Remembering Circus Report Founder Don Marcks: Anger in the In-Box ... The Invasion of Cirque du Soleil ... The Heartbeat of Billy Barton ...

Sixth in a series of seven

Prime contributors to the last great circus decade:

John Pugh, Kenneth Feld,  and Cliff Vargas in the excellent 80's

Into the mid-1980s,  Circus Report was riding as high as ever it would go. Came December and Don was facing a surprising parade of incoming ads for the upcoming Christmas issue.   “It has been growing, and right now we are looking at 56 pages, so it will easily grow a bit more.”

Rival upstarts  had come and gone.  November 2, 1985:  “So far I have outlasted all of the other attempts to put out a paper, including the magazine in England called ‘Performer.’ It closed after 4 issues.  One thing in my favor I think is that I can keep things cheap since it is only me and everything is done right here – if someone has to pay help and a printer, etc. then it certainly does get to be costly.”
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Big Top Bullies

                                                               

Growth, of course,  meant more ads, and with it, more pressure to please the advertisers. In deed, anything less than the expected feel-good coverage might drive a show owner over the cliff.  How dare he!   And they called him.  And they rattled him.   Some  even practically demanded that a review or item be retracted.  While he usually did not accede to their childish wants, their rattling kept him closer to playing it nice. Don't believe me?

July 7, 1986: “I had a call from the Gatti show saying they were really upset over the article that I had about their show in the recent issue - the item was titled ‘circus on the move’ I thought it was a nice article and said good things about the show.  Now they want me to run a bit that the show is much better than was described, etc.”

“So, like I said there is no way to please everyone and at times I’m too thin skinned for some of the backlash on things. Try to do a good job and what do they do, they kick you anyway.”

Another caller the same week, wrote Don,  “says I’m losing some credibility of the show folks because I print such glowing remarks about Toby Tyler by and then don’t print any bad things.”

Precariously Yours

Between 1973 and 1984, I turned out about a dozen pieces for Circus Report,  some feature stories, some reviews-- none of which, by the way, he ever made any moves on editing. The story I am proudest of was a profile of Dory Miller, drawn from a generous interview  he granted me. My favorite quote: “Nobody is disappointed in the AM.”

Nothing I ever wrote  – in fact nothing ever published in the Circus Report, to my knowledge ---drew such vitriol  as did my looking back piece on the passing of Irvin Feld,  The Uncertain Legacy. Virtually all the raging letters came from those employed by the Feld organization.  Star witness for the professionally offended took out a full page ad:
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Did it hurt? Of course, it did. Deeply. Was I really that  wretched a soul?  Perhaps the most hazardous thing about writing is trying to  tell the truth.

“What is interesting," wrote the ever-calm Don to me on December 3, “is that I have had several calls from folks saying they thought the article was right on an all.  However, they didn’t want me to to use their name or to put their comments into print.”

In fact, there were a few readers unafraid to go on the record, J. Scott Pyles calling it “the finest analysis of the man I’ve ever read.”

Have Typewriter - Will Fly

If there was a “star” contributor to the Circus Report, that would certainly be the flamboyant cloud swing aerialist  Billy Barton – dubbed "Mr. Sensation" by his long time friend Mae West. He might have become the Rex Reid of the big tops had he not been so deeply entangled in the circus community.  Billy penned a weekly column of light gossip delivered with a sense of urgency, and he  made you want to read him.  He did me.  He gave the paper a buzz, a touch of flair, a soul if you will, a  reason to read.  And sometimes he took bold stands, intelligently advanced.  Some samples:

Animal Rights Activists: “The real horror story is from England.  Animal acts are no longer permitted in metro London, where Austin Bros. circus was victimized when animal rights activists literally set fire to a horse tent and destroyed the horses, justifying their barbaric behavior with the remark that they were better off dead than with circuses!”

Cliff Vargas:  On his passing away in 1988, "He not only rekindled public interest in the nations big tops, but single-handedly resurrected a fading industry and instilled it with a glamour and excitement heretofore lacking.”

Cirque du Soleil: Addressing the show's top guns for snidely disparaging the American circus, especially the Ringling show: “It’s easy to be disdainful of the North American circus when you don’t have to fight or struggle for existence, when you have government support and private funds as a nice cushion ...  No one resents their presentation.  What we resent is their attitude, and their rude unwarranted remarks.  They are guests in our country, and Quebec, after all, is a short trip north across the border.  Let’s face it. We have the Big Apple Circus and Circus Flora, both of which are theme circuses and real circus, and animals! ... I say, Cirque du Soleil, go home. We don’t need you.”

Don covered the remarkable rise of Cirque du Soleil fairly and fully. 

The Last Great Decade:  On July 10, 1982 in Tucson, Arizona, 

Miguel Vazquez became the first flyer to turn a quad.

Several years prior, Barton and Marcks had had a falling out, over exactly what, I can not recall.  I think Don may have passed on one of Barton’s submissions.   A few months passed . September 26, 1983: “Had a letter from Billy Barton who said he would like to come back...Promised he wouldn’t get on the soap box and his column would be gossip just like when he started.”

I wished Barton and stayed on it more.  For, to be fair, many of his columns were fairly humdrum accounts of this and that person signing on to this or that show. Nonetheless, yet another parting of the ways occurred five years later. Billy may simply have been too busy  with his circus performing dates. 

February 22, 1988: “What to you think about Barton coming back?  Boy do wonders never cease.  He was was getting back to writing because of pressure from folks who missed his column — but that pressure must have come from others, it didn’t come from me ... One thing, it adds more names and info to the paper than I manage to get in otherwise.”

Billy came back.  And he always signed off, “see you down the road, luv’s.”  However long he lasted this time, I would not be around to know.

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Next:  Don's last letter to me, and mine to him.  

first posted 12.24.19