I’m the conductor of a symphony of wackos!” beams Chuck Harris through a dense, pungent fog of Cuban tobacco smoke. Here, with showbiz razzle-dazzle and spectacular spectacles is the undeniable King Of The Freaks, a modern-age PT Barnum ruling a menagerie of lizard men, miniature weightlifters, tattooed wonders, magical puppeteers and baffling oddities plucked from the world’s most exotic corners.

“When you need something strange and eye-popping and nobody knows where to look, I’m the guy to find it for you,” he promises with a carny wink. And folks, you’d better believe it.

For over 20 years, Chuck has carved himself a niche as the personal manager and talent agent for the bizarre, promoting weird and wonderful variety acts across the globe, creating cult careers and earning millions in the process. If you want to hire a pair of trampolining wolf-boys, or a man that juggles pianos, or even a backwards-driving motorcycle daredevil, then he’s your man. Boasting thousands of performers on his books, Mr Harris’ acts regularly drive up the wow factor for everything from Las Vegas spectaculars to TV programmes such as The Tonight Show and The Jerry Springer Show, to Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger’s annual Arnold Sports Festival.

Carnival story

Chuck is a true carnival barker, a larger-than-life remnant of an era when the manager was as colourful as their protégés. It makes sense, since he’s spent a lifetime on the industry’s fringes. He peppers Bizarre’s interview with impromptu re-enactments of vintage comedy routines and movie star impersonations, a happy hangover from his early career as a vaudeville comic.

Chuck was born Oaky Miller and thrust into the biz at the tender age of five by his colourful Jewish parents; his father was a song and dance man, and his mother was a professional gambler known as ‘Fast Gertie from the East’.
By the 1940s, the young Philadelphia-raised Oaky had joined his brother and father in blackface as one of Miller’s Mighty Minstrels. A decade later, after a pioneering bout as a rock’n’roll DJ – with killer catchphrases such as, “Stick around, you’ll dig the sound, the big bad O is back on the go!” – Oaky headed west in search of fortune.

In Hollyweird, his cheeky, boyish good looks landed him minor teenybopper roles, but he spent his nights working as a comic in the burlesque clubs. But that lowbrow industry faced its final curtain by the 1960s, with Oaky mopping up the last dregs. He’d often find himself in fleapit theatres working alongside the fading burlesque legends such as bad girl Candy Barr, fan-dancing goddess Sally Rand and the explosive Rose La Rose, ‘the original TNT girl’.

“The worst part about that bitch was she kept hitting on my girlfriend!” he says, leaning closer. “She was serious. I was like, ‘This is my chick – get your own!’ Sally Rand was great, though. She was still performing totally nude at 80 years of age. Because of her skills with the fans you never saw a thing, not even her wrinkles. It was incredible. We worked together in a bust-out joint, a small strip place where guys come in to see strippers but they’re really hookers who take them in the back room to sell them watered-down champagne for a bottle. Everyone was making money from those poor suckers.”

In 1972, Oaky toured across the US on the bill of the musical variety production The Big Show Of 1928, whose star-studded cast included singer Rudy Vallée and scat-jazz legend Cab Calloway, all in the twilight of their careers. Oaky clicked with the performers straight away.

“They put us in these nice hotels and I’d say, ‘Cab, we can rent a cheaper hotel for and have parties all night long, man.’ Cab, who was in his 60s and still loved to booze and gamble said, ‘That’s good for me.’ All the hookers and all the other comics would come and we’d have a grand ol’ time. It just didn’t work at the Hilton Hotel because the hookers were never allowed in. But it wasn’t about getting laid. These were working girls, the kind of people I grew up with.”

Secret agent

After turning 50 and finding himself broke with four kids, Oaky started to promote himself through his bespectacled, motor-mouthed alter ego – Chuck Harris. “This is Chuck Harris and I represent Oaky Miller, the greatest comic you’ve ever seen in your life,’ he snaps in his carnival barker patter. “I became my own agent and it worked. Then I started to represent my friends who couldn’t get any work. When I found the glasses I said, ‘Eureka! Here’s the brand!’ I’d dyed my hair for years, but the black rims looked better with silver hair and the cigar completed the confident showbiz feel.”

With his new identity, he landed his finger firmly on the entertainment pulse. “Now Chuck Harris is the only name I live by. To everybody I’m Chuck,” reveals the mogul, who’s now dined with presidents and sipped tea with the Queen. “When I walk into a showbiz room, I might not know anyone personally, but everyone knows who I am. And that’s part of the mystique of the brand.”

In 1987, Chuck received an auspicious tip-off about an unusual act from an old pal who happened to be a bigwig at major talent bookers William Morris Agency. ‘“If he’s so damned good, you hire the son-of-a-bitch!’” I said. But he told me, “We just don’t do things like this. I think it’ll be good for you.’


“So I went to some dive bar talent contest to see this kid Christopher perform. He bursts onto the stage dressed as Michael Jackson, with four life-size animated puppets of the rest of the Jackson Five, all strapped to him with 10ft poles. He pulls this dance routine, lip-synching to ‘ABC’, and I thought I was going to have an orgasm right there and then. I’d been in show business all of my life and I’d never, ever, seen an act as good as this. He got booked for Eddie Murphy’s Raw tour and hasn’t stopped working. The Amazing Christopher was my first major client and we’ve been together for 21 years. That’s longer than my three marriages, longer than anyone stays with anybody in our business.

“From that, all the other wacko acts came to me. Out of nowhere I became the go-to guy for the best variety acts in the world. At one time I was doing 8-10 variety shows every week. I’ve had more performers on the bill of the Royal Variety Performance than any Brit. I owned the marketplace. It was unbelievable.”
Next down the pipeline of peculiarity was a schizoid performer; half man, half woman and all soul.

“He wore a dress on one side, half a moustache on the other, and when he came onto the stage he sang like Lionel Ritchie. Then he would turn round with half a wig and nails and he’d do the Diana Ross part. It was a brilliant piece of business. Then I got Balloon Boy, who puts his entire body inside a big balloon. Today we’ve got a dozen guys doing the same act, but this was the first time. My ideas are always one of a kind.”

Hen nights

Dealing with performers and physical oddities also means dealing with delicate egos. There’s one particular client who calls Chuck several times a day simply because he’s feeling lonely, but it’s part of the job description for Chuck, who simply shrugs, “It’s a pain in the ass but I don’t want to hurt his feelings. Next thing you know I’m filling out the Electric Boy’s divorce papers because he can’t speak English! I’m like these people’s psychiatrist now. But when I was an act, nobody protected me, nobody cared. I feel an obligation to do good by them and the acts don’t want to leave me because of that. I’m like a mother hen.”

Chuck is everything that a Mr Showbiz ought to be. And as long as audiences love to be entertained, Chuck Harris will always be needed, lurking in the shadows, on the lookout for the next big act that nobody has ever seen before.

“This is the greatest job in the world, let me tell you!” Chuck says. “Recently, I had Mighty Mike, a fire-breathing midget, open for Motley Crüe. I went into his dressing room after the show and Mikey was there with two little sisters from New York. The girls were giggling and I asked, ‘Are you sleeping with these two bitches here?’ He was all embarrassed. I said, ‘Mike, who put you up to it?’ All of sudden Tommy Lee burst in and pointed to one of the girls saying, ‘You, you follow me,’ and proceeded to take one of the girls into his dressing room. I said, ‘Mikey, do you know what a fantasy you’re living?’ He grinned at me and replied, ‘Chuck, I’m having the greatest time of my life.’ The little fellow was trading girls with Tommy Lee! Could life get any better than that?”
 
See more at Varietytalent.com