Henry Maar

Henry J. Maar (1921–1992), known as "The Sultan of Balloons", was one of the pioneers in balloon twisting. He appeared for over a decade on episodes of the long running Bozo's Circus. While the origins of balloon twisting are impossible to prove, Emmy Award winning producer/director Joseph Maar has provided evidence that his father, Henry, may be the founder of balloon twisting. Larry Moss calls Joseph Maar's evidence "compelling" but warns that if Joseph Maar is correct then the history of balloon twisting would have to be rewritten. For example, the 1975 book by "Jolly the Clown" Petri credits "Herman Bonnert from Pennsylvania at a magician's convention in 1939" as being the first balloontwister.

Joseph Maar's account

Joseph Maar is the three time Emmy Award Winning Coordinating Director formerly with ESPN who worked on shows including Sports Center, Sports Century, Pardon the Interruption, and Around the Horn. He is also a client of some of the largest ballooning stores in the country.

According to Joseph Maar, his father had pleurisy as a child and spent several years at a TB Sanitorium in Milwaukee. To develop his lungs, the facility had Henry blow up balloons. In the 1930s Henry became a vaudeville magician. While preparing for a show in 1938 or 1939, Joseph writes, "he came back to the car to get the rest of his magic tricks only to find the vehicle had been broken into and everything was gone."

Joseph Maar also credits his father with inventing 'face painting.' According to Joseph, his father would sometimes have trouble with his makeup during long summertime events. To cover his own need to touch up his clown make up, he would invite kids up on stage where Henry Maar would "make them up" like a clown. John Shirley, in the preface to One balloon animals; the rubber jungle / Roger's rubber jungle by Roger Siegel, writes "probably began sometime around 1920 but did not become popular until the advent of the skinny balloons after World War II...The inventor of the one balloon animal is unknown, but his origination opened the door to a new art." Jim Church III writes, " Frank Zacone from Youngstown, Ohio was doing a balloon act during the 1940s and had been doing the act for some time."