33 Facts About Johnny Eck

Besides being a sideshow performer and actor, the multi-talented Johnny Eck was a folk artist, musician, photographer, illusionist, penny arcade owner, Punch and Judy operator, and expert model-maker.

Johnny Eck had an older sister named Caroline Laura Eckhardt.

Johnny Eck was born with a truncated torso due to sacral agenesis.

At birth, Johnny Eck weighed two pounds and was less than eight inches in length.

Johnny Eck was walking on his hands before his brother was standing when he was a year old.

Johnny Eck recalled that larger students would "fight each other for the 'honor' or 'privilege' of lifting [him] up the stone steps" to school, and that school windows were blacked out to discourage throngs of curious onlookers from peering in at Eck during his studies.

In spite of the scrutiny, Johnny Eck remained consistently upbeat about his birth defect.

At an early age, Johnny Eck developed an interest in painting and woodworking, and would spend hours with his brother carving and painting elaborate, fully articulated circuses.

When McAslan asked for volunteers for his act, 12-year-old Johnny Eck bounded onto the stage on his hands to the surprise of the magician.

McAslan convinced Johnny Eck to join the sideshow with him as manager; Johnny Eck agreed, but only if his brother was employed.

Johnny Eck's parents signed a one-year contract, which Eck attested the magician later changed to a ten-year contract by adding a zero.

In 1924, Johnny Eck left McAslan and signed on with a carny named Captain John Sheesley.

Johnny Eck was billed as a single-o, though he traveled with Robert and used Robert's normality to emphasize his own abnormal physique.

Johnny Eck's performance included sleight-of-hand and acrobatic feats including his famous one-armed handstand.

Johnny Eck often performed in a tuxedo jacket while perched upon a tasseled stool.

Johnny Eck performed for the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, and others.

Johnny Eck went to the Canadian Exhibition in the summer of 1931.

Johnny Eck was performing in Montreal when he was approached by an MGM Studios talent scout to be cast for his first feature film, as the "Half-Boy" in Tod Browning's 1932 film Freaks.

Johnny Eck got along quite well with Tod Browning and was often at his side while on set.

Johnny Eck told me whenever I have an empty seat or chair, you are to sit alongside me while we shoot.

Johnny Eck had made a circus ring made from matches.

Johnny Eck claimed that Browning wished to do a follow-up picture with him and Robert where he would play a mad scientist's creation.

Johnny Eck was disappointed by how much of his part had been trimmed from the film in the nearly thirty minutes that were cut by censors.

The illusion would end with stage hands plucking up Johnny Eck and setting him atop "his" legs and then twirling him off-stage to be replaced by his twin, Robert, who would then loudly threaten to sue Raboid and storm out of the theater.

Johnny Eck continued his love of drawing and painting, early on choosing such subjects as pretty girls, ships and himself.

Johnny Eck was a race car enthusiast and the driver of his own custom-built race car that was street-legal in Baltimore, the "Johnny Eck Special".

In 1938, Johnny Eck climbed the Washington Monument on his hands.

Johnny Eck became a screen painter, having learned the craft from William Oktavec, a grocer and local folk artist who invented the art form in 1913.

Johnny Eck is interviewed about the craft in the 1989 documentary film The Screen Painters.

Johnny Eck would sit on the steps of his porch with his Chihuahua, Major, telling stories about his life.

Thereafter, Johnny Eck went into seclusion, and the brothers no longer invited visitors into their home.

On January 5,1991, Johnny Eck had a heart attack in his sleep, dying at age 79 at the home where he was born.

Since the 1990s, Leonardo DiCaprio has pursued making a Hollywood feature film on the life of Johnny Eck, to be written by Caroline Thompson, the scriptwriter of Edward Scissorhands, and produced by Pelagius Films and by Joseph Fries, with DiCaprio and Joseph Rappa as executive producers.