Humphrey Bogart, Managing Editor ... Old Movie Addresses Timely Media Issue with "Read All About It!" Force

Movie Review: Deadline U.S.A

This 1952 film in which Humphrey Bogart plays a crusading managing editor as his paper, The Day, is about to be sold, has finally made it to TCM, and it’s more than worthy of prime time attention. The issues about the critical important of journalism that it raises, that in fact propel the story of a great newspaper being sold against the will of the wife of its late publisher, resonate perhaps more poignantly today than they did back at a time when daily broadsheets were taken for granted.

Much of the film was shot in the press rooms of the New York Daily News, and the passionate scripting by Richard Brooks reminds us of how journalism can expose and challenge and rally the populace to demand correction action from its leaders and judicial systems.

“A free press is like a free life; it’s always in danger,” says Bogart, caught up in his last great act of exposing a crime syndicate guilty of election fraud, murder, police bribery and cover ups.

As I watched courtroom scenes in which a judge considers a petition by a rival paper to purchase The Day (and stamp out the competition, many fear), I was reminded of the sad tragic sale of the Los Angeles Times away from the Chandler family, under whose aegis when Otis Chandler assumed control in the sixties, the paper achieved world wide renown and racked up Pulitzer prizes one after another. I still miss that paper as it once was not so long ago on Sunday mornings; in fact, no longer can I find it on newsstands. The sale of the Times about ten years ago to the also-foundering Chicago Tribune happened because Chandler family heirs were apparently far more interested in money than in any of them assuming the publishing reigns that Otis had so brilliantly held. Since then I’ve watched the Times editorial depth and scope wither and shrink slowly away.

Deadline USA’s most affecting scene is when the humble mother of two kids who get embroiled in a crime syndicate and as a result are murdered, does not go to a corrupt police department to offer incriminating evidence but goes instead to The Day to see “the boss.” She waits for Bogart to show up, believing in a paper she has trusted for decades, so that she can share with the “boss” evidence that will bring the gangsters and killers finally to trial. We must not forget that, day after day, year after year, such justice happens because of courageous newspaper reporters taking risks to dig sometimes dangerously deep, to get the facts and tell the story.

As our nation’s newspapers vanish and as they are replaced by the bloggers, the question remains: will a new kind of “freedom of the press” in cyberspace sustain a culture of investigative reporting. I’m not so sure. It takes a lot of money to fund the people and the resources necessary to track down the facts and put all the pieces together. As they say, most of the blogs and websites (mine included) continuously quote from our leading newspapers still in operation.

To my eyes, even if Deadline USA, with a trio of plot lines, is a bit contrived and "melodramatic," as New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther charged when it first came out, yet the movie achieves a certain raw excitement because of the essential truths it champions. Even Crowther had to concede, "the honesty of the effort rates a newspaper man's applause.” Surfing a few movie blogs, it seems to be enjoying serious respect, perhaps because of the time in which we live as we witness journalism's possible demise. One blogger calls it an "underrated gem."

I agree.

A Tale of Two Circus Museums: Popcorn, Politics & Patronage ...

Museum: “A building, place, or institution devoted to the acquisition, conservation, study, exhibition, and educational interpretation of objects having scientific, historical, or artistic value.”

If any place in this country deserves to host circus history, surely that place is Baraboo, Wisconsin. This is where America’s most celebrated circus dynasty, the Ringling Brothers, was born and came of glorious age. On the grounds of what would later become the Circus World Museum, the five Ringlings worked and argued and innovated, plotted how to compete against and eventually buy out Barnum & Bailey, signed contracts and repainted wagons, built a huge rail repair barn of daunting industrial magnitude. That is where it all happened.

Today, the site houses dozens of gloriously restored circus wagons, posters and photographs and rare documents. And it boasts a library of unparalleled resources upon which countless concerns the world over have called for documentation and research assistance. Its deliciously arranged Irvin Feld Exhibition Hall is a captivating blaze of circus memorabilia. And there are a number of old barns that survive from the original winter quarters. The small sleepy town itself offers just the right idyllic setting for this long-gone slice of Americana.

But Circus World, as it now calls itself, is a rambling spread of exhibits not particularly well joined. Its commercial centerpiece is a generic one-ring circus program it puts on during the summer months, said to help draw about 700 people on average per day. Although the number is hardly impressive, compared to the seven or eight customers, if that, who might appear on a typical day during the long winter months, 700 suddenly looms large.

And then there is Sarasota. That’s where circus king John Ringling built an art museum and not a circus museum, in case you forgot. Today, were the imperial Mr. Ringling to walk the grounds, he would likely be horrified at how his original intent has been somewhat squished into the shadows of a grand new entrance design that first directs visitors past a spanking new circus exhibit building. When Henry Ringling North, driving me back to my motel about 25 years ago after my interview with his brother, John, made a pleasant detour onto the Ringling grounds, as we drove past the older, much smaller circus museum that came about in 1948, Mr. North slowed the car down a little, peered at it in silent dismay, and said, “that never should have been built.”

I did not air my feeling that I considered it a charming and self-effacing little circus museum tucked discretely away into a corner of the estate so as, it seemed, not to detract from the main attractions — John Ringling’s art museum and his palatial residence by the bay. It was the work generally credited to gifted Mel Miller, who managed to artistically evoke feelings and magic about the circus as no other museum has since done. Miller achieved this with taste and restraint by first leading us into a small circular room of photos and posters and letters, then into a larger hall graced with old circus wagons and side show banner lines, more photos of ring greats, and finally, into the most wonderful exhibit I have ever come upon anywhere —the wondrously atmospheric Backyard Scene. Under a simulated twilight sky, you walked among the actual wagons that moved the show years ago. In the background you heard the Merle Evans band playing the 1955 score. This was a museum. This was not a commercialized circus performance. It did not last very long. Somebody in later authority either willed it into oblivion or let it fall by the wayside -- much like what happened in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1956.

Today, were Henry Ringling North to return to the scene of a Sarasota sell-out, he might drive his car up a pole in shock -- or straight through the plate glass doors of the new entrance arcade and shout "STOP IT!" The expanding presence of circus exhibits on the grounds originally purchased by his uncle, John Ringling, to build the art museum and his architecturally outlandish home, Ca’d’Zan, would be analogous to Al Ringling’s famed opera house in Baraboo being turned into a multi-plex cinema and pool hall. Because Al Ringling loved opera, Al built an opera house, just as because John Ringling loved art, John Ringling built an art museum.

Nonetheless, with its money and glamorous location easily reachable by bus, train, plane or roller skate, Sarasota seems to have enjoyed a much luckier outcome (I do not have actual attendance records, nor should we assume they are strong). To the Ringling circus museum’s rescue in recent years came a model builder with millions named Howard Tibbals, whose lavish funding has guaranteed him prominent display space for his circus models and name, including a large display room honoring the man and his craft. Too much. Now, when you enter the reconfigured grounds, the first thing you come upon is the Tibbals Learning Center (the audacity of it all rivals that of the Felds). Housed on the top floor of a two-story building is Mr. Tibbals' triumphant panoramic model circus day exhibit, complete with a circus train unloading at dawn, although short on historical accuracy and muddy realism; on a 1920s Ringling lot are models of 1951 spec floats. Curiously, the whole thing is not quite as enchanting to my eyes and heart as the older model circus in the older original building from 1948, possibly slated for demolition when newer circus museum buildings are constructed. You see, those Tibbals tents, as spanking clean as a Christmas tree gift just opened, lack dirt, which seems an apt symbol for the money and ego that has transformed John Ringling’s art and nature estate into a plastic showplace for Barnum rather than for Rubens. Say what you will about curator Deborah Walk, she is one cool calculating mover and shaker. To her goes credit — or blame — for the circus diaspora spilling out on the land left by John Ringling to the state of Florida.

And yet, the eye-popping Tibbals model circus, a dazzling feat in its own right, is far more valid a museum piece than are the summer circus shows at the other museum up north. Up north is where a succession of circus fans, including Greg Parkinson, have fallen prey to their own dreams of proving themselves to be big top men. Of maybe getting hired by Kenneth Feld to operate a real Ringling show. And so the politics of fanship favors a ring performance over a professionally maintained and staffed circus library of world renown. Which is why, as I see it, in recent days the Circus World Museum Board of Directors, claiming cash problems (ironically in the wake of a huge boost in attendance this past summer), let four people go and kept only three on the payroll. Of the three left to labor the year around, one is “Performance Director” Dave SaLoutous. Not among the three left to labor the year around or to labor any time at all, spring summer winter or fall, is ace archivist Erin Foley. And that’s a shame and a pity. A three-month summer circus program is not a museum.

I think that the current executive director, Stephen Freese, needs to reexamine what his and the museum’s mission should be. For instance, does he want the summer show to be an historically accurate recreation of the first circus produced by the Ringling five in 1884? Or of what they offered the American public under a three ring big top during the heyday 1920s? Either of those realizations might count as true museum manifestations.

Other Baraboo drawbacks: There is apparently scare support among Baraboo residents for the museum. In fact, there is a strong snob element among town residents that is of the theatre not the circus, thank you. As for prospective out-of-town ticket buyers, without a car, try getting to Baraboo by plane or train, bus or buggy or snowmobile. You can’t. Roller blades, perhaps.

Erin Foley’s professional neutrality (not a circus fan or would-be performance director) made her ideal, I think, for the post. So professional that, after being laid off a few years ago, she was offered her job back a year or so later. And I’ve benefited greatly, as have many others, by her no nonsense research assistance. We must be eternally grateful to Erin for satisfying all parties concerned (including the formidable Felds) and getting all the papers doted and signed in order to finally, finally, finally, open up the magnificently rich Ringling-Barnum Archives. At last, after more than thirty years of inaction when a lucky handful of privileged insiders were allowed to view them, a vast new treasure trove of circus documentation can be mined by fans and historians.

And how was Erin let go the second time around? Board president Paul Karch escorted her out directly after the layoff. Karch is credited with getting all board directors to unanimously approve what is called a “new model for business operations” by the Baraboo News Republic.

Another senseless and highly counterproductive action in an ongoing saga. Here is who to write to if you believe it is more important to maintain the nationally respected Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center than retain somebody to book and run a summer circus show that runs only three months:

Circus World Museum Executive Director Stephen Freese: sfreese.cwm@baraboo.com
CWM Board Chairman Paul Karch: pkarch@gklaw.com
Peter Gottlieb: peter.gottlieb@wisconsinhistory.org

If anybody at the Circus World Museum deserves a third act, that person should be Erin Foley.

Next: The Rape of an Estate

Sunday Morning Many Seasons Ago with John and Henry Ringling North ...

"Through letters from many individuals, wide editorial comment from the nation's press and direct expressions from the country's Army, Navy and political leaders, it has been made clear that the public wants The Greatest Show on Earth to carry on during war time. Everyone can not shoulder a gun, nor is everyone expected to. Many millions must work at home, in factory, field and office to supply and maintain our armies and our fleets. These millions must have diversion when released from their labors, and so far it has been our duty and privilege to help in providing such diversion ...

Hard and trying days are ahead for all of us, but such prospects have never before chilled American spirit or stopped American initiative, and we feel that as long as these two qualities are alive the American Circus, too, will roll on -- on to provide entertainment for the public, employment for our own kind, and an example of cooperation, skill and imagination which is unique in the field of entertainment, and of which all of us who are part of it may well be proud.

And so our Policy: -- Advance planning and preparation to make next year's show Bigger and Better than Ever in Quality and Spirit, if not in size. And our hope that our Circus will continue just as our American Way of Life certainly will!"

-- John and Henry Ringling North
from the Circus Route Book of 1942

The Morning Midway: Can Cirque du Soleil "Save" Vegas ...

This from CNN's Don Simon: As a vast new hotel-condo-everything else complex called City Center is about to dump six thousand new rooms onto an already depressed market, the question is -- will it lure new visitors to Nevada or only drain the other hotels? And they are wondering if the new Elvis Presley Cirque-produced bash will pull in a rebirth of tourism dollars. This following a 22 month decline in business, and with City Center having been barely able to raise construction costs. One of its hard-pressed sponsors is Dubai World, currently unable to meet its debts.

Can Cirque du Soleil save Las Vegas? Believe it or not, that was a question framed by Simon to a local official.

The betting and entertainment capitol has suffered 22 straight months of declining gaming revenues. Unemployment is over 13%, and the foreclosures here lead the nation.

What a story. Will the fortunes of both Cirque and Sin City collide into a heap of unsustainable over expansion? They're calling it the biggest bet ever to be waged in the town.

"Hound Dog," they're counting on you!

Out of the Past:: Wintuk’s Growing Charm ... A Feld Press Flack Kindly Recalls the Fun ... Fabric Flyers Keep Falling ...

First posted December 16, 2009



Wintuk on the Rise? I took a look at some recent reviews of Cirque du Soleil’s third season at the Theatre at Madison Square Garden, where Wintuk, a show designed for holiday-happy moppets, seems to be growing in luster and charm. That kindly supporter of all things circus, The New York Times, offered a more affirmative review of this latest return visit. “Though the plot is little more than an excuse to move from act to act, the performances are invariably impressive,” wrote Ken Jaworowski. Okay, I am falling too; were I back there, I would love to give Wintuk a chance. Seems it has a simple yet doable “story” premise, good-sounding acts and the big snowfall payoff ... Talking Cirque, the pre-Broadway shakedown in the Windy City of its oddball stagecoction, Banana Shpeel, was met with a downbeat notice from the Chicago Tribune’s respected theatre-circus critic, Chris Jones, basically echoing a slew of angry consumer reviews. “cold, chaotic , clipped and cacophonous” is what Jones found. “There is a great deal to fix before this show opens in New York.” ... BTW: Did you know that the Montreal monster flopped out in the distant past with another try at going legit, a “musical” presented in arenas called Delirium?

Flacking the Feld Way: To ask a good circus press agent for a critical take on his boss, well, when his boss was the late Irvin Feld, is probably asking too much. Jack Ryan, who came on in 1968 when the Feld family took over for the Ringlings, has penned a lively looking-back piece, “Bards of the Big Top,” the last of two installments now on display in the new issue of Spectacle. I felt a strange sadness at the end of the story, because Jack (seen here in his youth with Clyde Beatty) no doubt has the goods on so many things he will likely never reveal. Not that he should. He only hints at dissatisfaction, says he quit after five years, feeling “burnt out.” He did return now and then over the years free lancing for the Felds. I suppose a good press man is by nature too upbeat to feel very good about producing a tell-all tome. In his amiably entertaining book, This Way to the Big Show, the great Dexter Fellows wrote a chapter “The Customer Is Always Wrong,” full of candor concerning all manner of circus rackets against customers.

Is That All There Is, My Friend? As for Mr. Irvin, I’d love to know, for example, whether it was Jack who dropped Feld's name dozens of times in some of the program magazine articles, or if he was under orders from a driven megalomaniac out to upstage even Barnum's legacy? It’s not a nice question to ask, but oh-so-intriguing a story yet to be uncovered, and, judging by the enormously successful press campaign that built up Irvin Feld as the ultimate great hands-on circus boss (based on historical fictions landing in the pages of Variety), Jack on this count alone must at least share high honors with Feld colleagues as a master spinmaster. This does not however diminish my my grave misgivings over the rearrangement of circus history (doing great harm to, among others, Art Concello), likely ordered by the Felds, forever insecure under their own skins ... On the upshine, we can thank Jack for the creation in 1969 of the stirring Ringling sign off, "May all your days be circus days!" which director Richard Barstow set to music and ringmaster Harold Ronk sang. Jack calls this contribution his "fifteen minutes of circus fame." Now, there's a crack flackmaster at the top of his game ...

Danger in the bed sheets: Another sad tale of fabric aerialists (or aerial dancers) falling to the ground. This from Moscow, where Yulia Volkova and her husband-partner Alexander during Nulikin Old Circus rehearsals (sans mechanics) took a terrible fall while "wrapping their limbs in long swaths of cloth." Both were hospitalized with serious injuries ... In recent years, why so many other such mishaps on the fabrics? My guess is that some of these artists are too much into their “choreography,” too much into ballet, and thus lose practical contact with the inherent danger of aerial work ...

End Ring Chills: Trainer Christian Walliser, 28, at Pagel’s Dinner Circus in Germany close to death after being mauled by three tigers ... Reality remains the circus’s reigning feature. I wish a fine and full recovery for all of these fearless, very real, performers ...

MM: 12.16.09

Out of the Past: Sunday L'Amyx Scrambler: Circus World Bans Winter, Axes Ace Archivist ... Gardens Grow More Weeds .... Barbette's Lip Lives On ...

First posted December 20, 2009

Post Update, Monday Morning: How sad to have to revise this post. I just learned from two comments herein that Erin Foley was let go. What an inexplicable loss. Politics? I found her to be a total pro. Let's not forget that under HER direction, the Ringling-Barnum Archives, for far too many years horded over exclusively by a good old boys club, were finally opened to ALL researchers. Does Museum Director Freese have any idea how significant that action alone was? I am waiting to see if she gets replaced by the good old boys and just how open those Ringling-Barnum Archives remain. This development merits further investigation.

Sad news to hear that Circus World Museum's exhibits won't be open during the winter, but hear this, in the chilly off months often they draw only 7 or eight people a day, if that. Good news: Under the evidently swift direction of new exec director Stephen Freese, revenue rose by 22 percent this year. Paid attendance was up 17 percent from the year before. Ringmaster Dave SaLoutos guessed that Circus World’s 50th anni bash helped accelerate turnstile action. “I think we just had a dynamite set of programs during the summer season and word of mouth kicked in, too.” ... I trust their stellar library remains on scholastic high level alert the year around ... And Christmas Cheers to your archival excavations, Erin Foley!

Oh, what is it about those Felds and their optimally obtuse title ticklers? I think that Kenneth Feld is a frustrated medical research scientist wishing to assign trenchant terms to strange new diseases. One of his next shows to be called Illuscination. And it stars "illusciantor" David DaVinci (I guess magic is selling these days). Now, to me it could be either a drug for self-induced acid fantasies or a gigantic gadget to crumple them into shreds ...Then there’s Funundrum, which I rather like riding. A pill for too much fun up the ears. Dr. Feld?

These Gardens Grow More Weeds. I'm talking about Canada's reigning impresarios of dreck, Richard Garden and son Niles, who just tore up another lot. 'Twas they or he alone who gave us the precarious Toby Tyler Circus seats. They who brought a true circus from hell to the Cow Palace over there in Navel Gazers Central some years back ... Something about their latest aborted venture, if nothing else, shows how shameless they are. A Sarasota something or other billed as “a larger than life New Year’s Eve dinner extravaganza", going for ticket prices up to $550 ($2,400 for couples seeking heaven on earth, stretch limb included) — is not to be. The Gardens suddenly canceled. Not the first time that they’ve pulled the plug on a venture. Per the Sarasota Herald Tribune, which aptly describes them a "father son promotion team," this dubious duo has "been sued more than forty times in Manatee and Sarasota counties, largely for non payment of bills.” Oh, let’s leave it there. For every Guy Laliberte, there are a dozen Gardens.

Not for the Kids of Yesterday: Here’s another Barbette howler, courtesy of former Ringling flackmaster Jack Ryan (thank you, Jack) Barbette was at work in the Ringling winterquarters on the aerial ballet when a Hanneford girl showed up hung over in a black leotard and proceeded to stumble through rehearsals. Cracked Barbette as only he could, “Miss Hanneford. We all know your ass is dead but MUST you drape it in black?” More, please, Jack ...

High Seasonal Thanks to Don Covington, who sends me so much stuff that he sniffs out on the cyber midways of life, so much that informs this tent and makes it that much more fun three dotting away, dot dot dot ...

End Ringers to Go: Goodbye once again, friend Henry Edgar. How I miss your comforting contributions. I, too, am human. And how sad that Henry’s passing last September, inexplicably, seems not to have been noted by the bigger big top blogs in which he actively took constructive part. That he loved in his last years. Is it really that callous a midway I hang out on? A provisional Humbug to such indifference! ... Speaking of which, to all those few mortals (a tiny fraction of my tiny crowd) who do leave comments here now and then, they are regularly appreciated. Sometimes I’m flattered, other times challenged if not shattered, which serves to keep me in a sort of accidental classroom, and open to new-fangled views, so my life is still ALIVE, thank you ... Despite the profane grumblings of some, I am open to all points of view. I have my idols. You have yours. On with the Show. And, in deepest appreciation once more, I raise my Sunday Morning Tranquility Mao Feng teacup to you, Sir Don of Covington! ...

12.20.2009

Looking Back: Kudos, Jeers & Tears: Still Defying “Dying” Predictions, Circuses Shine (Sort of) in ‘09 ... So Long, Farewell, Henry Edgar

.Pardon me for chirping eternal, but whatever you have to say about our battered big tops, virtually all of them finished out the season, shook the mud off their boots, maybe turned their penny profits into Zero percent CDs, and are back in the barn gearing up and fearing up to do the same all over again in 2010. Oh, are they brave.

From sketchy information I have at hand (isn’t it always), I hereby happily state — or provide free press agentry to all — that customer turnouts were probably somewhat better than the tour before. Count that a good omen.

Before listing some high and low lights of the season just wrapping up (not a comprehensive survey, I must warn you, but based on the circuses I saw and reviews or reports I have read about some of the others), let me blow the whistle loud and long for the owners who manage by hook, crook, rain dance, prayer, reverse mortgage, accidental showmanship or the Mexican Family Plan, to keep their tents in the air, enough of their seats occupied.

Kudos: John Ringling North II faces his senior year as circus owner of Kelly Miller, representing a return of the House of Ringling to active circus management. North's "Concello," manager Jim Royal, reports that business in ‘09 was the best so far for the two partners. Let’s hope that North II has better marks yet to make. From what I know, he is one heck of a nice approachable guy, and he’s a patient and attentive producer. His dad, Henry, would, no doubt, be proud as popcorn and lemonade.

Kudos: Kenneth Feld, who mined basic unadulterated gold from his Gold Unit (Boom-A-Ring) at Coney Island out under canvas. The best damn complete circus I’ve seen in years. Will it return? I'm not as hopeful as I was a few minutes ago.

Kudos: Guy Laliberte, founder, owner and “guide”of Cirque du Soleil, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, for his extraordinary (dare I say unprecedented) producing talents. He astonishes, challenges, inspires, and he is only 50-years-old! His new show OVO proves beyond a shadow of a peanut pitch that he fully understands and respects the power of top-drawer circus talent to sustain patronage. That, kids, is why the customers return in droves. Let the Cirque gang fuss and Frenchify over thematic mist, as long as they deliver the beef.

Kudos: John Pugh, for being John Pugh and for putting out a show that seems, from reports and reviews of his Cole Bros. Circus of Stars, to represent a swing back up the artistic ladder.

Kudos: Abigail Munn and David Hunt. Your promising new Circus Bella (right here in my own Oaktown backyard) rekindles the simpler charm of the old Pickle Family Circus. May you find a viable road to future success. We still await our own version of Big Apple Circus on the west coast.

Kudos: Philip William McKinley for his expert direction of Boom-A-Ring

Kudos: Rob Reich, arranger and conductor of the Circus Bella band, for proving what a thoroughly satisfying score five crack musicians can deliver.

Kudos: Circus Vargas for giving free tickets to the unemployed (up to four per family) in many of its Southern California dates.

Jeers! Kenneth Fled, for his unbelievable public indifference to the YouTube PETA video showing clear mistreatment of his elephants by circus hands. And for issuing a press release claiming the damning film footage was “misleadingly edited” but then, strangely, failing to reveal how.

Jeers! Big Apple Circus for refusing to state on its website that morning shows are cut in length, which left suckers like me who went to see Grandma “singing in the rain” out in the rain (outside the tent on Long Island). Inexcusable!

Jeers! Shrine Circus potentates, too those of you who continue your clumsy assault on circus entertainment with carnival tie-ins, obscenely long intermissions (up to an hour) pitching concessions and animal rides, and for your pitiful acquiesce to your own Shrine “clowns” in lieu of professional fun makers. Have you lost all respect for your once-glorious history?

Jeers! “Author” Ian Halperin for his tawdry hit-job on Cirque’s Guy Laliberte. A lot of people indulge in late night sexcapades. How many people can achieve what Laliberte has with Cirque du Soleil? From what the critics are writing, that’s what your book should have been about, and that’s probably why I won't bother to read it.

Tears: With sadness I report on the recent passing of Dothan, Alabama native Henry Edgar, who ran a community theatre company (once called Almost Broadway) and spent some years press agenting for, among others, the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus. I got to know Henry through our correspondence over this blog and the many comments he contributed. I have no idea what Henry looked like, and I never heard his voice. He loved touring the midway of circus blogs, and he was such an affirmative early supporter of mine. In his teen years, Edgar interviewed famous people who came through his town. Later, he covered entertainment for the Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia, interviewing a parade of greats including Ethel Merman and Dolly Parton. He also issued a glowing review of my first book, Behind the Big Top, many years before the community of blogging introduced us to each other.

We shared, I think, a similar sense about going and growing with the ever-changing flow of circus art. Here is what Henry e-mailed me not long after my blog was up and running:

“I can’t tell you how many times my friends and I bitched about the old-timers saying, ‘That’s nothing. You should have been around when the show had three rings of liberty horses and a 20 piece band and a 4-mile street parade, etc. Now, we’re the old-timers telling younger people, ‘That’s nothing, you should seen what it was like in the 50s and 60s!’ But we’ve worked to reach out old-timer status, and we deserve it!”

What an empty irretrievable loss I feel. I last heard from him in July, only two months before his passing on September 13, at age 65, when he shared with us his low regard for the Haperin book on Laliberte, a regard later shared by a Bloomberg reviewer.

After reading this afternoon an e-mail and obit I received from Daily Press editor Ernie Gates confirming Edgar’s death (which I suspected but had to search deep to locate), by coincidence my tape of the Ringling-Barnum 1951 score was playing. In motion was the "circus Serenade" spec. Down my face trickled tears for Henry as this I heard that season’s vocalist sing:

There will be no sorrow tomorrow
if you’re singing a happy song!

So long, Henry, up there on the Big Lot. Whenever the ‘51 Ringling spec is making its way around the hippodrome track of my mind and they’re singing that song, I’ll think of you, friend.

 12.8.2009 / reposted Jan 2014

A Magnificent Classroom on PBS about Philosophy and Justice

He is a thoroughly engaging professor possessing a rare gift of clarity, who quotes from the great philosophers (Kant and Aristotle, among others) in a challenging discourse on how to debate and decide the morality of contemporary issues. His manner is both instructive and generously respectful. He engages his students in congenial exchanges. And now, thanks to the TV camera, we are there too. How richly satisfying it is to vicariously attend a class at Harvard.

His name is Michael J. Sandel. A wonderful new PBS series televising his lectures is tilted "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?" And, oh, what a right departure it is from all of the ersatz self-help gurus whose slick presentations before tidy little audiences of doting admirers clutter up PBS pledge breaks, ad nauseum.

I can't recall feeling this genuinely stimulated since -- when, since perhaps when the great Krishnamurti lectured all alone on a bare television set back in the '60s, or when David Suskind conversed with active minds on his "Open End" TV program.

An A+ to you, Professor Sandel. How lucky I am to be auditing your class!

Reviewing Cirque du Soleil OVO: Circus and Music Soar; Storyline Lays an Egg

Out of the past: From December 3, 2009


Review of OVO from Cirque du Soleil

San Francisco, November 29
Tickets: $65.00-$250.00

Bravo, bugs of the big top!

The “wow” factor of authentic circus is abundantly on display at this latest offering from Cirque du Soleil. OVO is a brilliantly scored work of cold seductive power, perhaps a little too cold and faceless for some, that just misses the mark of a true masterpiece, blame a fatally directed second half.

The stage seems to be set, pre show, with the entrance of figures in protective gear and gadgets, wandering slowly, apprehensively into a tent of gigantic cobwebs and wild nocturnal sounds of nature. Are they agents on a mission to suppress or eradicate creepy crawly things? Oddly, the atmosphere begins to feel more like an outer space spook show. This could be fun. Certainly, the bizarre costumes prove to be. According to program notes, insects will “crawl, flutter, play, fight and look for work.” They will also perform circus tricks that will make you quicky forget that they are bugs from a “colorful ecosystem teaming with life.”

But those intriguing agents in protective gear never return. And there goes a promising comedic conflict. A huge egg surfaces, causing confusion and excitement among ants and crickets, scrabs and spiders. Will it eventually crack wide open? Out of it, what might appear? While you wait to find out, settle back, turn your brain off to narrative nonsense, and hold your cockroaches: A circus is coming! This one packs riveting artistry drawn from China, Russia, Europe, and the Ukraine, much of it, no doubt, shaped, badgered, honed and polished to incredible new heights by the demanding masters of matriculation up in Montreal, to whom I toss flu-free kisses.


From China, six young girls — Han Jing, Su Shan, Wang Shaohua, Zhu Ring, Pei Xing and Kong Yufel — engage in foot juggling on their backsides, building up their agile executions while also juggling each other, and you’ll fall breathlessly in awe. Also from the Middle Kingdom, a young man named Li Wei works a wide ranging slack wire routine on a rig that elevates his latitude. He ends up riding a unicycle on his head! This cool “spider”will satisfy fans of a certain age who long for old-fashioned daredevilry. Wei has it. Go, China!

Other outstanding first-half features (really, there’s not a single weak act on the bill) include buoyantly lithe hand balancer Vladimir Hrynchenko, who begins his work with a series of sculptured slides down a spiraling pole. Lee Brearley’s squishy “Creatura Manipulation” is infinitely delightful. Adagio aerialists Maxim Kozlov and Inna Mayorova posture and float through increasingly complex patterns, hitting a lovely persuasive payoff. A diablo spun with effortless ease by Tony Frebourg delivers ok — from what I could see of the number — slivers of action disappeared behind a tent pole. Then there’s a knockout modern Russian flying act combining trapeze swing-outs with triumphant pole vaulting landings. It brings into the tent the largest spread of rigging that CDS has ever raised. And the nine flyers who perform it bring the first half to an exhilarating finish.

Now, onto a somewhat problematic second half. An “Acrosports” opener of dance and gymnastics presented by five women stirs up an easy breezy pleasure. Solid plus. Then comes the crack slack wire work of Lei Way, and after this, the first of two mood-melting detours. It arises out of an ongoing feud between three clowns, Joseph Collard, Francois-Guillame Leblanc, and Michelle Matlock, the latter, one of two cast members from the U.S. I must state here (CAVEAT) that I was viewing this all from a far seat and partially obstructed view – I could swear the Cirque ticket seller at the box office sold it to me using a misleading diagram. Anyway, I may have missed some humor in the bickering exchanges between the two male jesters, rendered sometimes in inaudible conversations and excessive facial expressions. All of which, to me, was like trying to watch a puppet show from a mile away. Their visual slapstick registered the best on my fickle tickle bone; I loved a sword fighting bit, pantomimed to sword-clashing sound effects — clever, charming, funny. Got that.

Now, as for all the other bits, too much of them rendered in minuscule body language — is this what they call “Frenchness”? They tried their hand at working the audience, too. One of them pulls from the front row a succession of female patrons, testing the sex appeal of each on his love-starved mate and getting back in return only contorted looks of rejection (he’s really got a thing for Lady Bug). Okay stuff, I suppose. But over all, their contributions, the work of David shiner, did not strike me, sitting up in the Gods, as clowning deluxe, and a circus of this glorious stature deserves clowning deluxe. Otto Griebling, come back! Hobo Ewrecktus needed to stir up fussy French nest. Fumagalli! Are you available?


Last act is one of the most thrilling things I have ever seen in any big top anywhere (I actually felt my spine tingling), to do it justice would take hundreds of words. They call it Wall and Trampoline. Suffice it to say that the eleven participants drawn from various European capitals contribute to this showstopping finale.

But, wait ... That’s not the end. OVO has more, which proves to be incredibly anti-climactic, blame director-writer Deborah Colker, who also serves as her own choreographer. Colker, who in a program message thanks her employer “for this unique opportunity to bring the world of circus and dance together” (hardly unique, Ms. Colker), blows her moment in the Cirque sun by bringing on a superfluous Latin-flavored ensemble dance number. It is simply inconceivable how any circus would not advance directly (as did Ringling so smartly in Boom A Ring) into a company chivari or bows, especially given the victorious climax they have just achieved. Nor does anything happen to that egg I told you about. It remained uncracked. Just a prop tease, I guess.

Production values are absolutely stellar, as always. Deserving top honors in this category is composer Berna Ceppas, whose score deftly interweaves new age with African drums. A recording of it should sell well and might earn a Grammy nomination. Marie-Claude Marchand’s soft, pensive vocals are unusually fine. I’ve never purchased a CD of a Cirque score; this time I may.

Overall, OVO’s terrifically staged acts and the deeply moving music that intimately addresses each leaves a searing artistic imprint. Then why did I leave feeling both astonished and a little emotionally empty? Was it that botched up ending that felt so unconsummated? The uncracked egg? Those strange, somewhat obtuse clowns? Sometimes great works of art are like that, like a night of unexpected love full of a primal force that is gone the next morning. Make no mistake, however, for anybody thinking that Cirque has flattened out or lost its way, go see OVO. Cirque King Guy Laliberte has not lost his touch. To the contrary, he may be getting better at it. Whether intended or not, against all of the competing subsidiary elements from atmosphere to dance to character-driven allusions to plot, it’s the circus in OVA that steals every step of the show and proves how very much alive circus art still is.

Overall rating (out of 4 stars) 3-1/2

[photos above from OVO program]



12.3.09