Timid Carl Baggessen Smashed Crockery As Klutzy, Loveable Vaudeville Artiste

Reprinted with permission from "4,000 Years of Juggling, Vol. 1" by Karl-Heinz Ziethen

 

The variety theatre has seen funny

jugglers in large numbers since i~. early days. But the master of this type of comic was the Dane Carl Baggessen, in whose hands tons of porcelain broke.

 

Baggessen rose to stardom during the 1890's. Originally he worked as a contor­tionist in variety theatres and was also known as "Klischnigg" amongst the artiste!l in Germany. In America the artiste had the idea to use his comedic talents in his act and within a few years the clumsy juggler became a star.

 

His act opened with a young maid wearing a white apron and juggling three oranges. This was nothing special, but when Carl Baggessen stepped from the background in his old, much-too-big morning suit, he aroused interest.

 

Baggessen came to the front of the stage to let the audience admire him. He liked the morning suit, the gloves and the white tie so much that it didn't occur to him to do anything. He just stood there, putting one foot in front of the other and sighing with deep relief. The maid, who was his wife, Saphira: stood in the background and juggled with the three oranges.

                                                              

 Baggessen dido't even look, but she wanted him to see her. So she put the oranges aside and picked up three plates. But plates? That was very difficult! The minute she touched them, one fell to the floor with a crash.

 

And this is how Baggessen's bad luck started. He was terribly startled when the plate smashed and he grabbed onto a side­board. He shouldn't have done this because the sideboard was covered with sticky fly-paper, which was now sticking to his nice white gloves. Baggessen peeled himself off the sideboard and went to help the maid by handing her the plates and even juggled himself. Naturally everything went wrong.

Plates, crockery and flower pots were all smashed until finally he was wading through a rubble of porcelain. But the size of the heap was not the main object. None was broken without a motive, without a reason or a point. Rather than a bull in a china shop, Baggessen was a poet in a china shop.

 

Baggessen tried to ensure his success with cautious, gentle movements. He saved one plate but smashed ten others in the process. He meant to catch an orange

and a plate. He caught the orange, fishing it out of the air with both hands, proud and pleased as Punch. But the plate fell to the floor and broke. .

 

Finally the last pile of plates was leaning like a snake against his body, ready to smash. The pile wobbled but Baggessen regained the balance. He finally fell with them, but managed to keep one in his hand. He held it up triumphantly in the air and stood there happy and proud. He trembled from excitement, holding the lone survivor carefully in both hands. But even this last plate, his only trophy of the gruesome fight with the porcelain, slipped and from his hands and fell. He stood in this chaos, amongst the debris of porcelain, ashamed and resigned, timid and shy, ignorant of the world and dreamy.

After almost three decades of performing, he appeared before them for the last time at the Wintergarden Berlin in February 1927. He retired to his manor, Carlshaab, on the Danish Island of Thuro and died there at age 68 on May 21, 1931.