As we walked down the street, I could feel stares from every direction burning into my soul. Could it have been the burrito stain that covered my left pant leg? Or maybe the reason was because I was walking next to a 7-foot 2-inch, 220-pound behemoth of a man, aptly titled George “The Giant” McArthur, and my height is a mere 5 feet 5 inches.
The Giant’s height is not the only interesting aspect about him. He has been performing as a sideshow entertainer for over 16 years, as well as running his own sideshow company titled Bean Stalk Entertainment. He performs with a troop of other entertainers named Karny Trash. The Bakersfield College communication graduate’s stunts include fire-eating/blowing, sword-swallowing, light-bulb eating, glass walking and facing, the human crazy straw as well as other various stunts. He also holds the record for total weight of concrete bricks broken on a human chest.
McArthur showed me the video of his feat. On July 26, 2006, during the halftime show at a Bakersfield Blitz game. Forty concrete bricks totaling a weight of 1,387 pounds were broken on his chest. Flames were licking the bricks as well. “Everything is better with fire,” said The Giant.
It was not always easy for The Giant to play around with fire. Overcoming his fear of fire was the reason he began performing. When he was 21, somebody broke into his brother’s home, tied up his brother, lit him on fire and left him for dead. His brother survived but was scarred from the flames both physically and mentally. McArthur developed the same fear, but wanted to overcome it by facing the fire with an open mouth.
“To overcome my fear,” explained McArthur, “I started to look up (how to eat fire) and while looking it up I found information on sword-swallowing and glass eating and I began reading up old manuscripts.” The Giant also sought out the guidance of experienced performers, such as veteran sideshow performer Bobby Reynolds. The Giant explained his first encounter with Reynolds as he reclined in a huge leather chair accompanied by three small lap dogs resting upon his enormous bones.
“Me and my one partner from another troop were trying to do Universal Studios for the first Halloween Nights. We were told we had the job, but then they told us that they had given it to someone else!” exclaimed McArthur. “We were then told that the person who took the job from us wanted to have a meeting and so we went to this house.”
Expecting to meet the man who stole their job, McArthur witnessed a Spidora character on the entrance of the home, the sign of a veteran performer. “Once I saw the Spidora, I looked at my partner at told him that this guy was old school.” McArthur continued, “Once I heard that voice, I knew I recognized it from somewhere.”
His convictions were true as that voice belonged to veteran sideshow entertainer Bobby Reynolds. After some talk of preserved Siamese twins in a jar, Reynolds offered McArthur a job in his sideshow and The Giant began thinking it over in his head. “At the time I was debating whether or not I was going to stay in radio or not, but then he offered me a job to join his tour and I went.”
The Giant learned the traits of a sideshow performer while under the tutelage of Reynolds such as how to make a show entertaining for an audience and how to include the audience into the show. “He showed me how to make a good pitch card and to grab the attention of the audience.”
McArthur showed me the technique he uses while selling his pitch card as well as his show. He starts off by explaining that the human body is able to accept pain as long as it knows it’s coming. He continued on with, “I will prove this by allowing you to staple two dollars to my body. And with those two dollars you can take home your very own sword-swallower!”
The pitch card is what he gives the audience member as they staple the money to his body. It has a picture of him looking up while a small snack sword is going through his throat. Information about sword-swallowing and The Giant are on the back of the card. This is his grabber and since people are usually hesitant about stapling objects to the human body, he explained that he usually has a friend that will rush up from the back of the crowd and be the first to start the stapling. “Once people see that first person staple the money, then they all usually start wanting to,” an old trick from the early days of side-showing which is still applied today. But back then instead of stapling money to a human, a man usually hammered a nail into his nose.
Still, the business is not the same as it was back then. Some of the gags that the old timers used are not as effective today as it was back then. “I remember when we did that first Universal Studios show, we had the Spidora and the lady with the missing middle of her body. But people were just bored with it. They wanted to see something else.”
The Giant slowly built up his show as well as his reputation. He is regarded in the sideshow community as an elder and now sells out his Universal Studios shows. McArthur has performed for various celebrites through private parties as well as sponsored shows. “I met Axl Rose one time and he is my favorite has-been, so that was nice.” Other celebrites have commented on McArthur’s skills, from Alice Cooper claiming, “I like it. He does it because he can,” to Ron Jeremy exclaiming “You’re a SICK, SICK man!”
Some of his stunts include the human crazy straw, where he sticks a huge hose in his nose and out of his mouth while it wraps around a lady and then someone proceeds to drink it. He also places hooks with chains on the lower half of his eye-lids while it is weighted with a full soda can. The Giant then swings it around and shows what his body can take. The rest of the show includes: fire walking, someone standing on The Giant’s face while he lays his head on a pile of glass, sword-swallowing, fire-eating, a lady sharpening metal objects on her body, as well as the hitting of bricks on his chest while lying on a bed of nails.
He has been in such films and shows as “Big Fish,” the HBO series “Carnivale,” “Firecracker” and “Touched by an Angel.”
Aside from performing, McArthur has a sophisticated taste for things odd. He owns the head of the mythical creature Chupacabras, the High Hand of Mamba Shampti as well as shrunken heads and a soon to be swamp creature.
He had just attained the head of Chupacabras and received it in the mail two weeks prior to our meeting. “I was so excited when I got Chupy that I called all my friends and told them.”
He received it by way of a farmer from Texas. He explained that the farmer was working in the field one day and “Chupy” popped up so the farmer whacked it with his shredder. Body parts flew and a few days later the farmer saw his dog walking around with Chupy’s claw, so he fought the dog for it. McArthur now has the claw and head cased in a wooden chest for show. “People ask me all the time if it’s real or fake, but I just tell them that it’s REAL STRANGE.”
McArthur shows his items to people at various fairs and events for one dollar and eventually wants to build his own museum in his backyard once he moves into a new home to showcase his collections as well as his talents.
“My main goal in life is to be that crazy old man that the neighborhood kids are a little scared of but want to go visit,” said McArthur, “I want to sit back in a huge chair and say “HEY KIDS! Want to see me swallow a sword!”