Entertainers

Would-Be Has-Been Ervin Hall Keeps Going On One Wheel

by Mariah Skinner

 

Question... "Is there life after the Whiz Kids?" Forty-four year old performer

Ervin Hall recalls having been a has-been at the age of fourteen. Listed in "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" as the youngest boy to learn to ride a unicycle (at age two), Ervin, his sisters Carmen and Jeannine (who learned at 18 months) and brother Jimmy were all child stars, performing together as the Cycling Whiz Kids.

Their father, Mel Hall, a noted vaudeville unicyclist, created a special device to enable his kids to master the single wheel at an early age. Encouraged by his success with human students, Mel taught a chimpanzee and a Macaque ape to ride the unicycle. "The monkeys learned faster than we did!" laughed Ervin.

 

By the time he was six, Ervin had added ring juggling to his unicycle act. Beginning

by spinning one ring on each arm, he added approximately one ring each year. Next he learned to spin a ring on his ankle and a ring on his thigh while idling. This latter trick took him three years to perfect. He used to practice the leg spinning while sitting in a chair watching the Mickey Mouse Club on television. Eventually he added more rings, spun on a mouth stick for a total of 12 rings spun simultaneously while idling on a giraffe unicycle.

 

Young Ervin's model for this feat was a friend of his father, a vaudeville performer named LaBraque. LaBraque spun 14 rings on the unicycle, and Ervin practiced 14 on the ground - four on each arm, two on one leg and four on a mouthstick. His father advised him against performing this on the unicycle, reasoning that only fellow performers would appreciate the difficulty of the trick and they were not the ones paying his salary.

 

The Whiz Kids was perhaps the youngest professional act in the business, traveling all over the US, Canada and Mexico, working clubs, circuses, fairs and television shows. The list of performers they worked with reads like a "Who's Who" of vaudeville, circus and television. Their education was mostly through correspondence courses, and the rest was seat-of-the-pants learning.

 

In addition to performing skills, Ervin's father taught him such practical skills as welding. Ervin builds all his own props, including his rings, which he cuts from sheets of plastic. His mother, Aurelia Zavata-Zoppe, an eighth-generation performer who came to this country from Italy, speaks many languages learned while traveling with her family's circus. Some of this linguistic ability has rubbed off on her children.

 

If Ervin could have done anything with his life, he says he would have become a Hollywood makeup artist. It took two failed experiments with plaster of Paris on his own face to convince him to stick with performing.

 

Ervin's other burning interest is clowning, and he is a natural. Tutored by "baggy pants" vaudeville comics, he soon realized that he was funnier without clown makeup. The comedy unicycle / juggling act he works today is performed in evening clothes.

 

Ervin put his present act together in 1976. The Whiz Kids had gone through an awkward transition period after bushy hair had burst forth on the legs of 14­year-old Ervin. He could no longer perform as a kid in shorts. The act was forced to mature into the Cycling Wizards; Each of them worked a specialty skill on the unicycle. Ervin's brother Jimmy tossed cups and saucers from his foot to his head. Ervin spun his rings and juggled up to five of them on the high wheel, and all of them passed rings in formation on their unicycles.

 

After a stint in the army, Ervin struck out on his own. He expanded his basic act to include between three and 25 minutes of comic material with a surprise finish where he does some virtuoso cycling and manipulates the rings. He also presents a trained baboon act and, not surprisingly, one of the baboons is an accomplished cyclist.

 

Coming as he did from an old vaudeville background, Ervin is very impressed with what he has seen of some of the new vaudevillians. He has seen them do tricks on a unicycle that he never thought possible. Still, he advises young performers to learn all they can from older, more seasoned performers.

 

Skill needs to be balanced with style and timing, especially in comedy work.

In his time, Ervin has worked with some of the best, including the legendary Bobby May. He counts among his friends Francis and Lotte Brunn, Michael Chirrick and Rudy Cardenas. He's worked nearly everywhere, with the possible exception of cruise ships. "I'd like to work cruise ships, but I get seasick," he said.