The Doll Family

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The Doll Earles siblings (native Schneider)

The Doll Family were a stage and show quartet performing in the United States , consisting of four small siblings who were originally born in Stolpen, Saxony. Her parents were Emma and Gustav Schneider, who also had three other ordinary sized children.

Show career

Kurt and Frieda, the older of the four, had their first stage experience in Germany as Hansel and Gretel . They were discovered by American show producer Bert W. Earles, who piloted the two to the United States in 1915. The Schneider siblings in America adopted the name of their discoverer and from then on called themselves Earles by surname. They also gave themselves American first names: Gracie and Harry instead of Kurt and Frieda. When they reached a certain age, their two younger siblings moved to the United States after their older siblings in the 1920s. They also gave themselves the American names Daisy and Tiny and used Earles as their last name. After the death of their discoverer Bert Earles in the 1930s, the siblings renamed themselves and from then on appeared as "The Doll Family" (The Doll Family).

In the 1910s, the two older siblings had already been employed on various Wild West shows. The siblings then worked for decades at the renowned Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus , where they performed as singers, dancers and actors. On occasion, the siblings also appeared in Hollywood films: Daisy and Harry became known to a wide audience through the horror film Freaks (1932), where they played lovers; in the classic film The Wizard of Oz (1939) the four siblings were seen as members of the Munchkin dwarf people. But since there were only a few film roles for short stature, the Doll siblings remained mainly active in shows and at the circus. At the end of the 1950s, the siblings withdrew from show business together.

Members

Life and retirement together

The four siblings were always closely connected, they lived and worked together. Daisy was the only one who was briefly married to a man of normal height in 1942, but divorced again that year. Through their four decades in show business, the siblings brought together a decent fortune. They used it to buy a house in Sarasota , Florida in the late 1950s . They spent their twilight years there. Tiny was the last of the siblings to die in 2004 at the age of 90.

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