Massachusetts clown retires after nearly 60-year career

WEST BRIDGEWATER, Mass. (AP) - Back in his heyday, George Hebert could make a coin appear from behind anyone’s ear.

What started as his role of the class clown as a student blossomed into a full-fledged career as Joy the Magical Clown. And through his magic tricks and acts, he aimed to bring a bit of joy to people’s lives.

But as arthritis and neuropathy riddled his hands several years ago, he was unable to perform the coin tricks as he used to.

You have to know when to quit, he said, and for him, it was time to say goodbye.

“It was my life,” he said. “Clowning was my number one thing in my life. I tried to live every day of my life as a clown. Not being silly and stupid, but making people happy. My whole purpose in being here on this earth, I think, is to make people happy and do good things for people.”

While he still makes an appearance as Joy the Magical Clown in Duxbury’s annual Fourth of July parade, Hebert, 75, has shifted his focus to helping people in other ways. Hebert officiates marriages and other services as a Justice of the Peace, hands out flowers for Pillsbury Florists in West Bridgewater dressed in dress tails and a top hat for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day and works as a motivational speaker, especially for clown clubs. He also started a transportation company, “I Need a Ride,” about three years ago, where he also provides free rides funded by the H.O.P.E. (Heightening Our Patient’s Experience) Fund for patients receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

“The business I’m in, I try to make every day the best it can possibly be for people that are in a very bad situation with cancer and blood problems,” he said.

His first professional appearance as Joy the Magical Clown was at the now-closed Glen Ellen Country Club in Millis when he was 19, he said, but his first taste of the clown life dates back to a carnival at the Howard School in Brockton when he was in fifth grade.

“I wasn’t the sharpest tack in the box in school,” he said with a laugh, ”…so one of the teachers said, ‘Can you dress up like a clown and just walk around the carnival for us and talk to the kids?’ Because I was always fooling with the kids.”

He took a trip up to the now-closed Randolph Manufacturing Company, the maker of the boat shoe, in Randolph to buy a pair of size 20 sneakers, had a costume made by his mother and attended the carnival, which sparked the love of clowning that carried him throughout his nearly 60-year career.

He graduated from Bristol County Agricultural High School as the last poultry major from the school, he said, and went on to work at Medfield State Hospital as a herdsman, handling the hospital’s cows, chickens and farm work. It was there that he met state milk inspector Walter Childs, who moonlighted as a magician on the side. Childs took Hebert under his wing, Hebert said, and taught him the art of being a magician during a three-year apprenticeship.

“Whenever he had a show, I would go with him and carry his equipment and set it up for him and watch his presentation, everything an apprentice would do,” Hebert said. “In the meantime, he’s teaching me magic because back then, that’s how you learned magic: one magician to another, hand to hand … because you’re not only learning how to do the trick, you’re learning how to present the trick, how to handle kids, how to handle people, learning reactions and so forth.”

After Childs decided that Hebert was ready to move on, Hebert said he then spent three years training under Quincy clown John Sisson before training under Charles Donnan, who Hebert said served as an opening act for famed magicians Howard Thurston and Harry Houdini. Hebert practiced his makeup whenever he went to Sisson’s house, and Sisson later referred him to Jack Stein, a famous makeup artist in Boston known for doing the makeup of celebrities and politicians. It was Stein that helped Hebert to come up with the clown face he would wear for the rest of his career: a big red smile, red button nose, two red dots on his cheeks, high “upside-down V” eyebrows that added a look of surprise and dramatic eyelashes off the inner and outer corners of his eyes.

Outside of clowning, Hebert also cycled through various day jobs, including: taking over Childs’s job as milk inspector for a time after Childs pursued being a magician full-time, car sales in Brockton, working as a manager at Standard Fruit Company, owning Estabrook Restaurant for 17 years with his wife and later selling greeting cards. Despite bouncing from job to job, the clowning remained a constant.

“There wasn’t a person that came into that restaurant that didn’t have a quarter behind their ear,” he said. “Kids would say, ‘I know you! You’re the quarter man!’”

It’s been a lifetime of performing, he said, but since he started, he’s watched the clown industry take hit after hit. He pointed to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who was known as the “Killer Clown,” that “destroyed” clowning. He also pointed to Stephen King’s depiction of clowns in his novel “IT,” as well as the more recent creepy clown sightings that sparked panic nationwide in 2016. Hebert even received the only clown ID issued in 1987 by the Clown and Character Registry, which performers use to register their names and makeup, to prove he was a professional clown if pulled over by police.

“That’s not what clowns are,” he said. “Clowns are loving, caring people. That’s how I explain it to the kids. They say, ‘You’re nothing but a man!’ I said that’s what a clown is. It’s a man who dresses up funny, puts on funny makeup to make people happy. ‘So you’re a regular man?’ Yep! But I know magic and that makes me special. And that’s when you explain that’s clowning. You’re an entertainer at all times. I try to live my whole life like that all the time.”

Hebert is full of stories about his experiences, each touched by his love of clowning. He performed at two World Fairs in New York and Montreal – for which he still has a newspaper from the time declaring “JOY THE CLOWN’S N.Y. WORLD FAIR SHOW ‘SENSATIONAL’” – and also traveled with the Bartok Circus for two years. He was a member of the Saint George Lodge of Freemasons, which allowed him to later become a “Shriner,” a spin-off fraternity following the principles of freemasonry that supports Shriners Hospitals for Children, including a Boston location affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital.

With the Shriners, Hebert was a Shrine Clown, which allowed him to visit the hospital and entertain the kids, he said. It’s a unit within the Shriners, he explained, and as the only professional magician at the time, Hebert said he taught other Shrine Clowns how to do tricks to use when performing.

“I only joined Shriners shortly after my wife (Elizabeth) passed, so I’m sure she would have been really proud of what happened with them because she loved the kids too,” he said.

Clowning, including trips to performances, became just a regular part of life for the Hebert family, which also included the couple’s two daughters, Melissa and Karen. After his retirement, Melissa made a blanket out of his old clown costumes, which he has at his home along with his shoes and a “clown car” he uses in Duxbury’s parade. While he continues being involved in the clown industry by teaching at the annual Northeast Clown Institute in Plymouth, where he received a lifetime achievement award, he’s largely said goodbye to his clown alter ego.

But his nearly 60 years as a clown continue to be recognized. Last year, West Bridgewater selectmen declared Dec. 4 as “Joy the Magical Clown Day” and he will be honored at the West Bridgewater Lions Club Annual Park Day this year, scheduled to take place Sept. 13. The event’s program will be dedicated to Joy the Magical Clown, which will be the first time the program has been dedicated to a living person, said Lions Club President Jerry Lawrence, who noted that Hebert, who he said has performed at every Park Day since it started, is expected to don his classic clown face once more.

“I can tell you, growing up in West Bridgewater, I’ve known him forever as Joy the Magical Clown before I knew him as George Hebert,” Lawrence said. “If you grew up in West Bridgewater, you knew Joy and you knew George … He’s just an icon in West Bridgewater and every community in the area.”

Hebert said he lives his life with the principles of a clown — if it’s not fun, he doesn’t do it, he said.

“It’s just bringing happiness to somebody and if you can do that for just a minute in somebody’s life, if you can make somebody smile or be happy for just a couple minutes, it makes your whole life as a clown,” he said. “I tried to make every show I did something somebody would remember.”

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