| College of Education Alum turns the world of sport, enterainment, education,−and himself−on its ear. |
A scruffy, apparently intoxicated man in a floppy, wrinkled suit totters on top of a wooden diving board while Ed Sullivan looks on in mock horror. Just before taking a leap off the board, he declares he’s doing it “with one eye shut” to increase the danger. But instead of making a splash as he careens into the water, he bounces back up again, flipping and twisting with each rebound.
“It’s spring water,” he announces to the studio audience as he incorporates the trampoline instead of a pool into his act.
The man, known as “The Diving Fool,” is Larry Griswold (BSPE ’32), a world-famous acrobat, diver, inventor, author, coach, teacher, and a University of Iowa College of Education graduate.
Griswold has been inducted into several halls of fame, including the Trampoline Hall of Fame and the Diving Hall of Fame, as well as the UI Athletics Hall of Fame. He performed his slap-stick diving act everywhere from county fairs to the Moulin Rouge in Paris, two Worlds Fairs, and even in command performances for royalty. But first, he honed his craft at the UI.
Griswold enrolled at the UI College of Education in 1927 and was a member of four varsity athletic teams: Diving, wrestling, track and field, and gymnastics. He was selected the men’s gymnastics team captain and won the 1929 Big Ten Tumbling Championship.
After earning his bachelor’s degree, Griswold spent a year teaching at Woodycrest School in the Bronx. He told an Australian newspaper later in life that he had “really loved teaching.”
In 1932, Griswold returned to the UI to further his studies and took a job as a graduate teaching assistant in Physical Education. He led classes in tap dancing and tumbling. His tap dancing class was so popular that it drew 116 students one term.
Griswold also worked with the head of the Physical Education Department, E. G. Schroeder (BA ‘27/MA ’32), to create a circus spotlighting the varied talents of UI students. The First Annual Iowa Circus took place April 20, 1933, and featured performances in tumbling, bicycle racing, roller hockey, tap dancing, flying rings, tight wire, clowning, teeter board, and more.
An Iowa newspaper touted the circus’ success and Griswold’s contribution.
“The rise of this event to its present status in the brief period since its creation in 1933 is nothing short of phenomenal,” the article read. “Credit for the success of the big Iowa show must necessarily be given to Larry Griswold who introduced it to the Iowa campus and who nursed it in its infancy and guided it in its youth.”
Griswold also made his mark on the UI’s Dolphin Club, an amateur aquatic troupe. It became one of the most highly touted amateur productions in the country with Griswold’s 42-foot-high trapeze act and his “Drunken Clown” comedy diving act stealing the show.
Grinwold, far right, helped create the first Iowa Circus at the UI. |
George Nissen (BSC ’37), a former member of the UI men’s gymnastics team who knew Griswold as an assistant coach and through his performances on campus, remembers him as a “wild man” who sometimes showed “more guts than brains” and would risk life and limb to please a crowd.
“We used to have to go around and try and stop people from clapping,” Nissen said from his home in San Diego. “He was so good that people were clapping and clapping and so he would just try stunt after stunt, and they were difficult physical tricks.”
In 1942 Griswold wrote the first textbook on the new sport, Trampoline Tumbling, which was used by the U.S. military to train pilots and astronauts. His second book, Trampoline Tumbling Today, co-authored with this nephew, Glenn Wilson, was published in 1975. |
In 1934, while working on the circus, the Dolphin Club, and as an assistant gymnastics coach, Griswold achieved another milestone: He collaborated in inventing the trampoline, an apparatus that would some day become essential to his career.
Along with Nissen and UI wrestling coach Mike Howard, Griswold came up with the concept of the trampoline, which the men designed for practicing tumbling after observing trapeze artists landing on nets and bouncing back. They used a piece of canvas attached to an iron frame with coiled springs and grommets. They named their creation the trampoline, a word they invented by adding an e to the Spanish word trampolin, which means diving board.
Griswold’s daughter Donna Kluck, a Cedar Rapids resident, remembers the men building versions of the trampoline in the basement of her family’s Cedar Rapids home.
“They used to hand sew the trampoline beds,” she said.
Despite positive response to their bouncy new invention, especially when Nissen took it to a nearby YMCA camp and let the children try it out, Griswold was more interested in performing and left the company, now known simply as the Nissen Trampoline Company. He joined the famous Water Follies in 1937. Within a year, he was billed as the “World’s Greatest Comedy Diver.”
In 1939, he joined Billy Rose’s Aquacade for a 26-week booking at the New York World’s Fair.
In addition to being a teacher, coach, inventor, author and increasingly famous performer, Griswold was also a father by this stage in his life. He and his wife, Sue, had four children: Sandra, Victor, Mary Jane and Donna.
Victor, now 70 and living in Florida, remembers the entire family traveling to shows around the country.
“I remember driving along singing songs. We would live in a tent sometimes on the fairground’s infield, sometimes the whole family,” he said with a laugh.
But Victor said he never grew tired of watching his dad perform.
“I always got a kick out of it, I was always laughing,” he said. “It was everything to me.”
Donna agrees.
“I knew every word of his act and he still made me chuckle,” she said, watching a video of his performance on the Frank Sinatra Show and pointing out spots where he’d shortened the act for TV.
Victor said he was always impressed with how much his father enjoyed his work.
“He didn’t do it for the money. He did it because he really, really loved it and you could tell when he was doing it. That’s what made him a great performer,” he said. “He was a performer that was in it to make people happy, but it also made him happy. He told me, ‘One time when we got rained out and I couldn’t go on, I cried.’”
In 1945, Griswold’s act changed significantly. A sinus issue made it impossible for him to continue his water act. But instead of giving up, Griswold became the “Dry Diving Humorist,” landing onto the trampoline instead of into a pool. Donna remembers her mom sewing a water scene to wrap around the base of the trampoline to disguise it as water.
Rather than hinder his performing life, the change from wet to dry diving made his act even more marketable—it was easier for venues to accommodate a trampoline than a pool.
He even booked some major television show appearances, including the Frank Sinatra Show, Jackie Gleason’s Stage Show, and the Ed Sullivan Show. One of his Ed Sullivan Show performances was on the same night the Rolling Stones made their U.S. television debut.
At age 50, Griswold was working an average of 44 weeks a year all over the world, thrilling audiences from New Zealand to Japan.
The Glasgow Herald newspaper described his performance as, “Comedy of the lofty, noble, philosophic sort of which only great clowns are capable.”
Variety described him as “the best thing the States has sent to Britain for a long time.”
He did a command performance for Queen Elizabeth in London as well as for Prince Ranier in Monte Carlo.
Nissen said he witnessed his old coach and collaborator becoming one of the great performers of the day.
“When performing in front of an audience, he was so intense that he was almost oblivious to reality. Sometimes, he didn’t even realize that he was hurt,” Nissen said in the World Acrobat Society Newsletter.
Griswold’s love of his art as well as his dare-devil character meant his act, which included a lot of choreographed slips and falls, could sometimes be dangerous.
Over the years, the so-called “Clown Prince of the Diving Board” suffered a broken neck, broken pelvis, torn bicep, knee injuries, and more. A serious head injury requiring surgery finally ended his career in 1973.
Still, Victor said his dad persisted in staying active. He became an avid golfer. And at age 65 he learned to scuba dive.
“He was always ready to learn new things,” Victor said.
Donna said she also remembers her dad, a grandfather to 13, as a champion of education into his later life.
“He was just education, education, education,” she said. “He was so proud of one of my daughters who graduated with a teaching degree and then went on for her master’s. I would tell Dad that and he’d have tears running down his face with a smile. He was so proud.”
Donna said her dad also remained affectionate toward his alma mater.
“He was very proud to be a graduate of The University of Iowa and proud of his grandchildren who went there,” she said. “He thought that was the school to go to.”
Griswold’s middle daughter, Mary Jane (BA ’64), also attended the UI. She passed away three years ago.
Griswold died August 24, 1996, just shy of his 91 st birthday. But his memory and his art live on.
Prior to his retirement and in the following years, Griswold trained several comedian acrobats to perform his act under contract. One of them, Don Zasadny, a 50-year-old Anamosa resident still travels the country as “Don Otto the Diving Fool.”
Zasadny, a former member of the U.S. Trampoline Team, met Griswold at the Nissen Trampoline Company where Zasadny used to train and Griswold would come by to watch.
“He was a legend for every trampolinist,” Zasadny said. “We were all excited to meet him.”
By 1981, Zasadny and Griswold had become golfing buddies and Griswold asked if Zasadny, then 25, would like to learn his act.
“I thought, sure why not, it’s something to do for a summer job,” Zasadny said. “And I’ve been doing it full time for 25 years now.”
Zasadny, who describes his mentor as a “natural goof,” said he can’t imagine the beating Griswold must have put his body through choreographing his act and finding just the right way to land on a fall without hurting himself.
“It’s physical. There are many falls and you wind up hanging by your feet, your elbows,” Zasadny said. “He taught me how to do it without hurting myself. I just had bumps and bruises from banging around. But when he was coming up with some of these skills, I don’t know how he did it.”
Zasadny performs his act at circuses, state and county fairs, and was even recently part of a rodeo circuit. He said audiences still love Griswold’s slapstick routine.
“It’s timeless,” he said.
Joey O, a trick shot golfer from Cedar Rapids who has been on the Tonight Show and performs regularly at PGA tour events, is another who counts Griswold as an important mentor. In fact, he said Griswold taught him everything he knows about show business.
“I said to him one time ‘Larry, something’s missing in my show.’ And he said, ‘Well, did the audience have a great time?’ And I went ‘Yeah, they had a great time.’ And he went ‘Who are you trying to entertain—you or the audience?’ It always made me focus on bringing happiness to the audience. It was one of the best lessons I ever had,” Joey O said.
“He was a wonderful teacher and a great friend.”
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