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What a clown!
Carol Collins didn’t run away and join the circus, but she did the next thing to it.
For 22 years she has reinvented and supported herself as a professional clown, performing all over the world as Bingo and more recently as Bingo’s sidekick Safari Bingo, dressed in complete safari regalia with a fake lizard climbing up one leg and a ladybug perched pertly on her nose.
“I make my living by practicing my hobby,” she said. “How many people get to do that?”
But like the clown in the opera “Pagliacci,” the beaming clown face and ebullient, effervescent persona mask a world of sadness. Despite her professional triumphs, Collins’ personal life has been filled with grief and disappointments. Her love of children sparked her original career as a teacher.
Born on Christmas Day in Queens, NY, she eventually moved with her parents to Florida, where she taught sixth grade for several years. “Teaching conditions there were just terrible,” she said. “I had 36 kids and six different reading groups. It was so unfair to the kids.” She and a few other teachers staged a mass protest and got fired as a result, an action that was overturned by the courts three years later.
By that time Collins had married and moved to Ridgefield, Conn. She longed for children, but suffered a series of miscarriages.
After several years of fruitlessly trying to adopt, a call came from Boston. Would she consider adopting a three-year-old Vietnamese girl? “Of course I said yes,” said Collins. “I asked, is she healthy? They assured us that she was, and we drove straight up to get her. Well, she wasn’t healthy, and she wasn’t three years old; she was five. She had worms, scabies, impetigo. She weighed 23 pounds and could hardly walk or talk.”
Collins threw herself single-heartedly into making her daughter into a healthy little girl, and she partially succeeded. But, years of emotional neglect — April had been abandoned in infancy at a Vietnamese orphanage — caused significant damage and she is now in a mental institution.
Nevertheless, this little girl inadvertently launched Collins into her life’s work, changing her life. One Halloween they were preparing to go trick-or treating and April insisted that Collins wear a costume. A friend had a spare clown suit, so Collins dutifully donned it and that night the original Bingo was born.
A few weeks later, the local library asked Collins and her daughter if they would consider dressing up and selling benefit tickets at the local supermarket. They sold over $1600 worth of tickets.
Emboldened by her success, Collins scouted around for another clown in the area and turned up Dot the Mop, who provided invaluable assistance.
“I mean, I had no idea what I was doing,” said Collins. “I put on a lot of smeary Avon makeup and made a wig out of my daughter’s old ballet tutu. I looked like Phyllis Diller. We all have to start somewhere, and I did a lot of reading and attended some clowning conventions and workshops. Since then I’ve been all over the world attending these meetings, and now I teach at them.”
Bingo sports a large red nose topped by a ladybug, no wig (“too hot”) but largish hats, big red Mary Janes, and a short sleeved skirted dress in large polka dots of red, white and black.
“I’ve found I needed to modify both the character and the show over the years,” says Collins. “Small children tend to think clowns are scary (another disadvantage of the wig) and the older ones think they’ve seen it all.
“So I went from simple clowning to what is now the Safari Character Comedy Magic Show. We bring in a cast of live animals, including a tiny Maltese terrier, African hedgehogs, two hamsters and several different kinds of rabbits, and mice.”
A rodent race is a high point of the act, which also features flights of balloons and bubbles as well as magic tricks. Bingo can also keep the kids busy for many hours at corporate and family picnics. Adults often join the kids having fun with giant bubbles, parachute games, a Tinkling Pole Dance (a teenage favorite), photo buttons, face painting, tattoo transfers and creative balloon sculptures (animal, hats, costumes and more).
Collins has performed at White House festivals, overseas and at corporate parties., appeared in two movies, "Her Alibi" with Tom Selleck and "Avalon" and was a clown doctor for three years with the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC.
“I want to be with children; it’s what I love,” said Collins. “If you’re doing it for the money, the kids know it.” Collins stresses that she builds a lot of learning opportunities into her shows — being gentle and respectful with the animals and keeping safe (“don’t put the balloons into your mouths!”).
Another popular offering is “Behind The Curtains,” an instructional program geared to Pre Kindergarten-6th graders. Children spend 45 minutes to one hour with a professional clown preparing for work, applying make-up and wardrobe. They learn about clown history, circus skills, magic, entertaining, and clowning as a part-time or career choice. The finale features a creative balloon routine and a live animal production.
Collins did a stint as a circus clown and disliked it. “I worked for two weeks doing three shows a day. The pay was terrible, $75 a day, and the worst part was that I couldn’t interact with the children. There I was, fooling around down on the floor, and there they were, sitting up in the stands, seemingly miles away. It wasn’t any fun.”
She also does shows for adults. “Basically, I go into an office and roast someone. Dr. Bingo wears a toilet plunger around his neck as a stethoscope and goes around telling his patients that they have obscure diseases like “kneemonia” and “toemane poisoning.”
There are thousands of professional clowns. Most of them belong to local interest groups, known as alleys. There are hundreds of these groups all over the United States. They can also join one or both of the two larger organizations, Clowns International of America, whose purpose is to educate, and act as a gathering place for serious minded amateurs, semiprofessionals, and professional clowns, and the World Clown Association, which has 3500 members in 17 countries and gives out Clown of the Year awards.
After Collins’ first marriage ended, she moved to Maryland, hoping to get back into teaching. “But Maryland wasn’t hiring teachers; in fact, they were firing them. For a while I worked as a receptionist in a dentist’s office and did clowning part time. I made balloon characters for all the recall patients. That place never had so many recalls!” she says, laughing.
“But it was getting to be more than I could do. I had remarried by then, and my husband said one day, ‘What if I just learn to do this with you?’ So he became Malcolm the Magician. He learned stilts at the age of 50. Ha!” Together they founded Bingo and Buddies, a talent agency, and found employment for face painters, unicyclists, jugglers, balloon artists and magicians as well as clowns.
Eventually Collins and her husband sold their business and moved to Virginia, where the taxes were lower. “Right around this time my marriage began to break up,” she said. “It just wasn’t working. I figured, if I have around 30 more years to live, I don’t want to spend them in an unhappy relationship. My husband complained that I was living Bingo so much that he didn’t know who Carol was anymore, and he was right. I lived and breathed that character. I never stopped to think about developing me. So now I’m lonely, and the holidays are tough. I wish I had grandchildren.”
Collins founded Newventur Entertainment, “ and I’m as busy as I want to be. I have about 30 people I can get jobs for, in every field. My husband still works for me.” As Safari Bingo, Collins does an average of three shows on a weekend. “I started out charging $10 an hour. Today I get paid $325,” she said.
Two years ago Collins struck out in a new direction. At a convention she met a member of Caring Clowns International, an organization that sends clowns into orphanages, hospitals, prisons, and shelters for the abused and disabled. The idea of travel, a long-time passion with her, combined with the prospect of touching the lives of unfortunate children, was powerfully appealing.
By coincidence, she gave a party for the child of a doctor who was involved with the organization. The result was a trip to Peru with four other clowns and a team of plastic surgeons who were to provide free surgeries for children with facial abnormalities.
“Four hundred families showed up, and we could only take 24,” she said. “I entertained and handed out about 2,000 red noses while the families stood in line, pleading with the doctors to choose their children.
“The doctors focused on cases they were confident they could succeed with. And they did. I visited the children in the hospital rooms, and saw their before and after pictures. They got great results. Peru is a beautiful country with beautiful people. And kids are kids everywhere. The food was great too, even if one time I did have to eat roast guinea pig.”
Collins intends to go on clowning “forever. That’s me — who I am. I can do it from a wheel chair if I have to, just so long as the arthritis doesn’t get my fingers and my brain keeps working. I hope I can always find a place for myself. I’m blessed. I’ve always loved my job.”
E-mail the reporter: lyonsc_2000@yahoo.com .
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