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Geeks

The geek show is a storied and transgressive part of the American carnival experience, consigned to the lowest rungs of the culture it was part of.

The performer who played the role was a down on his (or rarely, her) luck individual whose only available occupation in the carnival was to play the role of the geek, typically due to alcoholism, drug addiction, or a mental health crisis.

The performance was characterized by the destruction of living animals, most often by biting their heads off. Snakes and chickens were most often used for this performance.

Best explicated and revealed in the classic 1946 novel by Lindsey Gresham, Nightmare Alley, the shows that featured geek performers both fascinated and and repelled the carnival goers of the 1920s up through the 1970s.

Gresham’s story of the geek has held our fascination as both a 1947 and 2021 film.


Performers in this category:

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Contact Sheet For Unidentified Carnival With Geek, Girl Show and Motordome

Added Aug 11 2024
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Rose “That Strange Creature”

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Juanita, Wild Girl/Snake Show

Added Oct 12 2014
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Capture of Bosco Geek Show

Added Apr 13 2014

Free Images

Dolly Dutton’s Sheet Music

Added May 31, 2025

Wonderland Circus Sideshow, Coney Island

Added December 31, 2024

1893 Newspaper Advertisement For The Tocci Brothers and Chevalier Cliquot

Added March 30, 2024

1893 Newspaper Advertisement For The Tocci Brothers and Chevalier Cliquot

Added March 30, 2024

HORROR STORIES Pulp Cover Two-Headed Girl (December 1940)

Added January 28, 2024

Baby Irene “Fat Lady” Cashes In On Laughs (1950)

Added December 26, 2023

1937 Philadelphia Store Show Facade

Added July 22, 2023

Mr. & Mrs. Chauncy Morlan at Huber’s 14th Street Museum

Added July 21, 2023

Hulett Pest Control Spokesmen, Dwarfs John and Greg Rice

Added January 31, 2023

Foy Large & Frank Morgner

Added October 24, 2021