Jim Gerald

Who was Jim Gerald?

James Gerald was an Australia comedian, circus clown, acrobat, writer, director and troupe leader and filmmaker. He is generally regarded as one of the four leading post-World War I comedians to work the Australasian variety circuits, the others being Nat Phillips, Roy Rene, and George Wallace.

Born at Darlington, Sydney, Gerald was the seventh son of Stephen Australia Fitzgerald, a tailor turned actor, and his wife Mary Ann, née Ingram. In his youth Jim played truant from school to watch acrobats practising on the sandhills behind Centennial Park, learned to tumble and haunted his uncles' circus. Three of his brothers also went on the stage using the names 'Max Clifton', 'Lance Vane' and 'Cliff Stevens'. In 1898 his father apprenticed him to Oscar Pagel's Circus. He subsequently travelled the world, including South Africa, Africa, the Far East and North America for around ten years.

Back in Australia by 1908, Gerald found employment with several circuses; and as 'Diabolo' was billed as the first man to loop the loop on a motorcycle. In 1910 he and two of his brothers, Lance Vane and Max Clifton, appeared in The Life and Adventures of John Vane, the Notorious Australian Bushranger. That film, also directed by his father, is now viewed as a significant landmark in Australian cinema history, being the first recorded involvement in narrative film production by Charles Cozens Spencer.