Mario Zacchini; ‘Human Cannonball’ in Circuses

A human cannonball who had thrilled crowds worldwide by catapulting over fairgrounds at speeds up to 100 mph has died at 87.

Mario A. Zacchini, who survived about 5,000 cannon shots--by his estimate--and a couple of missed nets, succumbed to kidney failure Jan. 28 in Tampa, Fla.

He was the last survivor of five brothers who thrilled crowds in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s by sliding down into the mouths of cannons only to catapult out and--hopefully--land in a net more than 100 feet away.

In this family of frequent fliers, Zacchini was something of an underachiever. Though he climbed into the cannon three times each show day for about 10 years, other brothers had careers that lasted twice as long.

His flying days came to a close after an accident at the World’s Fair in New York in 1940. He broke some ribs and a shoulder when he landed wrong after being launched over a Ferris wheel.

“The net is very small up in the air,” Zacchini said.

With eight siblings, he was the next-to-youngest son of Ildebrando Zacchini, a gymnast who created the Circus Olympia in Italy in the early 1900s. The Zacchinis’ human cannonball act made its debut in Malta in 1922 and created such a sensation that eventually two teams of Zacchinis were traveling around Europe and flying out of cannons.

John Ringling of the Ringling Bros. Circus discovered the family doing the act in Denmark in 1929 and brought them to America. For years afterward, the Zacchinis’ act was the grand finale of Ringling’s circus.

During the 1930s, Mario was part of the original double human cannonball act, in which he and his brother Hugo soared out of what was called a repeater cannon, one right after the other. They made the act even more thrilling by having themselves fired over two Ferris wheels. Hugo, the most famous human cannonball among the brothers, died of a stroke in 1975 in San Bernardino at 77.

Despite the thousands of successful flights, each accident was etched in Mario Zacchini’s memory.

Once, he landed perfectly in a net in Terre Haute, Ind., “but the net was rotten,” he told a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times. “I went right through it and hit the ground. I was temporarily paralyzed. I heard the people saying, ‘He’s dead. He’s dead.’ I could see the people saying that, but I couldn’t say nothing.

“Flying isn’t the hard part,” he said. “Landing in the net is.”

After healing from his World’s Fair accident, Zacchini went into the hot dog and hamburger business at carnivals. He also put together his own small carnival and Ferris wheel and took it around the country.

His various other pursuits included a stint as a movie stuntman. But he didn’t care for the work.

“The movies were no good,” he once said. “All we did was sit and wait.”

He also worked as a clown and became proficient doing rope tricks.

Of his life as a human cannonball, he said:

“I healed pretty fast in those days. . . . I was like a cat, with nine lives. The eighth is gone. This is the ninth. After this one, I’m gone.”

He leaves his wife of 59 years, Lydia; a daughter, Yvonne; and two sons, Mario Jr. and Tyrone, all of Tampa, Fla.