Hilton, Daisy, & Violet Hilton | "The Sensation of Vaudeville"

Hilton, Daisy, & Violet Hilton

"The Sensation of Vaudeville": San Antonio's Siamese Twins Daisy and Violet Hilton Born Joined Together. Kansas City, Missouri: Quigley Litho. Co., ca. 1927–1930

Color lithograph poster (41 3/4 x 27 1/4 in.; 1062 x 692 mm). Minor separation and repair at foot of central vertical fold crease. Laid down on linen.

Daisy and Violet Hilton may have been billed as San Antonio's, but they were actually born, in 1908, in Brighton, England. Essentially sold by their mother to an exploitative guardian, the girls were exhibited throughout Europe before being taken to the United States in 1916. A new custodian-manager treated the Hiltons no better, but did provide them with music and dancing lessons (in 1926 they evidently performed a dance routine with a young and then-unknown Bob Hope). In 1931, Daisy and Violet successfully sued to break their contract with their management.

"The pair were among the few sideshow attractions that crossed over to the loftier worlds of variety and cinema. The Hiltons played the famous Orpheum vaudeville circuit, appeared in Todd Browning's classic film Freaks, and were the stars of Chained for Life, a fictional tale of the tribulations of Siamese twin girls trying to make their way in the sordid world of show business" (CCC, p. 35). While they were reported to have been well compensated, the Hiltons' star faded with the demise of vaudeville, and they ended their lives working in the produce department of a Park-N-Shop supermarket in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The present poster was issued before the twins gained their independence. They are shown, aged about twenty, both holding saxophones. A fine, bright impression.

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, p. 229; cf. Magic, p. 417