A Place for Clowning Around
Some tips from clown school: It’s easier to wear a painted smile than to make a real one. You’ll never get rich being a clown. And there are times to be serious.
As Jack Frank, a professional clown from Huntington Beach, explained to half a dozen clowns-to-be in a class this week, when you are trying to communicate with your employers or colleagues, drop the act.
He recalled meeting one clown at a convention who would mime but refused to talk. “I said: ‘Look. You’re a clown, I’m a clown. Talk to me.’ ”
To his annoyance, she didn’t.
Frank and his wife and business partner, Pat (also known as Potsy), are teaching a five-week course through Garden Grove’s recreation department.
Though the class is open to anyone 8 or older, none of the students are children. They are in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Said student Kathy Ramsey of Garden Grove: “We’re old ducks acting young.”
The class teaches them how to put on makeup for the traditional white-face look as well as so-called grotesque designs, how to dress and how to pull off a few trade-secret tricks.
The Franks have been career clowns for 15 years, and they bring the tools of the trade from their home office, which has more than 4,000 items. They have books on “The Art of Balloon Sculpture” and “The Clown in You,” an assortment of rubber noses and wigs made from yak hair.
“We ship all over the world,” Pat Frank said. “We have a steady customer in Costa Rica, a few in Hong Kong, and we just got a request for a catalog from Belgium.”
Most of the students are not taking the $55 class because they hope to turn professional. They want to entertain the elderly, sick children and their own relatives.
That’s good, the Franks said, because Southern California has a glut of clowns. With a depressed economy and an increasing number of clowns from the Franks’ classes, jobs are hard to come by.
“We used to work seven days a week,” Jack Frank said. Now they average two.
“Our clown friends say we should stop offering the class,” Pat Frank said. But the sessions continue, to the delight of students.
“I’m having fun,” said Pat Bommarito of West Covina--maybe too much fun. Bommarito had to ask her classmates to stop making her laugh. It’s hard to put on makeup, she explained, when you’re smiling.