Tiny Kline

Tiny Kline, born Helén Deutsch on June 21, 1891, in Magyar, Hungary, was a circus performer, aerialist, and Broadway performer whose career spanned more than five decades. She died on July 5, 1964, from stomach cancer.

Kline arrived in the United States in 1905 at the age of 15, traveling with a dance troupe and entering through a New York port. She took up residence at the Clara de Hirsch Home for immigrant girls and began her performing career as a burlesque dancer in clubs and music halls. In 1912, a Pittsburgh Press article reported that she had been arrested in Bloomfield following a performance authorities described as featuring insufficiently modest attire. Witnesses failed to corroborate the charges, and Kline was released after paying court fees.

By 1914, Kline had joined Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, performing under the name Tiny Duchée. It was there that she met rodeo trick rider Otto Kreinbrink, who performed under the stage name Otto Kline. The two married, but in April 1915 Otto fractured his skull during a performance at Madison Square Garden and died from his injuries. Following his death, she adopted the name Tiny Kline. On the second anniversary of Otto's death in 1917, she performed in the Roman standing race at Madison Square Garden, stating that learning to ride was her way of staying connected to her late husband.

In 1919, Kline began training for the iron jaw act after a conflict with fellow performer Lillian Leitzel, who objected to Kline using the still rings, Leitzel's specialty. Kline developed her signature act known as the "slide for life," a variation of the iron jaw performance in which she descended a wire by gripping it with her teeth, typically launching from tall buildings or other elevated structures. One of the most publicized instances of this act took place in 1932, when Kline slid from the top of the Hotel Edison to the roof of the Prospect Theatre in Times Square, covering more than 200 yards at a height of 27 stories. She was arrested afterward on a charge of disorderly conduct.

Kline appeared on Broadway in 1935 in the musical Jumbo. In 1961, Walt Disney initiated a search for a performer to portray a flying Tinker Bell at Disneyland, and Kline was hired to glide down a wire running from the Matterhorn to Sleeping Beauty's Castle. She retired from the role in 1964 but was scheduled to return that same year before her death prevented her from doing so.

Kline is buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. Her gravestone bears the inscription "Tiny Helen Kline. Our Tinker Bell." In her will, she left the bulk of her estate to the Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls, the same institution that had sheltered her upon her arrival in the United States nearly six decades earlier.