Welcome to Threw the Hat- a blog about Australian Juggling History.
Here you will find some links to photos and articles/stories about Australian Jugglers and those who visited Australia.
Please credit the site if you are using the information you find here
Enjoy your visit and feel free to contact me if you have questions or comments
Leann
Cinquevalli on the right. (from a painting in my possession)
These jugglers performed at the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney between 1905-1907.
All comments from Charles Waller- Magical Nights at the Theatre, pictures from Sydney Tivoli Theatre programmes.
Kara 1905
' Kara was always among the few conceded to be in the Cinquevalli class.' (1905)
Tom and Nellie Lesso were successful performers in Australia, the US and England during the World War 1 era.
Tom Lesso was a skilled acrobat and juggler born in Victoria in 1885. His real name was Thomas Burkett Dixon and he had several siblings.
Tom appears as Tom Lesso in newspaper reports in the early 1900s. His first juggling act was as part of a duo with Rexo (Charles Griffith) . In 1909 he married the fair haired 5 foot 5 tall, Nerida Ridout (born 1884 in Sydney) in Melbourne. The pair formed a duo act that astonished Australasia and led to a successful run in the United States.
Nerida took the stage name Nellie, and as The Lessos, the pair appeared on stages in Australia and New Zealand. Nellie was a sharpshooter. On stage, Tom would call for props and Nellie would shoot at a button which activated a spring which propelled the props towards him- he would then juggle them to the delight of the audience.
Tom also incorporated balancing in the act. He balanced a cannon ball via a stick on his chin and transferred it to a stick perched on his forehead. Inspired by Cinquevalli, he also balanced a wooden table on his forehead, and with a twitch threw it in the air and caught it, on his forehead, on the reverse side. This was perhaps his most popular trick.
In 1909 the pair travelled to the United States. They began on the Percy Williams circuit then transferred to Keith's circuit. Whilst playing there they were recruited for a tour of England.
In 1914 they returned to Australia. Tom, as a relatively young man, must have felt some pressure to enlist. They incorporated a patriotic finale into their act, perhaps to make up for this. Nellie fired her gun at various targets and the whole stage was enveloped with the flags of the allies. At this time Tom told the papers that he had suffered a period of blindness whilst in the US. He blamed a trick where he caught tennis balls thrown by the audience on his forehead.
In 1916 Tom enlisted with the AIF for service in World War 1. Tom stated that his profession was ‘professional juggler’ and that he was separated from his wife, Nellie. He cited his father William as next of kin.
Whilst waiting to be shipped out, Tom was reprimanded for staying out late and for disobedience. Eventually he arrived in England and subsequently, in October 1916 he arrived at the British staging camp in Etaples, France. On October 29 that year, Australian Jack Braithwaite serving in a New Zealand regiment was executed for helping a fellow soldier defy a British commander. Tom may have witnessed the execution.
His official mission in France was to reinforce the 23rd Battalion, which was on the front lines. Tom lasted a month in France, there is no record of him being at the front, although it is possible. In November he was shipped back to England via Calais. Finally after treatment in England he was invalided out with ‘disordered action of the heart’, the military euphemism for shell shock. In March 1918 he was sent back to Australia.
By September he was back on stage performing at the Bijou in Melbourne, and giving colorful descriptions of his antics on the front lines. He claimed he had taken all his props to France and entertained troops whilst waiting to be deployed
He had a new assistant, Miss Duckworth, and they did the old act. They were scheduled to perform in New Zealand and sailed there. But in November Tom contracted Spanish Influenza. He died that month in New Zealand,
Nellie Lesso, Tom’s estranged wife, attempted to revive the act in the 1920s, although it seemed she was quite wealthy. In 1921 she made a police complaint about a missing diamond pendant, with lovers' knots and a single diamond drop attached. In 1923 The Lessos, featuring Nellie, performed at the Shaftesbury Theatre in Western Australia. Later that year she went to the United States, and Theodore the juggler was on the same ship. Perhaps the two had formed a new Lesso partnership.
Attempts by the army to contact her in 1923 regarding Tom’s war medals received no response and in 1924 Nellie was in Paris with her mother.
There is some indication that Nellie travelled quite often over the following years and did not seek to further her stage career.
Nellie’s primary address was in eastern Sydney and it was there that she passed away in 1954.
( I found Tom’s real name in The Age newspaper death notice. His war record is available through the National archives.)
Juggler Bert Beaver began as a vaudeville performer and became one of the most influential radio personalities of the early broadcasting age.
Herbert Edward Beaver was born in Broken Hill in outback New
South Wales in 1897 to Ada and Edward. However, his father died when he was
young, and his mother remarried when he was 12. Her second husband, Bert’s
stepfather, was Gilbert Sinclair, a union man who later became secretary of the
State Boilermakers Union. Sinclair, a prominent and vocal member of the labour
movement, later became a member of parliament and a founder of a radio station.
How Bert became involved in juggling is a mystery, but his
first press notices date to the early 1920s when he was appearing with Dix and
Baker in regional Newcastle. He was known as the ‘talking’ or ‘jesting’ juggler
who told humorous anecdotes and made smart remarks while juggling sticks, balls,
and hats. His act also included balancing two billiard balls on a stick.
Bert became quite popular when the Fuller's circuit employed
him between 1922-23. In Queensland he caused ‘considerable laughter’ while
balancing two balls on a cue and in Adelaide he ‘delighted’ the audience. That
year he also toured New Zealand with Fullers.
Meanwhile, he had met juggler George Campbell, an old-time
passing juggler who started juggling in Australia in 1906. The pair joined up
and formed the Campbell – Beaver - (Fred) White Company and toured regional
areas of Australia. This company morphed into the Cockatoo Farm Company which
became a legendary touring group in country Australia. One member of the ensemble
was singer Vera (Peggy) Cornock.
Cockatoo Farm was an early form of vaudeville revue with a simple
humorous story interspersed with specialty turns. The story was stereotypically
country Australian with Dad played by George and his son Willie played by Bert.
The plot revolved around farm shenanigans and corny Australian jokes- it was
tremendously well-received.
The show included a juggling turn from George and Bert which
probably involved club passing, and it can probably be assumed that the pair
exchanged ideas and juggling techniques with George representing an older
generation of jugglers and Bert the new.
In later years Bert claimed that he could juggle three or
four lacrosse balls, hats, cigars or clubs and that he invented the trick of
passing soap bubbles up and down a stick or string. He was also a keen magician
and member of the Australian Society of Magicians and sometimes performed at
their annual soirees in Sydney.
After almost two years with George Campbell and the Cockatoo
Farm Company, Bert left and formed his own touring group. They were well-regarded
but relegated to smaller regional towns. In 1923 he married Vera Cornock , and
in 1924 they had their first child, Shirley.
Bert was increasingly interested in management, and
fortunately in 1925, just as radio and the movies were beginning to encroach on
vaudeville he was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The chance to be on
the ground floor with a radio station.
His stepfather Gilbert Sinclair was one of the founders of the
new station 2KY, which was owned by the labour movement. Gilbert persuaded the
other directors to employ his stepson as the manager, and by 1925, as 2Ky hit the
airwaves, Bert was one of the few permanent staff members.
He became well known in Sydney as Uncle Bert and had a
versatile career that mingled calling boxing matches with children’s stories.
Through the depression years, he maintained his role and mentored young talent
through community concerts and talent quests. It was through one of these that
he encountered young juggler Jimmy Wallace. Jimmy later said that he was lucky
that Bert was a juggler because their shared profession ensured encouragement
and reinforcement for his later career. Presumably, the pair swapped tricks and
ideas, just as George Campbell and Bert had done many years earlier.
Managing the station left Bert with little time to juggle,
but he continued to do so at the community concerts and public radio Xmas
parties. He is recorded as juggling occasionally until the 1940s.
He also took a risk in the mid-1930s when he travelled to
England for radio business and briefly appeared as a juggler in the London
music halls. Upon his return to Australia, he said he just wanted to find out
if he was still capable. On that trip, he also witnessed an early version of
Baird’s television and reported to the Australian press on his experience.
Bert was a pioneer of radio and a mentor for Sydney
jugglers. He provided a bridge from the old generation, such as George
Campbell, to a new generation, such as Jimmy Wallace, who had to adapt the art
of juggling to the demands of new technology.
This is a small advertising pamphlet for Professor Wallace who was a travelling entertainer in Sydney up to the 1950s/60s.
Professor Wallace was the father of juggler Jimmy Wallace and the family lived for some time in Marrickville in Sydney's inner west, and just around the corner from where I live. So this pamphlet is very interesting for me.
Just some small updates;
I am currently trying to write about W C Fields' tour of Australia. Neil Litchfield of Stage Whispers Magazine sent this photo of Fields to me.
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Once upon a time, Sydney had wonderful buildings like this;
