JW-vol49no2-p76

SHOW BUSINESS LIFE

DEALS IJA FOUNDER A DECK MIXED

WITH ACES AND JOKERS

by Bill Giduz

My love of the human manipulation of inanimate objects overshadows everything else - IJA Founder Art Jennings

To understand the roots of the IJA, you must understand the world into which IJA founder Art Jennings came of age - and how much that world has changed.

"As a kid the horses far, far outnumbered the cars," he said. "When my mom and dad finally got a car, it had a tiller instead of steering wheel! My dad and I once drove from Pittsburgh to Erie and the road wasn't paved most of the way. I also remember when we first got electricity in our house. And I most remember that when vaudeville was at its peak, there were many, many beautiful, full-time theatres in the city of Pittsburgh alone."

Art is a product of that time, and it frequently shows. "I must have been born in the kitchen because I heard water running!" he replied when asked about his birth. That's the type of corny humor that left them rolling in the aisles in the heyday of vaudeville! Whatever part of the house he saw first, it was in 1912 or 1913 in North Braddock; Penn., a suburb of Pittsburgh. He's not sure about the year because he didn't get a birth certificate until he was a teenager.

The most important event of his early life was his imprinting in vaudeville. Art's parents managed the Woolworth Five and Dime in downtown in Pittsburgh, and in the era before day care and child molesters they sat him in the Harris Family Theatre across the street by himself while they worked. It was a regular evening ritual for almost two years, from the time he was three until he turned five. "My babysitter was a vaudeville theatre," he said proudly. "I probably saw the greatest performers of all times."

That early exposure led Jennings to emulate those heroes of his youth and create his own half-century career on the stage. But his story is much more complex than that of most other Vaudevillians.

Jenning's curiosity and intelligence also led him to master a wide sweep of other arts, crafts and skills. He was employed as an engineer, flew his own plane, created and owned a theme park, worked as a business consultant, and still hand crafts jewelry and paints works of fine art.

Above all those, however, Jennings probably counts as his proudest accomplishment the founding of the International Jugglers Association. He succeeded in convincing many performers in a fractious post-war universe that it was in their best interest, and has continued to nurture it for five decades as cheerleader, elected officer and guiding light. It has alternately brought him joy and pain but as he watches it turn 50 it means more to him than ever before.

Following his work at Woolworth's, Art's father became one of the early employees of the Fuller Brush Company and traveled the country establishing distributorships and hiring salesmen. The regular uprootings sent Art to a dozen different grade schools, but dad was making good money - until the world came to an end.

That's how Art remember the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929. As a 17-year-old at the time, he heard of three suicides of his father's business associates in a two week period, and watched his father helplessly surrender to bank foreclosure dozens of mill houses he had purchased as family investments. "We went from a big house and several cars to being practically broke," Jennings said.

Work was scarce, many people were hungry and most were willing to do almost anything to earn money. The worst job Art took was unloading boxcars of cement. Each boxcar contained 40 tons of bags, and took 10- 12 hours to unload. Workers earned $2 for each boxcar they unloaded. "People actually stood in line to get that job," Jennings said.

At one point, his father handed him $2 and told him to go away and not come back for six weeks. "I learned then I could make it on my own," Art said. He later found a quote in a philosophy book that summed up the attitude he forged in those days of desperation - "Nothing is impossible, for if you have sufficient will you will find sufficient means."

That type of motto, many of which his English father had printed and framed on the walls of their house, made a big impression on young Art. The one on the stairs quoted Ben Franklin's adage that "A man who has a trade has an estate."