Acting

Sarah 'Babe' Kalishek

In her teens, Sarah “Babe” Kalishek (1902-1999) left home with a traveling vaudeville act, where she performed as a singer and as an assistant to a trained animal act. Before long, she found herself training animals for silent films in California. It was there she saw a newspaper ad for Barr’s Flying Circus. ('Daredevil In the Sky' by Kylie Kalishek). Barr’s Flying Circus in Venice, California was looking for a woman willing to learn aerial acrobatics. She thought, “It sounded interesting” and was soon wing-walking at 75 mph. (San Diego Air and Space Museum) By 1919, Sarah was learning to fly planes herself, while still spending three hours a day in the air practicing her acrobatic antics. Some of Sarah’s death defying feats included dancing on the wings, riding the loop-the-loop, playing tag with another acrobat, and dangling only by her knees or teeth.