The death of Henny Bario in Paris on December 24, 2011, brought to a close a great clowning dynasty and heralded the end of an era for circus comedy.
The daughter of a clown (the Belgian Martin Sosman, who also gained fame as an acrobat and trick rider), she married a clown, Freddy Bario, the son of Manrico Meschi who, with his eponymous brother, had found widespread fame in Europe as one-half of the much in-demand clown act Dario-Bario.
After the duo split in 1948, Henny and Freddy joined Manrico and another son, Nello, to form The Barios, with whom she was acclaimed “queen of the musical hammers”. Together, they appeared with the Belle Vue Circus at Manchester’s King’s Hall in 1952, and with Tom Arnold’s Mammoth Circus at the Harringay Arena in London in 1955. When Manrico retired shortly afterwards, the act became le trio Barios, in which Henny cemented her position as one of the few women performing as a clown.
She appeared in summer seasons of Billy Russell’s Circus Spectacular at Great Yarmouth Hippodrome (1963-65), on Thames Television’s Live From The (London) Hippodrome (1965), and regularly throughout Europe, hosting her own television show for a number of years in her adopted home of France.
Towards the end of the 1970s, with circus in decline, Henny also performed on the cabaret circuit with the Barios until her husband’s death in 1988.
Born on July 23, 1923, she died from a brain haemorrhage, aged 88, on December 24, 2011. She is survived by two daughters.
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