![]() But their albinism also fascinated and repelled whites uncomfortable with the idea of light-skinned blacks who might pass for white. African-Americans with albinism were often teased by their peers and suffered from sensitivity to light that led to constant blinking, runny eyes and eventual blindness. What made the Muses so fascinating as sideshow attractions was their hair and pale skin. They were renamed Eko and Iko and billed at times as Barnum’s Original Monkey Men, Darwin’s Missing Links, cannibals from Ecuador, Martians who crawled out of a hole in the desert, or whatever nonsense else the sideshow barker dreamed up to draw patrons into the tent. MUSICIANS, PERFORMERS, BROTHERS - The Fields of Truevine, Virginia. “Are They Ambassadors From Mars” reads a handwritten caption.Īt the time the photo was taken, George and Willie Muse had been exhibited in sideshows for at least 12 years. One man looks away into the distance the other stares downward. Their hair explodes up and out to either side in thick dreadlocks. Their skin is pale, their eyebrows white and thick over deep-hooded eyes. They are dressed in formalwear, tailcoats and vests, bow ties and sashes. and Barnum & Bailey Circus shows two men standing shoulder to shoulder, squinting at the camera. You can do the same here.A 1926 photograph from the Ringling Bros. They were fine musicians and global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. ![]() I’ve ordered a copy of the book for myself. At the height of their fame, the Muse brothers performed for British royalty and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden. DiCaprio could also create a role for himself, playing a character that wasn’t part of the boys’ story. George and Willie Muse, albino brothers living in the rural South during the late. I’m obviously reaching here, but this is Hollywood movie-making, where artistic license reigns. The Muse Brothers: The story of two bothers during the Jim Crow South Era. Amazon’s description of the book adds that it explores a central and difficult question: “Where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars, or in poverty at home?” So one can imagine a scenario in which the boys’ captor may be painted as more of a, dare I say, “savior” who believes his act rescued them from lives of poverty, and turned them into stars. The real life tale starts in 1899 when George and Willie Muse, two black albino brothers, were kidnapped by a scheming white man, who planned to turn them into circus freaks. Given that the book was just published, I haven’t read it, so I can’t say with certainty how DiCaprio would insert himself in the story given the above summary, the most obvious role would be that of the white man who kidnapped the boys. Now Paramount Pictures and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way shingle are negotiating to acquire screen rights to the book to be developed as a potential star vehicle for DiCaprio. ![]() But the very root of their success was in their albino skin, and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume – supposed “cannibals,” “sheep-headed freaks,” even “Ambassadors from Mars.” Back home, their mother never accepted that they were “gone” and spent 28 years trying to get them back. They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. Forced into the circus, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden. One day a white man offered them a piece of candy, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever. Summarizing their story, in an 1899 tobacco farm in the Jim Crow South town of Truevine, Virginia, George and Willie Muse were two black albino boys born into a sharecropper family. The true story of two African American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back, is at the center of author Beth Macy’s book “Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South,” which was published by Little, Brown and Company, hitting bookstores just yesterday, October 18. ![]()
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