Jack Earle: The “Texas Giant” Who Was One Of The Tallest People Ever
El Paso County Historical SocietyJack Earle, far left, towered over most men he met — except for Robert Wadlow.
Like many of the tallest people ever, Jack Earle became a sideshow performer, and he performed as the “World’s Tallest Man” with the Ringling Brothers Circus. But that wasn’t what he’d planned.
Born Jacob Reuben Erlich in 1906 in Denver, Earle originally wanted to be an actor. Later relocating to El Paso, Texas with his family, Earle started growing early on. By the time he was 10, he was already over 6 feet tall, and he found some early success in Hollywood between the ages of 13 and 17. But after appearing in some 50 silent films, Earle’s acting career ended when he fell from a piece of scaffolding. After that, Earle went back to El Paso.
There, in 1925, Earle went to see a Ringling Brothers Circus show with some friends. To his shock — and to the shock of the circus ringleader — Earle was even taller than the circus’ tallest man. (Earle’s height was publicized as 8 feet, 6 inches, but he may have been “just” 7 feet, 7 inches tall).
With his acting career over, Earle needed to make a living. So, he agreed to join Ringling Brothers Circus as a performer.
“I didn’t want to be a sideshow freak,” Earle later explained, according to the El Paso Times. “But I did want to earn a living. I traveled with the circus for 14 years. And by then all its glamor and color had ended for me.”
Boston Public LibraryJack Earle and his fellow performer, Major Mite.
One of the most annoying things audience members asked, Earle recalled, was: “How’s the weather up there?” But he joked that when he met Robert Wadlow, he was so awestruck by the tallest man in the world that Earle asked him the same question. “He didn’t like it either,” Earle remembered.
After leaving the circus, Earle went on to become the world’s “tallest traveling salesman” before dying of kidney failure in 1952 at age 46.
