SUNDAY BACKWARD: Sunday Morning Turnabout -- Tragedy to Trophies

Sunday morning not so serene. Had something different in mind. Shouldn't have surfed the blogs, full of mud, mayhem and sad sad tragecy ... Let's start out easy: A young kid named Logan Jacot enters the big top, gets bumped on the head and decides to bear the blood without a Doc. A young trouper to the core, Logan blogs of “death and destruction at Lewis & Clark.“ "Death" marks the passing of a baby goat, "destruction" the trauma to Logan's head. Still, this determined kid, all of about 21 or so, has found a home under canvas. Ironically, he calls it "the only consistent thing in my life. I’ve always been able to count on it to take care of me both physically and emotionally, I hope it’ll always be around to take care of me.”

Then there’s a slightly older chap, Ben Trumble, currently free lancing on the Kelly-Miller lot, chatting on his mud show blog about difficult lots and mixed turnouts, about an operation (now run by John Ringling North II) that is maybe too too nice for some ongoing issues to be resolved ... Heck, who needs the old Billboard or the new Circus Report when we have these on-the-lot troupers willing to tell all (okay, maybe not ALL -- but we're waiting for that, too)... It’s a different world toady ... A keen discovery is circus aficionado Crash Moreau (his blog, Circus Review, is linked to the right), who sees a lot of circuses, writes ‘em up and gives you neat facts about biz and logistics and vital trivia. So far this season Crash has crashed 16 shows – hold that stat for the end, right here coming up...

Surfing the insiders, Buckles pays tribute to the Besalou Baby Elephants as being “the finest elephant act ever trained in this country.” Gosh and “ WOOT WOOT,” as Logan might say, I saw ‘em on Polack in their heyday, and I LOVED baby Opal’s epic tricks ... Wade Burck, the Cage Man, has lots of photos of gorgeous tigers and wonders about some — who are they and who trained ‘em? ... Our King Clown of the Blogs, Pat Cashin, chirpfully quotes Steve Smith on his favorite subject: “Clowning really is snow on Christmas and all day suckers and Never-Never Land.” After the Xmas part, the sentence lost me ...

Now to the Sad Sad Story: Between recalling his leftist youth and talking up the need for humanist imagery in circus animal acts, Trumble (as do others) addresses the horrible murder this last week of Carson & Barnes road office manager, Mauricio Droguett, in a local mall by his estranged wife, Debi. “One family was permanently torn apart. A dozen other families are left to grieve and wonder why?” The circus can’t escape life, nor life the circus....My heart goes out ...

Okay, all this makes me sort of long for a copy of the White Tops. Maybe you, too, need a little tinsel and fresh pink sawdust? Back to the subject of an annual awards for circus performance art. Wade Burck wonders if my earlier proposed titles “the Johnnys” or “The Alberts” (both Ringlings) are a bit dated. Burck suggests "The Irvins" (nice sound) or “The Cliffs” (would the latter be for the most erratically run operation of the year?) And Baraboo’s Bob Dewell wonders aloud if they might not be simple called the RBBB Awards. Hummm, Doc, that sounds like a prescription.

Thus my latest proposal: THE CIRCUS RING AWARDS. What say ye, all three of you out there?

This I believe: If we can find ten or twenty Crash Moreaus who actually go out and see, let’s say, all of about the ten regularly touring shows (not to slight the fringe affairs, but who sees em all?), those people should automatically qualify to receive ballots and vote. It would be an honor system, remember honor before Steroids? We would trust these people, fans or ex-circus employees pledging no current financial or volunteer conflicts of interest whatsoever, to complete a simple form, sign and return. It’s a start, no?

Away from mud and misfortune, back to the front end: Circus Vargas is showing real class in tv ads it's running in the Bay Area. What a surprise! This should be one to watch. Meanwhile, Logan, I’d suggest a hard hat, all except for your ring time. The circus might take care of you -- as long as you are around to be taken care of...


[photos, from top: Logan Jacot, from his blog, Sawdust Nights; Opal, presented by Peggy MacDonald, from Buckles Blog; last photo from Circus Vargas website]

first posted 7.13.08. Yes, we were all alive then.

 

SUNDAY BACKWARD: Creepy Clowns Grip the Nation! ... Letizel and Codona Movie in Works at Warner ... Cirque’s Paramour Gets Scripting Overhaul, Biz Remains Stagnant ... Vinyl is Back ... Farewell, Jack Ryan and Pat Cashin ... and More on the Inside!

Do Creepy Clown lives matter?  That’s what I heard this morning on a radio talk show having fun with the issue.
 

This latest media storm is becoming fodder for late night  TV comedians.   It’s also no laughing matter for our struggling big tops, unless some really smart circus can spoof its own jesters into a new kind of merry mayhem.  Ringling, you’ve tried outer space. What say, a trip to the asylum for retired clowns on parole?   Bring on the Scariest Show on Earth!

Creepy clown sightings are spreading like a visiting virus    Another gift of social media, the demented darlings are rattling news wires, stalking schoolyards, scaring kids half to death.  But what a nice diversion from that political circus going on all around us.  Maybe Lady Hillary or Lord Donald will show up at the next debate in gory greasepaint, or is that what they are already wearing?  (shhh! Think Hillary's laugh, kids ...)

Pity the well-intended circus clown: If this creepy movement isn’t reason enough for all circuses to ban traditional jester makeup in favor of the harmless red nose, (okay, to be extra safe, a pink one)  I don’t know what is.  More and more adults are outing their own fear of funny faces.   No longer something to hide from.  Simon Cowell on America’s Got Talent, for one.   Just another nail in the coffin of our sadly beleaguered big tops.

P.T. Barnum once said that "clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung."  Well, these days, they may be hanging it — literally

Onto great promising news  Have we, at last, a high-drama quality film for adults about a genuinely tragic American circus story?  New flick about aerial thrillers Lillian Leitzel and Alfred Codona in the works at Warner Bros, and how I hope the Weinsteins have their hands in this one.  Heavy weights already signed on include producer Andrew Lazaar, who handled Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, and Aussie actress Margot Robbie, right (The Wolf of Wall Street, Suicide Squad), to play Leitzel.  I’m thinking this could be The One I’ve been waiting for through too many mediocre big top flicks  Think of the background alone --- Ringling in the ‘20s!.  The rivalry between Leitzel and her scheming nemesis, conniving Vera Bruce ... Of the tragic ends that would befall both icons.  

To be based upon Dean N. Jensen’s 2013 book Queen of the Air, and I can’t wait.  Yes, I might have said that before another film, Water for Elephants, came out, but I’d not yet read the wretchedly brutal book from which the latter was faithfully adapted. 

Can Queen of the Air achieve what all other circus flicks have failed to do: Mine cinematic gold from genuine big top history? Film Makers and documentarians  have long shunned compelling subject matter staring them in the face: I’m thinking the towering figure of reckless circus king John Ringling, who lived a colorful and ultimately tragic life, and I’ve thought of Leitzel and Codona, and of course of the catastrophic Hartford fire, not to mention its genesis in a fractious war among Ringling heirs for control of the circus.

What do we usually get from Hollywood?  Of late, Water. I mean, tell me, please, was there ever a circus as thoroughly sadistic as that one?   As improbably untrue to any semblance of tent show history, then, before or now?

Another Cirque du Fizzle?  The company’s ill-reviewed New York stage show, Paramour, closed down quietly for a few days in late Auguest to reivse script in reponse to public feedback, some fans wanting “more acrobatics earlier in the show during the exposition,” others hungering for more meat on the bones of an empty-headed plot.  Post revamping, the altered Paramour is enduring ticket sales still ranging from pretty good to ominously stagnant, hovering too often in the 65% range.  I still think they have a chance.

Will the eggheads on the lot ever learn?  When I came across a New York Times review of two new stage shows, headlined “Identify Crisis: Theatre Productions That Refuse to be Theater,” I thought of how well it applies to circuses refusing to be circuses.

END RINGERS: Sadly, the passing of  Pat Cashin, clown and blogger, and only 48-years-old.  When I started up this blog, he was an early supporter.  That support faded away over the years, down to zero. I never exactly knew why, but likely something I said ... Also departing us, on August 25, another early supporter of my blog and the person who coined "May all your days be circus days," Ringling PR man Jack Ryan, at 77 ... Yet another circus school is rising, this one over Philly, site of the first circus to play America .... Warning to freak show imitators:  If you try dining on blades, be sure to order them Dull.  An Indian man suffering acute stomach pains, discovered by doctors to be harboring 40 various blades and knives in his guts.  About the unnamed patient, you’re thinking. extreme side show trickster?  No, think 42-year-old policeman – and maybe, on the side, a petty thief with a built in fencing flow  ... Retro trendy vinyl record lovers not going away.  It’s no passing fade.  Some new CDs coming out on old wax, too.  Down the street, just opened a vinyl-only shop.  Exciting!  Many of my old LPs from the fifties are still cracking-free good, I’ll have you know ... Sinatra never sounded better ... Oh, you gotta love the kids who don’t dismiss everything that came before them ...

Chase a creepy clown into a panic.  Pray for a great circus flick from the great Warner Bros.  And buy a vinyl record on me!  

first published in 2016

He Only Wanted to Be in the Circus, But the Circus Only Wanted His Ideas

 (courtesy of Freedom Auction Company Archives)

No form of circus clowning I have come upon can match my staggering awe over this totally outrageous take down. Deviously damming? Wickedly funny? 

All those things and more.  

The genius behind this gem was certainly one of circusdome’s most creative contributors without ever achieving a prominent reputation.  Until now.  He had  to practically sneak into clown alley, and then only for a lackluster season or two in  a clown face closer to Stephen King than Felix Adler. I might have fled the tent. The worst possible way to introduce himself to the world. A tale had  it that John Ringling caught sight of his spooky face and ordered him out of the tent. But Pat Valdo, only a few saving  steps away, hired him back, not to clown, but to create their gags and build their props. 

Oh yes, the name of this most  "famous clown" you never heard of?

Jerry Bangs.

This account is  based upon my watching a  video of the  tribute to Bangs by  Brian Hollifield, as interviewed by Bruce Barry. at he Circus Historical Society’s recent convention in Baraboo.

Our sadly neglected figure was born in 1903 in Lisbon, NH.  He loved going to circuses at the Boson Garden.   His father,  a pharmacist who saw him in a higher calling, put Jerry, a promising pianist, through the Boston New England Conservatory of Music. Seven years of it and he did not gradate.  All  he still wanted to do was to be in the circus.  Evidently to do anything in it. A doctor  fiend of his father's, Neil Hoskins, happened to be a circus fan,and was thus able  to get Jerry installed under the biggest big top of them all. The year was 1930.

A design for Mama's in the Park?  No, Bangs sketched this (in black and white) many years before.  

Jerry composed songs, sketched cartoons, and concocted the most audacious clown gags. And his talents were  allowed to flourish under the aegis of Sam Gumpertz, who replaced Ringling in 1933 and saw an expanded role for Bangs to play.  (One for Gumpertz?). He   involved Jerry into other aspects of the performance,  such as composing  the opening spec music for the 1936 show, “Grand Circus Spectacle March."   Gumpertz also sought Jerry’s ideas for spec costumes and used a few of his designs. All for free.  Bangs knew what was happening but let it happen.  They paid him $30 a week ($602 in today's coin).

We must acknowledge, however, that since Bangs only clowned for less than two season, he really never became a clown, but stayed in the background as a comedy creator.  Paul Jung, if I am correct, served as producing clown for the Ringling show for many years.  A photo of him in the 1946 route book bears a caption that identifies him as  "clown inventor." 

Our unsung wunderkind did not drink, never married, and lived a largely solitary life, but loved every aspect of life around the tents and rings. Loved  relaxing in the backyard with a magazine in hand, eating at the cookhouse. Loved it all, and kept a  daily history of the show’s travails during the  Ringling Wrangling years of the 1930s and 1940s.  He turned them into a book, but could lot find a  publisher for.   He was active in some of the other shows for a number of years.  Google his name and discover.  Google Pat Cashin Dusty Dillion.

This photo in Life Magazine, of Bangs' The Long Headed Man, seen here above John Ringling North, has charmed me for years.  As fate would have it, all the other images in the photo except Jerry's work were credited in the caption. Given our subject's brilliant creativity,  I am surprised that North did not keep him  around for many more seasons.  He left the show at the end of the 1949 season.

Jerry Bangs was inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame this year. His props now reside there. What a draw!

There is such rich complexity to the Bangs legacy. Notwithstanding their fractured premise, give Hollifield and CHS high marks for this ground breaking illumination.

Bravo buffoonery!

Bonus Extra:  From what the late Pat Cashin had to say about Jerry's diabolical face on his blog:  

"This has got to be, hands down, the single most hauntingly disturbing image of a professional circus clown that I have ever seen! WOW!"

Here is a link to the You Tube:

 https://www.google.com/search?as_q=jerry+bangs+circus+hstorial+society&as_epq=&as_eq=&as_sitesearch=&as_filetype=&as_qdr=&lr=&cr=&tbs=&authuser=#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:d4a70fc1,vid:8gEktpthevQ,st:0