My Clown College ID
I used to be a circus clown named Celery.
How I got there is a story that some family has never heard, and now want me to tell.
Thus, while memories have faded, here goes.
But first, and unlike most other clowns I’ve known over the years, I was never crazy about the circus.
I attended one Ringling Brothers show as a kid, and while the acts were terrific, there was no longing to see the event again. Even though I loved to read, and even after discovering classic Hollywood movies a few years later, I never thought to seek out circus-themed books or films.
Then, as is so often the case, college changed everything.
Having done some acting in high school, my first-year major at UCLA in the fall of 1972 was theatre arts. Most of
the action happened at McGowan Hall, and with all of my heart, I believed that I had found my place.
However, I quickly discovered that I was utterly out of my depth.
Likely because of UCLA’s proximity to Hollywood, as well as its stellar drama program, many freshmen were already union actors. I even saw one in a national commercial. Visiting celebrities added to my insecurity: I spotted Beau Bridges, Joyce DeWitt and Lucie Arnaz hanging around Macgowan.
Just as important, it wasn’t long before I realized that I didn’t have the needed passion to succeed as an actress.
A lot of my theatre chums were thrilled to paint sets and work late into the night, showing up because they loved theatre and not caring that there was no extra credit. I never missed class but after hours, preferred to read in my dorm room.
So, no surprise, in my sophomore year, I switched my major to undeclared.
Then, one fine morning, life took a pivot.
I just happened to catch a segment on the local news with two Ringling clowns. Working as advance agents and bedecked in full makeup and costume, they were on camera to publicize a couple of things.
One, The Greatest Show on Earth was coming to Los Angeles. Two, there were going to be auditions for this thing called Clown College, also known as CC.
That got my attention.
Here, I thought, was where I could start anew.
In retrospect, I don’t know why I came to this conclusion so swiftly.
After all, besides not having seen a circus in years, I had exactly zero circus skills.
I had never juggled; walked a tightrope, or even thrown a pie properly. Still, I played violin and had done some tumbling as a child, becoming adept at somersaults and standing on my head. My audition, which took place in late July, was just okay. But then, after finding out that there was a long and required written application, and also knowing I was a decent writer, I figured I could ace that part of the process.
Much later, I discovered that a good number of Clown College alums never auditioned. But like me, their thoughtful prose caught the attention of the CC admissions team.
In what I now consider a small miracle, I recently found a completed copy of the five densely written pages I wrote in the summer of 1974. This was only going to be the seventh year of CC—the school didn’t officially end until 1997—and a new crop of youngsters was always needed. The joke from some of the 70something Ringling clowns was while they could still fall down, they had trouble getting up.
The application questions were definitely eclectic, including “If you could be someone else, who would you be and why?”, “Describe briefly memorable turning points in your life,” and “Rate your boiling point on a scale from one to 10.”
We were also told to write our replies by hand, with the rumor that Ringling had hired a handwriting expert and also took our astrological signs into consideration. I don’t know about the former, but SCORPIO was printed in bold letters by someone else on the top page of the questionnaire.
As to why I so badly wanted to get out of town, that was an easy answer.
My life was a hot mess.
Now ending my second year at UCLA with no path forward toward acting, I spent a lot of hours wondering why I was still in college. Also, my parents and I expended an inordinate amount of time loudly butting heads.
And then there was this other, way bigger thing: I was madly in love with a much older journalist, a popular and hard-drinking newspaper columnist in my hometown who had swept me off my feet. I wanted him to love me back as fiercely as I worshipped him. He didn’t, which was also complicated by the fact that he wasn’t going to leave his wife.
All in all, it was time to run away and join the circus.
Thankfully, I was one of 48 would-be clowns accepted into the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Clown College, Class of 1974. Our curriculum began in late September and ended eight weeks later. Tuition was free, but we had to get to Florida on our own, then cough up room and board and the cost of clown makeup. Most of those chosen were guys, but there were seven girls, too.
We were a talented crew.
There was Barry Lubin, who later saw his face plastered all over New York City as Grandma The Clown with The Big Apple Circus. Another classmate was Bill Irwin, recipient of a hefty MacArthur Genius grant in 1984. After that, Bill was Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street, and then scored a Tony Award. He’s still a working clown and actor.
I must also mention Steve LaPorte, who auditioned right out of high school on a whim. A few years later, he was an acclaimed makeup artist and Oscar winner. Other classmates were a magician working at the Trivoli Gardens in Copenhagen when he got his CC acceptance letter; a long-haired comic book artist, and a former US Army Captain recently returned from Vietnam. Also, second in command at CC was David Nicksey, who’s now an A-list Hollywood executive producer with credits including Wicked, In The Heights and Addams Family Values.
Despite its festive name, Clown College wasn’t all lollipops and rainbows.
Landing at night in Sarasota, I remember exiting the plane and feeling a blast of the hottest, most humid air I’d ever experienced. I was soon living 15 miles away at the Venice Villas with all of the other students. A not-quite rundown motel with kitchenettes and thank goodness, air conditioning, the cost was $25 per week. Each of us was assigned a roommate, and a mini-bus and station wagons provided transportation between the Villas and the Venice Arena, one mile away and where Ringling had its Winter Quarters and where we attended classes.
The schedule wasn’t easy: six days a week, starting early in the morning with dismissal late in the afternoon. This much time was needed because there was a lot to cover: 16 subjects, including stilt-walking, elephant riding and clown makeup. There were the same number of lectures, with circus jargon, trouper nutrition and history of the Big Tops being some of the topics.
In addition, we were encouraged to return later in the evening to see movies starring Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, two of the best silent clowns ever. Another must watch was Cecil B. DeMille’s 1950 classic, The Greatest Show
on Earth.
I took in every minute.
I learned to juggle with lacrosse balls and see-through scarves; balance a peacock feather on my nose, and ride a rolling cylinder called a rolla-bolla. Sort of a tiny teeter-totter, it was a wooden board in which I placed one foot on one side of the board and my other foot on the other side. Underneath was a large metal cylinder that made the board sway back and forth. Keeping my balance wasn’t easy, especially while juggling and wearing oversized clown shoes, but eventually I aced it.
I also became very good at my favorite thing: running up to and then leaping onto a very long banquet table covered with baby powder. From there, I slid across the entire table and somersaulted off. My black-and-blue thighs were testament to my success.
Our last official day of Clown College was an hours-long, nighttime performance designed to show off our talents for an audience that included the owners of Ringling. We were told that this single show was going to determine who would be offered a contract.
The next morning, several of us assembled at the arena, waiting to see who was going to win this particular lottery.
Shortly after arriving, I asked the head of Clown College where I stood. He stared at me for a moment and then said, “You were passed over.” Then he walked away.
That was it.
As it turned out, about half of us were offered contracts and about half weren’t. The latter group also included the magician, the comic book artist and the Army captain. Later, I was told that while some CC students were picked for their talent, just as many were invited for other reasons.
Those details included having the right personality thought to fit into the circus, whatever that meant. Or, some were recruited because they could rock a certain costume, and maybe deemed more acrobatic than others. And, some, especially students from small towns, were offered the gig because they were perceived as naïve youngsters who could be easily molded to the RBB & Bailey way of doing things.
Those new clowns were told to report back in January, with everyone else returning to the lives they had had before. I slunk home to California.
But I had learned so many new skills that I wanted to use them.
To do otherwise, I thought, would waste all of those weeks of training. This meant that despite the Ringling rejection, I still wanted to be a circus clown. So, and after asking, someone gave me a list of small circuses where I could send a query, including Rudy Brothers, Carden-Johnson Circus, Polack Brothers Circus and the lofty sounding James Harrington Pan American Circus.
My prayer was answered.
Rudy Brothers mailed me a congratulatory letter with a contract. The pay was $175 per week, $25 more than Ringling paid!
That was a fortune to me, but there was no train and my car had to double as a bedroom.
I drove a Datsun sedan, and one of the workers removed the front passenger seat and procured a long plywood board to lay a sleeping bag on. I also made some curtains for privacy, and figured out how to dress in that small space. Showers were a luxury, but I welcomed them whenever I could find one.
Also, and like every little circus, Rudy hit venues that didn’t offer the crowds Ringling needed.
So, taking the name Celery because it was both close to my own name and kids remembered it, I clowned around in Salinas and Yuba City, both in California, as well as Lynn, Massachusetts; Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Cincinnati, Ohio. We boasted a terrific trapeze act, as well as baby elephants and trained dogs. These animals weren’t pets, but they were treated with great respect because they were crucial to the acts. Usually we’d set up in a mall parking lot, but there were also rodeo grounds and baseball fields.
I thought I’d continue with Rudy or another similar show after the first season. In fact, I had more names of other circuses now where I could send letters. I think I sent a few.
But something unexpected happened while clowning.
I realized it was time to go back to college.
There were more than a few reasons for doing so.
At the top of the list was that the road was very lonely. The internet hadn’t yet been invented, so of course, laptops and iPhones didn’t exist. That left little contact with the outside world, with me depending on the occasional letter from a few friends sent via USPS General Delivery to the next town on the Rudy itinerary. I also had to use paper maps to get to our destinations, something that I wasn’t particularly adept at doing.
Plus, with all of the solo driving back and forth across the country, as well as performing, my brain was turning to mush. No longer a voracious bookworm, the only thing I could stand reading now were true romance magazines; even newspapers were hard to comprehend.
To sum it up, I was exhausted.
Two years after Clown College, I enrolled at San Jose State, finally realizing my passion and eventually, scoring a journalism degree. I also did some clowning on the side, including birthday parties and corporate events. For a while, I was even the official clown of the San Jose Farmers Market.
But my heart was no longer really into it, although I kept all of my costumes, props and makeup for decades. I couldn’t bear to throw them out, and was thrilled when the International Clown Hall of Fame in Wisconsin agreed to let me donate these items a few years ago.
Still, I’m Celery in a lot of ways.
This includes being in a private Facebook group of former Clown College and Ringling clown alumni, many of whom continue to perform. With The Hubster and The Daughter, I attended a CC reunion in 2008, and after 50-plus years, I’m still friends with the magician and the cartoonist.
As for the newspaper columnist, he lost a child; joined a 12-step program, and married two more times. We kept in sporadic contact, last speaking over 20 years ago. He told me then that the stupidest thing he had ever done in his life was not marrying me.
Looking back, there are three huge takeaways I got from Clown College and my life as Celery.
One, I found some extraordinary friends I would never have come into contact with anywhere else. That has been an incredible gift. Two, I made a lot of people laugh, including lots of children who treated me like a movie star and asked for my autograph.
But the third and most important lesson has been this.
You can be afraid of trying something new—I absolutely was--but it doesn’t mean that you have to succumb to that fear. Just do it, even when you’re afraid.
This self-taught mantra has led me through a life of challenges, surprises and much happiness.
Clown College, and becoming Celery, was the starting point.
How I got there is a story that some family has never heard, and now want me to tell.
Thus, while memories have faded, here goes.
But first, and unlike most other clowns I’ve known over the years, I was never crazy about the circus.
I attended one Ringling Brothers show as a kid, and while the acts were terrific, there was no longing to see the event again. Even though I loved to read, and even after discovering classic Hollywood movies a few years later, I never thought to seek out circus-themed books or films.
Then, as is so often the case, college changed everything.
Having done some acting in high school, my first-year major at UCLA in the fall of 1972 was theatre arts. Most of
the action happened at McGowan Hall, and with all of my heart, I believed that I had found my place.
However, I quickly discovered that I was utterly out of my depth.
Likely because of UCLA’s proximity to Hollywood, as well as its stellar drama program, many freshmen were already union actors. I even saw one in a national commercial. Visiting celebrities added to my insecurity: I spotted Beau Bridges, Joyce DeWitt and Lucie Arnaz hanging around Macgowan.
Just as important, it wasn’t long before I realized that I didn’t have the needed passion to succeed as an actress.
A lot of my theatre chums were thrilled to paint sets and work late into the night, showing up because they loved theatre and not caring that there was no extra credit. I never missed class but after hours, preferred to read in my dorm room.
So, no surprise, in my sophomore year, I switched my major to undeclared.
Then, one fine morning, life took a pivot.
I just happened to catch a segment on the local news with two Ringling clowns. Working as advance agents and bedecked in full makeup and costume, they were on camera to publicize a couple of things.
One, The Greatest Show on Earth was coming to Los Angeles. Two, there were going to be auditions for this thing called Clown College, also known as CC.
That got my attention.
Here, I thought, was where I could start anew.
In retrospect, I don’t know why I came to this conclusion so swiftly.
After all, besides not having seen a circus in years, I had exactly zero circus skills.
I had never juggled; walked a tightrope, or even thrown a pie properly. Still, I played violin and had done some tumbling as a child, becoming adept at somersaults and standing on my head. My audition, which took place in late July, was just okay. But then, after finding out that there was a long and required written application, and also knowing I was a decent writer, I figured I could ace that part of the process.
Much later, I discovered that a good number of Clown College alums never auditioned. But like me, their thoughtful prose caught the attention of the CC admissions team.
In what I now consider a small miracle, I recently found a completed copy of the five densely written pages I wrote in the summer of 1974. This was only going to be the seventh year of CC—the school didn’t officially end until 1997—and a new crop of youngsters was always needed. The joke from some of the 70something Ringling clowns was while they could still fall down, they had trouble getting up.
The application questions were definitely eclectic, including “If you could be someone else, who would you be and why?”, “Describe briefly memorable turning points in your life,” and “Rate your boiling point on a scale from one to 10.”
We were also told to write our replies by hand, with the rumor that Ringling had hired a handwriting expert and also took our astrological signs into consideration. I don’t know about the former, but SCORPIO was printed in bold letters by someone else on the top page of the questionnaire.
As to why I so badly wanted to get out of town, that was an easy answer.
My life was a hot mess.
Now ending my second year at UCLA with no path forward toward acting, I spent a lot of hours wondering why I was still in college. Also, my parents and I expended an inordinate amount of time loudly butting heads.
And then there was this other, way bigger thing: I was madly in love with a much older journalist, a popular and hard-drinking newspaper columnist in my hometown who had swept me off my feet. I wanted him to love me back as fiercely as I worshipped him. He didn’t, which was also complicated by the fact that he wasn’t going to leave his wife.
All in all, it was time to run away and join the circus.
Thankfully, I was one of 48 would-be clowns accepted into the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Clown College, Class of 1974. Our curriculum began in late September and ended eight weeks later. Tuition was free, but we had to get to Florida on our own, then cough up room and board and the cost of clown makeup. Most of those chosen were guys, but there were seven girls, too.
We were a talented crew.
There was Barry Lubin, who later saw his face plastered all over New York City as Grandma The Clown with The Big Apple Circus. Another classmate was Bill Irwin, recipient of a hefty MacArthur Genius grant in 1984. After that, Bill was Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street, and then scored a Tony Award. He’s still a working clown and actor.
I must also mention Steve LaPorte, who auditioned right out of high school on a whim. A few years later, he was an acclaimed makeup artist and Oscar winner. Other classmates were a magician working at the Trivoli Gardens in Copenhagen when he got his CC acceptance letter; a long-haired comic book artist, and a former US Army Captain recently returned from Vietnam. Also, second in command at CC was David Nicksey, who’s now an A-list Hollywood executive producer with credits including Wicked, In The Heights and Addams Family Values.
Despite its festive name, Clown College wasn’t all lollipops and rainbows.
Landing at night in Sarasota, I remember exiting the plane and feeling a blast of the hottest, most humid air I’d ever experienced. I was soon living 15 miles away at the Venice Villas with all of the other students. A not-quite rundown motel with kitchenettes and thank goodness, air conditioning, the cost was $25 per week. Each of us was assigned a roommate, and a mini-bus and station wagons provided transportation between the Villas and the Venice Arena, one mile away and where Ringling had its Winter Quarters and where we attended classes.
The schedule wasn’t easy: six days a week, starting early in the morning with dismissal late in the afternoon. This much time was needed because there was a lot to cover: 16 subjects, including stilt-walking, elephant riding and clown makeup. There were the same number of lectures, with circus jargon, trouper nutrition and history of the Big Tops being some of the topics.
In addition, we were encouraged to return later in the evening to see movies starring Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, two of the best silent clowns ever. Another must watch was Cecil B. DeMille’s 1950 classic, The Greatest Show
on Earth.
I took in every minute.
I learned to juggle with lacrosse balls and see-through scarves; balance a peacock feather on my nose, and ride a rolling cylinder called a rolla-bolla. Sort of a tiny teeter-totter, it was a wooden board in which I placed one foot on one side of the board and my other foot on the other side. Underneath was a large metal cylinder that made the board sway back and forth. Keeping my balance wasn’t easy, especially while juggling and wearing oversized clown shoes, but eventually I aced it.
I also became very good at my favorite thing: running up to and then leaping onto a very long banquet table covered with baby powder. From there, I slid across the entire table and somersaulted off. My black-and-blue thighs were testament to my success.
Our last official day of Clown College was an hours-long, nighttime performance designed to show off our talents for an audience that included the owners of Ringling. We were told that this single show was going to determine who would be offered a contract.
The next morning, several of us assembled at the arena, waiting to see who was going to win this particular lottery.
Shortly after arriving, I asked the head of Clown College where I stood. He stared at me for a moment and then said, “You were passed over.” Then he walked away.
That was it.
As it turned out, about half of us were offered contracts and about half weren’t. The latter group also included the magician, the comic book artist and the Army captain. Later, I was told that while some CC students were picked for their talent, just as many were invited for other reasons.
Those details included having the right personality thought to fit into the circus, whatever that meant. Or, some were recruited because they could rock a certain costume, and maybe deemed more acrobatic than others. And, some, especially students from small towns, were offered the gig because they were perceived as naïve youngsters who could be easily molded to the RBB & Bailey way of doing things.
Those new clowns were told to report back in January, with everyone else returning to the lives they had had before. I slunk home to California.
But I had learned so many new skills that I wanted to use them.
To do otherwise, I thought, would waste all of those weeks of training. This meant that despite the Ringling rejection, I still wanted to be a circus clown. So, and after asking, someone gave me a list of small circuses where I could send a query, including Rudy Brothers, Carden-Johnson Circus, Polack Brothers Circus and the lofty sounding James Harrington Pan American Circus.
My prayer was answered.
Rudy Brothers mailed me a congratulatory letter with a contract. The pay was $175 per week, $25 more than Ringling paid!
That was a fortune to me, but there was no train and my car had to double as a bedroom.
I drove a Datsun sedan, and one of the workers removed the front passenger seat and procured a long plywood board to lay a sleeping bag on. I also made some curtains for privacy, and figured out how to dress in that small space. Showers were a luxury, but I welcomed them whenever I could find one.
Also, and like every little circus, Rudy hit venues that didn’t offer the crowds Ringling needed.
So, taking the name Celery because it was both close to my own name and kids remembered it, I clowned around in Salinas and Yuba City, both in California, as well as Lynn, Massachusetts; Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Cincinnati, Ohio. We boasted a terrific trapeze act, as well as baby elephants and trained dogs. These animals weren’t pets, but they were treated with great respect because they were crucial to the acts. Usually we’d set up in a mall parking lot, but there were also rodeo grounds and baseball fields.
I thought I’d continue with Rudy or another similar show after the first season. In fact, I had more names of other circuses now where I could send letters. I think I sent a few.
But something unexpected happened while clowning.
I realized it was time to go back to college.
There were more than a few reasons for doing so.
At the top of the list was that the road was very lonely. The internet hadn’t yet been invented, so of course, laptops and iPhones didn’t exist. That left little contact with the outside world, with me depending on the occasional letter from a few friends sent via USPS General Delivery to the next town on the Rudy itinerary. I also had to use paper maps to get to our destinations, something that I wasn’t particularly adept at doing.
Plus, with all of the solo driving back and forth across the country, as well as performing, my brain was turning to mush. No longer a voracious bookworm, the only thing I could stand reading now were true romance magazines; even newspapers were hard to comprehend.
To sum it up, I was exhausted.
Two years after Clown College, I enrolled at San Jose State, finally realizing my passion and eventually, scoring a journalism degree. I also did some clowning on the side, including birthday parties and corporate events. For a while, I was even the official clown of the San Jose Farmers Market.
But my heart was no longer really into it, although I kept all of my costumes, props and makeup for decades. I couldn’t bear to throw them out, and was thrilled when the International Clown Hall of Fame in Wisconsin agreed to let me donate these items a few years ago.
Still, I’m Celery in a lot of ways.
This includes being in a private Facebook group of former Clown College and Ringling clown alumni, many of whom continue to perform. With The Hubster and The Daughter, I attended a CC reunion in 2008, and after 50-plus years, I’m still friends with the magician and the cartoonist.
As for the newspaper columnist, he lost a child; joined a 12-step program, and married two more times. We kept in sporadic contact, last speaking over 20 years ago. He told me then that the stupidest thing he had ever done in his life was not marrying me.
Looking back, there are three huge takeaways I got from Clown College and my life as Celery.
One, I found some extraordinary friends I would never have come into contact with anywhere else. That has been an incredible gift. Two, I made a lot of people laugh, including lots of children who treated me like a movie star and asked for my autograph.
But the third and most important lesson has been this.
You can be afraid of trying something new—I absolutely was--but it doesn’t mean that you have to succumb to that fear. Just do it, even when you’re afraid.
This self-taught mantra has led me through a life of challenges, surprises and much happiness.
Clown College, and becoming Celery, was the starting point.
Celery the Clown Photo Credit: Sue Contreras
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