Showing posts with label Circus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Circus. Show all posts

15 February 2019

Charlie Cairoli - circus clown

Milan-born performer who became a Blackpool legend


Charlie Cairoli became one of the world's  most famous clowns
Charlie Cairoli became one of the world's
most famous clowns
The circus clown Charlie Cairoli, who would at his peak set a world record by appearing at the Blackpool Tower Circus in England for 40 consecutive seasons, was born in Affori, now a suburb of Milan but then a town in its own right, on this day in 1910.

Cairoli performed at the Tower for the first time in 1939 and returned every year until 1979, quitting only when his health began to fail him.

The run was not broken even by the outbreak of the Second World War, which Britain entered soon after he arrived, or his own arrest as a suspected ‘enemy alien’. He was the Tower’s most popular attraction for almost all of those years.

Cairoli, though born in Italy, was actually from a French family, albeit one of Italian descent, who christened him Hubert Jean Charles Cairoli.

His father, Jean-Marie, was also a clown; his mother, Eugenie, came from another French circus family with Italian heritage, the Rocono. Charles - known as Carletto - and his brother Louis-Philippe became part of the show as young children. Carletto made his debut at the age of seven.

At that age, he was doing little more than fetching and carrying for his parents, who were the stars. By the age of 17, he was entrusted with the role that would make him famous, that of the slapstick character known in the circus as an auguste, the figure of fun who would inevitably end up with a custard pie in the face, their trousers ripped off or a bucket of water over their head. Cairoli adopted a red nose, a bowler hat and oversized shoes as his trade marks.

Charlie Cairoli and his wife, Violetta. during the TV show This Is Your Life
Charlie Cairoli and his wife, Violetta.
during the TV show This Is Your Life
When he was 24 and working in Paris with his father in their Cairoli Brothers act at the the Cirque Medrano at Montmartre, he met his future wife, Violetta Fratellini, then only 19 and also from a famous circus family, who was there as part of a knockabout acrobatic act. Carletto showed off his musical talent by serenading her on the clarinet. By Christmas 1934 they were married.

In the winter of 1938, the Cairolis went to work in a Christmas pantomime in Birmingham, England. Clem Butson, the manager of the Blackpool Tower Circus, saw them in action and offered them a contract for the 1939 summer season.

When war broke out in September, Cairoli found himself in a difficult position. His father had French nationality and his brother had gone back to fulfil his military service. But Cairoli was born in Italy and was therefore Italian.

Before the war began he had applied for French citizenship but the papers had not come through. He even made the dramatic gesture of taking a watch he had given by the German leader Adolf Hitler after a performance in Munich and throwing it into the sea off the end of Blackpool’s North Pier, in the hope it would make his allegiance clear.

Cairoli regularly ended his Blackpool Tower Circus shows soaked to the skin
Cairoli regularly ended his Blackpool Tower Circus
shows soaked to the skin
Nonetheless, along with many other Italians living in Britain, mainly in the catering industry, Cairoli was deported to the Isle of Man.

Happily, proof of his French citizenship had arrived by October and he was able to return to the mainland, where he and his father spent the winter working in a munitions factory and appearing in variety shows before returning to Blackpool Tower for the summer season.

Cairoli was fortunate that Blackpool Tower Circus continued to operate throughout the war years, its location on the Lancashire coast just far enough away from the major cities to be relatively safe from bombing. And with foreign acts unable to travel to England, the Cairolis thrived.

He and Violetta established a good life in Blackpool, where they would remain for the rest of their lives. Cairoli’s popularity as a performer grew and the arrival of television saw his profile rise substantially in the ‘60s and ‘70s, with frequent television appearances both in Britain and America.

At the same time, he became a regular on stage in variety shows and pantomime, especially during the winters, including the Grand Theatre in Leeds and Alhambra in Bradford. On one occasion, he brought Christmas shopping in Leeds to a standstill as he led hundreds of youngsters through the streets to the City Varieties, where he gave a special show.

Cairoli had musical talent as well as a gift for comedy
Cairoli had musical talent as well as a gift for comedy
A measure of his status as one of Britain’s best-loved entertainers was an invitation in 1970 to appear on the hugely popular TV show This Is Your Life.

Cairoli continued with a hectic schedule of performances until 1979, when exhaustion forced him to miss a number of shows at the Tower. In November of that year he announced his retirement, which lasted only a few months, sadly.

He died in February 1980 at the age of just 70, at his home on Blackpool’s North Shore. His widow, Violetta, survived him by 22 years. One of their three children, also called Charlie, revived his father’s character for cabaret and pantomime performances, but never appeared at the Tower Circus.



The Villa Litta is a 17th century house within Milan's oldest city park at Affori, where Cairoli was born
The Villa Litta is a 17th century house within Milan's
oldest city park at Affori, where Cairoli was born
Travel tip:

Since 1923, Affori has been part of greater Milan and now has little to distinguish it from many other suburbs in the city, which now has a population of 1.25 million.  There is evidence of a settlement in the area since 915 and there are some remnants of a medieval town, notably a 14th century watch tower that forms part of a more modern building in Via Osculati. Affori’s main historical building today is the Villa Litta, a 17th-century house located within Milan’s oldest city park. The villa, originally built by Count Pirro I Visconti Borromeo in the style of the Medici villas of Tuscany, it was subsequently owned by several families of the Milanese aristocracy, namely the Corbella, the D'Adda and the Litta.

Stay in Milan with Booking.com

The Piazza Santa Maria Novella in Florence, where Giuseppe Garibaldi gathered support for his Expedition of the Thousand
The Piazza Santa Maria Novella in Florence, where Giuseppe
Garibaldi gathered support for his Expedition of the Thousand
Travel tip:

Violetta, Cairoli’s wife, was the granddaughter of Gustavo Fratellini, a circus trapeze artist and acrobat from Florence who was also a follower of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the patriotic general who led the drive to Italian unification in the 19th century, most notably with his Expedition of the Thousand, which claimed Sicily, Naples and the southern part of the mainland on behalf of the new Kingdom of Italy. Fratellini may have been inspired by a major speech Garibaldi gave to a crowd gathered in Piazza Santa Maria Novella as he toured the Italian cities, gathering recruits for his army of red shirts.



1927: The birth of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, papal candidate

1944: Allied bombing destroys Monte Cassino Abbey

(Picture credits: Villa Litta by Goldmund100; Piazza Santa Maria Novella by Sailko; via Wikimedia Commons)

21 December 2018

Moira Orfei - circus owner and actress

‘Queen of the Big Top’ became cultural icon


Moira Orfei rarely strayed from her trademark look, with  heavy make-up and a turban-style hairdo
Moira Orfei rarely strayed from her trademark look, with
heavy make-up and a turban-style hairdo 
Moira Orfei, an entertainer regarded as the Queen of the Italian circus and an actress who starred in more than 40 films, was born on this day in 1931 in Codroipo, a town in Friuli-Venezia Giulia about 25km (16 miles) southwest of Udine.

She had a trademark look that became so recognisable that advertising posters for the Moira Orfei Circus, which she founded in 1961 with her new husband, the circus acrobat and animal trainer Walter Nones, carried simply her face and the name 'Moira'.

As a young woman, she was a strikingly glamorous Hollywood-style beauty but in later years she took to wearing heavy make-up, dark eye-liner and bright lipstick, topped off with her bouffant hair gathered up in a way that resembled a turban.  Her camped-up appearance made her an unlikely icon for Italy’s gay community.

Born Miranda Orfei, she spent her whole life in the circus. Her father, Riccardo, was a bareback horse rider and sometime clown; her mother, part of the Arata circus dynasty, gave birth to her in the family’s living trailer.  Growing up, she performed as a horse rider, acrobat and trapeze artist.

Posters for Circo Moira Orfei always featured her face and first name
Posters for Circo Moira Orfei always
featured her face and first name
Her film career began the year before she was married, with minor roles in a couple of action movies based loosely on historical themes. Dino De Laurentiis, the producer of one of them, suggested she changed her name from Miranda to Moira, after which the director Mario Costa gave her a bigger part in a swashbuckling adventure movie, Queen of the Pirates.

The so-called sword-and-sandal genre, very popular in Italy at the time, remained her speciality until she was given parts in a couple of comedies written for the great Italian comic actor, Totò.

Thereafter, although the adventure epic remained her staple, her acting talent was recognised in several movies that fell into the commedia all’Italiana genre.

She was in a cast headed by Marcello Mastroianni and Virna Lisi in Mario Monicelli’s Casanova ‘70 (in which her cousin, Liana Orfei, appeared as a lion tamer), played alongside Virna Lisi again in Pietro Germi’s Signore e Signori, with Nino Manfredi and Ugo Tognazzi in Dino Risi’s Straziami ma di baci saziami (Torture Me But Kill Me with Kisses), and with Vittorio Gassman in the Dino Risi classic Profumo di donna (Scent of a Woman).

Meanwhile, Circo Moira Orfei went from strength to strength. With Nones presenting obedient lions or tigers, she presented the circus’s performing elephants.

As a young actress, Orfei was a star of many sword-and-sandal adventure movies
As a young actress, Orfei was a star of
many sword-and-sandal adventure movies
Her animal acts gained silver and gold awards at the International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo in 1987, 1989 and 2004 and she became known in the circus world as Moira of the Elephants.

In 1969, she and Nones launched Circo sul Ghiaccio - Circus on Ice - a monumental production which combined a circus ring and a skating rink. A highly elaborate show featured frequent set and costume changes and an international cast of circus and stars.

Circus on Ice toured in a huge big top, the largest seen in Italy. Moving from place to place involved 10 tractors, 34 articulated buses, two special trains and more than 100 caravans.

Orfei retired from performing in the late 1990s, although she continued to supervise every detail of the business.  She suffered some setbacks, including a serious car crash in 2000 that left her with a broken leg and five broken ribs, and a stroke in 2006, which happened during a show in Reggio Calabria and required her to take more than a year off in recuperation.

Subsequently, her active participation in shows was limited, although she would usually parade round the ring at the start, welcoming the audience. Her son and daughter, Stefano and Lara, followed in the family tradition and became part of the show, he becoming one of Europe's foremost animal trainers, she a talented equestrian.

Moira Orfei died in Brescia in 2015 a month ahead of what would have been her 84th birthday, passing away in her sleep in her trailer, having continued to follow the itinerant life of the circus to the end. Her funeral was held in San Donà di Piave - 40km (25 miles) from Venice and about 60km (37 miles) southwest of Codroipo.

A crowd put at around 5,000 watched the funeral cortege, with a hearse drawn by four white Lipizzaners - the breed closely associated with the Spanish Riding School of Vienna - carrying her coffin to the tune of a marching band playing circus music.

The Villa Manin in Codroipo, once home of Ludovico Manin, the last Doge of the Venetian Republic
The Villa Manin in Codroipo, once home of Ludovico
Manin, the last Doge of the Venetian Republic
Travel tip:

Codroipo, which used to be part of the Venetian Republic, is best known for the Villa Manin, once the family home of Ludovico Manin, the last Doge of the Venitian Republic, who governed from 1789 until 1797, when Napoleon Bonaparte forced him to abdicate. It was at the villa in 1797 that the Treaty of Campoformio was signed, marking Napoleon's victory, the fall of the First Coalition (of European states opposed to Napoleon), and the cession of Friuli to Austria.


A typically elegant street in the town of San Donà di Piave
Travel tip:

Elegant San Donà di Piave is one of the historical main towns of the eastern Veneto, although it needed substantial reconstruction in the early 1920s after being heavily damaged during the First World War, when the drawn out Battle of Solstizio took place on the banks of the Piave river. The municipality of San Donà had been established in 1797 as the administrative centre of one of the 15 cantons of the Treviso district. It was part of the Lombard-Venetian Kingdom from 1815 and during the Austrian domination it kept its position of county seat of the district. In the first part of the 19th century, the centre of the city underwent some development, with the building of palaces, commercial buildings and a new cathedral, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Find a hotel in San Donà di Piave with TripAdvisor

More reading:

How Dino Risi helped launch the career of Sophia Loren

Why Mario Monicelli was one of the greats of Italian film

The former pasta salesman who helped put Italian cinema on the map

Also on this day:

69AD: Vespasian becomes emperor of Rome

1401: The birth of Renaissance artist Masaccio

1872: The birth of priest and composer Lorenzo Perosi


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