $2,800 a week.
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The reviews were not merely glowing, they were phosphorescent.
Variety
, the bible of the show world and a publication that could make or break careers, assayed the occasion this way:

So great was the demand for tickets after the twins’ triumphant debut that the State scheduled four shows a day instead of the usual three. Only a few weeks earlier, Jack Dempsey, the recently retired world heavyweight boxing champion, appeared in the same theater and broke all attendance records. His reign did not last long. As the
New York Morning Telegraph
remarked, “Violet and Daisy Hilton … copped Jack’s laurels with a wide margin to spare at Loew’s State, Newark.” The twins put on twenty-nine shows during their week at the theater, the same number in which Dempsey appeared. With tickets to the Hiltons’ shows priced at 30 cents for daytime performances and 50 cents for the evening and weekend shows, the theater grossed $36,000, a dizzying $5,000 more than Dempsey earned for the playhouse.
¹⁰

Following their Newark engagement, the twins made week-long appearances at Loew theaters in Boston, Cleveland, and Buffalo. The
success they had in Newark was repeated. New box office records were established at each of the venues.
¹¹

During the same week that Daisy and Violet were performing in Cleveland’s Loew’s Theater, Harry Houdini was appearing next door at the Palace. He took in the sisters’ show at his first opportunity and was no less captivated than he had been fourteen years earlier when he had first seen them in Glasgow. He made it a point to visit the twins backstage every day of their engagement in Cleveland.

The meetings between Houdini and the Hilton sisters would continue over the years whenever they found themselves performing in the same towns. Daisy once talked about just how great their love and respect was for the escapologist. “If we could have our choice of fathers,” she said, “we’d pick Harry Houdini.”
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The greatest gift the twins received from Houdini, they claimed, was a lesson on how they could separate themselves from one another spiritually and emotionally and, in a certain sense, overcome the constraint of their physical bond. This capacity to achieve what Daisy and Violet called a kind of “mental liberty” would often prove useful to them, especially in the years ahead when each was regularly involved in romantic relationships.