«Good evening, kind audience, I’m Francesco Lentini, but call me Frank. You may have heard of me, I’m the only man in the world with three legs. It’s a beautiful story. Wait while I get comfortable and tell you.” The man settles on the third leg as if it were a stool and a kind of overwhelming one-man show begins. People laugh. But it’s true, this incredible story.
From Rosolini to freak shows
It begins in Rosolini, on 18 May 1889, a village in the Syracuse area that seems to have emerged from certain pages of Verga. Lentini was born with three legs, four feet, sixteen toes and two genitals. In Sicily at the end of the 19th century, his life appears miserable and inevitably doomed to shame.
But then this story moves, or rather emigrates, to the United States. It has freak shows as its stage, the famous circuses like Barnumthose who showcased elephant men, ape men, bearded women, albinos, dwarf people, the tallest men in the world like the Norwegian John Aasen (two meters and 34 centimeters) and Major Delbert, the shortest one with his 96 centimeters.
The Italian is one of those freaks, one of those “monstrosities”, to go by the words used by the press of the time. But in the USA, Lentini soon became a star from being a monstrosity «a rock star before rock stars existed» says Alberto Giuffrè, journalist for Sky TG24, 41 years old, who a ‘U marvelous — as Frank was nicknamed as soon as he was born — has dedicated a fascinating biography at the pace of the novel, Incredible story of the man with three legs, in the bookstore with minimum fax.
Half a century of American history
The reconstruction of Lentini’s life was born with the “lockdown, when I came across an article on the life of this man – says Giuffrè – escaped from his homeland to seek his fortune elsewhere. I wondered why no one had told his story properly.” The rest is research conducted «with imagination, finding unpublished documents and also interviewing a nephew.”
In the background, between large cities and immense provinces, half a century of American history unfolds, roaring twenties, great depression, new deal. Frank lands in the USA because a Sicilian businessman approaches his parents to Rosolini — Natale and Giovanna, farmers, twelve children — saying that the three-legged baby can be “performed at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, making a lot of money.”
«More than one, but not two»
Without hesitation, Natale crosses the Atlantic, destination Boston. ‘U marvelous he is a smart boy, he immediately understands how to transform his deformed body into an opportunity for redemption. He does it with talent. To the public who follows him from New York to Los Angeles, he addresses himself with monologues like this: «My mother did not give birth to two children. More than one, but not two”. Soon he becomes rich, he sets up his own company.
Two of his two children — Frank will have four with the actress, Theresa Murray — they are drafted, they go to fight in North Africa against the Axis. From the front, Natale, who is a sergeant in the First American Division, the one that will then land in Italy, writes to his father: «I was wounded, it’s a miracle I’m alive, I met Eisenhower, they’ll give me a Silver Star. I heard that James — the brother, ed – he will go to fight in Sicily, I pray for him”.
To journalists who ask him about his two boys in uniform, Frank says he is “proud of them”. ‘U maravigghiusu dies in Tennessee, aged 77, while he was on the road with the Cliff Wilson Show and still working.
