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to make money off of them,

but they're not freaks."

And so they always sort of had

a division between them.

- I felt a kind of sorrow

at this whole thing.

They were very sad people.

Most of them drank too much,

or they... -

they just... -

they had problems,

which you can imagine,

being exploited.

It was a very debasing... -

it was a very nasty way

to make money.

But these were very miserable,

unhappy people.

I don't know a happy freak.

- In Birmingham, Alabama,

Auntie died,

and as we looked at her,

our first corpse,

the cunning and shrewdness

seemed out of her face.

l, Daisy, did not care

that she was dead.

"Why cry?" I asked Violet.

"We hated her forever. "

- "I'm afraid without her, "

l, Violet, answered,

"Now Sir will boss us. "

- Let's run away.

- Their existences then

were almost Dickensian

in the sense that they were

so fully controlled

by Myer Myers.

He was really

a quite hateful man.

- After Mary Hilton's death,

he had total control

at that point

over what was happening

with their careers.

- He thought he was

inheriting them.

- Willed as an old ring

or a chair?

It couldn't bel

- See,

Auntie left you to us.

You and her jewelry

and her furniture are ours.

Do you understand?

- They anticipated that,

as hellish

as their lives had been,

things were going to get

even worse.

- He had a terrible temper,

and that was something that

even his wife admitted.

- If they didn't do things

right,

they got punished.

They got hit.

They got slapped.

- We had to work as hard,

and the only privacy

we were to have

was in our minds.

The new owners slept

in the same room with us.

We were never

out of their sight.

- They always had to live

with him and Edith,

and when they were traveling,

they would stay

in the same hotel room.

He was very protective,

that he didn't want anybody

to see them

when they weren't performing.

He wanted them to pay

to come and see the girls

and to keep this aura of mystery

around them.

- Other freaks were so troubled

by the treatment

that Daisy and Violet

were receiving from Myer Myers

that, in effect,

they rebelled.

They refused to work.

It was sort of like

a sit-down strike by the freaks.

And they made the decision

that the midway was closed

to the general public,

and the whole joint

was Daisy and Violet's.

They were sort of princesses

for the day.

- Most of the time,

they were working,

and if they weren't working

and spending time

with Edith and Myer,

they were honing their craft.

They were taking dance lessons.

They were taking music lessons

and singing lessons,

and everything that they did

was about the show,

about the performance,

to make more money

for Edith and Myer.

When they were onstage,

they had this really sort of

witty repartee with each other.

That's... - That's inborn.

I think even if they hadn't

been conjoined twins,

that they might have been

drawn to show business

in some way, shape,

or form.

- Every time you see

a child star,

there's likely someone

behind that child star

who maybe is helping

the kid accomplish

what the kid wanted to do

but is probably,

in 1 0 or 1 5 years,

going to come up

on the wrong end

of a lawsuit that gets filed.

They were simply

used for their money

and given, in a sense,

a pittance in return.

- They were really cash cows

for the Myers.

And they were loath

to let go of them,

and they kept them

very, very confined.

My mother

and Dorothy, my aunt,

and a few other people were

the only ones allowed

close to them.

- They were working

with the Wortham carnivals,

and they came to do a stand

in San Antonio as part of... -

we call it fiesta now.

Back then it was called

the spring carnival.

- San Antonio

was a great wintering place

for both circuses and carnivals.

- Myer really liked

San Antonio,

and when they ended

their run with Wortham

and come back to San Antonio

in the off-season,

he has this dream

that he's going to become

a wealthy Texas rancher.

He certainly made

quite a bit of money

off of managing

Daisy and Violet.

Though he did not become

a rancher, by any means,

he certainly invested

in a lot of properties

around the area,

and while he was here

in San Antonio,

he built a very large mansion.

- It would have been

about a $5-million

or $6-million house now.

- Sort of Japanese-influenced

brick home.

Great circular driveway.

Greenhouses, fountains.

- We could never enjoy the

magnificent, splendid estate,

let alone call it

our own home.

During periods,

the servants were fired,

and we did the cleaning.

"You need the exercise, "

we were told coldly.

- When I was a little boy,

riding in the car

with my mother

down Vance Jackson Road,

she... -

when we would pass

this breathtakingly beautiful

house, mansion,

she would say, "That's where

the Siamese twins used to live."

- People were paying to see

the twins, maybe 1 5 cents or so.

Great streams of them

were going into the town.

So, yeah, he was making

an enormous amount of money.

- I never saw them

with other people.

They never went to school,

for one thing.

- Myer Myers takes the girls

to New York

to try to get them

in vaudeville.

- This would have been

in the mid-'20s.

The twins now would have been

1 6, 1 7.

- They'd gotten

quite a few rejections.

Nobody could see

where a Siamese twin act

would fit into

the vaudeville scene.

Myer Myers had staged

this little showcase

to kind of try and get interest

in them, and, unfortunately,

they got out on the stage,

and they kind of froze up.

They didn't really have

the projection

and the charisma that they would

later really embody.

Despite all of that,

they did find somebody

who really took interest

in them

and thought

that they had potential.

- Terry Turner was a big force

in the world of entertainment.

He would promote

flagpole sitters

and all kinds of crazy stuff

like that.

He was smitten

when he saw the girls perform

and took over

the agenting of the twins.

- He really

was instrumental in shaping

how they would be presented

to vaudeville,

and he was the one

who really kind of came up with

their costume of the ringlets

in the hair and the big bows

that were sort of outsized

to their tiny little bodies

and the little, white,

frilly dresses.

If they were just

these sweet little girls,

like your little girls at home,

it didn't matter so much

that they were conjoined twins.

You know, that was just

sort of a bonus.

They couldn't be

The, you know,

Brighton United Twins anymore.

They needed to be American.

When they hit vaudeville,

they became

the San Antonio Siamese Twins.

- Theatrical lights soon blazed

with our names.

Our work as musicians, dancers,

and singers stood out.

- The initial thing

that got people in

to see Daisy and Violet

was the fact that they were

conjoined twins.

- It was pretty poignant,

you know,

because people go to the theater

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