My entire world had diminished until the only part of me that existed lived in the 7 x 3 inch screen of my cell phone. There were only two times I didn’t feel nauseous or in pain. The first was when I was sleeping. The second was when I sheltered myself beneath all the blankets on my bed and watched silent films in the dark. Most of the jarring piano tracks that accompanied the films were not original, so I muted the music, and let myself be swept away in the flash and swell of adventures, dramas, and love stories. I was sick, scared, and the only comfort my body would register was in the flickering light from 100 years ago. I wonder if this was how some of my ancestors felt the first time they descended into the dark of a theatre not with a stage, but with a screen, and experienced for the first time the aching, haunting glamour of a moving picture.
/&
In 2021 I had two surgeries and got gunk in my lungs afterward from the anesthesia, which required some hardcore antibiotics that made me incredibly nauseous and unable to eat (which is not the best thing when you’re trying to recover from surgery).
All this to say that I ended up spending most of the spring and summer of 2021 in bed and my coping method of choice this round ended up being silent movies. (Or, more accurately, I should say my coping method of choice this round ended up being Rudolph Valentino.) I watched a lot of silent films and read about old Hollywood stars and it was a fairly glamorous way to spend moments in between excruciating pain and puking in a bucket.
This was the path that led me to discover the 1932 film Freaks. This is not a silent film, and the production and release of the film falls outside my usual time period of interest. (My time period of interest is between 1890-1920. Valentino lived from 1895 to 1926. Coincidence? Not at all.) But as a film set within a sideshow that featured actual disabled people and sideshow performers, I was more than willing to extend my timeline to learn more about the film. (RIP Rudolph.)
First of all, I didn’t actually watch the film. I still haven’t seen the film. (I have grand plans to do a reaction video someday so I’m holding out.) Unlike public domain silent films, Freaks still has enough of a cult interest that you have to pay to stream it. There are clips on YouTube and enough commentary, analysis, and articles on the film that this was good enough for me. I was mostly interested in learning more about the disabled people who were in the film and started seeking out their biographical information.
This is how I discovered Angelo Rossitto. In the film, he is featured in one of (if not the most) iconic scenes in the movie. (He is depicted in the above poster, the little person in a suit with his fist raised.)
A super condensed summary of the beginning of the film is that an able-bodied trapeze artist named Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) learns that one of the carnival performers, a little person named Hans(Harry Earles), is on his way to receiving an inheritance. Even though Hans is already engaged to another little person, Frieda (Daisy Earles), he falls for Cleopatra when she makes her move and he decides to marry her. Cleopatra plans to have Hans killed after they are married so she can have his money. They get married, and at the wedding dinner where all the carnival performers have gathered, the performers announce that since Cleopatra has married Hans, that they accept her as “one of us.” As Cleopatra is trying to poison Hans’s drink, the carnival performers begin chanting, “One of us, one of us, we accept her, one of us.” (They also chant gooble-gobble in there, which I take to make the scene more eerie and weird and horror-esque than it already is.) This leads Cleopatra to lose it and start screaming that she is not one of them and they are all just freaks.
In this scene, Angelo’s character had been standing on the table passing around a glass goblet for everyone to drink from. When he offers the goblet to Cleopatra, she takes it and splatters it all over Angelo before demanding all the freaks leave. (A video of this scene is embedded at the end!) It’s a short scene, but it packs a punch, and Angelo’s performance, though brief, is emotionally moving in the few seconds he was given.
I won’t get into what happens in the rest of the film. I’ll link some synopsis and analysis sources at the end if you’re interested. (I highly recommend the video from coldcrashpictures on YouTube in the links below!) The life of the film itself is interesting and telling about the experience of disability history. The film was not well received by audiences and many of the disabled performers were not treated well during filming. Several scenes were cut from the final release that made the film suffer, and the film was even banned in parts of the world. Though there are some elements in the film that do treat disability well, like presenting disabled people with love interests, families, and life goals, the way the plot deals with Cleopatra in the end is quite ableist. That and the film was marketed as a horror film, when it was much more a romantic drama (Albeit heavy on the drama with, you know, a murder plot.). But the title “Freaks” doesn’t exactly scream “Romantic Drama.”
But, back to Angelo. In my perusing of the cast, I found that Angelo had quite a long career in film, appearing in over 70 movies between 1927 and 1987. He was 2′ 11” tall and filled a range of roles. Modern audiences might best recognize his role in the 1985 film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome where Angelo played the Master part of the character MasterBlaster. Biographical sources cite he was born on February 18th, 1908 and died on September 21st, 1991. The part that interests me, though, is that he was born and lived in Omaha, Nebraska until he was about 18 or 19.
When I first learned about his ties to Nebraska, biographical information on websites like Find A Grave said that Angelo was “discovered” selling newspapers in Nebraska by stage, screen, and radio actor John Barrymore right before he was cast in his first film in 1927. However, this was uncited and the story changed to say Angelo was introduced to John Barrymore at a dinner party in California. Angelo did work selling newspapers in Omaha when he was a teenager and there is an image I found online of Angelo as an adult selling newspapers in California. The photo of him as an adult was cited as taken in 1948, after Angelo had been in many films. Even though he was acting, he also owned and ran the “Rossitto Paper Stand” (though I was unable to find out for how long).
Basically, Angelo made his way to California from Omaha, but when, why, and how I do not know. Whether he was discovered on the street selling newspapers and invited to the dinner party, or if the dinner party had nothing to do with newspapers is a mystery. The tie to John Barrymore seems to be correct, though, as Angelo’s first film role was in The Beloved Rogue which starred Barrymore.
Angelo’s parents were immigrants from Italy and the neighborhood he lived in Omaha was largely Italian. His parents are buried in Omaha, in an historic Catholic cemetery. Angelo is buried in Los Angeles.
My local search for Angelo produced an interview with Angelo that ran in the Omaha Bee on Sunday, January 20th, 1924. He would have only been almost 15 years old, and the short story features a photo of him wearing clothes typical of a newsboy at the time. The text of the article is included below the image:
Tiniest Newsboy in Omaha Looks Up at Yardstick; Has Seen 14 Winters
Studies Business and History at Tech High – Saves Money He Earns.
You’ve seen Angelo Rossitto. He’s the smallest newsboy in Omaha, he’s 14, and sells The Omaha Bee in front of the Peters Trust building from 4 till 6:30 p. m. daily.
Angelo will never be big enough to cause Jack Dempsey any worry. Still he couldn’t “walk under duck” and he is more than “knee-high to a grasshopper.” Most people take a bird’s-eye view of Angelo. He’s nearly as tall as a yardstick and he’s bright as a tack. Angelo isn’t always going to be a newsboy. No siree! He is getting an education. He graduated from Edward Rosewater school and now is attending Technical High.
“What are you studying. Angelo?”
“English, civics, business relations. physical training and European history,” says Angelo, rattling off the big words just like an archbishop.
He knows all about Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Taft and Harding and everything. His bright eyes and smiling mouth and quick answers indicate his ready mind. “What are you going to be when you’re through school?”
“A street cleaner,” suggests one of his newsboy friends, and leaps away just in time to escape Angelo’s rush.
“I don’t know,” says Angelo.
“Like to be a professor in a college or keep a cigar store or be a business man?”
“I’d like to be a professor perhaps or perhaps a business man,” he decides.
“Do you like the girls, Angelo?”
“Aw,” laughs Angelo, “I ain’t started going around any yet.”
“The girls like him,” volunteers his newsy friend. “They always buy Bees from him.” And again the laughing Angelo is constrained to chase the big boy away.
“What do you do with all your money?”
“Save it,” says Angelo.
“Got $10,000 saved up?”
Angelo laughs. “Yes, $10 would be more like it.”
“Do you sell papers on Sunday too?”
“No,” says Angelo, “I go to church on Sundays, to Philomena’s.”
Angelo lives at 1441 South Eleventh street with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Sam Rossitto, and his two brothers, Joe, 13, and Yanno, 8. He has a sister, too, Mrs. Mary Maloni.
This article is difficult to analyze. On one hand, I think the article ran for mostly entertainment purposes, rather than any genuine interest in Angelo’s life or his role as a paperboy (albeit a well-known one if the article is to be believed). The comments about his education, and questions about if he likes girls or wants to be a businessman when he grows up do come off as a bit mocking in tone. This very likely could be because he was a kid, and not just because he was a little person, but either way, it doesn’t come across as taking his answers very seriously. In contrast to the questions, I find Angelo’s answers to be quite earnest. The piece does, at least, point out that Angelo is smart and that he saves his money.
I might be a bit over critical in my take. In a history class I took for my Master’s that I’m still salty about, we had to analyze newspaper articles from throughout American history and most of my classmates read into things that I didn’t think were there. They purported belittling language, sarcasm, and backhanded compliments in places that I didn’t think it existed. (For example, in the early 1900’s a brief ran about a young woman getting a teaching job in a neighboring town and the paper reported being very proud that she would represent their town well in her new position. Multiple classmates said this was a backhanded compliment and the brief was mocking her. Excuse me? How??? I will never give this up. But moving on.)
Look, I’m pretty firm in my belief that we should not apply our modern ear too much in regard to things like tone in articles like this. This is not to ignore bigotry, but so we can be more accurate in locating instances of bigotry and thus analyze their effects more effectively than just saying any newspaper article that ran about any minority before the 1990’s was pure bigotry. That helps no one and in my opinion is disrespectful to our marginalized ancestors. Our understanding of the experiences of marginalized people of the past suffers when we do this, because it gives focus to overarching bigotries of the time while ignoring the multilayered cultural experience of marginalized people. So let me say this:
Overall, I don’t think the article meant to outright mock Angelo and his endeavors, or be openly bigoted toward disabled people. But the article was written to entertain readers, which is why it was presented with jabs at Angelo’s expense. It also could have been written to give curious gawkers more information. People saw a little person selling newspapers, wondered, what’s up with that? and then the Bee ran the article. Nosy neighbors aren’t just for small towns. (Which, I know, a lot of people consider Omaha small, even now, let alone in 1924, but stick with me here.)
This in itself is important to understand, because for many disabled people at this time and even now, our lives are used for entertainment or gossip. It’s likely this experience was entwined with Angelo’s future career in the entertainment industry, and perhaps even in his decision to continue to run a paper stand as an adult.
What I can extrapolate from the article is that Angelo appeared to have no problem going to school, selling papers, or being welcomed in his church community. He comes off as outgoing, attentive, and eager to learn. These are all things that translate to his long acting career, and speak more to his experience in Omaha than dwelling on the annoying tone of the interviewer.
Of course. there’s a lot we don’t know, like why he left Omaha. And though he acted in many films, we don’t know if he was treated well on sets or if he was treated like a “freak” on the same level of some of the villains or alien creatures he portrayed in roles. We don’t know how his experience as a child of immigrant parents impacted his life. There is some evidence that he stayed close with his parents or even supported them–though they are buried in Omaha, they died in Los Angeles in the 1960’s where Angelo would have been living and working.
Whether the interview meant to be mocking or not, it’s an interesting piece of history to contrast Angelo’s early life from how it would turn out.
“What are you going to be when you’re through school?” Angelo went on to act in over 70 films in Hollywood, along with voice acting, and other jobs in the entertainment industry.
“What do you do with all your money?” Angelo funded charitable causes and helped found Little People of America as well as serving in various roles for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the American Red Cross.
“Do you like the girls, Angelo?” Yes, though he did get divorced, Angelo would go on to get married and have a family.
Angelo Rossitto’s headstone at Forest Lawn Memorial Park reads “Beloved father and grandfather”
/& /& /&
P.S.–Since I couldn’t gracefully fit it in earlier, here is an article than ran in a Nebraska paper about the film Freaks which showed at the Overland Theatre in Nebraska City in April, 1932. The Overland had a stage and a screen. The movie showed on a Friday and then Saturday matinees at 2:30 and 4:30 on the screen. On Saturday there was also a dog and pony show taking place on the stage before the movie that was marketed to families as being fun for the kids. Admission was 10 cents for children and 25 cents for adults.
A collection of pygmies, monstrosities and freaks, a world of half humans who live, love, marry and engage in struggles for existence much the same as ordinary mortals is shown in the motion picture, “Freaks,” now showing at the Overland theater., Medical science in many cases is at loss to explain their deformities and peculiarities, existing since birth. Many of them had normal parents. Their petty jealousies and self-sacrifices, their envy and hatred form a fascinating tale as revealed for the first time in this film. These humans in miniature form are supported by Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Wallace Ford and Rosco Ates. Tod Browning directed. Nebraska Daily News Press, Page6, April 23, 1932.
Chapter links:
Angelo Rossitto on Find A Grave
Postcard of St. Philomena Catholic Church, Omaha, Nebr. circa 1910
Video Analysis | “Freaks Isn’t a Horror Film” from coldcrashpictures
One of Us scene:
To be Continued
