Tracing Glendale’s Past: Clicko: The Wild Dancing Bushman
At first glance, a 1930s South African stage performer who went by the name of “Clicko” might seem tenuously connected to Glendale--but the connection became clearer over the course of a unique conversation that took place virtually on May 29th. The Glendale Historical Society’s architectural historian Francesca Smith and Neil Parsons, author of Clicko: The Wild Dancing Bushman, dove into the interconnected histories of racism, ethnographic show business, Glendale’s exclusionary racial practices, and a property on Montgomery Avenue.
“Clicko” was actually Franz Taibosh a performer whose career peak in the early 1930s had already begun declining in the winter of 1938 when he rented a house at 1442 Montgomery Avenue in Glendale after a cross-country trip from New York. Glendale was racially restricted at that time, and it was understood that “blacks in those days were subject to a curfew of 6 pm in this all-white suburb.” If Black people were on the street after 6 pm, they risked harassment and being run out of town by the police. After 6 pm, Taibosh was forced to hide in his home with his adoptive American family. Eventually, he became friendly with his neighbors and was able to live less cautiously. He left Glendale in 1939 and died in 1940.
Taibosh was born around 1870 when South Africa was under European colonization, particularly the Dutch immigrant farmers called the Boers and the British. His family were tenant farmers, herding sheep. Like many indigenous people, Taibosh became a servant who also happened to be skilled at performing traditional Korana dances. He later incorporated many types of dance into his routines, as well as imitations of people and animals.
Ethnographic show business was popular around the same time with agents and bookers capitalizing on the racial prejudice toward Africans that justified colonialism. Taibosh and others were commodities in “human zoos” performing on stage under various exoticized personas. Taibosh was forced to embody the “Wild Dancing Bushman” identity of “Clicko” (so named because of the click sounds made when he spoke). Taibosh was under “guardianship” and thus able to travel to Europe, the United States, and beyond. He toured and performed on stage in dance and music halls but also in sideshows at fairgrounds and in the circus, most notably for Barnum & Bailey starting in 1918 as part of their “hall of freaks.” Various stories were told by his “guardians” to enthrall audiences: Taibosh was a captured “savage” unable to speak human language, he was at least 110 years old, and the “last known pure Bushman.” To authenticate their investment, Taibosh was studied by various people including at the American Museum of Natural History in New York where he was photographed and cast in plaster.
This history, as documented by Neil Parsons in his book and detailed in the webinar, was discovered by the Historical Society, and they attempted to save an otherwise unremarkable house from demolition in 2018. Because there were so few Black residents in Glendale during the time it was considered a “sundown town," they argued, there are few existing buildings associated with Black people in Glendale making the preservation of any remaining structures essential to the city's history. The property at 1442 Montgomery Avenue was demolished, but there was a South African man who lived briefly, unwelcome, in Glendale and had an extraordinary and bizarrely tragic life that subjected him to different forms of racism on three continents.
Learn more about Glendale's history as a sundown town through the ReflectSpace and Brand Library & Art Center exhibit Reckoning: Racism and Resistance in Glendale.
The Glendale Historical Society’s past webinars are available to view on their website. Other recommended topics are “Master Architects of Southern California 1920-1940: Paul R. Williams” and “Stories of Black Residents in Glendale: Past and Present.”
Read The Glendale Historical Society’s position statement for the preservation of the house at 1442 Montgomery Avenue and watch the 2017 Design Review Board public meeting regarding its demolition.