Circus Impossible: Summers Go Dark .... Parades Disband ... The Show Does Not Go On .... Death Stalks Vacant Midways .... Elsewhere, Art Concello Stirs Again ...

Once upon a glorious time in America, long long ago

And now ....

Hello Circus Vargas Friends! 

We hope this message finds you safe and above all healthy!

Please continue to show your support!

We wish everyone the best of health. Please stay safe. Stay home,  and we look forward to seeing you all happy & healthy under the big top in the very near future!

Welcome to –  for now -- the new normal.  To more of the above.  Welcome to more bad news, as if there was anything more to report. 

Circuses were already, pre-Corona, struggling, nearly gasping for each ticket sold,  each fragile new date gotten through.  Struggling to make “nut” before going nuts.  No doubt, what is a labor of love for people in various other arts who never make a dime (acting in community theater, for one), has already become a new old normal for circus folk.   Even the mighty Cirque du Soleil, a victim of its own insane grow-grow-grow mania, is now skirting the un-pretty edges of bankruptcy protection talk.

If there is to be an exception, it may have to be the Big Apple Circus, whose website contains but  this one meager message:

Big Apple Circus is not currently performing

due to COVID-19 safety and assembly precautions.

Have they already thrown in the towel?  On the surface of things, the show fostered a half-believable success at Lincoln Center  over the winter.  Come the new fall, when Corona may return, and with greater force, how can Big Apple talk enough New Yorkers into dawning masks and spatially crowding themselves, six feet apart, into a small and confining tent?

Salvation in the Great Outdoors?

 Circus Bella in an Oakland park

 

Over summer grass under a sky of natural blue, the circus will most likely return.  Easier to space patrons safely apart, easier to give them a more healthy-feeling atmosphere.  I have long argued for Big Apple letting go of Lincoln Center, and humbling itself back to the real city parks. Like Prospect.

The circus World Museum, ideally suited to present an outdoor show, yet is not going to be presenting any kind of a show at all, not this June.  Cancelled.  A bit in haste?   No, they are up against what all sporting events are up against: Having to severely limit the number of customers.  But sports teams can simultaneously broadcast on TV, and maybe break even until Corona is conquered. 

If it is true that a circus can actually not go broke by averaging a quarter of a house (Circus Vargas, maybe Carson & Barnes fit this notion), well then, they won't have to change a thing!  And by having to suppress attendance in publicity (Hurry! Hurry! Buy Now! Seats limited to a precious few!),  they might make themselves an in-demand attraction.

Am I dreaming? Will they even come back, ever?  No Baraboo parade.  No circus in June.  No Smirkus, either.  Virtually all the big and little tops are rolled up in canvas that may never be unrolled.

Goodbye and Thank You, Chuck Burnes

Death visits us too,  from Don Covington:  Gone now is long-time Circus Report columnist, one time Ringling clown, Chuck Burnes, who passed away on April 20 at the age of 89.  Chuck was a genuinely nice fellow who spent a lifetime luckily employed in many facets of show business –  co-manager of the Palace Theater, producer of stage shows for Disneyland, Great America, and Knotts’s Berry Farm, among others.  He appeared on television shows, toured around the world with Disney on Parade, and only ever once held a “normal job,” as lovingly recalled  by one of his two sons, Chip, and then for only a year and a half.

Chuck met his wife, Bambi under the big top, when she was a Ringling dancer and aerialist. Many years later, I got to meet them for dinner at a landmark eatery in Hollywood, where we chatted about their years with the Big Show.  They were there when the big tents folded for the last time.  And during work on my book,  Big Top Boss, they had me over to meet with a group of local circus fans and talk about its subject, John Ringling North.  Such good company.   

Reenter Art Concello's Greatest Show on Earth

Another sad passing is that of Mort Gamble, right, on January 29, co-author of a promising book in the works on Arthur Concello. He and co-author Maureen Brunsdale, herself a natural born  mover and shaker who heads up the impressively expanding Illinois State University circus archives and collections, were over half way through their manuscript at the time of Mort’s passing.  Maureen will continue on and see it through to publication. And in so doing, she  will be helping to restore and keep alive one of the most remarkable sagas in American circus management history. Concello, as you in-the-know know, was a virtual king behind the throne of John Ringling North, the two composing a Barnum & Bailey combo.  North, the unstinting showman of lavish and eclectic spectacle and world class acts; Art,  the nuts and bolts genius who made it all work -- and then some.

After the big top fell, in 1956, it was the flyer-turned-manager who single-handedly masterminded a long and tricky transition from big tops to hard tops.   A fact shamefully overlooked in too many so-called history books.  Even from Circus World Museum, in their latest newsletter, in which they pay tribute to Irvin Feld, a major donor, they write, “Feld brought the circus into indoor arenas.” No, he did not. 

Maureen has grown to marvel over the colorful Mr. Concello. “He was brilliant and wily, sagacious and tenacious, loyal and kind – in other words, complex! The cast of characters with whom he worked are an equally curious lot.” Boy, were they ever.

 From center ring to front office, where he became known as "Little Cesar"

Now, on her own, Maureen has typed her way up to and  through Art’s sudden resignation at the end of 1953, when he and North had a falling out over Art’s wanting to cut the show down in size.  He had already been experimenting with indoor dates.  The writing was on the wall.

“In 1950 alone, he was involved with bringing a carnival ride over to the US (the Rotor), buying then building a dog racing track in Havana, Cuba, creating the trailer park near the RBBB winter quarters, and working hard with Paramount men to bring the Greatest Show on Earth to life on the big screen.”

And what a perfect way to end this rather bleak posting. Thank you Art, for the part you played in that great great movie.  The more that things darken in the present. the more I thank God that at least we - and the world that comes after us – have and can find joy in the extraordinary visual evidence of how truly great the American circus was in its heyday.

In the meantime, ring-side seating, sir, for a party of  one ... or two? – and,  would that be with or without masks?