13. Emmett Kelly and the sad-faced clown
One of the survivors of the fire of 1944 was Emmett Kelly, who was a former trapezist who worked as a full-time clown for Ringling Brothers from 1942 to 1956, when he took a year off to serve as the mascot of the Brooklyn Dodgers National League Baseball Club. Kelly was a new type of clown when he began his act with Ringling Brothers. Rather than adhering to the slapstick routines adopted by most clowns of the day, Kelly appealed to the angst of the unemployed and downtrodden, performing never-ending thankless tasks as part of his act, and appearing in makeup which made him sad and even tragic in appearance.
Kelly named his clown character Weary Willie, and his sad appearance was heightened following the 1944 fire, when a photograph appeared in Life Magazine of Willie carrying a bucket while running towards the burning tent. The combination of the destroyed Big Top, the sad clown, and the uselessness of the bucket immortalized the clown, who had done all he could to help people escape the flames in the terrifying short time expanse of the fire. The Hobo Clown became an American icon after Emmett Kelly, and is still copied by clowns in parades and other events across the United States, years after Kelly died in Sarasota in 1980.