La Norma Fox, 1926 – 2026

Danish aerialist La Norma Fox, who doubled for Betty Hutton in The Greatest Show on Earth, died on Aug. 8. She was 100. A backyard acrobat as a child, she trained in ballet and was performing in circuses by her teens (at one point, she dangled from the Eiffel Tower). She signed with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which brought her to the US and to the attention of Paramount, where she got the doubling job in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). She retired in the 1970s to care for an ailing son, but continued to train other performers well into her old age. Fellow circus performer Tony Steel recalled that “La Norma was very beautiful and she’d flirt with the audience. She had a special talent for that. She’d have an auditorium with 3,000 people in it and be able to flirt with every one of them with just the way she looked at them.”