La Norma Fox: I had never seen a winter quarters like that. Adam Forepaugh wasnt around to see how the Ringlings fared with his railroad cars. Jennifer Lemmer Posey, Curator: There would be men balancing on horseback. The following spring, the showmen opened their combined circus in Madison Square Garden, starting a tradition that would endure into the middle of the next century. The show closed on September 14th, the earliest date in its history. Post Production Facility DAtalie lifted a forty-gallon barrel as well as a man carrying two hundred pound weights, with his teeth alone. Narration: Like many circus impresarios, P.T. At the age of sixteen, he responded to an ad from a circus owner looking for someone to do a handstand. But losing their mentor didnt slow the brothers down. I could never find my baby. Minneapolis Museum of Art/Bridgeman Images When she learned to ride, it was clear she had discovered her true talent. Narration: DOMINIQUE JANDO: But she had this immense charisma and in a place like the Ringling tent with these thousands of seats, everybody was totally hypnotized by what she did. Its your job. The spirit that brought people over from the Old World to the New, the spirit that rejected the established culture of Europe, was the same spirit that got people to leave a small town and join the circus. To restore order, Castello proposed a revolutionary idea: two rings of simultaneous entertainment. Though elated by the success of their first combined season, the Ringlings were struggling with sad news on the home front. I turn around. When workers finally agreed to work for reduced wages, North tried to update an entertainment that had remained essentially unchanged for half a century. If you bought an animal from Hagenbeck and it died soon after arrival, as they tended to do, he would replace it. Determined to fill seats, John Ringing brought back the cat acts, hiring Clyde Beatty, the most celebrated big cat trainer in America for the opening run in Madison Square Garden. Over the next few hours, Leitzel woke on-and-off briefly, but only to cry out in agony. In 1860, he was working as a bellboy at a hotel in Pontiac, Michigan, when Fred Bailey, an advertising man for the Robinson & Lake Circus came to stay. As long as there has been circus, there have been people trying almost seemingly insane acts. Janet M. Davis, Historian: The audacity of this move was spectacular. La Norma Fox: And it happened. Paul Ringling: Then it was announced, therell be no show. And certainly the spectacle of how the circus operated proved to be fascinating, endlessly fascinating for European audiences. Narration: As the 1874 circus season got underway, the hyperbole heated up. Flexibility, according to music used and 'acts' - at the Producer's discretion. Lowery, famed early twentieth century bandleader, spread African - American music with an all-black band in circus performances. Barnum Narration: Like many circus spectacles of the time, Jerusalem and the Crusades was a full-scale drama. On the one hand with muscles coiled like pythons, but on the other gentle, dainty, and sweetly feminine. Matthew Wittmann: Probably one of the biggest indicators of Ricketts success is this wonderful painting by Gilbert Stuart. Narration: Typically, Hagenbeck contracted with European agents, to capture his animals. Dominique Jando: Their marriage was very tempestuous, as any marriage with Lillian Leitzel would be with anybody, and they both had a gigantic ego. In Ohio he found an outfit that built him on short notice flat cars on which to load the wagons, cages and carriages. You couldnt run a traveling circus the way you had. Anxiety was rife in Bridgeport that fall. And it was loud, and it was colorful, and it was beautiful. Narration: In the century since a skilled English equestrian had brought the first one-ring show to the United States, the circus had become the most popular of American entertainments, appealing to presidents and farmers, teachers and coal miners, grandparents and school children. Beginnings: Castello, Coup, and Barnum P.T. Dominique Jando: Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey was still touring with more than one thousand people, traveling with the show. Mrs. Bailey put her brother in charge of the circus. He understood the fact that the circus was one and the same for so many years, and maybe there was other ways to approach that if you looked at the theater or if you looked at the movies. It was transgressional. One of the most striking was Australian wire walker Con Colleano. Coup was distraught. But in the end it was the performers feats in the big top that made the biggest impact. Janet M. Davis: Emmett Kelly tramps around the arena, and acts in ways that are very familiar to circus audiences. You know, today, we talk about big oil and big pharma. They remind everybody of their mortality with a laugh. Circus is a peek into what we could be, how great we could be, how beautiful our world could be. Historical Society of Pennsylvania Michael Lancaster: Sam approaches him in the menagerie, then a fight ensues. Cori Brosnahan The Documentary Investment Group: He had this little buggy that hed go around, and hed put up the posters in the towns ahead of the route of the Robinson & Lake Circus to announce that it was coming. Church leaders claimed that hard work was virtuous and entertainment of all kinds sinful. Richard Reynolds: You're spending your money to see people in tights, shorts, and tight costumes, was considered immoral. National Gallery of Art, Washington Its life on the Mount of Transfiguration. The Circus. And so, they approached him and they wrote him and said, Would you be interested in doing, you know, getting together with us?. The dramatic storyof Lillian Leitzel continues. The nations most distinguished choreographer, George Balanchine, designed the elephants dance moves. An even larger crowd cheered them from windows and sidewalks all the way from Washington Square to Carnegie Hall. Every last one of us, svelte and lithe and sheathed in silk, is swinging in space There is not a flabby muscle, not an awkward limb, not a sagging knee in the whole tent. In some cases, that has undoubtedly been done through just brute violence. Jason Longo But still, as the show took to the road, the tragedy was on everyones mind. Heather Merrill When the circus opened two days later, there was a scramble for tickets. This young lady leaves a trail of chaos but always manages to land on her feet. Narration: The completion of the first transcontinental railroad had capped a frenetic era of railroad construction. New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections, Albany, New York Fred Dahlinger Jr.: Even while the end of the big top show is taking place, working men are already starting to take down the cook tents, the sideshow, the menagerie, because by the time the big top show ends, the working men are waiting there to start tearing down the seats, take down the big top and load it up. Nigel Rothfels: When your whole method is to try to acquire the young animals, its going to be a pretty brutal process. In 1882, he persuaded his brothers to produce a traveling musical show. Joshua Abraham Kopin, Archival Materials Courtesy of Narration: The same traditions played out over decades. Although nothing new has been added in the death-defying way, wrote one critic, the Greatest show on Earth is greater than ever this year. Its a real indication of how he was valued by the elite, as it were, in the early United States. Physically and emotionally exhausted, he took a leave of absence. Roderick Garr John Ringling North felt like this circus was not the circus that his family was meant to present. But its a feat. Narration: Bailey toured the United Kingdom for two seasons, before taking his circus to the European continent. Walnutts Antiques No one had ever shipped a vehicle of that size before, without taking it apart first. History Courtesy of The United States Army Band, International Vaudeville The following day, Lillian Leitzel succumbed to her injuries. It was an adult form of entertainment. And you see the lions and they are mentioned in the bible. Narration: In 1871, Barnum and Coups show had been confined to the Northeast. It took nine hours to extinguish the flames. Theres this unbelievable drive for new attractions, new forms of advertising, new forms of entertainment that can be incorporated into the circus. Sakina Hughes, Historian: P.G. Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Director of Digital Content Fred Pfening Iii: Bailey would set himself up a little table near the front entrance of the circus and he was constantly receiving telegrams from his advance people, telling him what they were doing and him sending an advice out. The pay was meager, the work never-ending. This play is written with 22-23 parts to include a cast of circus performers and circus animals (e.g., the ringmaster, big cat trainer, musclewoman, cowgirl, tightrope walker, clowns, dog Rover, cat Sassy, a large bear, prancing horse, cheetah Speckles, lion Harry, and tiger Stripes) and a family (a mother, father, and 3 children) who enjoy the day under the Big Top. Plain Dealer Archive/Barcroft Media Circus Polka Narration: He does something remarkable. Theres a certain kind of exhaustion that overtakes the industry. Though he could have hired African Americans for even less, he never did. Industrialization, immigration, all the problems that characterize American society and then, also make American society move forward. Narration: In the fall of 1926, sixty-two-year-old Charles Ringling suffered a stroke at his home in Sarasota. When she finished her act, he would yell to his drummers, Drummers, take cover! because Leitzel would go after them. The Circus is an American television documentary series initially following the 2016 presidential race, the Trump administration, the 2020 United States presidential election, and now the Biden administration.It is produced by Left/Right Productions, a Red Arrow Studios company, for Showtime.. Start out with it louder and subdue to background music as time progresses. Theres nothing in the world like it. Bridgeman Images When is payday? Ammed Tuniziani: Youre flying. Box . Stark had started out as a nurse. Fred Pfening Iii: He was the first circus to have two tents. It's that yearning of being able to defy gravity, to fly through the air, to be that princess on a back of the horse that everyone is looking at. Coup realized that, We could really make a lot more money if we could skip the small towns and just play the big ones. By train, you could go up to, you know, a hundred and twenty-five, a hundred and fifty miles a night. Janet M. Davis: the way that he performed, not by his own choosing, was in a boxing elephant routine. Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia Collection North finally showed up in Alliance, Ohio to take stock. I have lived so long on excitement, pepper and mustard, he admitted to a friend, that plain bread dont agree with me.. The ringmaster came and said, Sorry, no, no, no, youre wrong. Paul Green Leitzel had an engagement in Copenhagen. Like Barnum, Forepaugh had grown up poor, starting out as a butchers apprentice at the age of sixteen. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Elisha Whittelsey Collection From then on thats how he always finished his act. Paul Ringling: Lillian Leitzel was a tremendous actor. And if you see the posters, you see an unbelievably large elephant. She was the greatest superstar the circus had ever seen. Approximately 15 minutes long. Ringling was incensed. It was about possibility. James Bailey faces his stiffest competition yet and tries to hold on to his edge. Narration: Noting how a collection of animals elevated their businesses in the eyes of local authorities, most circuses added menageries. James W. Cook: Theres no question that theres a large dimension of exploitation. It would stitch into one nation a patchwork of disconnected communities, and dazzle not just Americans but the entire world. Then for the first time since launching their circus decades before, the brothers sent the Ringling circus to winter, not in Baraboo their hometown, but in Bridgeport, Connecticut with the Barnum show. Photograph: Science History Images/Alamy. The docks of Manhattan were thick with fog when P. T. Barnums first shipment of animals arrived on January 16, 1873, less than a month after the fire. He fashions himself a go-ahead Yankee who is relentlessly entrepreneurial, full of energy and self-made individualism. She did, of course, somersault from horse to horse. Barnum took home two hundred thousand dollars himself. De Agostini Picture Library/G. And we just kept counting them as they came out. Many of those people that run away, they run away toto look for their dreams, to make their dreams come true. Nathan Halpern, Cinematography Roger Smith: Television was running old movies, bringing them back. The Circus focuses on the historic second impeachment trial of Donald Trump as the Senate faces a decisive moment and questions the former President's culpability in the January 6th Capitol siege. Janet M. Davis: We often like to think about running away with the circus as a kind of stereotype or a clich. Christopher D. Anderson, C.A.S. PLEASE go support them they worked so hard on this it's legit amazing!! Edward Hoagland: The clowns act out the resentment that we all feel towards people who are more successful than we are. Narration: Just days before he died, Barnum wrote his younger partner with some parting advice. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Narration: It was dumb luck, however, that gave the greatest promotional coup of the season to Barnums main rival. Narration: Entertainment choices only proliferated. The ship didnt see land for more than fifty days. You woke up early, and you worked through the day. At almost every stop along the route from Boston to San Francisco, local dignitaries and jubilant crowds turned out to greet the first passengers to take a train trip across the country. He countered with his own enormous pachyderm, Bolivar, claiming he was the most gigantic beast on earth. Everything cost much more than it had been. And what circus performer do, is just to play this image or this performance of danger. It would've been the show to see. Narration: Like other 19th century entrepreneurs, circus impresarios made enormous profits in part because their workers were paid poorly and their businesses were unregulated. Matthew Wittmann, Assistant Editors A queer person is running down the stairs from the spoken-word performance piece I have just watched in a Unitarian church in Portland, Oregon. In 1800, a fire gutted his amphitheater and he left America for good. Jackie Leclaire: My father turned to me and he said, Jackie, Im sorry, but Im afraid youre going to have a very short life in circus business. He didnt think that theyd ever pull out of this. So, naturally, we had a lot of people on the lot. A lot of people fall. He was extremely good at that. It shut towns down. Dominique Jando, Circus Historian: You saw extraordinary animals that you sometimes had never seen. It was the largest circus anyone had ever seen. That winter, Barnum housed his circus on 14, There was a double horned black rhinoceros from Abyssinia, four large African lions, six Bengal tigers, a pair of leopards, and, according to, Though audiences found the big top performances thrilling, it was. American Antiquarian Society I shall see that they are presented with fancy articles and small allowances monthly.. That was the differentiating factor between a big and a little circus. Narration: Leitzel and Codona tied the knot in Chicago between a matinee and the evening show. That first season, they paid everybody well and they came back home and they emptied out their sack of money and they had a lot of it and they were really amazed. A trip to see Chaplin was cheapabout a quarter. Narration: Without their eldest brothers firm hand at the helm, the Ringlings struggled. Some seventy thousand people visited that first winter alone. I mean there was no suspense. They hire attorneys, they have to make contracts in the towns in which theyre performing, scattered across the country, and they have an advance team that, over time, travels on four separate trains. Nothing so discourages a performer, he would say, as an utter lack of appreciation.. Richard Reynolds: Youve got to remember there were no zoos to speak of then. Janet M. Davis: John Ringling had never been all that fond of cage acts involving big cats. What the Ringlings saw was its potential. Janet M. Davis: Sandwina is tall. But by the time it was all over, the fire had destroyed forty-three cars of the circus train. She was, Bailey claimed, the first elephant born in the West since the Roman Empire. I feel like an outcast from society, a bearded lady said. Wheres Gilbert? Somebody had him. These are people who make choices and think strategically about what forms of upward mobility are available to them in a world, without support for those with disability. Forepaughs biggest coup was his creation of the first truly giant opening pageant called a spectacle or spec for short. When the news reached Winter Quarters, remembered one of his nephews, clowns and cooks, hostlers and equestrians, wept.. Find various objects and numbers and pick out the differences between two scenes. Michael Lancaster, Great-Grandson, Charles Ringling: Whats really important about the Ringling story is that it isnt just a circus story. Louis Masur Working men became hard to find, as millions of Americans were drafted. The American Federation of Actors, representing both performers and labor, had forced circus management to agree to a wage increase. Jackie Leclaire: July 6th, 1944 we came to Hartford. And an elephant can take the penny from your hand. Barnhouse Co. (Sesac) By the mid-1920s, a small group of animal welfare activists began calling for a boycott. Narration: Leitzel came from a family of circus acrobats in Germany. A slew of news reporters documented the last ever Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey show under canvas. If you were injured on the job, so be it. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The death of financial wizard Otto, a decade earlier, left just Charles and John. This is when Ricketts would go around the ring holding a child with his hands on top of his head. If you can do something, if you are good at something, that is what you do. Richard Reynolds: Hands down, Lillian Leitzel. Circus Baby and Glamrock Freddy Show you will find new and exciting content featuring your favorite character from Five Nights at Freddy's and Security Breach! Narration: The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know. Paul Ringling, Grandson, Alf T. Ringling: They were quite young when they started. The Alfred Court cat acts had just worked. Mccaddon Collection, Princeton University Library Okay, whats going to happen now? Filmmakers Collaborative, Inc. Elissa Meyers, C.S.A. State of the Art | Art history Why the circus fascinated modern artists (Image credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) By Alastair Sooke 7th March 2017 Painters from Seurat to Matisse. Matthew Lawler Janet M. Davis: A 19th century writer called the circus, our season of imaginative play. What the circus offered is this ability, in a way, to dissolve oneself, to have an out-of-body experience. There was all kind of big wagons with machine shops, and it was humongous. Bailey in particular was a striver. Minneapolis Institute of Arts/Bridgeman Images Ben Greenberg, Director of Audience Engagement At around 4am on Christmas Eve, a fire broke out in the building, destroying the performers costumes, instruments, and almost the entire menagerie. Narration: After a lackluster 1930 season, Alfredo Codona and Lillian Leitzel headed to Europe to perform for the winter. Devastated, Barnum retired from the museum business. Narration: Forepaugh didnt take the Jumbo-craze lying down. Associated Press He was beautiful. In the process, a camel slipped and broke its back. The early travelling tented shows were modest outfits. Framepool But, you know, John Ringling North did it. As you see the top come up, that is a sight. The circus crashed in on everyday life, loud and brash, then vanished like an illusion, leaving some child dreaming of a different life. Janet M. Davis:Imagine a big top that seats over ten thousand people with hurtling automobiles inside of it. But it wouldnt stay that way for long. In diapers theyre standing on their daddys palm balancing. They came from Hungary and Italy, Germany and Russia, Norway and China. Theyre sort of the perfect embodiment of the circus in the late 19th century. As a rule, one journalist observed, Leitzel fired the maid before and after each performance.. Framepool Gretchen Stone Cook Charitable Foundation Narration: Through hard work and ingenuity, the Ringlings had grown from an inconsequential twelve-wagon show into one of the most prominent circuses in the country. A drama for teens about romance and family written by Tom Cavanaugh. James W. Cook: Barnum is really the central figure in making freakery a dominant theme in 19th century mass entertainment. With 6 songs, it's . Barnum came from humble beginnings. Well sort of. These were tight rules. They were part of it, but its really Barnums specialty. Michael Lancaster: Mable said it was love at first sight. More than a quarter of Americans now lived in cities. And I think taken as a group they were the best circus managers, the best circus men in American history. He invents the matinee. Though Heth had little choice in the matter, she played the part and the ruse worked. It garnered interest even from the Prussian military that was of course involved in moving large groups of men from one place to another in different contexts. Narration: Barnum exploited the innovation in his advertising. Fred Pfening Iii, Author: Coup and Castello had a show that they took around the Great Lakes and made a lot of money in 1870. Watertown Historical Society Bailey used the telegram against Barnum, publishing it widely with the caption: What Barnum Thinks of our Baby elephant.. National Library of Australia It can do no harm to boys, the poet Walt Whitman wrote after visiting the circus, to see a set of limbs display all their agility A circus performer is the other half of a college-professor. People to see the animals, they went to see the circus because thats where they were, and advertising for circuses in those days, the posters and so forth, they featured exotic animals as much as they did the performers. Even that wasnt enough to make ends meet. Dominique Jando, Circus Historian: The Circus was the big unifier. I thought, I'm better than anybody else. In St. Louis, Forepaugh hung twenty-two thousand posters; Barnum and Bailey put up twenty-three thousand. They were five brothers that got along. Employees of both shows were unsure about their futures. When the time came time to sign the traditional four-week lease at Madison Square Garden, Ringling discovered the Garden insisted on reserving Friday nights for prize fighting. Narration: In Berlin, he signed four female aerialists. Hill and Jos. The world doesnt stop for your pain. Richard Flint So even in death, Jumbo was a great attraction. Michael Lancaster: They were disciplined, highly disciplined. It was his passion. In preparation for their first season together, P. T. Barnum and James Bailey constructed a permanent winter quarters on five acres of land in Barnums hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Burton D. And Gloria Rose They traveled every day, as far as a horse could pull a wagon, from one small town to the next. With just a handful of large cities and very few exhibition halls, showmen struggled to attract audiences. It was the largest audience for a sporting event ever. December 14, 2022. Performed By The Washington Winds, Edward S. Petersen, Conductor No swearing. Known as the Adonis of the Altitudes, Codonas celebrity rested on his skillful execution of a triple somersault. Alexander W. Morgan Australian National University It did not allow him to display his talents in working with big animals in a way that created dignity and power. And that foundation is what Ricketts sets up. Oh my God, what happened? Narration: The addition of a small animal menagerie by a New York showman in 1828 helped to squash some of the objections. Its a very different life from any kind of other life. And I will admit, it was rare for anybody to shower every day because it isnt practical. Budget Films Stock Footage And so, for a certain part of the audience, it was undoubtedly empowering. Youd hear people talking, What do you suppose that is? He called it opera chair seating. They were both big stars and they knew it. Both sides took jabs at each other in so-called rat sheets. Barnum claimed Forepaugh had bought his old dilapidated equipment. None was as spectacular. Jason Harris It must have felt like it he was thrown out into the alley, like a common criminal, from his own show. People would speculate. Turbulent seas almost sunk their ship on the way to New Zealand. And somebody took the sidewall, picked it up as high as he could, and we looked out and the whole tent was on fire. Quietly and swiftly every night it [picks] up in its magicians arms theatre, hotel, schoolroom, barracks, home, whisking them all miles away, and setting them down before sunrise in a new place.. He has remarkable energy. New York came to you. Barnum encouraged the press to believe he was distraught by Columbias birth and saw no path forward other than to merge his show with Baileys. Director Cris Medina was thrilled to share their success with their production: Circus Olympus was a great script . He quoted the prevailing price of hay in Tucson, and the cost of unroasted peanuts in Tallahassee. C.L. My grandfather and his brothers never had a partnership agreement, nothing in writing. When they didnt get it, they went on strike. Details Summary Set in the early 1940's, this funny play tells the eerie story of frustrating, neurotic, and irresponsible but resilient and strangely appealing Becky Armitage. Fred Dahlinger Jr., Circus Historian: It turned out he had a great knack for it, and eventually over the next thirty years, ended up being one of the finest showman in America. The circus had mushroomed into a moving town of more than eleven hundred people, 735 horses, and nearly one thousand other animals. F.I.L.M. Robert Thompson, Historian: John Ringling was the worlds greatest at planning circuses. Yes, I feel pretty darn good about it. Fiscal Sponsor I dont think the public really understood what was involved in acquiring these animals. In place of his fee, Forepaugh took part ownership of the circus. Whereas the English circus was a very modest affair, the American circus did not allow life to go on as we knew it. And some places in New England actually banned circuses; they couldnt exhibit at all. The man knew how to get people talking. Barnhouse Co. (Sesac) Travelling by rail had been so successful, the show grossed a million dollars, the first time a circus had ever made that much money. Bailey spent 1877 touring his show around Australia.
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