jackie

Published in COAI Magazine,
December 2011
Written by Karen Bell and Robin Eurich after an interview with Jackie LeClaire in June, 2011

Jackie LeClaire is an American clowning icon. Having been raised and instructed by his well respected father, White-Face Jack LeClaire, on the Ringing Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus, Jackie joined the show in 1948 as an aerialist, eventually developing a clown character know as ‘the Children’s Clown’. He retired in 1965 making him (according to a recent conversation with Leon McBride) perhaps the only active clown from the pre Ringing Clown College days, which opened his doors in 1968. He recently came out of retirement to become Circus Sarasota’s Ambassador of Mirth and has produced a number of one man shows, making him, at 84, a continuing inspiration to professional and amateur clowns all over America.

His accolades include: Induction into the International Clown Hall of Fame, Sarasota’s Circus Ring of Fame, Ringing Museum Circus Celebrity as well as being an instructor at Clown Camp and Headliner for World Clown Conference.
We had the honor to be granted an interview with Jackie LeClaire, whose career, talent and willingness to share with others embodies the heart and soul of clowning.

Karen and Robin: how did you learn clowning?

Jackie: The school of hard knocks! Circus Clowns were in a very strict society back then. In my era, I am talking about in the 40’s when I first started clowning with my father…they were very serious about clowning. I got a lot more tenderness because I was my father’s son but I was still a First of May. Nobody was hesitant to say ‘you don’t have enough clown white on the back of your neck’, ‘put your makeup behind your ears’, ‘look at your shoes, they should be whitened’. You were constantly being reminded because they took it so seriously themselves. If you look at the makeups of that era they were incredible. Look at Felix Adler, he would stand in front of the mirror and he would put it on like a masterpiece on a canvas. And he was very proud of what he did, they all were. I think you have to be proud of your appearance and proud of what you do not just ‘hey look, I’m a clown!’ When I looked around at all my mentors they were so great in their makeup and efforts it would pull me up and make me want to be a better clown. Someone told me if you ever want to learn anything never go to a place where you are the best at it because you are never going to learn anything.

My father took clowning so seriously! He really loved it as a profession and was very proud to be a clown. I remember a story, I was not there at the time, when the show played Hollywood and all the movie stars came out. Ringling management asked Bob Hope and Bing Crosby to wear a costume and makeup and were introduced in the ring as very famous clowns. My father was furious. He said why are they demeaning us? We work all our lives to be what we are and these celebrities are dressed like clowns but don’t know beans about clowning.

Robin: They are not clowns.

Jackie: No, they are not clowns. My first years clowning, I was the assistant and my father did all the principle stuff. He was strict in training. He had only black and white in his thinking. There was no ‘that will pass’ or ‘oh, the audience will never know the difference’. It did not matter if we were performing for the low price ticket seats or if there was no audience in that section at all, we still did our entire clown gag.

There was no meet and greet in the circus. We were never close to the audience. We did not shake hands with anybody and we rarely met any children. In our day, projecting was important. We had to be seen and heard in the last row of the stands; which is why, to this day, my voice is a little loud at times. Felix Adler was the greatest visual clown that the circus had. When he walked in the ring with his big white suit, grotesque whiteface makeup and half wig you could spot him from the other end of the big top. In those days our job was to be larger than life.

I enjoyed clowning under the big top but not anywhere near as much as in later years. That’s when I really became a clown, because it became my career. Clowning is a very serious business, extremely so. Everyone thinks you are having such a good time, and you may be, but the professional is thinking about how the gags are working. Just like Robin on his TV show, my mind is like a computer that is working like crazy.
I think the greatest joy and fun you have in clowning is in accomplishment. The joy is in doing a show and doing it well. It is not instant gratification, it’s not putting on the makeup and looking in the mirror and saying ‘I’m a clown! I’m a clown!’ it’s the production.

Karen: Steve Smith said ‘you can’t decide you are a clown just because you want to be one’.

Jackie: That is absolutely true; it’s for the audience to decide if you are a clown. In my case, the people I work with are more convinced than I am about my character. You can say you are a clown in your publicity but only in your performance can you prove that to be true.

Robin: I remember you saying you never took clowning classes.

Jackie: Well, I should say I did take classes because every show that I performed with my father I would get a lecture about what we did right and what we did wrong, there was always self-criticism about the gags. Ringling performed every day from May 1 to the middle of November. And every show we were trying to make it better; and we did. We improved by doing.
It is very hard to develop a solo piece when you are on Ringing because you are always working with a group of clowns. But when I went to work for Rich Plan Frozen Foods I was all alone on stage and all of a sudden I realized I can’t carry all those props. They become a crutch. I never will forget the time I did my first kiddy matinee in Raleigh, NC. I went to a store and bought all this magic stuff, I bought enough magic stuff to put Copperfield out of business. I had all the magic in a big basket and I am standing backstage thinking, ‘boy I’m going to be the best thing there ever was’ and this little kid goes on stage, about 9 years old, and he does a trick that I have in my basket. So I push it aside and say ‘oh, I’m not going to do that trick’, then he did another trick, and I push that one aside… when he got done he must have done everything I had in my basket and so I said, ‘to heck with it I am just going to go out and be me’. And I went out did a few little falls, danced, some funny walks and it was great. I knew right then that I had to be the thing, not the prop. Now the material, the show, has to be there but you have got to be the one that the entertainment comes from.

I did school programs as well and I had to learn how to make it all work. I started the show with the curtain closed and the curtain would open and there was nothing on stage but a prop and the kids were all ‘shhh, shhh’ and then from back stage I would go ‘birdie bird, birdie bird’ and the kids would start to snicker, and then I would go ‘birdie birdie birdie boo boo’ and by the time I came on in my big outfit they were all laughing. When you are alone on stage for 40 minutes, boy, can you learn to clown because you know what is getting a laugh and what is not. You might not always get the same laugh at the same time but you know if it was good. I performed at a school and did a change bag routine. I got a boy up on stage and asked him to put his hand in the empty bag and asked ‘what’s in the bag?’ and he looked at me and said ‘my hand is in the bag’. Well it got a great laugh. So I thought whoo whoo whoo! and the next show I asked the child, ‘what’s in the bag?’ and the kid said ‘nothing is in the bag’ and I said, ‘what do you mean nothing is in the bag? Your hand is in the bag!’ And it was a laugh. You learn that way.

I tell clowns perform somewhere, if only for the kids next door,
you will never learn to clown in the living room!

Jackie recently performed a one-man show that he created. Here are his musings on the process:

Jackie: I am learning all the time. Robin helped me in my movement for the Red Skelton pantomimes. There is a moment when the character indicates ‘what the
h---‘s the matter with you?’ I am very careful not to move my arms or legs or anything because, like Robin says, the movement will detract from the motion of my mouth. I got a lot from that. I am not kidding! I don’t think just because I am a clown I can go out and do it right without practice or direction.
In another Red Skelton pantomime, when I am holding the tennis racket, I should feel the weight of the racket. I rehearsed in front of the mirror and I swear in the show I swung it well. Afterwards, I watched the video of the show and I can’t believe I swung it like I wasn’t hitting anything. It seemed in my mind that I was making a big movement and in fact I did not. I am still learning.

Robin: I am always trying to teach people to use the director’s eyes so they look at that kind of thing themselves. Not just movement but what makes sense in the moment. It seems to me you got that from your dad and from Felix Adler. ‘This action is what is going to set up everything else’ so the importance of this movement is critical.

Karen: There were also technical issues with the stage that caused problems for you during the performance. The loud squeaking of the floor boards as you performed a silent piece. I love how you handled it by addressing it to the audience after your first pantomime so the audience could become comfortable knowing you were not going to let it upset you. After that it was not an issue.

Jackie: For some reason or other the audience likes me, that is very important. I don’t put myself above them and they can see that I am not trying to be a great star or anything; I think that helps a lot.

Robin: If the audience likes you they will give you a break if something happens. If they don’t like you, you have lost them.

Jackie: It is hard to perform a show just once. If I do the same show for a good month, boy, I get it honed.

Robin: I know what you are saying, Karen and I and did a show on a big local stage together that we only got to perform once.

Jackie: Yes, but you did that very good, I remember, I saw it.

Karen: But it could have been so much better if we had a chance to run it over and over.

Robin: We realized that we were partners and that we were essentially working together 4 times a year. You can be ok but you can never be really, really good that way.

Jackie: No you can’t. So we are getting back to what we started to talk about; learning to clown. Because I was with the best in the field, my father, Felix Adler and Lou Jacobs to name a few, that was pretty good company. So I had a very high degree of skill to reach for and my father was there to teach me. It was constant performance. Between shows we would practice the gags I can’t tell you how many times.

And I would watch the other clown’s work, which was very good. In a big top like that, it seated 12,000 people, and 35-50 clowns working, you are competing for the audience’s attention. There are all these distractions and they could see other clowns on the track so you’ve got to get the attention of the people. For instance, my father had a gag with his hat and umbrella. He would hold an umbrella with one hand and the hat would have wire from the top of the hat to the umbrella so the hat would rise up supposedly by itself. But there was no sense doing it if nobody sees it, he had to set up the gag. My father had a loud voice and he would get out there and he would say ’yoo-hoo, hello Mary!’ (there is sure to be a Mary in the audience) and when he would get the audience’s attention he would perform. I used to do that best with a bend over gag. I would come in while the other acts were working and I would wander around the grand stand. Just being there, sort of like how Otto Grebling used to do it, and, when I stepped onto the track and did the bend over the audience was wowed! Comedy is the unexpected.

Karen: I love going to a dollar store with you because you still have such a sense of play and curiosity. I remember there is a great line in Grock the Clown’s autobiography; he says that whenever he walks into a room all the objects of the room say ‘come, play with me’!

Jackie: Why do you think I have so much junk in here?

Karen: Yes, you are like Grock, you want to play.

Jackie: You can be a clown, a dancer, musician but we are all there to entertain. You have seen clowns that maybe did funny things but they weren’t entertaining and others that are not funny but entertaining. I don’t think you need your audience applauding all the time; let them sit back and enjoy. I hate entertainers who constantly ask the audience, ‘are you having a good time?’

Robin: Yes, pandering to the audience. A friend of ours said recently ‘smiles last longer that laughs’.

Karen: Do you have any final words for clowns coming up in the world?

Jackie: I think that it depends on why you are clowning. If you are clowning in groups just have a good time that is fine but if you are serious and want to make this your career then you have to take it on a more serious track. Know your limitations as a clown; know what you are good at. Robin can juggle but I would have to do comedy juggling. Do it as much as you can every little chance you can. You must apply yourself.

We are all children at heart and I think most comedy is the art of saying things we would not say normally as an adult. I think to be a good clown you need to have a childlike attitude-not a childish attitude. I look at life like that. You need to be emotionally involved to a point that your heart is in it to. It isn’t just, ‘I got a laugh’. I think all good performers show what is in their heart. Red Skelton was 100% that way; everything he did had a message.
Jack LeClaire passed his wisdom, knowledge and skill onto his son. His son has graciously passed it on to us.

Robin: The vast majority of us will never be Circus Clowns but the dedication and inspiration and methods of working we hear from Jackie apply to us all. His decade’s long career is not at an end because of his spirit, love and commitment to the Art of Clowning.