GRACE McDANIELS
OVER THE TOP
  The vast majority of side show entertainers understood the importance of not mixing your stage persona with your personal self and for that reason would choose a stage name.  There's no reason not to believe that "Grace McDaniels" was a stage name, but for who we don't know.
    It is also true that not a single oddity ever, ever went on stage because they enjoyed it.  Always it was done because of the simple need to earn money. 
    By Grace's own account she had brothers and sisters. More often than not a deformed or afflicted person exhibited in order not only to support themselves but also their family.
   Was Elmer Grace's son?  Maybe, maybe not.  It is certainly possible that before Grace's condition manifested itself she was married and had a son.  Her husband could have died and fortuitously enough, may I say, Grace found herself with a medical condition that was conducive to the show business.  The story of Mary Bevan, the "Ugliest Woman in the World" bears an uncanny similarity.
      But despite her striking and singular appearance, Grace's stage act never became well-known or regarded for one simple reason. 
      The carnival industry spent many years cleaning up its act.  There was a time when carnivals = immorality, cheating, lying and general filthiness.  An effort was made, eventually successfully, to turn the industry around and present wholesome entertainment, promising "nothing to offend" to the paying public.
     Grace's act was about as far as a showman could push it without being ostracized by his own kind.  Grace could  offend. People that saw her became nauseous and left sickened, vowing never again to pay to see another such thing.
     That Grace was allowed to play at all was due to her sympathy pitch.  No, not the one that was proffered to the public but the one that was offered to the carnival owners.  Still, the Greatest Show on Earth wouldn't touch her and as you know they always had to have the Crème de la Crème.
    In all my years of studying the lives of human oddities "Grace McDaniels" is the only modern act that almost went too far.  There were working acts that people found revolting such as "Bosco" or the "Great Waldo" but Grace stands as the only oddity who was almost too bad for her own good.