He admits the cup and saucer trick was not original with him, but it did turn out to be his ticket to fame and America. Tasso believes it was originated by a German juggler named Ferry, but it was quickly adopted by other jugglers. Tasso saw both Rudy Horn and Sigi Manulescu doing it after the war, Manulescu on a rolling globe and Horn on a unicycle. Tasso decided to learn it on a slack wire.

As you might imagine, catching an ever-growing stack of crockery on one's head is not an easy trick to learn. Tasso said he started with real dishes and broke plenty during the learning process. "It was also a neck breaker and a knee breaker," he explained. "When you catch them you have to bend down into your knees very softly to catch them. It ruined my knees eventually."

Tasso said he didn't learn the trick very scientifically, it was just a process of trial and error - tossing cups up and either catching them or hearing them fall. Tasso said, 'There was a picture of me in old biology book that explained it to me. It said as soon as a cup passed into my field of vision it set up an electric thing so that I knew exactly when to duck and catch it. It was a combination of tossing higher and ducking more as the stack grew. It's second nature now, but I've been doing it 40 years. Now I say in the act that it's not much of a trick, but at my age it's a miracle!"

But 40 years ago he began performing it too soon ­after about three or four months of practice. He recalls dropping the whole stack on stage a few times, and of being almost booed off stage in Berlin once. 'They advertised I could do 10 and I could barely do 6 then," he said.

It took a full year to develop the confidence he needed to do the trick right every time. He eventually reached a 14-cup stack record while standing on the ground in rehearsal, and did as many as 10 in actual performance.  He also did eight while balancing on the slack wire.

But developing the technique was only part of it. Tasso said, "It takes a long time to learn, then even longer to make something out of it, to sell it to the audience."   Henry Ringling North saw Tasso perform the trick at the Friederickstadt Palace in Berlin, and offered him a contract to perform center ring with his circus in America in 1952. Tasso said, 'The cups turned out to be my big break. I wasn't getting into variety shows before, but started getting those jobs once I could do the cup and saucer. Then learning it on the slack wire made me a circus act."