Bound by Flesh Page #8

was to sign a joint petition.

And, actually,

to get an annulment,

you have to never have lived

together as man and wife.

- Jim Moore...

Ended up... -

and I didn't know this until... -

there is a theater in

San Antonio called the Aztec.

Below it was a restaurant.

- As we started talking

in his restaurant

called El Matador... -

this was 30, 40 years later... -

he casually mentioned that

he had been in vaudeville

and knew the Hilton sisters.

He said, "In fact, I married

one of them, kind of."

- I think their fans

felt duped.

They did turn on them, yeah.

- We understand

it was all a publicity stunt.

- Yes, that's right.

The office that we worked for

made all the arrangements

for us

before we even

arrived in Dallas,

and it was advertised

several days before we were even

consulted or asked if we would

go through with it.

- Our marriage was just

a publicity stunt.

Publicity stunt.

- It was all a publicity stunt.

- Jimmy and I are

the very, very best of friends.

He sure is a swell guy.

- I think the world

of the girls,

and they still think the same

of me.

- In spite of the annulment,

Jimmy and I and my sister

are still going to continue

as partners

and travel through

all the nightclubs and theaters.

- Well, wait a minute.

Turn the thing off.

- It was the start

of their hard times.

Daisy gave birth to a child... -

and it was a boy... -

in Minnesota,

probably in one

of the Twin Cities,

Minneapolis or St. Paul... -

but gave it up for adoption

immediately.

- There was no way that they

would have been able

to continue their careers,

and I don't think

there was any other way

that they really could have

supported themselves.

At this point,

they were so far down the road

of being performers

that I think

that was really the only thing

that they ever foresaw

in their lives.

Having a child just

wasn't part of the picture.

- The whole show business thing

was changing drastically.

It was a totally different

business.

- It became unseemly

to pay money to see freaks.

Motion pictures then started

pushing out vaudeville

off the stage,

and it became

more and more difficult

for live entertainers

to find work.

The twins were 28.

Now, that is not ancient

by any means.

They were no longer these

dewy-faced ingenues anymore.

Everything was beginning

to slip away

in the entertainment world... -

not just for them

but for all live entertainers.

- Burlesque, in its day,

prided itself

on being a little sleazy

but a little bit big-time

but not too big-time

that everybody couldn't

sort of show up

and get a little raucous

and a little wild.

- So they went into burlesque,

and it was pretty demeaning.

Stripping, yeah.

- I worked with them

at a theater

in Steubenville, Ohio.

Their dressing room

was right next to mine.

They did a nice little act.

They played ukuleles,

and they did harmony.

And they had perfect little

Barbie-doll bodies.

But I used to

get a kick out of them

'cause one would always scream

at the other one to shut up.

[laughs]

- The Hilton sisters

were a vaudeville act.

Vaudeville didn't exist

in the '40s,

and these people

still needed a job,

and I guess maybe

they were a draw.

both:
Never say

you'll be the kind

To ever keep one sweetheart

on your mind

- I don't know if they danced.

I mean,

they couldn't be, like,

separating them on either side

of the stage.

They had to stay together.

both:
Love

[applause]

- All I know is that

my father said

they stayed drunk

the whole time they were here.

- They were not great dancers.

I mean, well,

how do you dance

when you got somebody

attached to you?

And they were not

great musicians,

but I think they were

great entertainers.

- It's hard to know how the

Hilton sisters saw burlesque

when they started doing

more of that

than what wasn't around anymore.

- It was heart-wrenching

for them,

because these lonely men sitting

out in the darkened seats

of the striptease houses

really weren't

too interested in,

you know,

seeing these Siamese twins.

They wanted to see Evelyn West

and her $1-million chest,

and that's the kind of freak

they wanted to see.

I think

they were kind of, like,

hooted off the stage

sometimes

and booed,

and, you know,

"Hey, let's get on

with the real babes here."

- I don't think they had

the skills to do anything else.

And besides, they had

had a reputation that was

deeply entrenched

of what you see in the pictures

of Daisy and Violet,

Siamese twins.

So their skills

and their talents were not such

that they would have stood out.

Sometimes they were grateful

that it made them a living,

and sometimes they were tired

of being exploited.

They didn't know what

the word "exploited" meant,

but they knew the feeling.

They were used

by guys who took their money

and who did mistreat them

and worked them too hard.

- I think they started to drink

to excess at that point.

They both drank.

- I'm sure one of those

boyfriends or husbands

along the line

encouraged them to drink.

- If one sister drank to excess

and became woozy

or intoxicated,

ultimately, the other sister

would get in that same state.

They used to fight about that.

- They really could not

understand why it was

that they could no longer draw

thousands of people

into the theaters.

- They're watching

the death of vaudeville.

Burlesque is slowly but surely

guttering out

as a place

where they can really perform.

The carnival midway,

despite the fact that it still

could have been bigger money

for them, is grueling.

It's exhausting.

You're on the road.

You're sleeping in your car.

You got... - Maybe you got

a little trailer,

but you're living in a trailer

nine months out of the year.

It's a horrible life.

But when you got to do it,

you got to do it.

Well, the Hilton sisters

had made

a lot of money in their day.

They'd lost a lot;

they'd wasted a lot;

they'd frittered

a lot of it away.

They got in some bad

business ventures.

But they still made

a lot more money

than most of that

sideshow talent.

- They were doing, you know,

whatever they could to survive.

Sideshows were disappearing

at that point,

but they made some appearances

even into the '40s.

- When they go back to that

a little later in life,

I think they realized

the degree to which

they'd been sheltered from

some of the reality of that.

And I don't think

it was a pleasant experience

in their life.

- It's hard to separate

fact from fiction

with the marriages

of the Hilton sisters,

and I say that plural

because I couldn't tell you

how many were actually

reported on,

were really recorded in

court documents... - Who knows?

And then there's

the old apocryphal

and not-so-apocryphal

carnival marriages,

which I don't know that

they ever got into,

which basically is,

"I love you, honey,

but the season's over."

- When they were in Atlanta

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