The American sideshow by 1940 was considered a place of tawdry entertainment, and even a frightening afront to more refined cultural pastimes. In this pulp cover from 1940 the sideshow becomes a dangerous place– a den of crime and evil that the actual business had nothing to do with. Six years later the classic noir novel “Nightmare Alley” was published, cementing into the American imagination the sideshow as den of vice. Publication: Horror Stories, December 1940. Publisher: Popular Publications, Inc. Cover: Horror Stories, December 1940 by John Howitt. Cover artist per Peter Haining’s The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines
Dates: 1940s
Acts: Conjoined Twins, Siamese Twins