Ben Dova: The Vaudevillian Who Survived The Hindenburg

March 14 was the birthday of Joseph Anthony Spah (1905-86), professionally known as “Ben Dova”.

Spah was 17 when he immigrated to the U.S. from his native Alsace-Lorraine in 1922. A circus performer since childhood, he became a comic acrobat on the American vaudeville circuits. In his act he played a drunken swell who would teeter dangerously around the stage, constantly on the verge of falling, always righting himself at the last possible second. At the climax he would climb to the top of a lamp post to light his cigarette. The specially designed trick lamp post would swing and sway around with the performer clinging to it like a monkey in a tree during a hurricane. His reputation led to a little film work. He’s in the shorts A Chinatown Fantasy (1930) and The Way of All Freshman (1933), the latter with Hal Le Roy and Mitzi Mayfair.

That same year of 1933, Ben Dova also made the newsreels by performing his lamp post act from high atop the 56 story Chanin building adjacent Grand Central Station in New York. Publicity shots for the event like the one above are deceptive though. The Chanin Building is structured in a series of setbacks. He was indeed on its highest elevation but quite far from the edge. At any rate — shades of both Houdini and Harold Lloyd in this inspired stunt.

In 1937, he made the newsreels yet again in a far less happy way. Spah was one of the passengers on the final voyage of the ill-fated German airship Hindenburg. He’d been performing in European music halls; it made sense for such a flashy guy to return in the most glamorous way possible. This did more to assure Spah’s lasting fame than his actual career. He was portrayed in the 1975 movie The Hindenburg by Robert Clary!

A more fictionalized version of his character was also included in the 2011 German mini-series Hindenberg: The Last Flight, which I watched recently, thus putting him back onto my radar. (It’s a terrible show btw, I’ll be writing about it in a few weeks). At the time, Spah was briefly under suspicion as a saboteur for the event. (Part of the Hindenburg mythos is always that the explosion was the result of a bomb, because the ship was the pride of Nazi Germany. But such intrigue is hardly necessary in an environment where a single spark can ignite your giant bag of pure hydrogen). In the 2011 movie, Spah is unfairly depicted as a creepy and insinuating cynic, whose facial scars imply some kind of weird SM double life. He comes off as creepier than the Nazis — not good storytelling.

I’d have been more inclined to suspect him for blowing up the Hindenburg for the publicity! After all, surviving the Hindenburg disaster is the kind of life event a performer can dine out on! Spah continued to perform in American night clubs over the decades. He was on The Ed Sullivan Show. And in old age, he was in a couple of movies. He played Laurence Olivier’s brother in Marathon Man (1976), no doubt thanks to renewed interest in him from the Hindenburg film of the previous year. He was also in Dear Mr. Wonderful (1982) with Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent!

For more on vaudeville, where Ben Dova performed his lamp post act,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.