Harry Lewiston - Harry Lewiston's Traveling Museum

Harry Lewiston's Traveling Museum

In late 1937, Lewiston and Rose left Ringling Bros. to form their own organization, and brought several circus freaks with them, including Grace McDaniels the "Mule-Faced Woman," tattooed girl Stella Grassman, Clico the African pygmy, "Human Balloon" Art Hubbell, Disco the magician, Lady Johanna the mentalist, sword swallowers John and Vivian Dunning, and Mel Burkhart the "Anatomical Wonder," who subsequently developed his "Human Blockhead" act while working in this show. Harry Lewiston's Traveling Museum (also known as "Lewiston's Big Circus Sideshow," "World's Fair Freaks," and "Palace of Oddities") featured a variety of sideshow and freak performers, a "girlie show," and snakes. Additionally, Rose managed several fortune tellers and served as the entire organization's treasurer. They initially paired up with the Conklin and Garret Shows and performed at venues throughout the United States and Canada, including the Canadian National Exposition. Their son Eli was born in Illinois in February 1938, and later became part of the act. He was billed as the baby of two dwarfs, with advertisements featuring teasers including "Midget Couple and Normal Baby, 10-mo. old son." Lewiston's python display, which included a wrestling act, was featured in a full-column article with two more columns of photos in The Charlotte Observer, and an excerpt of the story even received national attention:

"Charlotte, N.C., March 25 (AP) - Pete, a thirty-foot python, had a late luncheon today - six months late. Pythons, Harry Lewiston, keeper of the reptile, explained, eat only about once every three months. Pete hurt his throat nine months ago and had to pass up two meals. Today, with an eight-foot rubber hose, he was fed a snack of thirty pounds of chopped meat, fifteen dozen eggs and fifteen pounds of crushed bone. It took eighteen men to hold Pete while they fed him."

While Rose ran her "Palace of Knowledge" at the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940, Lewiston continued to bring his museum on tour, traveling with organizations including truck carnival William Glick Shows and Johnny J. Jones Carnival. He ran an enlarged side show, including his snakes, plus a freak animal show. While traveling with Jones in Warren, Pennsylvania during the summer of 1940, Lewiston's sword swallower Lady Vivian Dunning was profiled in the local paper. Lewiston also claims to have been the first showman to buy and repurpose the "headless girl" display, transforming it from a simple illusion act to fooling audiences by pretending she was real. He rigged the exhibit with flowing liquids and medical equipment, and created the story of "Olga Hess," who had been decapitated on a train but was kept alive by a doctor.

Throughout the early to mid-1940s, the Museum continued to perform successfully, typically contracting with amusement parks and state fairs during the summers and touring during the winters. In 1941, Harry Lewiston's Traveling Museum joined the Happy Land Shows for summer events in Michigan. Later that season, they performed at the Cambria County Fair in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania. He notes in his autobiography that due to the lewd nature of part of the show, he was sentenced to nine months jail in Eastern State Penitentiary, as were several hoochie coochie girls, though they were all released after six days. In 1942, while the Museum was in Erie, Pennsylvania, Harry Lewiston's performing "stone man" Charles Porter visited a famous local resident also suffering from the disease (likely Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva), and they were profiled in the local paper.

In 1944, while the Museum was installed for a month in Pittsburgh, the two legal guardians of Bobo and Kiki, the show's "pinheads," arrived to take the pair back home to Texas. After Rose objected that their contract had not yet expired, a fight broke out, and a local patrolman arrested all five of them. Charges were later dismissed, and the pinheads stayed on with the show. In late 1945, he formed a partnership called Gayer & Lewiston Enterprises with Archie Gayer, operator of Archie's Playland Arcade in Detroit. They co-ran the Monroe Theatre, and a new annex was added to the back of the arcade, where Lewiston managed a variety of attractions for several years, including an exhibit titled "Crime Does Not Pay," bazaars, and sideshow acts.

In 1947, while working for Lewiston over July 4 weekend, sword swallower Tony Marino "gulped a two-foot length of lighted neon tube, glowed at his appreciative audience, bowed, thereupon went out like a light, was hustled to a hospital for removal of the shattered tube." After two weeks of recuperation, including treatment with a stomach pump, milk of magnesia, and oatmeal, Marino continued performing with Lewiston's Museum. In 1950, Lewiston ran sideshows at Edgewater Park, Eastwood Park, and Jefferson Beach in Detroit, the first time that any single show operator had attractions at all three parks at once. In 1951, he leased sideshow and concert operation rights from Mills Bros. for their 32-week season. He noted in his autobiography that he was bitten in the face by a South American boa constrictor during this time.