- Andy The Clown
Andy the Clown was the performing name of Andrew Rozdilsky, Jr. (December 6 1917 - September 21 1995), a lifelong Chicago resident who performed, unofficially, as a clown at Chicago White Sox games at Comiskey Park for 30 years from 1960 to 1990. The youngest of five sons in a family of undertakers, Rozdilsky first began performing as a clown when he was 10 years old. After serving in the Army during World War II, … - Flippo the Clown
Flippo the Clown was the alter ego of Marvin Fishman (6 January 1927 - 10 June, 2006), who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Fishman, an aspiring jazz musician, changed his name to Bob Marvin in the late 1940's. Marvin first appeared as Flippo in 1952, hosting a children's television show, though it was the advertising agency JWT that gave him the name. He hosted a number of shows on WBNS-TV until leaving the station in September of 1977. - Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr. KBE (April 16, 1889 - December 25, 1977), better known as Charlie Chaplin, was an English comedy actor. Chaplin became one of the most famous performers as well as a notable director and musician in the early to mid Hollywood cinema era. He is considered to be one of the finest mimes and clowns ever caught on film and has greatly influenced performers in this field. - Patch Adams
Hunter Campbell "Patch" Adams (born May 28 1945 in Washington, District of Columbia) founded the Gesundheit! Institute in 1972. In 1998 his life was portrayed as a movie. Patch Adams is a social activist, citizen diplomat, professional clown, performer, and author. Each year he organizes a group of volunteers from around the world to travel to Russia as clowns, to bring hope and joy to orphans, patients, and the people. - Marcel Marceau
Marcel Marceau (born Marcel Mangel) (22 March 1923 – 22 September 2007) was a well-known mime artist, among the most popular representatives of this art form world-wide. - John Wayne Gacy
John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 - May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer. He was convicted and later executed for the rape and murder of 33 boys and men, 27 of whom he buried in a crawl space under the floor of his house, while others were found in nearby rivers, between 1972 and his arrest in 1978. He became notorious as the "Killer Clown" because of the many block parties he threw for his friends and neighbors, entertaining children in a clown suit and makeup, … - Emmett Kelly
Emmett Kelly (December 9, 1898 - March 28, 1979), a native of Sedan, Kansas, was an American circus performer, who created the memorable clown figure "Weary Willie," based on the hobos of the Depression era. Kelly began his career as a trapeze artist. By 1923, Emmett Kelly was working his trapeze act with John Robinson's circus when he met and married Eva Moore, another circus trapeze artist. - Steve Smith
Steve Smith (born August 8, 1951) is best known to audiences as his clown character, "TJ Tatters." Steve began his career in clowning as a Graduate of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, Class of 1971. He then toured with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for six seasons before leaving the show and moving to Chicago, Illinois where he attended the Goodman School of Drama and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from the institution, … - Bill Irwin
Bill Irwin (born April 11, 1950) is an American actor and clown noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American circus during the 1970s. He is known for his vaudeville-style stage acts, and has made a number of appearances on film and television. - Shawn Crahan
Shawn "Clown" Crahan, (born Michael Shawn Crahan on September 24, 1969), is a percussionist in the nu metal band Slipknot. He has a set of deeply tuned toms (drums) on which he provides backup (along with Chris Fehn) to the drumming of Joey Jordison. According to Slipknot, he was the first band member to wear a mask (he had an old clown mask). Shawn is by far, the most accident prone of Slipknot's members, suffering at least twelve serious injuries. - Philippe Gaulier
Philippe Gaulier is founder of L'École Philippe Gauliere, a theatre school located in Paris, France. He is notable for his work in Physical theatre, particularly in the areas of Clown and Bouffon. Gaulier is generally recognized as the worlds leading teacher in Bouffon, an artform which he holds as a sort of inverted Clown, where a balance is struck between Grotesqueness and charm. Gaulier teaches Jeu, and clown all over the world. - Annie Fratellini
Annie Fratellini (November 14, 1932 - June 30, 1997) was a French circus clown and film actress. She was born in Alger, Algeria to a Pied-noir family in Algeria (then part of France), a member of the Fratellini Family, and the granddaughter of Paul Fratellini, a famous European circus clown. Fratellini launched her career with the Medrano and Pinder circuses when she was 14. Much later in her career, Fratellini became the first female circus clown in France, … - Wavy Gravy
Wavy Gravy is a life-long activist for peace and personal empowerment, best known for his hippie appearance, personality, and beliefs. His moniker (which is the name he uses on a day-to-day basis: "It's worked pretty well through my life," he says, "except with telephone operators – I have to say 'Gravy, first initial W.") was given to him by B.B. King at the Texas International Pop Festival while he lay onstage incapacitated by a high dosage of LSD. - Matthew Rush
Matthew Rush (born Gregory Grove on September 22, 1972) is an American gay pornographic actor who appears in gay pornographic films and magazines. He is also a bodybuilder and personal trainer under his real name. He has competed at the Gay Games in Amsterdam and Sydney, Australia. - Caterina Valente
Caterina Valente (born January 14, 1931 in Paris) is an Italian-born singer, dancer, and actress. She comes from an Italian artist family; her father Giuseppe was a well-known accordion player, her mother, Maria Valente, a musical clown. She had three siblings, of whom Silvio Francesco was also active in show business. - Charlie Rivel
Josep Andreu i Lasserre (in Catalan; in Spanish, José Andrés, best known as Charlie Rivel, was an internationally known Spanish circus clown. He was born in Cubelles (Barcelona, Spain). His parents Pere Andreu Pausas (Spaniard) and Marie-Louise Lasarre (French) were circus artists as well. He debuted when he was three and formed the group Los Rivels with his brothers Pablo and René. He took his artistic name from Charlie Chaplin. - Bob Keeshan
Robert James Keeshan (June 27 1927 - January 23 2004) was an American actor who played the original "Clarabell the Clown" on the "Howdy Doody" television program. He is most famous as the star and title character of the children's show "Captain Kangaroo". Keeshan was born in Lynbrook, New York, and attended Fordham University after serving in the United States Marine Corps reserve during World War II. - Joseph Grimaldi
Joseph Grimaldi (December 18, 1778 - May 31, 1837), the most celebrated of English clowns Grimaldi's performances were reminiscent of the classic Commedia dell'arte. - Glenn
Glenn, whose full legal name consists of the single word "Glenn," is an American performer and artist. As a clown he was known variously as "Bongo", "Bongo the Clown", or "The Great Bongo". - Slava Polunin
Vyacheslav Ivanovich (Slava) Polunin (born June 12 1950) is a Russian clown, creator of the "Asisyai-revue", "Snowshow" and "Diabolo" shows. Polunin was born in the town of Novosil, Oryol Oblast, Russia into the family of a shop-assistant. He was successful in his school theatre, imitating Charles Chaplin, but was refused entry to the Leningrad Theater Institute because of poor pronunciation. After a few years' study at an engineering school, … - Slim Pickens
Louis Burton Lindley, Jr., better known by the stage name Slim Pickens, was a cowboy and actor. Pickens, who epitomized the profane, tough, sardonic cowboy, was born in Kingsburg, California. He was an excellent rider from age four and quit school to join the rodeo at age twelve. He was told that working in the rodeo would be "slim pickings" (very little money), giving him his name, but he did very well, … - David Shiner
David Shiner (born September 13 1953, Boston, Massachusetts), is an American clown. The lanky Shiner, usually donning a small dunce cap, started as a street mime, first in Colorado, and later in France and Germany. He managed to get multiple gigs with various circuses, including performances with the German Circus Roncalli and the Swiss National Circus ("Circus Knie"). In between he toured performing a dual act with Rene Bazinet. - Oleg Popov
Oleg Konstantinovich Popov is an extremely famous Russian clown and circus artist. Popov is also called the "Sun of the clowns". He was born on July 31 1930 in Moscow as the son of a clock-maker. He has studied elements of acrobatia, juggling and other circus skills in his youth. In 1949 he finished the Russian circus school in Moscow and started his career in the Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard. - Raymond Devos
Raymond Devos (November 9 1922, Mouscron, Belgium - June 15 2006, Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, Yvelines, France) was a French humorist, stand-up comedian and clown. He is best known for his sophisticated puns and surreal humour. - Dan Rice
Dan Rice (January 23, 1823 - February 22, 1900), was an American entertainer of many talents, most famously as a clown, who was pre-eminent before the Civil War. During the height of his career Rice was more of a household name than Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain. Coining the terms "One Horse Show" and "Greatest Show", he was a leading personality in the new American "pop culture", … - Lou Jacobs
Johann Ludwig Jacob (better known by his stage name Lou Jacobs) (January 1, 1903 - September 13, 1992) was an Auguste clown who performed for Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey for more than 60 years. He was inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame in 1989. Originally from Bremerhaven in Germany he was performing as a clown as young as age 11 and learned most of his skills in his early days. - Justin Bihag
Justin DeRago Bihag (born 1983) is the nephew of Duane "Dog" Chapman, and appeared on the A&E documentary/reality television series Dog The Bounty Hunter. Justin served as part of Chapman's team of bounty hunters during the first season of the show. During the "Bustin' With Justin" episode, he was described by Tim Chapman as more of a clown than a bounty hunter. Amidst the chagrin of many of the other employees, … - Paul Dooley
Paul Dooley (born Paul Brown on February 22, 1928 in Parkersburg, West Virginia) is an American character actor. Dooley was a keen cartoonist as a youth and drew a strip for a local paper in Parkersburg. He joined the Navy before discovering acting while at college. Moving to New York, he soon found success as a regular on the stage. Also having an interest in comedy, Dooley was a standup comedian for five years, and a member of the Compass Players, … - Max Patkin
Max Patkin (January 10 1920 - October 30 1999) was an American baseball player and clown, best known as the Clown Prince of Baseball. Patkin was the third officially crowned Clown Prince of Baseball, after Al Schacht and Jackie Price, though that sobriquet has also been applied to St. Louis Browns third baseman Arlie Latham among others. He performed for 51 years as a baseball clown. After an arm injury curtailed his minor league career, … - Achille Zavatta
Achille Zavatta was a French clown, artist and circus operator. Achille Zavatta was born in La Goulette, Tunisia, the son of Federico Zavatta, a circus owner. He started performing in his family's circus show at the age of three, forming with his brothers Michel and Rolph, the "Zavatta Trio". He became famous as a result of his pantomime skills. He died in 1993 in Ouzouer des Champs, Loiret and was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. - Roy Brown
Roy Thomas Brown (July 8,1932-January 22,2001) was an American television personality, puppeteer, clown and artist best known for playing "Cooky the Cook" on Chicago's long running "Bozo's Circus" and "The Bozo Show." Roy Brown was born in Tucson, Arizona but had lived in the Chicago area since he was a boy. - Barry Lubin
Barry Lubin, recently inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame, is an inventive, creative physical comedian most familiar to circus audiences as "Grandma", the eager and adored star of the Big Apple Circus. A member of the 1974 class of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, he performed for 5 years with the Greatest Show on Earth. He also performed at the prestigious International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo in 1977. - Grock
Grock (January 10 1880, Reconvilier, Switzerland - July 14 1959, Imperia, Italy), original name Charles Adrien Wettach, was a Swiss circus and music-hall clown whose blunders with the piano and the violin became proverbial. The son of a watchmaker, he became an amateur acrobat and was allowed to spend each summer with a circus, where he performed first as a tumbler and then as a violinist, pianist, and xylophonist. - Pat Cashin
Patrick "Pat" Cashin (born 1967 in Saddlebrook, New Jersey) has been described as "an inspired architect of slapstick circus silliness" whose performances are "a cartoon cavalcade of idiosyncratic oddities and imaginative absurdities" and that he is a "passionate practitioner of his ageless, eccentric art", which is really just a longwinded way of saying that he's a circus clown who really likes his job. - Felix Adler
Frank Bartlet Adler (better known by his stage name Felix Adler) (June 17, 1895 - February 1, 1960) was a circus performer and entertainer known as "The King of Clowns" who performed for Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey for 28 years. He was inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame in 1989. Adler and his wife, Amelia, were the first American husband and wife clown team, and he was the first clown ever to appear on television. - Frank Kelly
Frank Kelly (born 1938) is an Irish actor whose career has spanned radio, TV, theatre, music, writing and films. An educated and learned man, he has played a wide variety of roles in Irish theatre over many years, and he has toured extensively in the USA and Canada. - Otto Griebling
Otto Griebling (April 28, 1896 - April 19, 1972), an eccentric tramp character clown, is widely regarded as America's finest circus clown. Griebling came to America at the young age of fourteen. He began his early circus career as a bareback comedy rider with a circus in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Much of Griebling's career was spent with the Sells Floto, Cole Bros. and finally the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circuses. Most of his performing was done silent or in pantomime. - Alan Kupperberg
Alan Kupperberg is a comic artist known for working in both comic books and newspaper strips. Also occasionally working as a writer, he created the successful one-shot comic, "Obnoxio the Clown vs. The X-Men" as a one-man band handling everything from writing and illustrating to lettering, unusual for the comic industry at that time. Known for a more "cartoony" style than many other superhero artists employed, he seemed to specialize in nasty clowns for a while, … - George Carl
George Carl (7 May, 1916 - 1 January, 2000), a true "vaudevillian" style comic & clown. Carl was born in Ohio, and started his comedy career traveling with a variety of circuses during his teenage years. In time, Carl would become internationally famous as a clown and visual comedian. In his Sixties, Johnny Carson (a huge fan of Carl's) invited him to appear on The Tonight Show. - Karandash
Mikhail Nikolayevich Rumyantsev (10 December 1901 - 31 March 1983), better known under his stagename Karandash (which means "pencil"), was a famous Soviet clown. He was a People's Artist of the USSR, and was the teacher of the Russian clown Oleg Popov.
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