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Where did clowns go so horribly wrong? Dive into the history of their downfall, from Edgar Allan Poe's Hopfrog to the recent Clown Panic. Good clowns' reputations have been ruined by Pogo's collection of bodies beneath his house. Crotchy the Clown mortified Nebraska's Supreme Court. A Florida clown shot a woman at her own home. We even dig into the suspect history of the word, coulrophobia. Shakes the Clown had nothing on these characters!
Very Bad Clowns
Show notes
Coulrophobia - the fear of clowns
A discussion of the erroneous etymology of this rather recent word.Book: Radford, Benjamin, Bad Clowns (University of New Mexico Press), pp 31-40, 166-67, 2106
Website: Merryam Webster Dictionary, n.d.
Book: Langley, Travis Ph.D, The Lost Origin of Coulrophobia, the Abnormal Fear of Clowns, Feb 24, 2017
Website: First known use of the word Coulrophobia, n.d.
Crotchy the Clown
Crotchy the Clown had a late-night, public access show in Nebraska back in the 1990s. He pushed the envelope with an episode of him... taking care of some business in the nude.Book: Bradford, Benjamin, Bad Clowns (University of New Mexico Press), pp 95-98, 2016
Origins of the Harlequin clown
From folklore of the Wild Hunt, to the French stage, the harlequin has one of the most intriguing origin stories.Book: Radford, Benjamin, Bad Clowns (University of New Mexico Press), pp 6-10, 28, 2016
Book: George Taylor, French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789-1805, Vol. 39 (Cambridge University Press), pp 32, 2000
Article: Peake, Harold, Horned Deities (Man, Vol. 22), pp 27-29, Feb. 1922
Book: Grimm, Jacob, Teutonic Mythology: Volume I & III (Dover), 1883
Divine Court Jesters
Just how did jesters get away with saying terrible things to kings without having their heads lopped off? Some believe they were considered divine protection against evil.Book: Radford, Benjamin, Bad Clowns (University of New Mexico Press), pp 9, 2016
Joseph Grimaldi and Charles Dickens
The progenitor of the modern clown is Joseph (Guissepe) Grimaldi. His tragic story was parodied in Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers, and then retold by Dickens in Grimaldi's biography.Book: Radford, Benjamin, Bad Clowns (University of New Mexico Press), pp 24-25, 2016
Book: Dickens, Charles, Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi (G Routledge & Co.), 1853
Article: Stein, Sadie, The Vestigial Clown (The Paris Review), Jun 23, 2014
It's Uncanny how right Sigmund Freud was
An old pscychologist's theory on why we're creeped out by clowns. The UncannyArticle: Watkins, Gwynne, An Expert Explains Why You’re Scared of Creepy Clowns and Other Horror Tropes (Slate Magazine), Sep 6, 2017
The ball of the burning men, and Hopfrog
A French historical moment called the Bal des Ardents was retold by Edgar Allan Poe in 1849. He changed the characters to jesters and, in doing so, contributed to the history of bad clowns.Book: Morgan, Jack , The biology of horror: gothic literature and film (Southern Illinois University Press), pp 41-42, 2002
Book: Eugenio Barba, Nicola Savarese, The Five Continents of Theatre (Brill), pp 390, 2019
He Who Gets Slapped
A 1924 silent movie, staring Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer stands as the First English movie portraying a bad clown (based on an earlier Russian film from 1916). We also discuss The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), staring Jimmy Stewart, n.d.
John Wayne Gacy
Michelle and Charles debate the relevance of including this 1970s serial killer in a discussion of unsavory clowns., n.d.
, n.d.
Sheila Warren
Sheila Keen was arrested recently for a 30-year-old unsolved murder in Florida, where a clown showed up at Marlene Warren's doorstep and shot her down. Keen court case is now working it's way through the system in 2020Article: Olmeda, Rafael, Suspected killer clown went free for 27 years. What took so long? (South Florida Sun Sentinal), Nov 2, 2018
Clown Panic of 2016-2017
We discuss the origins of a mass hysteria phenomenon of recent years - The sudden increase in clown sightings that became criminal acts.Website: There were so many, Wikipedia is the best starting point, n.d.
Show gallery
Arthur Rackam's 1936 illustration of Hopfrog and Tripetta at the King's court, in Edgar Allan Poe's story, "Hopfrog"
"Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination" (1935) Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
Crotchy the Clown
Sheila Keen Warren's 2017 mugshot, after being charged with murder, disguised as a clown.
Joseph Grimaldi, drawn as "Joey the Clown" in an 1820 illustration
John Wayne Gacy, as Pogo the Clown