The Hilton Sisters

It's funny how things can happen that cause you to take something of a left turn in your research. I had not expected to be doing background reading on vaudeville and burlesque entertainment in the early twentieth century, yet that's pretty much all I have been doing over the last week. Let me tell you, it's a bit awkward trying to read a large book about circus freaks on the train.

Violet (on the left) and Daisy (on the right) Hilton were born out of wedlock in Brighton in 1908. Their mother worked in a pub, and the landlady, clearly an enterprising woman, offered to buy the babies from the no doubt shocked parents, once it became clear that they were not going to die within the few days predicted by the doctor. The twins were almost immediately put to work in the pub, drawing crowds who could come into the back parlour for a glimpse and the opportunity to buy a postcard or two. For an extra couple of pennies you could lift up the girls blankets to check for yourself that they really were "bound by flesh." Before long the girls were learning to sing, dance and play instruments and were playing to packed variety halls and theatres around Europe. Whilst still teenagers they were whisked away to America, only returning to Britain once many years later.


From our more "enlightened" perspective the idea of exploiting the disabled for entertainment seems tasteless and crass, but from the 1700s right through to the mid-twentieth century  the freaks, geeks, pinheads, dwarves, midgets, indeed anyone deemed to be deformed, were basically given two options: go on the road as a performer or be left to rot in an institution. The Hilton sisters grew up with this used a constant threat should they ever refuse to perform. Refused schooling, all the girls knew was how to perform on stage. They became accomplished singers, dancers and musicians and audiences were often brought to tears seeing these diminutive girls overcoming such personal tragedy with such grace and style.


Anyone reading this will know the girls mainly from their appearance in Tod Browning's Freaks (1932).

By this point it had been many years since the girls had actually performed in the circus, and evidentially they were initially reluctant to appear in the film for this reason, but ultimately they perhaps saw it as an opportunity. They actually come off well in the film. They are required to act, something they were inexperienced in, rather than sing, dance or play music. Sadly, due to the problems the film had it was not the springboard to movie success they were perhaps hoping for, and they went back on the road, touring for many years with their own revue. Along the way were romances, fake weddings and even a baby: Daisy got pregnant from someone in her band, and the baby was born in Minnesota and put up straight away for adoption; just another in the long list of personal tragedies for the Hilton sisters.

After years of being ripped off by unscrupulous men they were advised to put their own money into another movie, this time with them as the stars. In 1952 Chained for Life was released, directed by the journeyman Harry L. Fraser, who had spent decades making 'B' westerns. This means that unlike many cheap exploitation films, this was at least shot with relatively decent production values. The girls were in their early forties at this point, and are showing what two decades on the road, smoking and drinking all the way, can do to your looks. It is still a fascinating watch, being semi-autobiographical in it's depiction of the Hamilton sisters who are still a big draw on the vaudeville scene. In real life they were anything but, and vaudeville was dying out.


The film is worth viewing especially for one astonishing scene. Daisy (playing Dorothy) is in love and wants to marry, but they have been refused a marriage licence on the grounds that it would be bigamy (this is something which did actually happen to them some fifteen years earlier). She goes to bed wishing that they could finally be free of each other, the screen wobbles and we are in a dream sequence, where Daisy climbs out of bed leaving Violet (Vivian in this movie) behind. She goes out into a garden and dances around, alone, until her lover appears and they dance together. This is a heart-breaking scene to watch, as one imagines the shooting of it. Obviously a double is used for the long shots, and there is enough Vaseline on the lens to make sure we can't tell it's not Daisy, but occasionally it cuts to close-ups of Daisy. At one point she is standing next to a tree, and you picture in your mind poor Violet crouching down out of shot. How the girls must have felt about this scene when they sat and viewed it for the first time one cannot imagine. Perhaps it was wish-fulfillment for them.


In the mid-1950s they actually set up and operated a burger shack by the beach in Florida, but this did not last long, possibly because customers felt slightly revolted at the sight of "freaks" serving up hot snacks. By the end of the decade they were reduced to travelling around the States making personal appearances at movie theatres and drive-ins, accompanying double-bills of Freaks and Chained for Life. All they really knew what to do was perform. They had not changed their act in fifty years, despite the entertainment industry irrevocably changing around them. By 1962, the kids at the drive-in would not have known who they were, or cared.


Just when their story could not get any more tragic they were left in Charlotte, North Carolina by the promoter who had been driving them from gig to gig. He took the money and the film prints and drove away. Daisy and Violet were taken in by the local community, offered shelter, jobs in the town grocery store and most importantly friendship. When they finally died in 1969, they had spent their last few years living something close to a normal life, with people who cared about them. This must have been some comfort after such a long and exhausting life of abuse, exploitation and abandonment.


So their story does have a happy ending. I think they are fascinating and have enjoyed revisiting their story over the last week or so. My reason for this renewed interest was because I was invited to contribute to a short piece on the girls for BBC's The One Show. It has not been aired yet so I don't even know if I will make the final cut. You will learn far more about the girls if you watch the documentary recently produced by Leslie Zemekis called Bound by Flesh (2012). It's a great overview of their lives and features interviews with people who actually knew them. I watched it on American Netflix, but you can also find it to buy and download on iTunes.