The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Saying goodbye to the Greatest Show on Earth
The last weekend in April, a circus with roots in Connecticut (P.T. Barnum, born in Bethel, became famous as an expert at bamboozling people, then a circus tycoon and later a Bridgeport mayor), was in Hartford.
Music boomed, people cheered and laughed, tigers snarled. And then it ended. The trucks and the train rolled away. They will never come back to Hartford. The circus unit (the circus has two units) that played in Hartford then traveled to Providence where it closed on Sunday, and the other unit will end its run in Uniondale, N.Y., on May 21. Then only memories and odd mementos and retired elephants will remind the world of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the Greatest Show on Earth. The show is over.
The show, 145 or so years old this year (the earliest days are somewhat hazy), holds memories of both joy and tragedy. The circus fire in Hartford on July 6, 1944, that killed 163 people, nearly ended the circus, and was remembered for decades afterward. And when the Greatest Show returned to Hartford, it was not under the canvas big top, which for Ringling was gone forever.
Feld Entertainment, in announcing the closing of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, cited high costs and dwindling attendance, which more sharply dwindled after the retirement of the elephants to an elephant park in Florida. For years, animal rights groups had protested the use of elephants in the circus. It will be left to social scientists to find other explanations for the demise of the three-ring circus, invented by country—not city—boys.
I was there for this last show in Hartford, remembering so many past circuses, remembering the many stories I wrote about the circus and the performers. At a certain time in the past, I spent a lot of time with the Ringling show and I once traveled for two weeks with the circus train. And forever implanted in my memory is the night I was a Christmas tree in the “spec”—the opening procession which in the past, included elephants and just about every member of the cast.
In Hartford, I was with a friend, Lisa Felber, who has a special knowledge of circus lore. Some years ago, Lisa was living in Branford and working as a magazine writer when she decided to run away and join the circus. She wound up at the Big Apple Circus, working as assistant to the general manager. She wanted to learn how the people of the circus live—and discovered they live (more or less) like the rest of us; the train is their home, and there is school for children, and the circus tent for parties or weddings. In time, Lisa retired from the Big Apple and became a suburban mother—but there’s an expression , “When you have sawdust in your shoes, you always come back to the circus.” Lisa left the circus but her heart has never left. Today the Big Apple is dark— it went into bankruptcy. However Lisa, who has circus contacts, reports that the big Apple Circus is scheduled for a comeback.
So here we were—Lisa, having driven to Connecticut from Maryland, where she lives, just to see a couple of final hours of the Big One, the Greatest Show on Earth... and here I was, my head jangling with memories, and wanting this last Ringling show I will see to be a great show.
It was only sort of great. Of course, we knew that the spec without elephants would look a little thin, and it did. There were some sensational acts—the high-wire act with the acrobats scampering on a wire 40 feet from the ground; cyclists spinning into the air and somersaulting from slanted platforms. There was an unusual bouncing act—acrobats bouncing from a trampoline some 20 feet into the air, falling back, bouncing up, over and over. And there was a lovely act with showgirls, Sirens of the Sea, hanging from trapezes, and wearing silvery fishtails so that they looked like glamorous mermaids floating in an invisible pool. A nod, I thought, to a P. T. Barnum stunt –he created rather gruesome-looking creatures made of the mummified torso and head of a monkey attached to half of a fishtail. He called it a Feejee mermaid, and said it had been caught off the Fiji Islands.
There were cheerful obedient dogs (white poodles, but Lisa missed the typical mischievous dog who runs along the ring curb teasing his handler, and there were tigers, savagely beautiful. There were horses—two elegantly groomed white horses, and a handsome sleekly black horse. Good looking horses, but they didn’t do anything, they simply walked into the arena. No racing around a ring, no bowing. There were two-humped camels, ridden by showgirls; they did what camels do—they walked around in circles, looking bored and a little grumpy.
The Ringling show was famous for being a threering circus, and smaller mud shows have often imitated the three-ring format. This last show in Hartford wasn’t a genuine three-ring circus—acts sprawled over the arena floor, or sometimes only one act (like the trampoline act) took place at one end of the arena. In short, it was an enjoyable show, and there were shrieks and hollers of delight, but it wasn’t in the class of top greatest shows.
What makes something great? There was a “spec” quite a few years ago that I thought at the time was the most beautiful spec I had ever seen, and it today is still the most beautiful spec of my life. It is also the one where I became a circus performer.
The spec was titled “The Four Seasons,” and it ended with a line of Christmas trees created by performers wearing a kind of tent-like canopy over their shoulders and head; they could see through a small mesh peep hole. As the trees walked around the arena, bubbles fell, looking like snowflakes. Once the trees had circled the arena, they were plugged in, and all those trees lit up in many colors. It was the kind of beautiful moment that can bring tears.
On one wonderful night I was a Christmas tree. A glowing tree. In the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The Big One.
And now that circus, with such a history—a history of beauty and daring and excitement, of laughter and the giggles of children, and of terrible grief —w ill soon be gone. Ended. Sand in our shoes won’t take us back to the circus.
Editor’s note: Barbara Carlson is a freelance writer from Branford who ran away to the circus for one day.