Hilda Emma Schneider, who went by the stage name Daisy Earles, was a German-born actress with dwarfism who migrated to the United States in the early 1920s. She worked in Hollywood films and later toured with circus companies. Daisy Earles was blonde, pretty, and tall compared to her other sisters, and had a very well proportioned figure, for which she earned the epithet of a "miniature Mae West". Her circus acts with her siblings were primarily as "parade performers".
Earles in a scene from the film Freaks, 1932
Freaks is a 1932 American pre-Code drama horror film produced and directed by Tod Browning, starring Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates and Harry Earles.
1932 theatrical release poster
Critic Jon Towlson notes that the everyday interaction between the able-bodied and disabled circus performers serves to uphold an anti-eugenics sentiment.
Johnny Eck as Half-Boy and Angelo Rossitto as Angeleno
Freaks lobby card