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Welcome to Back of the Napkin, musings from Serviette for the cultured world.
A recent Serviette discovery that brings new meaning to the phrase “by the skin of your teeth”: Tiny Kline (née Helén Deutsch) was a Hungarian-born burlesque dancer turned circus performer living in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. Upon immigrating to the United States with a dance troupe at age 15, she began performing at clubs and music halls. Before long, she had caused enough of a stir with an alleged “ultra-risqué” performance to be arrested for wearing what authorities deemed “too scanty attire” (a diva by 21st century standards, to be sure).
It was at this point that Kline made the decision that would later cement her legacy: she joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus as Tiny Duchée. She worked her way through the circus ranks, appearing as a painted “statue girl” and later as a Roman rider, standing atop a speeding horse during chariot-race spectacles. Here, she met rodeo trick rider Otto Kreinbrink. The two struck up a relationship and married before tragedy struck—Kreinbrink died only five weeks later from injuries sustained after being thrown from a horse.
Rather than leaving the circus and letting her grief consume her, Kline vowed to learn how to perform the dangerous acts herself. She began training as an aerialist, eventually arriving at the act that would enthrall audiences for decades to come: the iron jaw.
In Tiny’s own words, the iron jaw involved using one’s teeth to support one’s entire body weight “bulldog-fashion,” suspended in the air from a cable attached to a bit clenched between the teeth.
Picture, if you will: a woman no more than five feet tall whizzing through the air, careening through Times Square along 1,134 feet of wire, reportedly some 600 feet above the street. With no modern safety equipment keeping her in place, Kline was tethered only by her extraordinary balance, her tenacity, and, of course, her teeth. As onlookers held their breath, Tiny performed the “slide of life,” travelling from the roof of the Hotel Edison to the Prospect Theatre by way of a single wire. The 1932 stunt, staged to promote an engagement at the RKO Palace Theatre, was not exactly city-approved. Police attempted to stop her; Kline found another way onto the wire, made the crossing anyway, brought Times Square traffic to a halt and was arrested on the other side.
There is an improbably charming postscript. Nearly three decades later, Walt Disney hired Kline, then 70, to become Disneyland’s original flying Tinker Bell. For the park’s Fantasy in the Sky fireworks, she travelled by wire from the Matterhorn toward Sleeping Beauty Castle, suspended roughly 146 feet above the ground. The woman who had once stopped Times Square while hanging from her teeth had, by then, been recast as a fairy.
To Serviette, Kline represents a bravado one would be hard pressed to find today. We thank you for taking the time to read this week’s newsletter. We hope it emboldens you to soar to new heights—though perhaps with your dental work intact.