Making musicals fly can take a toll on history. Some of our most cherished hits (My Fair Lady, Carousel) resort to feel-good endings unfaithful to source material. The Sound of Music is nearly a total fairy tale.
Starting from the facts
On solid ground, the through line --- my central theme --- follows five young brothers who take on a corrupt circus world by refusing to condone or sanction all manner of grift, and win the hearts of Americans.
But there are other areas in their story, ill detailed in history, that left me free to fill in with some creative dramatizing. In particular:
When and how did Al and Louise Ringling actually meet?
(Please note: See the post following this one for much more on the subject)
I find this the most puzzling of all the things we do not not know. After all, how many couples do not remember how and where they met? Of course, Al and Louise would know, but may simply never have shared it with others -- or with writers. In his book Circus Kings, Henry Ringling North states that Al met Louise "during his travels." By the most persuasive accounts, she, Eliza Morris, was a widow (of 2 children, assumed to have died in their early years) and a dressmaker. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that Al met Louise while both were working on a circus. No other account in the several books I have verify this.* More likely is that they could have met each other when both, in their childhood years, lived in McGregor, Iowa. It seems clear that Louse became a versatile performer after she met Al. They were married in December, 1883. But, then again in Hoboken, NJ in 1890. I sometimes think of her as the stronger willed of the two.
What was the relationship between Al and Louse?
They were childless, as were both Otto and John Ringling. Might their so-called second marriage in Hoboken been taken to more firmly establish marriage, because, I am speculating, Louise became pregnant? Did Louise, in fact, want what Al did not want? Might they have ever taken in or befriended a young boy, running away with the circus, as a substitute figure? She had a (possibly young) chauffeur, and rumors alluded to an affair between the two. From one very reliable source a few years back, I was informed of Louise’s once telling a friend that Al, as he became more prosperous, became “boring.”
Why did Al offer Louise $100,000 to retire and move away?
The incidents above may play into this rumor. And, if true, it suggests to me that Al was more in love with her, and on a deeper level, than she with him. All of these elements influenced my adaptation.
What did the brothers think of P.T. Barnum?
It’s doubtful that Barnum knew or had much reason to care about the boys in their early mud-show years. He lived only a year after they went out on the rails, in 1890. But they surely would have known everything about the celebrated “prince of humbug.” In fact, on March 28, 1884, two months before the boys started up their own circus, Barnum unveiled his sacred white elephant hoax in New York city. And his famous elephant, Jumbo, died the following year. So, on their way up, the brothers would likely have joked about Barnum’s showmanship, and even started blasting away at his tawdry attractions — by implication, linking them to grift.
Anything goes with John Ringling
He was bigger than life, the Ringling who grabbed all the attention and bullied his brothers around until he got his way, a self-made circus king who looked back upon the people of Baraboo, where he had grown up, as “Baraboobians.”
This youngest Ringling brother once audaciously booked space for their big top to rise directly across the street from the Barnum & Bailey’s Bridgeport winter quarters! Or so it has been written. Quintessential John Ringling.
John in his big wooden shoes song, featured in the Rnglings' winter vaudeville shows, and likely in their first circus, from The Life Story of the Ringling Brothers
advance man on the run
By day, a bid for business
By night, a run for fun!
“Oh, Johnny I’m waiting
with arms you were made for!”
Ho, ho, what I’ll trade for
garters going down
Ringling Bros. World’s Greatest Shows
are coming to town!
“We think the script is really wonderful”
– Tyler Dubrowsky
Associate Artistic Director
Trinity Repertory Company
Published by BearManor Media
Buy on Amazon, google "Those Ringlings"
or at the publisher’s website:
https://bearmanor-digital.myshopify.com
* Sources drawn from: Harlow’s The Ringings: Wizards of the Circus; Circus Kings, by Henry Ringling North; Ringlingville, by Jerry Apps; Life Story of the Ringling Brothers, by Alf. T. Ringling, 1900; Plowden’s Those Amazing Ringings and their Circus
12.9.20
2 comments:
This video is just one of hundreds involving the rescue of captive animals,many from the circuses of South America and Europe, but read the comments below the video and then tell me you think the circus is ever coming back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRxrJv78J3Q
Okay. so there it is. On balance, rather tepid compared a one or two videos I have seen of blatant abuse. Here the issue is confinement, and I respect those who argue for more space, which I think had been happening here in the U.S.
As for the comments, no I did not read them, hardly at all. I know the parade of both just compassion and irrational smearing of all circus.
So do I think the circus will ever come back? In some parts of the world, of course, as is the case in the UK, were it never went away and is doing okay without big cage acts. Over here? I surely hope so.
I think it was Charles Ringling, maybe with John as well, who did not feel good about the cage acts, such that, some seasons through most of the 1930s, they brought on wild animal act for the NY and Boston dates only.
Post a Comment