Leon Claxton was a millionaire. He lived in a big house in Florida and drove a stylish car. The motel he owned in Tampa had a picture of him on a wall near the bar.

Claxton was black.

When he went to filling stations in the deep south, racism hit him head on.

"They'd say, 'No black gas here, nigger,' " said his granddaughter Leslie Cunningham. "He started to tell people he was a white man's chauffeur. Then he could get gas."

Born in 1902, the only child in his family, Claxton grew up on Beale Street in downtown Memphis. Although he was in school, education for black people was limited. At 11 he joined Ringling Bros. circus, at first to water the elephants and then to be what was known as a block boy, making $5.35 a week as he helped with the show's setup and takedown. Soon he became a performer. He was an acrobat and worked in vaudeville houses.

He not only lived the show life, he learned it. By his late 20s he was making shows.

He called his show Harlem in Havana. For 32 years Claxton toured with singers and dancers, comedians and musicians, a mix of black American and Cuban entertainers who gave one-hour shows, sometimes doing more than a dozen a day in a carnival tent. Every year from April to October they were part of the Royal American midway, travelling by train to state fairs in Florida and Arkansas, Illinois and Minnesota, then on to Western Canada.

They played in Winnipeg and Regina and Calgary and Edmonton. They were in the Saskatoon Exhibition each summer from the 1930s to 1966.

This year is the encore. Leslie Cunningham, a filmmaker in Durham, N.C., is making a documentary about the life and times of her grandfather Leon and the Harlem in Havana show. She plans to visit Canada. She wants to meet people on the Prairies who saw the show and hear their stories.

"I'm in my 40s and I talk to people who weren't around then, who don't know what he did," said Cunningham. "When I sit here today and think of the legacy, how he helped shape and influence the pop culture of today, it blows my mind."

Leon died in 1967, before Leslie was old enough to know him or even how she was related to him. Leslie found out years later, as did her father John, the details of their family history. Leon, who married Gwendolyn Bates, had an affair with Gwendolyn's sister Shirley. Shirley is John's mother.

It took the family a while to deal with knowing this part of their past. Leslie, the youngest of three sisters, now wants to celebrate Leon, detailing both his challenges and achievements.

She is making the film. She also has a website - harleminhavana.com - and is putting together a photo collection about the show.

John is writing a book. Leon's Saskatoon connection is a chapter in itself.

Leon and Gwendolyn, two Americans, were married at St. John's Cathedral in Saskatoon in 1938. Leslie said from what she has read and heard, they liked the city. With Saskatoon being on the Royal American circuit, they came back year after year, Leon as the producer of the show and sometimes the MC and Gwendolyn as the lead dancer and bookkeeper.

When Leon and Gwendolyn were here in the 1950s, a teenage girl in Saskatoon made a point of seeing their show. She walked to the end of the midway, past the buzz of the generators and the yell of people riding the double Ferris wheel, to catch the Harlem in Havana orchestra playing a promotional number outside their tent. She and her friend went inside, getting their first taste of black music.

The girl was Joni Mitchell. She has written and recorded a song about the experience.

"I've been trying to reach her," said Cunningham, who hopes to add a clip of Mitchell to the film.

Cunningham has already talked with entertainers who were in the show, including jazz saxophone player Rocky Wynder, who continues to perform in his 80s in Tennessee.

Harlem in Havana was a launch pad for several stars. There was comedian Redd Foxx and singer Chuck Berry. Merceditas Valdes is called the grand dame of folk music in Cuba. Fontella Bass co-wrote the hit Rescue Me. Rufus Thomas became a DJ on a radio station with the first all-black aircrew in the U.S. Lester Bowie could make a trumpet sing.

For Claxton, the important thing was not developing big names, but delivering good times. There were tap dancers and show girls, rhythm and blues musicians, doowop groups. Elvis Presley, who sometimes performed on the same midway as Claxton's show, encouraged the crowd to see Harlem in Havana. Claxton made the show the most profitable part of the midway for Carl Sedlmayr, the owner of Royal American.

"A jig show, that's what it was called," said Cunningham. Claxton preferred to call it 'brown skin.'

"This was a time when blacks could not go to dance and music school. For them, life on the road was their college.

"On the train (with the Royal American midway) there were 70 cars holding other shows, rides, animals. The dining car was not segregated."

The cast of Harlem in Havana rode in a separate Pullman car on the train, though. Their car, always No. 66, was pelted with rocks and bottles by people in some cities in the States. It didn't even unload in others.

Guiding the show was Claxton, a man with Grade 3 education who went on to be named citizen of the year in Tampa for helping orphans and disabled youth.

As a producer, Claxton welcomed entertainers from Havana to the show when the U.S. was blowing smoke at Cuba. He was a black man who bought and ran a motel in a country where for years black people had not been allowed in restaurants. In schools they had to drink at different fountains than white people and in buildings were told to ride in a separate elevator.

"I'm nowhere near the social issues he was up against," said Cunningham, a writer and journalist who has produced and directed five other films and publishes TRIBES magazine, which features independent artists. "He pushed through this for decades, these stereotypes across America, and helped to ease the racial tension in the south. He's well beyond his time.

"How he got the drive I don't know. What would he say to me? Keep the faith, I think he'd say. That was his motto."

The show goes on.