PEOPLE

Art Jennings

Master of All Trades Becomes Father of the IJA

Each evening while his parents managed the Woolworth Five and Dime in Pittsburgh, 5-year old Art Jennings was taken across Diamond Street to the Harris Family Theater to watch "Twenty Big Acts Continuous Each and Every Week Twice Daily Noon to Ten."

"Vaudeville was my baby sitter," said Jennings, an IJA founder. "Only in later years did I realize that I had seen nearly every one of the great acts of the period. What a fantastic head-start, what a great kindergarten! "

This was 1916, with vaudeville in its stride. Tickets cost 30 cents for 10 hours of vaudeville, 50 cents for 2 hours of burlesque. The audience was polite, quiet, and waited for the acts to end before seating themselves during the two-a-day continuous performances.

Art Jennings dreamed himself to the stage, toured his acts throughout the country, founded the International Juggler's Association and accomplished enough else to fill several life times. "I wanted to learn everything there was, period. I have learned enough to qualify in 15 trades over my lifetime. "

It isn't surprising, meeting the man, to believe that dreams come true for Art Jennings. He has a voracious appetite to discover and accomplish. The breadth of his reach is astonishing: research and design engineer, pattern and model maker, pilot, silversmith, builder of Story Book Forest in Pennsylvania, magician, juggler, clown, philosopher, unicyclist, slack wire artist. Wunderkind!

"At that time I was what today might be referred to as a Yuppie.  I was very ambitious. I was very confident and truly felt that there was nothing I could not accomplish if I put sufficient energy and time into the project. I wanted to learn to do everything, and still do even though I know its totally impossible. I'm still taking courses and exploring new fields. Love it!"

He first cultivated his entertainment talents as a magician, becoming active in the International Brotherhood of Magicians in the mid 1930's. He worked juggling into his act, as many magicians do, simply as a side bit. "I first put my juggling into my magic act about 1936. I juggled the oranges I used in the 'Dollar Bill into the Orange ' as a diversion and to add a bit of novelty. There were not many jugglers so it made my act a bit different. By 1939 that bit had developed into a separate part of the act and soon became a 12-minute standard act booked primarily in theaters."

He moved on to clubs, using solid Indian swinging clubs until he met the Three Swifts, a comedy juggling team. They let him in on the secret of Harry Lind's clubs. Tips like this were rare and much appreciated.

By the early 1950's, his juggling career was in full swing. Of all the forums available to him, he gravitated to the most difficult, the school assembly circuit. It was grinding - long hops of driving along one-horse roads, bad weather, lugging trunks of props in and out of a cramped car that always threatened to break down.

Although circuits in the West and Midwest were better than others, some booking agents could run you to death. Jugglers often turned down lucrative school bookings for saner pastures.

Nevertheless, Art reveled in the travel. He toured for an unprecedented 17 years with the same agency, enjoying the sight­seeing, the enthusiasm of the children and the thrill of defeating obstacles along the way.

Reported in the March, 1954, IJA Newsletter:

"One of Earl's fishing pals was stopped on a country highway recently by a fellow who had run out of gas. While driving to the next town they discovered that Earl was a mutual friend. The guy with the thumb and nonchalant attitude toward gas stations was Art Jennings, who has been in the midwest lately working school shows."

There was method in his madness. He stowed all his props in exactly 5 trunks that fit precisely into the trunk of his Cadillac. He arranged with principals to have kids meet him at his car so that, after an impromptu performance, what kid could resist carrying his trunks to the auditorium? He used a minimum of props and replaced each in its own place in its own trunk as he worked, thereby packing for the next show even while working. He threw on make-up and costume in 15 minutes and was ready to leave in five.

Through it all, he maintained separate "civilian" jobs. During one period as an engineer, his reputation was such that he could come and go as he pleased. He'd sometimes return from a school hundreds of miles away, go to work at 2 a.m., and work on a project until it was time to leave for another school. He occasionally paid someone to drive him so he could sleep en route between jobs: driven, indeed.