- Ella Carver in 1961
Memphis has always attracted our share of unusual entertainers. Some of them are born here, and some come from other places. But few have such a distinctive specialty as Ella Carver, the “World-Famous Fire Diver,” who performed here several times in the early 1960s, at Lakeland and the Mid-South Fair.
Judging from old newspaper articles that I discovered, Ella clambered to the top of a 90-foot platform wearing a special bathing suit. She somehow set herself ON FIRE, then leaped from the tower and splashed into a shallow pool below, which was also ON FIRE.
Ella, who called Miami home when she wasn’t on the road, traveled the country in an old truck (shown below) with brightly painted signs on the side that proclaimed that she was “the only high swan diver in the world ‘on fire into fire.'” Another sign said that her diving act is “the one that never fails the public.”
And what makes this even more amazing? Ella was doing this act when she was 73 years old!