BEY.AR COUNTY H J STORI CAL COf.1MISS I ON
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH : Mr. James 1'-loore
INTERVIEWER: Mrs . Esther MacMillan
DATE : June 30, 1978
PLACE: Residence of Mr. James Moore : 732 Olive Street
San Antonio, Texas
JM: Denotes James Moore
M: Denotes Esther MacMillan
..
M: There 1-las a time when San Antonio was home to the
world- famous Hilton Siamese t wins. Jim, you had a r ather
close connecti on with these two women for a long time.
But before we say just how close, I ' d like to ask you
some questions about the twins themselves. Now,the
description I have is: the girls ' names were Daisy and
Violet .
JM: Hilton .
M: Hilton, and according to what I 've read, Violet had
dark hair, was less than 5 feet tall; Daisy was blond and
5 feet . ~
JM: Well, that's not right. The girls were both.~ was
4'9" and Daisy was about 4 ' 9!z"; they were 5 feet with
3 inch heels on, which they wore all the time.
M: Oh!
JM: They always wore very high heels because they were
very conscious of being so short.
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M: They were very small?
JM: And the fact that they were Siamese twins, they
didn't want to be counted as midget Siamese twins .
M: Well, I can see .. tha t ' s perfectly normal. Well now,
i s it true that . ..
JM : And they were not . . . they were both of the same
color, however .. .
M: Were they?
JN: Daisy, just to make themselves diff erent . .. they
were not identical twins.
M: No .
..
JM : Daisy was s lightly taller than Vi and which threw
her jus t a little bit into a s quat position al l the
time ; it wasn't noticeab le unle s s you were very famil i ar
with the girl s uh , but they had sort of dark brown hair,
but Daisy bleached hers .
M: In other wo r ds ...
JM: Only afte r t hey became grown.
M: To be different?
JM: As children they
turned darker as they
both had very li ght hair, then~
got old and they kept t hem i n
curls, long sausage curls, until they were 18 years old.
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M: Now that' s Daisy and that ' s Violet . (referring to photo)
JM: Now you can see that they 're both very pretty girl s ,
but they a r e not identical twins .
M: No t at all. Well , the point was brought up at the
r esearch that I did on these twins at the Circus Library
in San Antonio. There is not very much on the Hilton twi ns ,
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that's one r eason why I'm so glad that you are willing
to do this interview, beca use they had a couple of ...
well, they have this "Intimate Loves and Lives of the
Hilton Sisters . " There is some . .. there's an advance
publication over there of suggestions to theaters and
what-not to promote the twins. There are a few newspaper
clippings, mostly of their later life and there is one
chapter in a book called "Very Special People" by
Fredrick Drimmer, one chapter only , and the name of the
book is "Freaks" and I am sure that the twins would have
not liked to have been cal led fre.a ks. So, ge tting back
to the girls now, according to what I read at the Library
and when we talked the other day, you said this was not
true ; they were born out of wedlock to a barmaid in
what? Liverpool?
JM: Brighton, England .
M: Brighton, England. You say that's not true?
JM: No, that is true.
M: Oh, I thought you said she worked in a house, a great
house.
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JM: No, well, she was fired from that immediately when she
became pre gnant.
M: Oh.
JM: Now, you see, in the f irst part of that book I never ...
they never told me that part of the story that their
mother was supposed to have been married to a Captain Hilton,
which the first part of the book says , I never heard
that . I always was under the impression that the midwife ,
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tha t her name was Hilton; howe ver , they bring out in
this story that her name was what? ... Williams?
M: Williams, yes.
JM: Well now, that may be, that may be .
M: Mrs. Williams.
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JM: But , now her daughter was the one that is mentioned . ..
Meyer ...
f\1: Edith.
JN: She is the one that later had the twins .
M: Yeah, she inherited them in other words.
JM: But , Mrs . Williams, I always thought that her name
was Hilton and that that's where the girls got the name
Hi 1 t.on, that they took the name of the midl-Ji£e , but
e vi dently they took the name Hilton; j ust picked it out
of the air.
M: Well, is th i s jus t a made up publicity story then,
because in this thing . .. .
JM: About the captain?
M: It says Kate married .... was married to a Captain Hilton.
JM: No, they glamorized tha t .
M: She gave the babies away when they were t wo weeks old.
JM: Now, this talks as though it were an Ameri can and that
they were born here in the St ates : well, they weren ' t . It
brings that out l ater in the s tory that they wrote here ,
but that ' s what they were told when they were young; but
then when they started into all this tria l and ever ything ,
then al l the other things came out , which i s the fact
that they were born out of we dlo ck; they were born in
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Brighton, England; and their mother was a se rving girl
or of some capacity in one of the great houses in
Brighton , and from this midwife, their guardian by ...
they go t the impression t hat their father was one of
the lesser , younger children of the family , and t herefore
the serving girl, naturally, she was i n disgr ace and
he wouldn't have anything t o do with her when s he
became pregnant. So, they were born out of wedlock, and
the girl was so astounded and frightened and everything
to have Siamese twins that she wanted nothing to do
with fhtm.
.·
Jvl : Uh huh.
J1,f: And so she sold them to the mid\vife . Now , t his
says that t hey \vere given to the midwife, and tha t
she took them but it came out i n this tri al, that they
were sold to th e midwi fe for twenty shillings, that
was a hal f pound.
M: Oh, r eally , it did come out?
JM: And that is why she claimed that she had absolute
control over them , and there i s no such thing as s lavery,
you don't sell human bab ies anymore, so tha t was one
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thing that was brought out in the t rial, here in San Antonio.
M: Well, it says in thi s t hing we're quoting from: " sold
into virtual slavery at birth"; •cexploi ted and mistreated
and mi s understood~ Well, in another reference , it said
that Mrs . Williams . .. I think her name was Mary Williams .
JM: Yeah.
M: Kept them c l ean and took care of them , but that's
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about all.
JM: Well, that of course was in their ... in their very
early childhood. Now, the first time I met the twins,
they were very small, young girls; they were two years
older than I, but I didn't realize that, they were so
tiny.
M: Uh huh.
JM: Now, I met them first ... they lived somewhere on
Essex Street in Highland Park.
M: Here in San Antonio? Here in the winter?
JM: And here ... they wintered her.e. ; see, that's why
they took San Antonio as their home, because they
tra~e l e d with a carnival . It was one of t he ... the big
carnivals that used to winte r here fo r years and years
and years .
M: Oh?
JM: And it wintered here.
M: Do you remember the name of it?
JM: Well, they winter in Florida now; it's the biggest
carnival in the United States.
M: It mentions somewhere Loew's.
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JM: Well , now they kept ... they don't mention the carnival
at all. I think that in that book ... I think they're
a shamed of t he carnival; now, t h at ' s where t hey worked
all their life , and this Mrs. Hilton ... I also saw them
in the carnival, but as I was going to tell you .... The
girls ' family, I guess it was the one that is called
Mrs . Meyer ... that's when the girls wer.e ge tting a little
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older. What year did it say that Mrs. Williams di ed?
M: It mentions the fac t that Edith, the daughter of
Mrs. Williams, had all along been growing up with these
girls ...
JM: Now, s he ...
M: now the part ...
JM: She wasn't a great deal older ; I would say S or
6 years older, maybe.
M: Well, i t menti oned the fa c t that she had known
them from way back.
JM : But, she'd known them since birth .
.-
M: And, so when she got ... then the mother died, 1'-1ary
Williams died , somewhere along, I don't have the dates ;
maybe I 've got them ...
JM : But I think . ..
M: So, they were inhe rited by this Edith and her husband,
Meyer Meyers , jus t like a chair or a tab le .
JM: That' s right , that' s right.
M: Just as if they weren't human be i ngs.
JM: She took them over and t hat's when Meyer informed
them that they had been given to the daughter and him
on the mother's death.
M: Well, now it says here maybe Edith was n 't the daughter,
because when "aun tie" died . ..
JM: Well, Edith ... well, they cailed her auntie.
M: Oh, they called he r auntie?
JM: Yeah.
M: Edi th and her husband inheri ted them with all t he
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possessions, and according to one of the references, it
said that when this Edith married Mr. Meyer, that he
was a go-getter and he's the one that started the
promotion.
JM: That was in Australia; he was in Australia and he
was a . .. now , they said circus ... it wasn't circus at all ...
it lvas in a carnival, and they were brought up in a
carnival, but no\v no one ever remembers seeing them in
the carnival. When you went in, their books were there ,
they were studying. The girls were quite well educated ,
and they were very talented, they had charming singing
voices .
M: They did?
JM: They pl ayed ... they talked about play ing the piano;
I never heard them play the piano; but one supposedly
played the piano and the other the violin.
M: Oh, yeah, that's what it says ... Violet the piano,
Daisy the violin.
JM: Well, I think that's a l ittle bit exaggerated.
I'm sure they studied , but they talked about being of
almost concert caliber. That isn't true, but they played
very, very nice saxophone now, ah ...
M: Oh, who did? Did both of them play saxophone?
JM: Oh, yes, both played s axophone ; now they used that
in their act, you see. They played the saxophone , and
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the way they finished their musical part of the act was ...
they played a number and an encore on the saxophone , and
then they had a .... well, they cal l ed them fi sh horns ; they
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were straight saxophones, but they were s t raight like
a clarinet, and as they played the saxophones, they
stood ... they turned as far front as they could, which
was about more than a 45 degree angle. Now, you see,
they can turn almost front, as you can see , they stood
like that and played their saxophones.
M: Uh huh?
JM : Then when they started into the third number, they'd
pick up these straight saxophones, the fish horns, and
turn back to back.
M: Oh, they could move that much?
JM: Oh , oh, the girls could . . . normall y were back to
b a ck , and then they 'd turn ab out , oh , about that angl e . ..
it's about a 60 degree .. . or almos t front, as you see .
When they walked, they walked straight . I mean they
took a step and around and a step and around , they didn't
walk back to back . Now, there were boy Siamese twins
that were joined, I imagine, simi l ar or exactly like
the girls.
M: Oh?
JM: But the ... and the boys, they were just a little
younger than t he girls, and you never hear about them.
They were grotesque .
M: That wasn't besides the Orien t al ones .. .
JM: No, not the original ones where they get the name
"Siamese Twins." That was Yang and Ying .
M: Yes, I re ad about that.
JM: No, the boys ... we saw them in Atl ant a. I met t he
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boys and ...
M: Were they traveling with t he carni val, too?
JM: They traveled with the carnival ... no, well at tha t
time , I don' t know . Now, t hey were, I 'm not sure . ..
they were Puerto Rican, I believe or something, but
they had been raised h ere in the States and I'm sure
they had been more or less exploited and used. But~
see, they weren't talented nor pretty like the girls~
and the boys walked back to back, and when one boy
walked front, the other one walked back .
M: Had to walk back?
JM : And they were . . . well, I'll tell you about it in a
l ittle later story.
M: We ll~ somewhere it says t hat they were joined by
bone and muscle; that many times doctors looked at them
and scientists looked a t them. They were assured that
they could be separated successfully, but the girls
always said no. Is that true?
JM: That's true.
M: They really wanted to stay together?
JM: Well, they had gotten ... when I met the girls they
were, had been about 28.
M: That old?
JM: I mean that when we j oined their act.
M: Oh, I see.
JM: Now, I met the girls, as I say . . . ! started ·telling
earlier, I met the girls when they were very young .
M: · Well, you said ...
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JM: In San Antonio, when they were in the carnival
and I was about ... ! would say I was about 10 and they
were about 8, I mean about 12, but I thought that
they were very young because they were so tiny,but ...
M: How did you happen to meet them when they were at ...
at that time?
JM: Well ...
M: What were they doing here?
JM: They were v i siting over at ... their name was Smith,
and I was going to school with a boy, his name was
Porter Smith. Now, his uncle was Porter Loring . .
N: Uh.
JM: . . . of the funeral home. And Porter, naturally,
was bragging about it at school that the Siamese twins
were going to come over to their house with this woman,
whoever she was . Now, s he was a friend of Mrs . Smith ,
Porter's mother , and so we went over to see the twins .
M: Just out of idle curiosity? And t hat ' s the first
time you laid eyes on them?
JM: That's the first time I laid eyes on them . Then
I saw them several times after that, in the carnival,
but ...
M: Here in San Antonio?
JM: Here in San Antonio.
M: In other words , they kept returning here?
JM: Oh, they lived here every winter ; they lived here
every winter from the ...
M: From the time they were quite young?
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JM: Oh, yeah, from the time they were very young and
they built a home out on Vance Jackson Road .
M: It mentions that, but • . .
JM: Ndw, at the time, it was a very expensive house and
a very ornate, elaborate house, but a very cold house.
It was built on a sort of a Japane s e or Chinese style,
with the curved-up corners, pagoda type . It was built
out of blond, light colored brick .
M: Oh .
JM: And had pagodas, pedestals , all around this big
brick wall around the house.
M: Did they l ive in that, when they were children?
JM: No , well, probably in the ir la t er childhood, after
they were 16 or 18 years old . (Correction: probably
in their earl y teens . )
M: And t hey kep t coming back here .. . this was sort o f
home base?
JM: This was considered their home .
M: Well, now, one of the things that interested me in
tal king t o somebody else , they denied . . . they said it
couldn ' t have been true, but in one reference, it said
that the plans came from Frank Lloyd Wright, not that
he built the house , but that t hey got plans . . .
JM: I don't know about that .
M: And somebody said that it just didn't look like
Frank Lloyd Wright . You see, I never saw the h ou se .
JM: I think that was a little bit of ...
M: Fluff?
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JM: Well, they fantasized on several t h ings in t hat
book .
M: Did they?
JM: Yes, I mean they didn't exactly tell a fib, but
they sort of glamorized it.
M: Well, you can see how they would ... you can see
why they'd do that. Well, then, they never wanted ...
it was the truth, then, that they didn ' t want to be
separated. In one place it says that they had different
t ypes of bloo<l.
JM: No , that' s not so .
M: That's not so? It says that 1f one caught the
meas l es, fo r instance, the other one didn't .
J l\1: Oh, no , now that I don't know because ...
H.
1'1 • .. . they didn ' t c atch i t from each other .
J M: That \vould have happ ened before , when they were
real small children, and I didn ' t know them before at
all.
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M: One of them, in being interviewed, said that: "harmony
has existed for y ear s b etween us . We've always h ad
an harmonious relationship, we two twins'' ... that neither
dominates, that neither was a dominator.
JM: Well, Dai s y was the stronger character.
M: Was she?
JM: However, if Vi put her foot down, why Daisy would
gi ve in, but Da isy ... well, Daisy was a little bit more
practical than Vi.
M: She says in one pl ace, where they're being interviewed,
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she says s he likes show business, she lived in her
mind, was impulsive, talkative and quick- mo tioned,
and Violet described hersel f as ... what did she say
when she . . Oh, Violet said she wanted t o be a nurse , she
lived in her he art, not a talker, and seldom impulsive .
I s that true?
JM: No, they were both ... Vi \vas more impulsive than
Daisy really .
M: They were jus t making a s to ry?
JM: They were just making a . ...
M: On an interview?
JM: They were trying to make them ... now, they were
no t identical twins and they didn't have t he s ame t astes
along everything, but when they say things like that,
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not whether Vi ever wanted to be a nurse , I think that ' s ...
that you know, maybe she somewhere saw a movie or
something and s he ' d say , oh, I 'd like to be a nurse,
you knm'l?
M: Yeah, every girl sometime thinks she' ~ like to be a . ..
JM : But they ...
M: Well, they say . . .
JM : They were ... they knew nothing but show business ;
nothing.
M: They said that they didn 't have any fr i ends, t ha t
their. ..
JM: Well, that ' s just about ... no c l ose frie nds , but,
of course, they had been so kept mvay from people that
they didn't n eed any , t hey had each other and t hat's
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about all that was necessary .
M: What?
JM: They were very self-sufficient, and very head -
strong, and they liked people, now, don't
think they didn't ... they loved people, and loved to be
around people, but they didn't make very .. . when they
made a friend, they were very possessive of that friend
for the time that they were in s ight, and out of
sight, out of life.
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M: Well, they were moving all the time, you could imagine ...
JM: I mean that ' s another reason.
N: You couldn't send any roots dmvn with that kind of
li fe.
JM: No, that•s true.
M: Well, it said that . . . i s i t true this ... in the quote
the "Intimate Loves and Lives of the Hilton Sisters" ..
it said until they were 24 years old, without parents
or one intimate friend, and they were exploited, mistreated,
and misunderstood. Is that true?
JM: That's true.
M: It is true. It is a terrible life. It's wonderful ...
they kept their sort of amiability.
JM: Well, now, you see, well, this Mrs. Williams and
the Meyers, r ealized that people , even though the twins
r efused to be called freaks, and refused to think of
themselves as freaks .. . . people paid to see them .. . not
to see them perform. Now they were both talented and
good performers, but after people had seen them walking
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around on the street, which was in t heir later l ife, they
·would .. . people would say: " \Vell, I s aH them downtown
~oday, and I was this close . Why s hould I pay a premi um
price to ~o look at them?" And that's why the Meyers
kept them isol ate d . .. and particularly when they were
exhibited, which is what they were.
M: Sure.
JM: And in the carnival, they never appeared . They
had a limousine pick them up right in back of the tent
t hat they were be ing shown i n and were driven right
straight back to the hotel, where they were staying,
and they were never seen. No one saw them.
M: They didn't go to parties or anything l i ke that?
JM: They were not allowed to . They were not allowed
to do anything l ike that.
M: Well , it says they were treated like animals, that
they 11ere not permi t ted to play with other chil dren .
JM : Now, that I don ' t know; they we r en't allowed to
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go out and play . They did, t hey came over to the Smith's;
that 's where I first saw them , but I would say not very
often because .. . well, people in s how business cannot
make very many c lose friends in very many pl aces. Now ,
I'm sure that this Mrs . Meyer who was their guardian in
later life, knew Mr s . Smith, and that is why she came ove r
to visit her, and she brought the twins.
M: Brought the twins? Well, uh .. .
JM: But it i s true that they had no cont act Hith other
people.
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M: Somewhere a long, they s pe ak of s ome of the famous
names in show business and they say that Bob Hope t aught
them the Black Bottom. I s th at true?
JM: Well, now, that I don't know .
M: And they mention ...
JM: But, I imagine so . Now, the other people that
they mention in this, I vaguely remember, and we used
to talk by the hour. We were back stage you know.
1'-1 : Yeah.
JM: And I mean we'd chat and chat and chat and there
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were so many things that we talked about that I just don't
remember. Sometimes,you know,the things they \vould
tel l you woul d s ort of r a i se an eyebrow.
M: Sure.
JM: But a great deal of this stuff they would t ell
you, I know i s true .
M: You do?
JM: Oh, sure . I mean, now, like, because we r an into
them later. Now, Blue Steel which ... who Vi talks about
is her lover, well, now, I don't think that Vi ... that
Blue Steel ever had any romant i c f e elings toward Violet .
He liked her, everybody liked the twins . . . they we r e
very likeable girls , very like able.
M: They weren 't spoiled by all the a ttention on t he
stage?
JM: No, no, not that kind of s poiled. Not the way
spoiled children are. Now, they were demanding in a
lot of ways , but they we r e not s poiled . No , not that
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kind of spoiled.
M: Wel l , at one point, they mention Houdini, who
sensed that they were terribly pinned down .. .
JM : No, I see that is when they were young .
M: ... and gave them some philosophical advice about . . .
JM: That's before . .. that ' s when they were in show
business and during a period t hat I didn ' t know them .
It was befcre we joined them.
M: Wel l, then, it said, t h ey they first appeared . . . they
made t heir debut in Berlin, and it said ... do you know
i f that' s t rue or not?
JM: Yes, they did . I think it's fantasizing a little
bit about Vi .. . Daisy play i ng t he walt z f or two and a
half hours and ... but I imag i ne that in their musical
act, Vi played the violin and Daisy played the piano
and t hey always ... now, when it said that they stopped
t he show, well, they didn't use that expression in the
book, because, I guess , people, other than show business,
don't knmv exactly \vha t "stop the show" means, but
that's . . . well , they should, but I 'm sure that that is
true because they always stopped the show.
r.t: They did?
JM : Oh , yeah.
M: They were that good?
JM: They were always .. . oh, yeah .
M: Well, now, it says . . .
JM : And we s tarted to stop the show .. . the act finished
with four of us dancing . I danced with one and a boy
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out of the orchestra danced with the other one and . ..
M: Did that take a good deal of practice to coordinate?
JM : No, not ... me being a dancer and they had the routine
down so anybody that worked with them . . . they did the
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same thing, and I just stepped right in and in 30 minutes ...
it was a simple little routine but to see four of us
doing it all together was sort of spectacular.
M: Of course it was. Well, now, was this still
carnival?
JM: No, no this was in vaudeville, a unit show .
M: You were in a ,what kind of show?
J M: A unit shm.,r.
M: A unit show at . . .
JM: And that ' s a produced show but we played thea ters .
M: Well, now, when it says that they went al l over the
world, was that in carnival or vaudeville?
JM: That was in both.
M: Both?
JM: Yeah. When they were young they trave l ed all over
the world in carnivals and when they .. . as this brings
out in that book ... I don't know exactly at what age, but
something is s aid about t he ... I think it was one of the
columnists , \Val t er Winchell, or s omebody, said tha t the
gi rls were attractive young \vomen , and 1vhy , Hhen they
appeared in their act on the s t age, we re they presented
as children.
M: Oh.
JM: Now, at what age they decided to let the girls start
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appearing as young ladies, I'm not sure , but I think
it was about 18 or 20 .
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M: Well , it says ... I just have a note that says "rebel l ion
at 18 years ."
JM: Well, then tha t's probably when they ...
M: Probably \vhen they .. . and it says the house cost
s eventy -five thousand dollars, and f or those days, that
was a lot of money.
JM: I'm sure ...
M: Now, we're talking about the ' 20 ' s,aren't we?
Are we back i n the ' 20 's or the ' 30 ' s?
JM : When they were 1 8, th at would have been in the . ..
:t-1. : In the '30's?
JM: No , l et ' s see. Well, they were born in '08, so
when they were ... what? Figure that out .
M: 1908 ... 18 , well ... if it were built in 1934, that's
when they were 26 years old.
JM: They were 27 years old somewhe r e around that, when
they built this house out there . (Correction: the
house must have built in the mid or late '20' s. Note:
in that case, the twins would have been about 18 or 19 . )
M: But they were born i n 1908?
JM: Uh huh.
M: I didn't write that down anywhere. That I don't know ...
JM: It mentions tha t in .. .
M~ It may not have ... now wait a minute , I don't want
to get ahead of thi s story here . One of the things in
this book that this Fredri ck Drimmer wrote; he said
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that they could di s associate themselves from each
o t her . In othe r words, one could be doing one thing
and one could be doing anoth er, and . ..
J M: Well, they did have the talent to do that. If you
want me to t ell you a little story about that; it's
a little d i rty.
M: Sure, that' s what ... ! like those sorts of things . ..
makes it interesting.
JM : Well, in later l ife, I mean, we were talking and
t his was when we were t raveling you knmv?
M: Yeah.
J t-.!: And they both had boyfriends . They were members
o f the band .
M: Oh!
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JM: And s o somebody ... we were just sitting there chatting,
jus t dishing, you know .
M: Ah h ah.
JM: And I don't know who it was , but somebody asked Vi . ..
says: "We 11, what do you do >vhen Johnny comes by to
see Daisy?" And Vi says : "Why, I just turn ove r and
read a book and eat an appl e ."
M: Well, in other words , they did have lovers?
JM: Oh, yes .
M: Well, of course, that' s what everybody's going to
be curious about because how could twins have lovers ...
oh, how could Si amese t wins h ave lovers?
JM : We ll, they had every organ and every function t h a t
anyb ody else does . Now this i s regres s ing a litt l e bit,
MOORE
but ... or di gressing, but t hey s aid t h a t the y we r e
joined by gristle and bone and it brings ... it says that
their back bones were attache d . I doubt tha t . I
don't think their back bone . ..
M: It said they were joined one way so that they were
joined at the hip with muscle and bone. That's what
they were .. .
JM: I think the main organ that was connected must
have been something to do with the colon. It must have
gone through that attached place. Now, they said they
didn't want to be separated beca~se the spinal fluid
would run out and that kind of thing, you know.
M: Yeah.
JM: That might have be en something in the back of
their minds . But I think, now this I never knew . . . now,
when they were small and being exhibited this is one
other thing that used to just hack the hell out of them.
They had to lean over and thi s woman would part their
dress and show the place where they were joined, to
prove, you know, that showing that they were not fakes.
M: This wasn't a fake.
JM: This was in the carni val.
END OF TAPE I, SIDE I
22
MOORE
TAPE I, SIDE II
M: Oh ! The other day, when we were talking you said
t hat there was talk that one of them had an abortion,
going back to this lover bit.
JM: It wasn ' t ... I told you that .
M: Yeah.
JM: Well, this ...
M: One of them did get pregnant , in other words?
JM: Well , this was "\vhen we were traveling in the unit
show , and in the show it featured . . . i t wa s the Hilton
si s t e rs atid there was Dale Stevens' band . .. they were
ou~ of Ohio .. . Mansfield , Ohio, and they were a semi-name
band , a v ery , ve r y fi ne band; f ourteen mus i cian s ;
and there was Dai sy and Vi an d then Anita an d I and Do r is
Zeman. Now, Doris Zeman worked with Anita and I; we
did a trio number and then Anita and I worked together
and Doris worked alone ; and that was the whole unit show.
We did about an hour and a half show.
M: You were a dancer, weren't you?
JM: Yeah , Anita and I . That was Anita, my partner and
later my wife.
M: Oh , I di dn't know that .
23
JM: Oh, yeah , after I got out of the twin deal (laughter).
M: I ' d say you had trouble there.
JM: Well , anyway, so both of the girl s had boy friends
i n the band.
M: In the band?
JM : And I 'vill change the names: I'll call Daisy ' s boy friend,
MOORE
Johnny , and I'll call the other one, Stan.
M: Alright.
JM: And, so those were the t wo boys that in the band,
that came by to see Daisy and Vi . And Dai sy , someHhere
along the line, got pregnant and we went in to .. . I think ..
I can 't remember which city Ne were in .
M: You said you thought it might be Detroit, Nhen you
told me.
JM: No, no, it Nas in Detroi t where we went down to the
Cent ennial (Dall as) , from De troit, but where we went
to see a doctor; that's the only t ime that the girls
eve r consented to go and see a do ctor all the time
I knew them.
M: Oh, r eal l y?
Ji\1: And, ah .. .
M: They were ... you told me that they Nere afr aid
of doctors.
JM: They weren ' t a fraid. They just dis l iked them.
M: Uh.
JM: They wouldn't let them ... t hey would say , "no,
we ' re not going t o s ee a doctor. They ' ll want to poke
at us , look at us, see where we 're joined and want
to cut us apart." And that was t r ue .
M: Uh huh . Sure . ..
JM: So , we went to this doctor and the show manager who
(they t ell that a little wrong i n here ) . . . now this s how
that we were in, it was the l as t show .. the l ast decent
t hing they did in show business besides make t hese movies
24
MOORE
We went ... the s how manager . . . and it ·was Stan Zukor
owned or was the head boy, and a consolidated radi o
artist . . . and that was out of Cincinnati and his younger
brother was Ben, Ben Zukor.
M: The famous Zukor f amily that l ater went to Hol l yw·ood?
Z-U-K -0 -R . There was a famo us bunch of Zukors out
there in the early days .
JM: No, that's not the same one.
M: Not the same one? Ok ay .
JN : But, anyway, Ben took the twins and they insisted
that Anita and I go with them. i'}.ow , as I've said , when
we were traveling with them they were very possessive ,
and everytime they went out or went any place, why Ani ta
and I had to go with them.
M: They just demanded it , huh?
JM: Well, they ' d say : "Oh, please honey, go lvith us .
We don ' t want to go alone ." And, of course, I
can't blame them. I mean they .. .
M: For protection?
JM: Now, naturally, when they wanted to go out , and
they liked to go s hoppi ng and do things like that, well
it was almost impossible for them t o go alon e .
M : I s u pp o s e s o .
JM : Oh, sure. I mean they lvould have b een mobbed. They
would have been . . . Well, you just had to walk out on the
street . . . you had . . . before you could get two blocks , there
were forty or fifty people fo llowing you .
M: They _were that well known?
25
f.100RE
JM: Oh, honey, what would you do if you happened to
see two girls coming down the street and you couldn't
figure ou t why they were walking that way. And when
you real ized they were joined, wouldn't you have sort
of wanted to get a better l ook?
M: Wel l , I suppose . . . just out of curiosity . What
I 'm getting at is , were they that famous?
JM: Oh, yeah.
M: For instance, if they went to a big city ... were the
Hilton Siamese twins that famous?
JM: Yes .
M: They were. That's what I thought .
JM: And, by this period, because they had been in
every major city ...
M: Ah bah.
JM: As the star, the main attraction and everything . . .
they had played every good vaudeville house a l most , in
the worl d ... . all of the good vaudeville houses in the
United States .
M: Oh, they had?
JM: Oh, yes .
M: Now that ' s not brought up in any of these books.
JM: Wel l, I know, but they had.
M: But,though , it 1 s interesting because that was back
1n the good old days of vaudeville, and vaudeville was
a flourishing theater.
JM: And that is why, that is why, when they talk about,
you know, the money they made ..... The girls have made
26
MOORE
literal ly 3 or 4 mi llion doll ars .
M: That ' s what I thought.
JM: I mean it brings out in that . .. their salaries,
doesn't it?
M: Yes, it does . It says ...
JM: Well, that i s true ... Now look, they ... when they
talk about the Orpheum Circuit and so forth, they
t alk about the different circuits, Loew's ... wel l , I
know that a fter they did that, their salary jumped t o
an enormous amount o f money.
M: Well, now the figures I have :· .. the highest they
got, that's l isted, is $3,8 50 a week.
JM: That's about right .
M: They went f rom $2 ,500 to $3 , 850. For those days ,
t h at ' s awful good pay, isn't it?
JM: Now, that was a for tune . That would be at l east
10 or 15 thousand n ow . That was back in the ' 20 ' s.
M: Sure .
JM: And in the earl y '30' s.
27
M: We left Daisy pregnant. Did s he ever ge t the abortion?
Did s he ge t the abortion?
JM : Well, that's why we s houldn ' t have gotten into t h e
pers onal things with the twins b efore we got this
hi s tory stuff.
M: Funny bus iness.
JM: Well, yeah, we went to the doctor and they wanted
to have it done right , you know ... to have an abortion
and have it done c l inically and in a sanitary place .
MOORE
It could have been in the doc t or ' s office, but they
wanted no problems, so the doctor says , well, let
him examine them and so forth . Well, they were very,
very adverse to that, but he got out his calipers
and he started measuring a little bit on Daisy ... she
\vas pregnant. And he says, "No. "He says"this young
lady is perfectly capable of having normal child b irth."
And so he wouldn't do the abortion.
M: He wouldn 't. Oh , dear.
JM: So , we ... very s hortly after that, went from Detroit
to Dallas, and while we were in D.· allas . . . why I say I
28
kno~ the girls do not have different types of blood and that
they do have a mutual blood s tre am, you see ... a t that
time I was married to this ... to Daisy, to Vi.
M: Oh, you were?
JM: Well, this was after we were ... that happened, you
know, in Dallas, but Vi quit menstruating .
M: When Daisy was pregnant?
JM: In about her 5th or 6th month .
M: She got that far?
JM: Before ...
M: In her pregnancy?
JM: Well, she got .. she had a baby .
M: Oh, she bore the chi l d?
JM: Well, sure .
M: Oh, I thought she somewhere , got somebody to do an
abortion for her.
JM: No, no.
MOORE
M: She bore a child?
JM: Evidently. Well, now this is the thing that is
the mystery that I don't know about. When we got . . ..
after Dallas, why we went to the Chez Paree, in
New Orleans , and we worked there for about four weeks.
Well, at the end of the f our weeks, the girls had an
offer to go up to Minneapolis and they didn't want to
pay the money to transport Anita and I up there, and
Anita and I had been offered four mo r e weeks a t the Chez
Paree . But they couldn't afford the twins and they
t hought they had capitalized on me, you see.
M: Yeah.
J~l: And so we tal ked it over and the girls said : "Well >
29
we almost have t o take this job and will it be alright?"
And , \ve said: 11\llell, sure" and so they went to Minneapolis.
Well, now that is where it happened and I don't know.
Now, Anita and I, seven months later. jus t happened to
be booked in Minneapolis also, and the girls had
written us and told us who their agent was up there.
Well, I went down to see the woman, it was a woman booking
agent, and I went down to see her and I don't know
what the twins might have told her, but she treated me
as though I were the big bad wolf.
M: Ah, she did?
JM: And she would give me no information. She would
not tell me where the girls were. They may had bean
been there in Minneapolis at that time. I don't know .
M: So it was a big mystery?
MOORE
JM: As to exactly what happened. I'm sure that by
that time that no one would have touched Daisy and
she certainly .. oh, when we were in New Orleans it
was quite noticeable almost, of course, with them
being joined and the way they wore their dress, well ..
they wore different dresses all the time except
their show costumes. Now the show costumes, they
dressed alike, but that was just for appearances sake ...
but when they were . .. they split their dress up sort of
up the back ... and sewed the two dresses over so it just
went round this place that they were joined. Well,
of course, as Daisy got bigger and bigger, s he just
had to buy bigger size dresses.
M: But, I don ' t see how she could carry on with dancing
and stuff.
JM : She did.
M: With the full term apparently, if she had a baby.
JM : Well, they didn't dance, of course, when they 1vent
off alone; there was no one to dance with them, you see.
M: Oh, they didn ' t dance together.
JM: As they had almost quit doing their whole act
completely ... they walked off the stage somewhere. I
30
think it was in Nashville. It was in Nashville, Tennessee.
M: Oh, they did?
,JM: Ah , they didn't walk off the stage , not in the
performance. When they go t through playing their fish
horns , they were standing there and they hadn't 1varmed
them up and Vi ... you say Vi said she wasn 't the impulsive
MOORE 31
one ... well, this is what Vi did. As they were p l ay i ng
and they were holding the horns up in the air and, you
know ... if the reed is not moist and if they hadn't
warmed it up it'll squeak ... and Vi was holding on the
last note,and they always held them 1vith it way up
in the air 'til their back was arched as far as they
could and their heads thrown back and,then she was blowing
it, and in the last note it says "squa1vk" and made
a big, this . .. eeeee ... aaaaa .. .
M: Dear.
JM: Well, she walked off and says: "This goddamn
saxophone" and threw it against the brick wall.
M: Oh !
JM: That's the last time they played.
N: Really?
JM: Well, it bent all up . .. it just mutilated it.
M: Yeah, they couldn 't buy another one?
JM: And at the same time .. some place along the line,
I don't remember when, they Ivan ted something . . . they
were broke, and they hocked the other saxophone .
M: Oh, why were they broke?
JM: Why were they broke?
M: They didn't know how to handle their money, I bet you.
JM: They didn't. No, they were j us t s o gener ous with
their money. Money meant nothing in the world to them.
M: Where was this Meyer now at this point?
JM: This is after that big law suit.
M: Oh, we haven't got t o t he law suit y et.
MOORE
JM: I never was with them when Meyer had anything
in the world to do.
M: Oh, you weren ' t? They were free by the time you
met them?
JM: Oh, yeah.
M: Well, then, in other words, we come to this law suit?
JM: Well , this lmv suit \vas when they \vere . . . I think
they say 23.
M: Twenty, ah . . . oh dear me, I don't know . Well, it
says in 19 . .. in accounting of their money . . .
JM : Well, that I don't ... ..
M: No, it says the court trial in San Antonio, in
a ccounting of t heir money , and the manager , i n ot her
words ... he'd been holding .. . he was still there then,
because they made him account . . . the court made that
Meyer account where was all this money these girls
had been making . And it said, 1929 . I have that
date they were l egally of age and . . .
JM: That ' s when they became 21 .
M: Oh, 21?
JM: Yeah.
M: Well, then, attorney Martin 'J. Arnold, informed of
the virt ual slavery and so forth . .. and it tells about ...
do you know anything about that because t hat was quite
a deal? It was here in San Antonio.
JM: Ah, you should go dm<~n to the 11Express 11 and 11Light"
Publishing Companies and look in their archives and
32
see if you can get out ... there 's a ... what did the magazine
MOORE
used to be called ... the weekly magazine t hat the Hearst
papers put out?
M: Oh.
JM: You see, I had all of thi s publicity and everything ,
but Anita, when I went in the Army . .. why , Anita took all
of .. . well , n a tural ly, i t was in our traveling trunk,
and I never got any of i t back. I lost all of the
publicity .
M: Wel l , now, here I got this . . . this is f rom the San
Antonio "Express " of January B, 19 69 . The January ...
and it's going back in remembering apparently : "The ..
J anuary 1 931 tri a l was a diversion for depression
sufferers.
JM: Well, if that was in ' 31, then they were 23 .
M: 23 years old?
JM: Yeah .
M: Okay. And I have it written down some1vhere , but
I can't lay my hands on it right now, but it told about
how they finally were just desperate and they . .. how did
they ge t in touch 1vith this la1vyer? I've forgotten that
story.
JM: It ' s brought out in this book.
M: Is it in there?
JM: And the secretary ...
M: It says attorney Martin J. Arnold informed of the
virtual slavery under which they were held . . .
33
JM: Now they went out . . . they got i n . . . it ' s in this book .. .
they wen t back ... they went for a mus ic lesson ... don't
MOORE
you remember?
M: Yeah .
JM: That's ~11 true, that's all the exact . . ..
M: Well, it says that is the 0nly time th~y were le ~t
alone at that period, and so they ...
JM: Well, the first time, after they had contacted
him, they went in to see this lawyer.
!VI : Yeah.
JM: What was the reason for that? Anyway, he sensed
that they wanted to talk to him and he made Meyer leave
the room. .·
M: Yes, that' s in here.
J !·.I : Yeah, lvell now, that 's right .
M: And then that lawyer's secretary . ..
JM: And it was his secretary ... is the lady that got them
out and she took them to the St. Anthony Hotel, and
then from there, they took an apartment, and that is
the second time I met the twins, when they were in that
apartment. I had .. . well, it isn ' t really. They went
up to the dancing school that I was connected with
here in San Antonio and they knew Mimi and Pomme, who
were the owners of this dance school .
M: Who was that? Who were those . .. say it again .
JN: M-I-M-I, Mimi and Pomme, P-0-M-M-E.
M: Pomme?
JM: And they were friends of the twins. They had
knmvn them in vaudeville, see , and Mimi and Pomme
were old vaudeville dancers. And the twins were up to
34
MOORE 35
their studio . .. this is after the trial or during the trial,
and I met the twins again there.
M: You hadn ' t seen them for some time?
JM: Oh , I hadn't seen them since they were very small
children . I mean . . or children ... and in vaudeville, I had
seen them do their act , but not personally.
M: But then you joined up with that act, then, later
after all this had passed.
JM: Well, now tha t is after . .. this is much later again,
you see .. . that was in'33. I joined them in 1936 .
!vl: Ah, then the lawyer . ..
JM: Well, I said '36. Now, we joined them in ' 34, but
' 34 or ' 35 somewhere, either late '34 or early ' 35 . And
then we traveled with them through . .. to the next period
of theiY lives .
M: Is it true t hat . . . now this Mr. Arnold must've
been a great guy because he understood the problems and
he was sympathetic with them and he made that Meyer
give an account of the money and it said somewhere that
the girls got a hundred thousand dollars . Well, that's
a lot of money in those days .
JM : Well, what they agreed . .. that the girl s were given
the money that they had made . .. when they had had an accounting.
After they took out all the expenses and everything
like that, why they gave the girls what they thought was
the money they had earned that he had in his possession,
tha t the girls had earned from the age of 21 . They gave
the Meyers everything that the girls had earned up to
the age of 21 .
MOORE
M: That was fair enough.
JM: Which included the h ouse, that magnificent house,
and all the money which was ... I would say the man
had a million bucks in the bank.
M: The Meyer guy?
JM: Yeah. He got ... he lived here in San Antonio ...
this Mrs. Meyer, and I can always regret that I didn't
make an effort and get in touch with her . And she
would have been the one that really knew all about
the twins.
M: Well, didn't they dislike her so insensely that
they wouldn't have kept up with h~r ?
JM: They didn't, but I would. When I came back . .. wel l ,
I've been back here in San Antonio for years and years
and she lived here.
M: She did?
JM: Sure.
M: What became of her husband?
JM: Well, he died.
M: Oh, well, it said .. . now, then it said that Joe
Freeman was made the receiver and that's t he Joe
Freeman for whom the Coliseum was name d apparently.
JM: That' s ri ght .
M: And it says he was t h e r e ceiver and th ey go t some
money and freedom from their owners, it said.
JM: That ' s right, well . ..
M: Then it goes on to say that in some place or other
it said that then they just played, that they went off
36
MOORE
the s tage and they just played with all that money.
JM: For awhile.
M: And they had a great time until they ran out of
money. At one place, it said that they owned a hotel
in Philadelphia. Is that true?
JM: I didn't know that, read or hear of anything
like that ... owning a hote l.
M: It says they had a hamburger ...
JM: No, that was in Florida .
M: A hamburger bar in Miami. That \vas after they quit
the stage. Well, somewhere or other they played .
with this money; I suppose it was so marvelous to be
f r ee and they have all this money and they just had
a riotous time. Then somewhere it mentions that they
owne d a hotel briefly, I think in Philadelphia .
JM: Well, that is something I don't know .
M: And they had an apartment on Central Park in New
York , and they apparently just lived high off the hog.
Then they're broke, okay, then they've got their ...
they spent the money.
JM: Well, no.
M: No?
JM: No, they organized their first unit show .
M: Well, it says ... here is the thing I have .
JM: They don't bring that out in this book at all. I
mean they footed the bill to produce another show.
M: They did foot the bill? So they weren't broke?
JM: That's where their hundred thousand dollars went.
37
MOORE
M: Well, it says, they went back to work ... this is a
quote from something I read over at .. .
JM : Now, that's when they went back into vaudeville .
M: After years of play?
JM: No, because immediately after this trial ... they
don't bring this out in here , in this book either. They
went back to Europe, and they went into England, went
to London, and I think it was 40 weeks, you know,
40 weeks , 42 weeks, that was the year ' s work which
it just happened to depend on ... what it is and when
you would sign up with one of those big, big circuit ..
why , they had it laid out and maybe a theater would
drop out or they would add a theater that would give
one or two more weeks, you know, or two or four more
weeks and they went back to Europe at an astronomical
amount of money .. .
M: Is this the new show now, t hat they are doing?
JM: No, this is the show when they were just in
vaudeville as a vaudeville act.
M: Oh.
JM: Just the two of them .
M: Just the two of them?
JM: Well, t hey had a young dance t eam that they took
with them , two boys , and the boys, that's all they did
was just one numbe r with the girl s, but they did
t errific there for years .
M: In England?
JM: In Europe, and could have gone back . There was no
38
MOORE
reason, I mean the girls died in poverty, and there ' s
no r eason 1vhy they should have done that . There ' s
no reason, no excuse, except th~ chose it that way .
It was their own doing .
M: They probably had enough, don't you suppose?
JM : What?
M: Of exposure, working.
JM: That's the way they fel t about it, but I would
rather be expos ed a little bit and live in comf ort.
M: Yeah .
Jtv! : And ·what would ... they finally wound up as a checker
and a packer in a food market. And they certainly
were exposed t hen .
t-.1: Yeah .
JM: But I guess they felt like they were doing an
honest day's work. They had finally come to the place
where they r esented show business, I do believe.
M: I would gather from what I read.
JM: At the very end there, of course, I wasn't with
them.
M: How long were you with them, ac tually?
JM: It was just about five years.
M: That long?
JM: Uh huh.
M: We come now to the interes ting part. To me it 1-:as
very interesting, because in one of these references
that I found it says Terry Turner , Publicity Press
Agent, got the brigh t idea that "a wedding f or one of
39
MOORE
the girls would be the greatest publicity stunt
ever pulled off since September morn." Violet said :
"I'll be the goat, if you can manage ."
JM: Well, no at thi s , let me tell you the exact thi ng.
It was Terry Turner's idea. Now he was doing publicity ,
they make it sound like he was their publicity agent .
He \vasn' t. He was do i ng publicity , he was a promoter,
and did publicity for some of the acts that were in
at the Centennial, the Dallas Centennial in 1936 .
.M: Yeah .
JM: And he got this idea of do ing this publicity stunt,
but he contacted St an Zukor. Anfr Stan came over t o
Detroi t where we were playing and contacted us. Well,
now, when he sai d: "Well , which one of you girls \'lant
to do it?", and it is ri ght that Daisy says: "Well ,
I don 't care','and Vi says , "well, I ' 11 be. " Well, you
see , at that time Da i sy was pregnant .
M: Yeah .
JM : And so Vi says: "Well , I 'll do it." Of course,
Turner didn' t know anything about this pregnancy .
M: Oh, de ar .
JM : That is when it was arranged. Now, how I got
mixed up into it, I didn 't know that I was it , when
t hey asked Vi, well Vi said: "Who i s it? I prefer
it to be somebody that I don't even know." And
s he says: "Being that it will be a publicity stunt,"
40
she says , "St an, you get somebody , one of your acts ."
Well, of course, I'm s ure Stan sort of started questioning
MOORE
around, he couldn't find a candidate, and so when we
arrived in Dallas and drove in, I look up on the bill­board,
one of tho se 60 foot bill-boards, and it said
James Moore and Violet Hilton. I got billing over her
and, of course ...
M: This is the first you knew of it?
JM: First I kne111 about it. Well, my family, of course ,
were absolutely . . . my daddy disowned me; he just told
momma, you see: "just . .. don't even write to the boy."
They still called me a boy . I was 26.
M: But it says . .. where I read it, it said Jim said:
"he was game for the act's public"ity."
JM: Well, they didn't want to put it the way they
finagled it . I'm sure that the girls knew that I
was the goat from the very beginnin g, but I didn't
know it unti l we arrived at Dallas. Well, it was too
late ... there had been l iterally ... and in those days
thousands of dollars spent on publicity was a lot of
money, and there had been a lot of money spent on
publicity. Of course, it's publicity ... if I was smart,
I would capitali ze on it, but I was too embarrassed.
M: Were you?
JM: Oh sure, now .. .
M: You r eally were?
JM: Well, people used to say: "My god, weren ' t you
self- conscious?" Look, when you spent 5 years of every
time you'd walk out of the hotel, and with the girls,
and you were out on the street for 3 minutes~ a crowd
41
MOORE ,q
started following yo u. And you got to the place
where you just i gnore d peop l e. You could just s ay
"excuse me" and we were always rather courteous , but
just push your way t hrough, you know, and say "pa rck
and just push and people .. . you know people are just
really . .. people are pigs.
M: Oh, I know it.
J.M: And the public. was impo ssibl e .
M: Especially with public people .
JM: Yeah, and you sometimes, you would jus t have t o
b e . Well, now, one time, I'll tell you a funny incid.
We had gone shopping in Charles ton, and t his was Ch a r.~ · ·.on,
South Carolina, and Daisy and Vi want ed t o go out
and buy some present for the boys, and we ·walked in i f:
this store. It was a mens ' store . Well, by t he t:i ::
we go t from the hotel over to the stor e , there was a
mob of people foll owing us . Well, when we walked in
the store, enough people came in that we couldn ' t ev~~-·
get through the aisles to look at anything .
M: Really?
JM: Well, finally the girls, I don ' t know what they
were looking at, somet hing for the ... socks or hand!\ ere
or someth i ng, and they're looking at the things, and
finally two small boys pushed the i r way through. The··
crawled unde r th rough peoples' legs and came up and
they're standing there and one l ooks at the other one
and says: "Golly, they're hung together." Wel l, the
girls just sort of turned around and looked at hj m,
without saying one word to each other, they each rc~R ch f' ·
MOORE
down and took off one of tho se spiked little shoes
that they wore, they wore size 2, their shoe sizes there
are right ... they had very tiny feet, but 3 inch heels ...
their toes could just barely reach the ground. And
they took off one of these shoes, grabbed these two
little boys and nearly beat them to death. And I'll
tell you, that crowd scattered.
M: I bet they did. Well, there's a quote early on,
in that book in "Intimate Loves and Lives ... n and it
says when James Lambert Walker Moore ...
JM : Well, nmv, Lambert is not my middle namef. I
' .
me an I don't know where they got that.
M: Walker Moore, my . . .
JM: And my name is Jim, which, I mean, it's not James ..
I was, my given name is Jim.
M: Is it?
JM: Yeah, nobody believes it , but it is.
M: She says: "My six foot, two inch, dancing partner
and I said our vows. More than 100,000 persons attended
the wedding . I looked over the crowd and pulled my
wedding veil over my face t o hide my excited tears,
but Daisy ·was convulsed 1vi th mirth." Is that true?
JM: Well, now, that is not exactly true. We were all
sort of convul s ed with mirth .
M: Now this was in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas?
JM: It was in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
M: In 1936?
JI'-1: Uh huh.
END OF TAPE I , SIDE II
43
MOORE
NOTE: Tape 2, side l i s bl ank. On the tape which didn't
r ecord, JM tells of running into them in San Antonio.
TAPE 2 , SIDE 2
JM: So , they said: "We ll, fin e ," they said , "we 'l l
meet you at the St . Anthony Hotel. Is that alright?"
And I said: "Well, tha t' s fine . Wha t time ." And
they said: "At one o' clock. Alright?" And I said:
"Yes , that'll be f i ne." So the following day at one
o' clock , I was at the St . Anthony.and they never showed.
M: They didn't?
JM: No , so then I got a call l a t er and they said they
had tried to get in touch with me earlier, but said:
"Business had c ome up and that they just couldn't make
it." And then they said : "You know, we just have
to be so careful when \ve go out . " And then, of course ,
as I said, th ey 're s till dreaming, they were in their
little dream world.
M: How old were they by this time? In their l ate 30 's?
Late 30 ' s , do you s uppose?
JM: By this time, 32 , 36 , they were getting up close
t o 40.
M: Up close to 40. Well, now , in this fi l e over at
the Circus Library there are very few clippings about
their death. And it said .. this is from t he "San Antonio
Light", January 9, 1969 . .. If they 1vere born in '08,
that would mean . ..
JM: That would make them 67.
44
MOORE
M: They were 61.
JM: If what?
M: '69.
JM: Oh yeah 7 61.
45
M: It said they were found dead of flu in their apartment .
Aged 61. For 5 years they had weighed produce at a
grocery store . They were stranded in Clarlotte in 1962
where they had gone to publicize a movie called "The
Freaks ."
JM: No, it was this ... not Freaks .
M: "Chained for Life." Well, then it goes ... Then
another clipping from the ... said ...
J N: It mentions there that they had a ... did you say
produce stand or something in Florida?
M: No, one weighed and .one checked.
JM: No, that's what they were doing in this chain store 7
where they were up in Carolina .
M: Charlotte? Charlotte, North Carolina, is where they
died. I'm surprised they lived to the ripe old age
of 61, aren't you?
JM: Oh , they were as healthy as oxes. When we used
to travel, everybody ... in the snow and ice up there ..
and everybody would be freezing to death and they would
have their coats off just sit ting there as comfy as you
please, and everybody's freezing to death . It was amazing,
in all the years that we were with them, I n ever remember ...
they never missed a show. Vi was subject to getting hives
and every once in a\vhile she would get the hive s or it
MOORE 46
was .... this happened in Detroit: and it was hotter.
Oh, it was hot and we had been out doing something and
had just gotten back to the hotel and Vi says: "Oh,
Daisy, I'm getting those welts." And so they say: "Oh,
come qui ckly." And we ran into the bathroom and they
got into the b ath tub and we turned cold water en
and they said: "Would you pour this cold water up
over Vi?" And we poured cold water over Vi and she
got welts, some a llergy or something, and she just got
'em on her. But then after sitting in that cold water,
they were all gone. .
M: Poor Daisy had to sit in the cold water, too?
J~l: Yep.
M: Well, now you're just guessing about how they wound
up poor, and it says that they had made no friends ...
one of the articles ... newspaper articles, said that
they had been friendly, but they'd not made many friends
in the community.
JM: Actually, that's true.
M: They'd held themselves sort of aloof, and your
analysis is that they just probably got fed up with . ..
it said that they were st randed in Charlotte in 1962.
JM: Well, that's quite true. I don't know about that
being stranded, but we got stranded . .. hell, we got
strande d.
M: Well, all show people got stranded, didn't they?
JM: Sure.
M: But they apparently elected to quit the whole business
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and go into the grocery stor e?
JM: That 's right. They were always talking about
doing that.
M: They were?
JM: Yep.
M: In other words, they had a full life and certainly
a varied one, and they finally wound up with a very
dull life and no money. Shame, isn't it?
JM: Yes, it is.
M: Really a sad story.
JM: Yes , it is.
M: And really a shame that they treated you so cooly
after ...
JM: Well, I never ... I n ever could understand exactly
what ... why they acted that way. But then, this happened,
too funny .. well, this wasn 't funny, this was sort of
tragic. We were in Atlanta and we were in one of
the great big theaters there and this little girl that
had worked in some show with the twins came back
s tage, and she was pretty, pretty little girl, and
she ran up to the girls and says: "Daisy and Vi " .. . and
she greeted them and they looked at that girl and lit
in on her. Now, why or how ... well, the girl just burst
into t ear s , and when s h e l eft, they were jumpjng al l
over her and so I wen t over and took the girl by the
hand and led her out of the dressing room, and when
47
we got outside I said : "My goodness, what was that all
about?" And she says: "I have no idea." She says : " The
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twins and I were the ... so friendly, the 1 as t time
I saw them." And she says : "I'm just heart-broken."
Now what it was ... \vhat they had figured out in their
own minds, as to why they should ... jump on that girl ,
I don't know.
M: But you couldn't tell from what they said to
her? You said ...
JM: Oh, they were just calling her everything in the
world.
M: For goodness sake.
JM: Dirty little whore and all that kind of things.
M: Oh, really?
JM: So, maybe one of them that had ... maybe they had
a crush on some boy that they thought ditched them,
or one of them, for this girl, I don't know . This
was s omething that happened before I knew them.
M: We 11, anylvay ...
JM: Well, let me tell you another funny story I just
thought of, mentioning Atlanta. One night we were in
Atlanta and that's where I met the boy Siamese twins;
they came back stage to see the girls. Well, they
48
were not very grac eful . Now, the girls were very graceful,
very, very . .. to see them walk down the street you would
have thought, well, why are those girl s walking so c lose
and because there were no bobbles, there was never
anything awkward or like that. Well, the boys walked
one, one straight and the other one back and the one
that was walking straight forward bent over just a little
MOORE
b it , and the one tha t was ... l ooked like if he was
lytng up on his back like a big spider with arms
waving and feet going , it was very grotesqu e . Well ,
the boys came back stage and wanted to see the girls
that night, and so we said: "Okay" and so you can
i magine .. . we went night clubing with blo sets of
Siamese twins .
M: I bet you were the talk of t he town.
JM : Well, there was Anita and I , the two sets of
Si ames e, the boy twin s and the g irls, and one of the
boys from the band went along. W~l l, needl ess to say ,
we' d stopped the show wherever we were.
M: I bet you . . . you did. How did those guys sit down?
JM: Well, thi s is just what I was getting around to
telling you. So , the next day we were back at the .. .
getting dressed . . . we always had to dress together . . . the
girls a lways had a star dressing room, naturally ,
wheTever we went. So Anita and I dressed i n the same
dress ing room . We had s t ar dressing room, too. And
so they were talking and th ey said : "Well, I was
certainly embarrassed last night. Did you se e h ow
49
those . .. how they acted and how awkward they were? 11 And,
when they started to sit down , t hey sat down on one
chair, a l so , but they would s ort o f get straddled
and then they would go up and down and up and down and
up and down, and fina l l y settl ed down on the chair . And,
what they had to do al l this for , I don't know. And one
of the girls, I don ' t recall which, but one looked at
MOORE SO
the other and says: "Wel l , did you see the way those
clumsy son-of-a-bitches sat down? I was so embarrassed ,
I didn't knmv ·what to do.''
M: Isn't that funny? Oh dear, that was the only
time they ever met, huh?
JM: It wasn't so terribly l ong after that, that the
boys . . . one had an appendectomy and died and they
separated them and the other boy died.
M: He did?
JM: That's,they mention that in this . . . they don't tell . ..
they do mention that about the boys, but they said
that they were separated and didn't survive. But that,
of course, they should have been able to do a better
job than that , even then. I'm sure that there are
marvelous ways that they have separated some of the
Siamese twins in this day and age . It would have been
a very simple job to separate, the way they were connected.
M: Oh, sure.
JM: Very simple .
M: If they had everything intact in their bodies, -
which they obviously did .
JM: Yep.
M: Well , did you . .. you were with them so much , in the
way you speak now about them. You never f elt that
you were with a pair of freaks?
JM : No, no.
M: You weren't conscious any time of them being unusual or . . .
JM: Wel l, sure, you knew they were unus ual and they
MOORE
were one of a kind. I mean, now there were another
set of girl twins, th ey mention them in the book here,
one of those was retarded; one of them was alright. Now
they made a big try on the publicity and so for th , the
drawing power o f the Hilton sisters, they tried to do
the same thing .
M: Oh.
JM: And they made an appearance .
but 1 saw them . And they gave the
I neve r met them,
same, they almost
copied the girls' format, but they played t~o pianos
and one of the girls played fairly nice little piano,
and the other one just, sort of, hit a note every
once .in awhile . And when th ey did the stand up and
things, one of the girls ... to me it was quite obvious
that she was retarded ... whether it went over the whole
public or not ... I me an, she answered no questions or
anything, just one of the girls did. There was some
publicity about her getting married, one of the girls.
And so, I think she did and they went out of sh0\'1
business and \ve heard no more about them ... and their
mother traveled with them. She was a big German - type
woman, and I think they li ved over in one of the New
England states .
M: Did the girls ever work with Barnum and Bailey?
JM: Barnum and Bailey tried all their life to get
them to join the shmv.
M: They didn't?
JM: But they wanted to bill t hem as freaks and they
51
MOORE 52
would not ...
M: Oh, really?
JM: Would not be cons idered freaks. The gi r l s
could ' ve had a very comfortable l i fe in their l atter
days if they would have ... they could've joined Bar num
and Bailey and just appe ared as freaks and they
would've . . . I'm sure even . .. and they would have h ad
to do nothing, you know, just have a li t tle talk
i n terview with somebody and they would not be exhib ited,
and would not ... and , of cours e , if they had done some thing
like that, they would have to live a more or l e s s
s ec l uded life, because people would have been payi ng
to see them. Tha t' s what they didn' t do . They demanded . . .
that is really as far as an attr action ... the gi r ls
ruined themselves because they would not sign a contract
or anything tha t prohibited them from doi ng what
anybody wants to do: appear on the str eets , go to t he
dinner clubs, go to any nigh t club, go have di nne r
any place, walk up and down the street s, go s hopping.
M: In other words , a normal life?
JM: That's ri ght and that 's wha t t hey demanded , and
th ey were not r eally norma l peop l e.
M: No, they r eally weren't. Well, I keep comi ng
back to them be cause all t hrough t his research .. . I keep
coming back t o think tha t they go t along s o wel l
together .
JM: Well, they did, actually ...
M: Amazing !
JM: I saw them have a ... oh ) they had their l ittle spats
MOORE
and it :l.oJas funny, you wanted to laugh and cry at
the same time . They would try . .. as I said , that
they couldn' t reach this way, they would try to hit
each other across, you see, like this, but they
really couldn't because if somebody \lias here, this
arm doesn ' t get ov~r there far enough to really get
a hit, and somet i mes they would reach over like t his,
maybe they would be sitting at the dressing table and
try to hit each other with their brushes, you know,
their hair brush. But it would get over with .
M: Nell , basically they agreed on everything. They
didn't want to be freaks. They didn't want to be
e xasi ned by doctors. The y were pretty ... in other
wo rds .. .
JM : \~e ll, they were very compatibl e . Well, they
had to be and, as they said, they kne\v they had to
be and so, there was no use in fighting or anything like
that.
M: But I know a lot of people in that situation, never
being able to get a\vay from anybody .
JM: Yeah, because the boys . . .
M: I would go crazy.
JM: You know, Ing and Ying are the ones that took the
53
name . .. that's where they got the title Si amese t wins because
they were originally Siamese . They both got married
and both raised families .
M: I thought only one had a family .
JM: No, I think they both got marri ed.
MOORE
M: They di.d?
JM: And they lived six .. . or part of the year, or
part of the time , with one and part of the time with
the other one. And they never spoke to each other in
later life.
M: They didn't? Well, you see, that's why it's all
the more remarkable that these Hilton twins were so
harmonious .
JM: Well, now, they were very , very harmonious ... very,
very .
M: It's a terribly interesting story and you know
.-
people . . . when I got interested in this after Bob told
me about it and began to look into it and ask
ques tions, everybody I talked to said: "Oh, sure, we
remember the Hilton tlvins."
JM: Sure, well ...
M: It must ' ve made a great stir in San Antonio.
JM : Well, they made a stir all over the whole country ,
all ove r . . .
M: Well , I mean here was home and ...
JM: Well, they didn ' t ... . one reason why, of course .. .
if somebody we re around back in those '30' s , when
they had this big court trial here . .. . why tho se p eo ple
\vould remembeT it beca use it was quite a trial and i t
got quite a bit of publici t y , but that got publicity all
over the whole world . I mean that kind of stuff was
publicize-d everywhere.
M: Well, sure, that would be great stuff .
54;
MOORE
JM: Oh, yeah, 1vell when we got married ... when I
first .. . the first time that I went out and tried to
get a divorce or annulment .. is what I tried to get
in New Orleans, and work it out, and Walter Winchell
called me.
M: He did?
JM: Yeah, wanted to know about it and I wouldn't tal k
to him.
M: Why?
JM: Well, I was young and foolish and didn't . . .
M: Was it . .. how'd he gotten word about it, for goodness
sake? ~
JM: Oh, I made a movie . . . a Fox Movie Tone newsreel.
M: You did?
JM: Yes, he gave me an interview ... took it out to the ...
what ·was it ... the fair grounds in New Orleans there .
M: You ' ve had an interesting life, haven't you?
JM: Well, more so than you know.
M: No, I can read in between the lines . But how
did you ever get into a Mexican restaurant business?
JM: Well, that was after the war and I didn ' t know what
I wanted to do . I went back to .New York a couple of
times, with the idea of getting back into show business,
you know, and . . . .
M: Did you have an opportunity to do any of your dancing
when you were in the Army?
JM: They put me in the Signal Corps . I should ' ve been
in the Special Services, you know, where they could have
55
MOORE
utilized me , no, they had t o train me to do something,
because they spent a million dollars on making a
photographer out of me .. . Cryptographic Security. And
that is what I did all during the war. Oh, I was in
Supreme Headquarters in Europe .
M: Were you?
JM: Oh , I had a lovely time.
M: You did? Well, when you came back and it just
di dn't appeal to yo u, to be a dancer anymore?
JM: Sure it did. I mean, that was the only thing I
56
knew to make a living. I couldn't do it as a Cryptographic
Security Officer and I sure as hell wasn ' t going to
stay in the Army and so ...
M: Had you gotten out of practice?
JM: Oh , no .
M: You kept limb e r?
JM: Sure, I could s till dance.
M: Can you?
JM: Oh, I could dance up to a few years ago.
M: You could?
JM: Oh sure. I can still hold on to the back of a
chair and do a few kicks.
M: Can you really?
JM: I'll show you in a minute .
M: That's good for you .
JM: No , I went back to New York and there was a
dance-arranger . Ile didn't teach you. He was a professional.
We called him a dance-arranger and he would take your
MOORE
routines ; he'd watch you Hark, and then say: "No,
you don't look well doing that. Let's do thi s and let's
do this. Let her down and do that and so forth."
Well, his name was LaCorn in New York City and I went
by to see him after I got out of the Army. Of course,
Anita had gone her way and so I went back to see LaCorn
and he says: "Well, Jim" he said ... I thought that I
57
Hould find a girl in New York, .you see, and he said: "Well,
there's some retired girls around . tt He said, "I could
put you in con tact with a couple of girls. '' There Has
one that I won't mention . Her name Has June Knight.
But he said: "You don't \'<'ant to work with her." Said
it would be her act. That' s when s he was looking for
a partner but she would have been _ .he says: "You don't
want her. You'd have an a\'lful tough time . "
M: I just vaguely remember that name.
JM: Well, she did ... l ater she did a few things in movies,
but not very much. But, anyway , I think she married
some rich guy and anyl-'<'ay, he said: "Why don't you go
back to Texas?" He says; "You know," he says, "the
freshest, best dancers in the whol e world come from Texas."
Which is true. And so he says : "Go back to Texas and
get you one of those fresh , good dancers; fresh clean
faced , bri ght girl and come back and then I'll be
happy to work with you. " Well, I couldn't find anybody
back here. I came back and talked. What the hell!
I'd looked around in New York and the type of show
business that I knew was no more. We were a ballroom
MOORE
team and hoofers . Well, now , tap dancing is coming back .
M: Come back here. It sure is .
JM: Well, it was dead for 30 years .
M: Oh , i t sure was. I know it . I'm crazy about dancing .
JM: And the ballroom dancing, the type of thing .. . they
were j ust .. and there weren ' t any places to do it . I
mean the type o£ club .. they didn ' t use dance teams .
When I went into the Army , every supper club , every hotel,
at their dinner shmv, had a dance team. When I came
back, t here had been no dance teams for five years during
t he war and so t hey had, you know 1 the style had
change d . They had singers and comedi ans.
M: Yes.
JM: Stan d- up tal k comedians.
M: Stand-up comedians . That's very interesting to know,
t h at tap dancing has come back . Have you been out t o
see the show at the Dinner Theater?
JM: No , I haven't.
M: Well, you know Robert Morris . Was he a dancer? The
way he h andl es his body ... he is so loose and graceful
58
that he dances just a little bit, just kind of joking, but ...
JM: Well, you know , so many people that are in show
business all started out . .. you ' d be surprised at the
old movies stars , how many o f those all started out .. .
we l l , l ike Lucil l e Ball . Did you see ... what is she
called?
M: Shirl ey McCl aine . Wasn't that cute?
JM : We l l, t hey all started out in show busines s , and
MOORE
a great many of the boys of the ... well, the ones
that've become stars . .. . they all started out as chorus
boys.
M: Sure .
JM: Sure.
M: Well, we're ge tting to ·the end of this thing, but
you do feel that your spasmodic contacts with the twins
wa s a very interes ting part of your l ife, right?
JM : Oh sure . I mean, now '\vell, sure ... I mean , when
59
I was young and so forth, it was a little bit embarrassing
at f irst, you know . I wouldn't t~l k about it. I
wouldn 't tell anyone . Now I think it' s hil arious. I
t hink it's . .. well, how many people h ave ever been
married to a Siamese t'\vin? And I think it's funny.
I think it's a hoot and so ...
M: I do, too. Well, I am so gl ad that we did it, and
it took us a long time ta get t ogether, didn ' t it?
JM: Yes, it did.
M: But, I'm very grateful to you, for talking on t ape .
Thank you .
END OF TNTERVI EW
References at the Circus Library which were consulted previous to interview.
"Intimate Loves and Lives of the Hilton Sisters, World Famous Siamese Twins"
pamphlet Essar Productions, Inc.,
1632 Central Parkway
Cincinnati 10, Ohio
No date.
Daisy and Violet "Sold into virtual slavery at birth,
exploited, mistreated and misunderstood" Until 24 years
old, without parents or one intimate friend. Reactions
completely different. Amiably shared lives without
quarreling.
Violet: "When James Lambert Walker Moore, my 6 foot , 2 inch dancing
partner and I said our vows, more than 100,000 persons
attended the wedding. I looked over the crowd and pulled
my wedding veil over my face to hide my excited tears ,
but Daisy was convulsed with mirth"
"Harmony that has existed for years has amazed many
who have known us, neither dominates." blood not alike.
different sets of friends.
Daisy: blond, 5 feet tall, "like5 show business, live in my mind,
am impulsive, talkative and quick motioned"
Violet: dark hair, 4 feet 11 inches , wanted to be a nurse, "I live
in my heart, not a talker and seldom impulsive"
The mother gave them, at 2 weeks, to Mrs. Mary Williams,
the mid wife who kept them clean and fed them. Didn't know
much about the parents. Kate married to a Captain Hilton.
Married in Texas. "Mother ran away from him after we were
born. Father died during World War I. We were whipped with
a belt buckle; treated like animals, not permitted to play
with other children." Examined by doctors and sci entists
with a view to separation. Twins preferred to remain joined­"
Auntie" too eager for profit to let us become the objects
of experiments .
Violet , piano; Daisy, violin
Never caught diseases from each other.
Never bored with each others presence .
Bob Hope taught them the Black Bottom.
First debut in Berlin.
Debut in the Temple Theater in San Antonio.
Daisy kept 50¢ in her shoe , Violet, 25¢ in her shoe, the
only money they had , yet they were making thousands.
When "Auntie'' d i ed, Edith and her husband (Myer Meyers)
inherited them with all t heir possessions .
Played Australia , India, Egypt, Central America , Europe, U.S .
Marcus Loew Circus, $2500.00 a week. ~ 3,000, as much as $3,850 .
Rebel li o~ at 18 years in San Antonio j $75,000 house on
Vance Jacksonf ~t~~yd Wright plans. They were 23 years old.
Attorney Martin J. Arnold was informed of their virtual
slavery. Escaped from owners tofue St . Anthony Hotel and
f reedom.
Page 2
Court trial in San Antonio. ,: ·,n accounting of their money
anct . of the manager's handling. They earned probably 2 million
dollars. In 1929 they were legally of age (21)
one story: Gas jets on in apartment, was this an attempt on their lives?
Joe Freeman was appointed receiver. They got some money, and
freedom from owners.
Marriage arrangements.
Violet, was in love with Blue Steel who was married.
21 states refused to issue a marriage license.
Went back to work after "years of play"
Terry Turner, publicity press agent.
"A wedding of one of you girls would be the greatest publicity
stunt ever pulled off since September morn" Violet "I'll be
the goat, if you can manage ~ Dancing partner, James Walker
Moore. Jim said he was game for the acts publicity.
Page 1, announcement: to be married at the Texas Centennial
in the Cotton Bowl at Dallas on the 50 yard line. Joe Rogers
to give bride away, but the janitor took his place. The stunt
won space on the front pages from Texas to Maine.
Jim went to war and divorce was never formalized. Made films
in Hollywood "The Freak" and "Chained for Life"
Night Club korld.
Clippings: San Antonio Light--January 9, 1969
Charlotte, North Carolina
Found dead of flu in their apartment. Aged 61. For 5
years had weighed produce at a grocery store. Were stranded
in Charlotte in 1962 where they had gone to publicize a movie
called "The Freaks"
Went on Vaudeville carnival circuit at 15.
1955 had a hamburger bar in Miami, Florida.
Left about $1400 api~ ~ce;;no will; no living relative.
San Antonio Light--January 9, 1969
The January 1931 trial was a d i version for Depression ~ ufferers.
(joined at the hip by bone and flesh) They never wished to be
separated, although assured surgery could be successful.
Advance Campaign--booklet
Sales pitch to book the twins, news releases, headlines,
proposed programs, advertising tie-ins, personal appearances,
and history of the Siamese twins.
Souvenir and Life Story of San Antonio's Siamese twins.
Daisy and Violet Hilton. 25¢
greatly at variance with all the other material;
photos.
· ~
~ .
~HE HILTON SIAMESE TWINS, VIOLET AND DAISY·
Jim Moore, interviewee
biographica1,3-17,20-30, 36,37,39, 1ibrary references, 3
42,45,51-54 ~ Moore,Jim,biography,55-59,
carnival, 6,8,10,16,19,22 show business, 8,9,15,17-19,
death, 44 23,31,38
l awsuit, 31-36,54 vaudeville, 19,26,38
wedding, 39-41 ,43
The detailed biography continues all through the interview, in­terspersed
with their carniva1/vaudev111e life, ''show biz",
the famous l awsuit which disengaged them from thetr ''keeper",
the wedding publicity stunt and their death.