Circus Tricks
Roland Butler, the famous circus publicist came up with a great idea to publicise the listings for local circuses. Most newspapers in Chicago would not print circus listings which was obviously very costly to the circus owners. Butler created a fictitious eleven year old from Chicago who couldn’t write from left to right so wrote upside down instead. Considered a freak, he created a great deal of interest from journalists whom Butler allowed to watch the boy writing upside down. The photographers took shots of the boy’s topsy turvy writing and of course, the journalists had to check that what the boy was writing wasn’t just goobledeegook. When each journalist checked, the boy was writing the listings for the Chicago Circus, thus publicising the performances in every paper in Chicago.