Harry La Pearl

Harry LaPearl was born in Danville, Illinois in 1885. He grew up in a circus family and traveled in the 1890s with his father’s show, the LaPearl Circus, where he made his first public appearance of note as a bareback horseback rider, after which he learned various other acrobatic specialties, including tumbling and aerial trapeze work. He settled on the role of a clown, and in this vocation he became well known. For two years he was the lead clown for Ringling Brothers, after which he was chief clown for the Barnum & Bailey Circus, a position considered to be the ultimate in clowndom. In 1910, while in Madison Square Garden in his clown outfit, he married Frances Macginley, in a ceremony with 60 other clowns in attendance. In 1911 his home address was 3609 Sheffield Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. After a two-year stint with Barnum & Bailey, he went on stage at the New York Hippodrome, after which he went before the motion picture cameras for MinA Films. In 1915 he was seen in several MinA features and serial episodes, including Once is Enough, The Trouble Maker, and The Girl of His Dreams. Shortly thereafter, he played in Thanhouser’s The Flying Twins, a film about the circus. In 1914 and 1915 he maintained a chicken farm in Cedar Manor, Long Island, New York. Harry LaPearl died in Hollywood, California on January 13, 1946.