Colleena Sue is a target for her knife-throwing mom.
In the early twentieth century, before every home had a television and long before news was updated every minute in the palms of our hands, there were things called newsreels. They typically played in theaters before movies as a source of current news and entertainment. Among the most bizarre newsreel clips was that of Louella Gallagher—the knife-throwing mom.
In the 1950 clip, seen below, Louella throws at her two daughters, announced as Connie Ann, five, and Colleena Sue, two-and-a-half.
As the announcer states, they “are a big help to mother Louella, who is no mean hand to a handful of knives. Connie Ann is a veteran of being a target for mother’s cutlery…”
After a few knives build up around her, the five-year-old gives her little sister a chance to watch Mom throw knives around her.
Louella Gallagher throws knives around her daughter.
“…Evidently Colleena Sue has more trust in Mother’s aim than the audience has,” the announcer notes. “It takes a steady eye and a stout heart to heave knives at the apple of your eye, but this female William Tell has no qualms and plenty of faith…”
Like any knife thrower, Gallagher was clearly confident in her skills.
“Louella Gallagher was a very talented knife thrower. It’s wonderful to see what she was socially able to do back then,” David Adamovich, aka The Great Throwdini, told Weird Historian. “If I were to throw around a child these days I’d have Child Protective Services knocking on my door.”
The Great Throwdini—who holds more than forty world records—uses fully grown target girls and is the world’s only impalement artist to throw around two women spinning on a veiled wheel. His feats can be seen in hundreds of videos, unlike Gallagher, who appears in just a few.
Beyond the information in that newsreel and a few others, very little is known about her. However, Connie Ann’s name appears in a 1946 issue of Showman’s Trade Review, commenting on her performance as a four-year-old in San Antonio where she “stands nonchalantly against a board while her mother throws knives into the board around her.” This contradicts the information in the aforementioned 1950 newsreel, but a third sister appears in a second 1950 video, so perhaps Connie Ann was actually the eldest.
Louella Gallagher’s name pops up again in a 1987 edition of The Pittsburgh Press, which thanks her for her charity work in the “Hair Cut-a-Thon.” It’s quite likely a different Louella Gallagher, but if not, imagine how those haircuts must have been given.
