Today is Johnny Eck's 102nd birthday!
The "half-man" sideshow performer best known nationally for appearing in the 1932 movie Freaks. Baltimoreans know him as their most famous screenpainter. Eck, who was born in the same N. Milton Avenue rowhouse where he died (in 1991). Johnny lived an extraordinary life.
(robert & johnny eck)
During the filming of FREAKS, Eck got along quite well with Tod Browning and was often at his side while on set. Eck would later say that "Browning wanted me to stay as close to him as possible. He told me whenever I have an empty seat or chair, you are to sit alongside me while we shoot." Although he sometimes tried to socialize, he didn't feel comfortable mingling with his castmates, whom he described as a "happy, noisy crowd" and "childish, silly and in a world all their own." At one point he complained that they had gone "Hollywood" because of the film, "wear[ing] sunglasses and acting funny." When Pete Robinson had difficulty lying on a blanket in one scene, Eck made the comment that if he had legs, he would have lain on a fakir's bed of nails. Olga Baclanova would reminisce fondly of her costar (whom she described as "handsome"), "When we finished the picture, he came and gave me a present. He had made a circus ring made from matches. He said he had made it in my honor.
In January 1987, the then 76-year-old Eckhardt brothers were robbed in an ordeal that lasted several hours. One of the two thieves mocked and sat on Eck while the other took his belongings. Thereafter, Eck went into seclusion and the brothers no longer invited visitors into their home. Eck would go on to say, "If I want to see freaks, all I have to do is look out the window."
On January 5, 1991, Eck suffered a heart attack in his sleep, dying at the age of 79 at the home where he was born. His brother Robert followed him on February 25, 1995, aged 83. They are buried under one headstone in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, MD.
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