Jane Barnell

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jane Barnell (1874-?) was a US bearded lady who used a stage name Lady Olga.

Jane Barnell was born in North Carolina. According to later accounts - notably Joseph Mitchell's article "Lady Olga" - her mother sold her to the Great Orient Family Circus, which was later merged with a larger circus. This circus took her to Germany. She fell ill in Berlin and was left in an orphanage, where she was later found by her father.

As an adult, when she was working on her grandmother's farm she met a circus strongman who invited her to join John Robinson's Circus. She tried several stage names before eventually settling on Lady Olga Roderick. At that time her beard was 13 inches long.

Lady Olga toured for a time with number of circuses, including the Ringling Brothers circus, and later joined Hubert's Museum in Times Square, New York. She appeared in a number of films, most famously Tod Browning's Freaks (1931) which, according to the documentary on the Freaks DVD, left her unhappy with the overall portrayal of the sideshow performers in the film.

Barnell was married three times and had two children.