Inherited Craziness: Vaudeville

Monday 10 July 2023

Con Colleano and Winifred Constance Stanley Trevail

Winifred Constance Stanley Trevail and Con Colleano

Cornelius Sullivan (b. 26 Dec 1899 in Lismore, New South Wales), Theatrical, son of Cornelius Sullivan and Julia Robinson, married my 2nd cousin, twice removed, Winifred Constance Stanley Trevail (b. 16 Sep 1900 in Lambeth, Surrey), Actress, daughter of Herbert Fleming Trevail and Alice Maud Stanley Blazey on 10 July 1926 in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. The marriage record states that they were married by the Associate Pastor of the Central Methodist Episcopal Church, from which I deduce that the venue was the Central United Methodist Church (Detroit), although they were resident in Brooklyn, New York. Both stated they had not been married before.

Known professionally as Con Colleano, Cornelius Sullivan, was the most famous and highest paid "swashbuckling circus performer with matinee idol looks" of his time, “The Australian Wizard of the Wire”. A member of the Circus Hall of Fame, Con Colleano is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first person to prefect the forward somersault on the tight wire.

"Mrs. Winnie Colleano (neé Trevail) was herself a well known Australian Vaudeville Soubrette", dancer and trapeze artist." One article says that Winnie Trevail began appearing on the stage in Sydney as a child, but actually, she was performing before that in New Zealand. There in Lyttelton, New Zealand in 1909 - where her father's aunts, Ellen Higgs and Mary Ann Burn Trevail Bawden then lived - reports in the Lyttelton Times in Oct 1909 detail that Miss Winnie Trevail was appearing in one of the principle roles in a production staged by the Garrick Juvenile Opera Company, at the Opera House there.

Trevail abandoned her own career in 1924 to travel with her husband.

Con Colleano on a slack-wire, circa 1920

Con Colleano, was of Aboriginal, Anglo-Irish and West Indian descent and adopted a Spanish persona and a costume of a ‘toreador’ or bullfighter.

Colleano’s Indigenous heritage was unknown to his fans – which included one of history’s most infamous racists - "Few people are aware of the fact that in the 1930’s, Adolf Hitler issued an Aboriginal Australian tightrope walker with a German passport so he could come and go as he pleased."

Passenger lists reveal that Cornelius Sullivan and Winifred C. S. Trevail left Southampton, England on 13 Sep 1924, on the RMS Berengaria (former SS Imperator), The first Cunard "Queen". This was their first trip to the US, so their port of arrival was the infamous Ellis Island, New York. Various sources tell us that, in 1924, Con made his debut at the New York Hippodrome before returning to the circus with Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

There's also record of Cornelius and Winifred C Sullivan Colleano travelling from Southampton to New York, on the Berengaria, on 24 Feb 1937.

On 7 Jan 1938, Cornelius and Winifred (Sullivan) Colleano, left Sydney, bound for California, on the luxury ocean liner, SS Mariposa (1931).

On 8 Sep 1939, Cornelius and Winifred Sullivan, listed as British, boarded the Italian ocean liner, SS Rex, leaving Genoa, bound for New York.

In 1940, they are shown arriving in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

These, I'm sure are just the tip of a globe-trotting iceberg, but it was finding these records of voyages that led me to discover more of their story.

The former Albion Hotel (pub) at Forbes, New South Wales, Sheba, CC BY-SA 2.0

"Sadly Con and Winnie ultimately lost all their money indulging in a luxurious lifestyle, giving it away to friends and making a disastrous investment in a pub in outback Australia in the 1950s (what were they thinking?)."

Con Sullivan died, in Miami, Florida, on 13 Nov 1973 and in his obituary in The Stage, the wife of Con's brother is quoted as saying, "His wife WINNIE has cabled that she is broken-hearted because she found my dear brother-in-law lying dead, obviously she is too shocked to tell me more."

Winnie returned to Australia, where she died, in Sydney, in on 5 Jan 1986.

Con Colleano home movie: circus preparations (1928)

While researching, I found a record of a marriage of a Winifred C Trevail, in Victoria, Australia, in 1919 to a Leonard Mendoza. It would take $20 AUS to obtain the certificate to see if there are enough clues to tell whether this is the same Winifred C Trevail, but just how many people named Winifred C Trevail are there likely to be in the same area? We know Winnie was in Melbourne before this, because in the Victoria Police Gazette of 11 Apr 1918, is: "TREVAIL, WINNIE theatrical, 7 McKenzie Street, Melbourne, reports stolen from the dressing-room, Bijou Theatre, Bourke Street, Melbourne on the 3rd inst. a diamond cluster ring, diamond in the centre set with other stones around, the centre stone is set a little to side, gold band at side of setting is wavy. Value £8." It's obvious this report is from "our" Winnie and hard to accept that a completely different Winifred C Trevail turned up in the very same area only a year later. Someone with the surname Mendoza even sounds like Winnie's "type". It's said that Winnie met Con, in Melbourne, Victoria, when she was 22. What can have happened to Leonard Mendoza? If he died, or they had divorced, Winnie would have listed that she was a widow, or a divorcee when she married Con. Was Winnie committing bigamy in 1926?

I'm much amused by self-aggrandising family stories, but this one probably takes the biscuit - although no surprise perhaps among theatrical types. In several articles, it mentions that Winnie "claimed descent from the Earls of Derby" and it appears that the source of that quote is her own brother, Eric, so it may well have been a story perpetuated in the family. A claim doesn't make it true though! And through which side would that be, I wonder? The line we share to the 'illegitimate born' former dyer who downgraded to labourer in Norfolk, or the bankrupted tenant farmer in Cornwall? Lovely people, I'm sure, but Earls or any other type of nobs they were not!

Sources (many of these links contain images):

Videos:

Further reading: The wizard of the wire : the story of Con Colleano