Music hall contortionist and early performer for Edison's Kinetoscope

Born Beatrice Mary Claxton in Sheffield, UK, into a family of acrobats, Ena Bertoldi (or Bertholdi) made her stage debut at the age of eight, touring Europe and America throughout the late 1880s and 1890s. The films, Bertholdi (Mouth Support) and Bertholdi (Table Contortion), taken at the Black Maria studio, West Orange, were among the first selection to be exhibited at the original Kinetoscope parlour, Broadway, New York from 14 April 1894. An illustrated article in The Royal Magazine shows that the feats were the mainstay of her act, stating that 'Bertoldi places every reliance upon the strength of a magnificently perfect set of teeth and, of course, her powers of equipoise'.

Among the many acrobat, dancers and variety turns performing for the Kinetoscope 1893-95, of whom very little else is known except that they had usually appeared at New York's Koster & Bial's Music Hall, were voluptuous Spanish dancer Carmencita, French dancer Armand d'Ary (real name Marthe Armandary), Mexican tightrope dancer Juan Caicedo, comic boxers the Glenroy Brothers, further comic boxers Walton (Charles F.) and Slavin (John C.), genuine boxers Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing, Spanish contortionist Louis Martinelli, Gaiety Girls Lucy Murray and May Lucas, the Rixfords troupe of acrobats, Robetta and Doretto in a Chinese laundry, Princess Ali with her Dance du Ventre (belly dance), George Layman (the original 'man with a thousand faces'), several artists from Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show, casts of shows such as Charles Hoyt's A Milk White Flag, and numerous performing animals. (See individual entries for some of the performers: Eugen Sandow, Fred Ott, Jim Corbett, Annabelle, Buffalo Bill Cody, Joe Rastus and others (The Pickanninies) and Ruth St Denis).

Barry Anthony / Luke McKernan (revised entry)