The failure of hoopla
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The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, an American institution that survived gorilla bites, carny strikes, fatal fires and decades of family intrigue, announced its impending death Saturday. It was, depending on the judge, between 135 and 146 years old.
The company, founded by seven sons of a Wisconsin harness maker, weathered nearly a century and a half of calamity and innovation only to fall prey, finally, to changing tastes, rising costs and evolving American norms.
The last performance of the show, long known, by trademark, as the greatest on Earth, will take place next May in Uniondale, N.Y.
Kenneth Feld, the current owner, told The Associated Press that waning attention spans and animalrights demonstrations were both factors in the closure. The company agreed earlier this year to retire its controversial elephant act following years of protest. “There isn’t any one thing,” Feld, chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment, said.
“This has been a very difficult decision for me and for the entire family.”
The Ringling Brothers story, from a 19th- century lark to global colossus and back down again is quintessentially American. The company’s arc traces the history of that country through the birth of the gilded age, into the Great Depression and through the Second World War before it began to wane as a cultural institution in the latter half of the 20th century.
The act, which grew into the l argest circus in the world, began small in Baraboo, Wis. There, according to company lore, the seven sons of German immigrant August Rungeling performed for the first time as the Ringling Brothers Classic and Comic Concert Company, in 1882.
Two years later, five of the brothers — A. J., Alfred, Charles, Otto and John — took to the road with a variety show that included clog dancing, juggling, acrobatics, comedy and music.
According to a 1956 New Yorker profile, the brothers built their menageries slowly, beginning with a “secondhand hyena” bought in 1885 and billed as a “Mammoth, Marauding, Man- eating Monstrosity” before expanding slowly to a “pony, a donkey and an eagle.”
By 1890, the brothers, under the leadership of John Ringling, had acquired several elephants, a staple of any big-time circus act since 1881, when P.T. Barnum first introduced Jumbo The Circus Elephant to the stage.
Robert Lewis Taylor, a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist who chronicled the circus for years, described John Ringling in 1960 as “egotistical, domineering and eccentric” but “completely dedicated to the circus.” By 1908 he had built enough capital to buy out his chief rival, Barnum & Bailey, and in 1919 he combined the two acts to form “The Greatest Show on Earth” — The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
The travelling show featured elephants, camels and zebras, among other animals. It had a freak show, including “the living skeleton,” as well as giants and dwarves — for the “callously curious to stare at,” according to a 1926 New York Times story — and death-defying stuntmen like Hugo Zacchini the human cannonball.
The Ringling family briefly lost the company during the Great Depression, when debts from John Ringling’s acquisition spree proved too great to service. But in 1938, John Ringling North, John Ringling’s nephew, took control again.
North was a famously colourful character. He attended Yale for several years, never graduated, then spent decades donating animal corpses to the school. According to a 1956 profile, North lived in a luxury train car and only worked at night. He ate dinner at 8: 30 a. m., drank whiskey for breakfast and spent years trying to glitz up the traditional circus show, usually by adding more and more showgirls.
Early in his tenure, North bought Gargantua, a famous gorilla, and added him to the show. When, in 1938, “Gargy” as he called him, reached through his cage, grabbed his arm and bit him, North exploited the wound for publicity.
Descendants of the original Ringling brothers spent most of the ’ 30s and ’40s fighting amongst each other for control of the company. They also suffered through labour strife in those years. John North was out of favour when, in 1944, a fire broke out at a performance in Cleveland. One hundred and sixty- eight people were killed and hundreds more in- jured. Five circus executives eventually went to jail. In the aftermath, John North once more took control.
In the 1950s, in a ceremony in the Roman Coliseum, North sold a controlling share of the company to the Feld family and other investors. The show continued for decades to come but eventually, interest began to wane. The show itself, once described by Taylor as a “triumph of hoopla,” lived through the birth of television and the Internet as well as myriad other distractions.
IT HAD A FREAK SHOW, INCLUDING ‘ THE LIVING SKELETON,’ AS WELL AS GIANTS AND DWARFS — FOR THE ‘CALLOUSLY CURIOUS TO STARE AT,’ AND DEATH-DEFYING STUNTMEN LIKE THE HUMAN CANNONBALL. — 1926 NEW YORK TIMES STORY