Jack Earle

Biography

He weighed only four pounds at birth and was so tiny that doctors feared he wouldn't live. But immediately, he began to grow at an incredible rate and by age ten was over six feet tall. He was discovered by Hollywood as a teenager and offered a job acting in comedies. He made over fifty of them, until one day on the set when he fell from a scaffolding. When he woke up, he found he was losing his peripheral vision, due to a newly-discovered pituitary gland tumour. Doctors attempted to shrink the tumor with X-rays which miraculously both restored his sight and stopped his incredible growth. He enrolled in college, during which he went to see the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus where he saw Jack (Jim) Tarver, billed as 'the tallest man in the world'. He joined the circus and traveled with them for fourteen years. Upon retiring from the circus, Jack became a successful traveling salesman and was intensely creative. He painted, sculpted, was a prize-winning photographer.