Club Juggling in Australia- a short history.

 This is just a very brief discussion about club juggling in Australia and 

an opportunity to look at the evolution of props 

and style between 1890s-1940s.

A brief overview of club juggling in Australia (a work in progress)

It seems that club juggling came to Australia around the late 1800s and

South Australians were some of its earliest exponents. Most of these

displays were in small venues such as Town Halls or private functions

and in the context of Indian club swinging. Some early examples were

Mr George Steel/e in Adelaide in 1889 and Mr Soutar in the same year.

Whether this was club juggling as understood today, or just two club

twirling is unknown.

Marizles Wirth of the Wirth Circus family is traditionally said to have

juggled clubs on horseback.She certainly juggled a lot of other things,

plates, balls and lighted flambeaux, as a horse cantered beneath her. This

was as early as 1886. Her sister Madeline, at the same time, was

swinging Indian clubs, so it's entirely possible that Marizles juggled them too.

An interesting note is that in her diary, Marizles talks of getting new props

made in Adelaide. It seems the city had a significant juggling community

in the late 19th Century.

Below is a picture of Marizles.

One of the earlies club jugglers in an Australian theatre was John Pamplin,

a performer with Orpheus McAdoo's Georgia Minstrels. John, like Marizles

was a skilled juggler who specialised in juggling guns whilst dressed as a

Zouave. There are newspaper reports of him juggling Indian clubs at the Theatre

Royal in Adelaide in November 1899. In later years he was a noted club juggler,

which supports the idea that he was one of the the first people to juggle clubs on

an Australian stage.

It is difficult to find pictures of John because the individual members of 

touring minstrel groups were rarely identified. Below are two photos. One a

group shot and another a pair. The first seems to show a man in a white

hat with possibly a gun- perhaps this is John? The second shows the same man

with what could be an axe? I could be mistaken

 Is this John Pamplin in Australia in 1899?

Americans, Derenda and Breen came to Australia in 1902 and introduced club
passing to the Australian theatrical world. From that time passing became a

staple of the Australian vaudeville circuit.

Local club passing acts started appearing in the theatres after their visit. Lennon, Hyman

and Lennon were early Australian club passers and here they are in 1906.

By 1910 there were many Australian club jugglers.

The Kavanaghs and the Creightons were examples and they soon

took their acts to the US.

Some jugglers remained in Australia.  Carl Bracken of the Bracken family

included a passing act as part of the family travelling show.

His partner was Frank Uren, of later Frank, Lank and Alice fame. 

Here they are  in 1912. This picture is courtesy of a family member

Used with permission, please don't reproduce it.

Frank Uren and Carl Bracken, c.1912

Photo courtesy of the Uren/Thomas family private collection.

Passing provided more opportunities for women to perform

with clubs and Frank, Lank and Alice were a passing trio who

appeared during the early years of the First World War. They

were Victorians.Alice later became a well known and loved dance

instructor in Melbourne. She also married Frank. 

The popularity of club passing continued into the 1920s

when the Littlejohns sparkled up their clubs and maintained a

solid juggling career for over a decade. Frank Littlejohn

made his own clubs and patented the design for

his sparkling props. Frank always included women in

his act.

Above Frank's patent

Below- in costume (1920s)

A famous club passing duo of the 1930s in Queensland

were the McIvor sisters who were filmed in Brisbane in 1935.

Their father was a juggler who taught the girls at an early age.

Their career as adults was relatively short,

but very memorable.  Here is a bad copy of the video. It is apparently

one of the earliest known videos of women passing.

During the late 30s club passing and club juggling

continued its popularity, but opportunities for performance

declined due to competition from movies and the consequent

decrease in vaudeville performances and popularity.

But of course there were still club jugglers.

In 1940 PIX magazine published pictures of Ossie Delroy, a circus legend and

Jimmy Wallace juggling in Sydney. Jimmy was ‘the’ juggler in Australia

for about two decades. He grew up in Marrickville in inner Sydney

and his father was a well known magician and puppeteer. 

Below Ossie and Jimmy in Pix Magazine 1940.

Ossie and Jimmy entertained the troops with their

club juggling during the war and the entertainment unit was

organised by another juggler, West Australian, Jim Collins.

- to be continued .........

This is what I've discovered so far...

and of course the research continues.

Feel free to comment etc...

.

Early club juggling on the Australian Stage

Some information about early club juggling on the Australian Stage. References available upon request. 

 Indian club swinging was well established in Australia by the turn of the 20^th Century. However, although club juggling was common in England and the US in the 1880s and 1890s, it had not reached the antipodes. It was not until 1902, according to Charles Waller, that the first club jugglers performed on the Australian stage.

Although it is probable that clubs were juggled in the country before 1902, the first theatrical performance occurred that year at the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney. The performers were two Americans, Derenda and Breen, who were comedic jugglers and carried Van Wyck clubs.

 The two men had met at a club swinging tournament in New York and from this meeting they developed a music hall act. They were the first club jugglers to incorporate comedy and patter into their performance despite their peers saying that club juggling was ‘too pretty’ for comedy.  

In Australia they began the act by one of them leaping out of a life size poster. Every night it was a different juggler who leapt from the backdrop, keeping the audience guessing as to which one was alive and which a representation.

They incorporated a great deal of humour into the act and showed an amazing dexterity on stage. Their show involved juggling three Wyck clubs back to back, and the climax of their performance was the pair mounting pedestals and throwing eight clubs at each other.

Derenda and Breen, Australian Town, and Country Journal 18 January 1902 p.22

. Derenda was well known for his temper tantrums when the clubs misbehaved.

‘When Derenda made a miss, his rage became a thing awful to behold. Sometimes he would snap a mighty chain to pieces; sometimes with his teeth, tear lumps from the top of a wooden pedestal.’

The arrival of the juggling club on the Australian stage led to a contest between club users in the country. Indian club swingers scoffed at the club jugglers, and the cultural space occupied by the club was contested between the athletes and the entertainers.

Whilst Derenda and Breen were entertaining the crowds with their version of club juggling, well known axe and Indian club swinger, Jack Harrison, challenged them to a match. Jack called the pair ‘fancy club swingers’. A term that implied a derogatory attitude towards the art of juggling.

The antagonism between the Indian club swinging community and club juggling continued during the early 1900s. One article published in a Queensland paper compared the health effects of club swinging and juggling as follows.

‘I am aware that the artistes ‘on the boards’ execute some marvellous and intricate evolutions but their work savours more of jugglery than legitimate club swinging. As a rule, they use extremely light clubs, in fact were you to offer them ones weighing 3 or 4lbs they would be unable to do their wonderful finger swings catches and changes. This stage trick- club work looks very pretty and is indeed clever, but it does not bring any appreciable development, as the clubs being mostly held with the finger tips confine the muscular work to the fingers, wrist and forearm.’

This description of club jugglers as ‘artistes’ who performed ‘jugglery’ dismissed the skill involved in juggling. The author clearly considered juggling inferior to swinging. By 1910, this disdain of club juggling had spread, and Indian Club Swinging competitions were posting rules stating, ‘no juggling allowed’. This indicated that club juggling had spread in the general community and was infecting the athletic halls of Australia.  Another indication of the spread of club juggling occurred in 1906, when an Australian club juggling act was incorporated into the annual  pantomime.

Australian born trio, Lennon Hyman, and Lennon, were experienced acrobats before encountering the juggling club.  They began their career with touring companies presenting a comedy contortionist act called ‘The Three Waiters.’ After a tour of New Zealand, they took the act to England, and returned to Australia with some Van Wyck juggling clubs. Their encounter with juggling clubs changed their status in the theatrical community and ensured a successful career.

 

Lennon Hyman and Lennon (Authors Collection)

They were comedians,  and their costumes were similar in style to those of Derenda and Breen. Modestly dressed on stage, the three men passed clubs between them at a dizzying rate.

'The first turn was a display of juggling with Indian clubs which they handled with remarkable proficiency, exchanging flying clubs with one another, and sometimes surrendering three clubs in mid-air with an air of perfect nonchalance…. the varied manipulations were really astounding, the concluding turn in which the nine clubs were kept twirling in the air created the greatest enthusiasm.'

In 1906 they performed in the annual William Anderson pantomime, Sinbad the Sailor, suggesting that club juggling had become a popular feature of the Australian stage.

If you are interested in current day juggling in Sydney, try Sydney Juggling for information.