A three-hour tour with ‘King of the Freaks’ Johnny Eck
Carnival sensation Johnny Eck’s severely truncated stature did not deter him from being crowned “The Most Remarkable Man Alive” in the 1930s by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Prompted by a dose of eBay browsing serendipity, a twilight expedition to the retired Tarzan Escapes actor’s modest Baltimore home is fondly etched in stone by committed Three Stooges researcher Scott Reboul, incidentally a distinguished Savannah River Site radiochemist for a quarter of a century.
The Scott Reboul Interview, Part Six
In 1932 Johnny Eck was co-billed in Tod Browning’s motion picture Freaks, playing the role of himself, a circus freak known as the half-man. Eck’s Hollywood foray lasted for just three additional Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies [variations of a “Bird-Man” in Tarzan the Ape Man, Tarzan Escapes, and Tarzan’s Secret Treasure]. Eck was born with his body ending just below his rib cage, with no obvious waist or legs. He walked on his hands, and was an acrobat, balancing himself on one hand, while the remainder of his body stood suspended upside down. For more details on Eck, see the information provided on IMDb and/or the Johnny Eck Museum curated by Jeffrey Pratt Gordon.
As a kid growing up in the 1960s, I learned about Freaks and Eck’s role in it through Forest J. Ackerman’s Famous…
