Canarsie’s Painless Medicine Show

In the early years of the century, there were some “Medicine Shows” that traveled around the countryside to dem-onstrate and advertise their products and services. Among these was the famous “Painless Parker” that come to Canarsie alongside of our house and set up a tent for the actors who performed on a large stage right out in the open lots every evening and drew a crowd of three or four hundred people every nite during a couple of weeks of the summer. It was sponsored by the dental firm of Healy & Bigelow from downtown Fulton Street. which was well known at the time and for a couple of nites each week Dr. Healy would extract a tooth from anyone in the audience who wanted a tooth out free of charge as long as the “patient” came up on the stage where they had all the necessary equipment for this purpose to show how painless he could do it.

There were three show people who traveled with this attraction: George MacGregor, a comedian; Dick Demarest, a magician; and Frank Colligan as MC who also acted in the different sketches which they put on each nite to entertain the crowds. After about three weeks, they moved to an empty lot which was alongside of a house on Conklin Avenue and the railroad right of way, to show the people at the other end of Canarsie. After a couple of weeks there, they left Canarsie and went to the Ridgewood section alongside of the DeKalb Avenue trolley car barns and then they went from there to Aqueduct near the horse racing track.

Golden City Park was not the only source of “medicine show” shenanigans. Merlis collection I went a couple of times a week after school to stay with them until after the show in the evening and then after the Aqueduct performances, I lost track of where they went. I was very friendly with all of them and then after a couple of months, Colligan moved for a while to Avenue K and East 94th Street and then on Rockaway Parkway across from the firehouse. He had children who grew up here and were known to the old timers of Little Old Canarsie.