Eddie Carmel

Lore & Background

Carmel was born in Mandatory Palestine to Orthodox Jewish parents and moved to the Bronx at age two. He graduated from Taft High School in 1954 at age 18, standing 7 feet tall, and attended City College of New York for two years. His gigantism and acromegaly were caused by a pituitary adenoma; he weighed 13 pounds at birth and stood about 5 feet 10 inches by age 10. Although the Guinness Book of World Records listed him at 9 feet tall, later sources suggest his actual height was closer to 7 feet 3 inches. He wore a size 22 shoe.

Reader's Guide

Carmel's significance lies in his dual legacy as a sideshow performer and as the subject of Diane Arbus's iconic 1970 photograph 'Jewish Giant, Taken at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, N.Y.' The image, which sold for $421,000 in 2007 and $583,500 in 2017, captures the tension between his extraordinary stature and his ordinary family life. His career spanned carnival acts, film roles (including 'The Brain That Wouldn't Die'), and novelty records, but his physical decline from arthritis and kyphoscoliosis ended his work by 1969. The photograph and subsequent audio documentary by his cousin in 1999 have cemented his place in American cultural history as a figure of both spectacle and humanity.

Did You Know?

• Carmel was listed by Guinness as 9 ft 0 in tall, but may have been closer to 7 ft 3 in.
• He formed a rock and roll band called Frankenstein and the Brain Surgeons.
• A print of Arbus's photograph sold at auction for $421,000 in 2007.
• By age 33, arthritis made walking difficult, and he later used a wheelchair.

Early Life and the Condition That Shaped Him

Born Oded Ha-Carmeili in Jaffa in 1936 to Orthodox Jewish immigrants—his father a Polish-born insurance agent, his mother a secretary at the Jewish Theological Seminary—Eddie was an only child who arrived at a staggering sixteen pounds. The family relocated to the Bronx when he was two, eventually settling on Elgar Place in Co-op City. Both parents stood just five feet six, making his extraordinary growth all the more conspicuous. By his tenth birthday he already measured over six feet, and at fifteen, after reaching six-foot-six, doctors identified the pituitary adenoma behind his gigantism and the acromegaly that would follow. He graduated Taft High School in 1954 standing seven feet tall, then spent two years at City College of New York studying business, joining the Dramatic Club, and earning a vice-presidential seat in his class before transferring to Baruch College. The nickname "Eddie," which had followed him since childhood, eventually became the name he carried into the public eye.

A Patchwork Career Across Sideshows, Screens, and Stages

Beyond the circus tent, Carmel's professional life was a collage of unlikely pursuits. In 1958 he sold mutual funds from an office near Times Square, a job that likely felt as surreal as any of his later gigs. His primary stage, however, was the carnival sideshow: Hubert's Dime Museum, the Flea Circus on West 42nd Street, Milt Levine's World of Mirth, and ultimately Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, which billed him at nine feet and five-eighths and five hundred pounds. He slipped into a couple of low-budget films, including the sci-fi horror The Brain That Wouldn't Die and the comedy 50,000 B.C. (Before Clothing), both from the early 1960s. Music called to him too—he formed a rock and roll group called Frankenstein and the Brain Surgeons and cut two novelty 45s, "The Happy Giant" and "The Good Monster," plus a single titled "The Happy Monster's Song." With his close friend Irwin Sherman, he also performed stand-up comedy in New York clubs. All of it ended in 1969, when his body simply could no longer keep pace.

The Photograph That Outlived Its Subject

In 1970, photographer Diane Arbus visited Carmel in his parents' Bronx apartment and captured an image that would become one of the most recognized photographs of the twentieth century. Titled Jewish Giant, Taken at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, N.Y., the portrait showed the thirty-four-year-old seated between his much smaller mother and father. As Arbus set up her camera, Carmel quipped, "Isn't it awful to have midget parents?" Arbus later reflected that the mother's expression carried the universal dread of a woman who had feared her child would be born a "monster." Two years after Carmel's death, the image had already cemented his place in cultural memory. In 1999, his cousin produced an audio documentary for Sound Portraits Productions, the predecessor to StoryCorps, directly inspired by the photograph. The market has since validated its power: a print fetched $421,000 at auction in 2007, and another crossed $583,500 at Christie's in 2017.

The Slow Reversal and a Brief Final Chapter

The same pituitary adenoma that had made Carmel a spectacle in his youth ultimately undid him. By 1969, at thirty-three, arthritis had rendered walking a painful struggle, and he leaned on two canes to get around. The progression was relentless: the canes gave way to a wheelchair, and the wheelchair gave way to a bed from which he could no longer rise. Kyphoscoliosis—a painful combination of spinal curvature in both the forward and lateral planes—set in during his final years, stealing several inches of the height that had defined his public identity. He died of glandular disease on August 14, 1972, at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, just six days short of his thirty-seventh birthday. At his funeral, the man who had been billed at nearly nine feet was noticeably shorter than he had been only a few years earlier, his spine curved, his frame diminished. The giant had, in the end, been reclaimed by his own biology.

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