A Fairgrounds of Memories ...

Beyond the creamy bark of Eucalyptus under a cool April sun, I glance down upon a grassy open field where once upon a spring I helped set up the Clyde Beatty Circus. Upon it now are a trio of tots chasing after a ball while a father figure looks on. I like this setting most of all when I have it all to myself, for then my boyhood memories are pure, unmolested by the passage of time...

I am sitting with laptop at a picnic table where people never come except for when the Sonoma County Fair is here in late July. In my boyhood, the field at my feet was an open lot across the street, later annexed to the fair. Up here once stood an old shed filled with abandoned metal strips that I collected for model building.

Once upon another day when Carson & Barnes played the same space, late friend Hugo Marquardt and I hit the fairgrounds mutually intent on crashing a circus. Hugo made laughing reference to an old CFA slogan that went “We pay as we go.” Said Hugo, his hands mimicking applause, “We clap as we go!” And he laughed. Sure enough, we did what young boys once did ...

The fairgrounds is so much better when the fair is not here. Before an ugly elevated freeway appeared at the front side, there was a median of dirt and weeds, and on it one July evening stood a carnival wagon of quaint intrigue. What was it for, I wondered? It had just been tractored out from the railroad crossing at Sebastopol Avenue where Foley & Burke were running wagons across flats, down the runs and onto the streets. That wagon, waiting to be spotted, would the next morning be unfolded out and up into the Thimble Theatre Fun House — I fell in love with its spooky walkthrough upstairs, its grinding old shuffle boards below. Now sadly it rests in semi-neglect under a back shed at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo.

So many summers ago, when the first two races were the trotters all harnessed up, my favorite dirt derby, so much more dramatic at the start as sulky drivers whipped and gripped and sped into positions behind the extended bars off an accelerating white Cadillac, which whizzed suddenly away ... “And they’re off!”

And big burly lovable John Strong entertained as a free attraction in his little tent, managing to make a shoestring show seem like the most important event of the day ... "Hi, ya folks! Gosh, look who I see out there in my audience! David, stand up!"

In outline, the fairgrounds has changed little over the years. A pair of old hog barns recharge my memories with unmistakable smells, with thick splintery boards bearing white chalky paint and rusty hinges. Strange how the slightest whiff can revive a vivid feeling you can never put into words. Inside the Grace Pavilion, where gadget vendors still hawk in late July, the circus many years ago stole my heart away when Polack Bros. came to town. Francis Brunn and La Norma and the great Wallendas were there. The Shriners were there in their tall red hats, free passes in hand, looking for kids like me to make happy. Through a door suddenly opened to me, a world of spangled wonder and magic came alive...

Trot, please, trot your horse...

Across the way now in the Lyttle Cow Palace, an Arabian Horse meet is on, and they are as lost in time as I feel. And up beyond the cow barns, there is the old farm machinery building, called that initially until it soon became the flower show building. During the winters when I lived only a few blocks away on Brown Street, I loved bicycling out, hoping the doors to the building would be open, which they never were, and peeking through the cracks to study the colors and shapes of Foley & Burk wagons, all tucked away in off-season hibernation. The one I most wanted to see was the Thimble Theatre, my pet.

The grassy field is now vacant ..

Walk around the track at the normal trot...

Once upon a boyhood, I’d gaze out upon the race track surrounded with Monterrey Cypress in the still of a muted blue January day and try imaging what Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey would look like were it to pitch its beautiful blue big top right out there in the middle. What a spectacle!

We will take a lunch break at the end of this class...

So many quiet memories on a perfect day at the fairgrounds. If only I had the place completely to myself ... If only time could be turned ...

Sunday Morning, Looking Back: Do Circuses Face Another 1938?

This first appeared on April 12, 2008


Seventy years after arguably the worst season in American circus history, today’s smaller shows are already foundering, and it’s only April. Cry, clown, cry?

Seventy years later, at least two U.S. circuses that I know of (Cole and Vargas) do not offer the public program magazines or handbills. At least two (Cole and Kelly-Miller) have web sites that feature act photos from previous editions with no reference to current offerings. Virtually all U.S. tenters are ominously short handed, desperately awaiting temporary Mexican workers held back because of the Visa issue. All face the ugly realities of skyrocketing gas prices. What else? Despite a recessionary economy dumping more Americans into unemployment lines, our circuses can’t seem to find U.S. citizens to move their tents. Why?

By the brutal end of ‘38, eight shows were out of business. Only two of those eight returned the next year. To bring the point home, here are eight of the shows now on the road:

Ringling-Barnum
Big Apple
UniverSoul
Kelly-Miller
Carson & Barnes
Circus Vargas
Walker Bros.
Culpepper

Okay, take your pick. Remove six of those eight from the list, and you have 1938 all over again. Of course, this is not going to happen — not yet. The tenting world today is a far different animal, drastically reduced in size and equipment from what it offered a public addicted to three rings during the 1930s. Only Ringling still tours by rail.

But there are two major issues that do not bode well for 2008: bank-draining visits to the gas pump and a dearth of worker bees to pitch the tents.

What can the owners do to stave off the unthinkable? The one day standers can reduce their gas bills by playing fewer towns for longer stays. This favors those shows (like Cole and Vargas) with such a policy already in place, and it minimizes stress on overworked personnel — performers expected to help lug props and poles and ring curbs into place. In order to sustain a multiple day run, however, a show needs a certain showmanship that will generate word of mouth. I still believe that discount ducats for the moppets can only get you so far.

The one day pattern of survival rides on the free kid’s ticket angle — give two shows (marginal contents) in a city and get out fast. Which is not to say that some of the one-day tricks are guilty of inferior offerings. My guess does explain to me why Circus Chimera failed; the Judkins bare bones approach sans animals might have worked in a one day format. I rarely saw the Chimera canvas even half full. But then again, neither was the Vargas tent even half full when I took in a show last summer.

On the other hand, the smaller shows have an advantagee as the economy tanks: Highly affordable ticket prices and a public ready, I suspect, to gratefully embrace adequate entertainment for their children. I printed out a C&B ticket and discovered a smart (new?) approach I have never encountered before: Any person can enter with the coupon for free as long as he or she is accompanied by a paying patron. How flexible. I could take an adult friend.

Now let’s cut to the ugly chase and discuss wages. Up until 1933, circuses could pay whatever they could get away with paying. Some of them put up a good cookhouse, and the workingman had a place to sleep. When federal minimum wage laws were enacted in 1933, setting the scale at 25 cents an hour, combined with the rise of labor unions those laws complicated the picture. The U.S. Supreme Court repealed the act in 1935 as unconstitutional, but it was reenacted in October, 1938 —25 cents per hour, slated to rise to 30 cents the following year and remain that way for six years. The Ringling show in 1939 signed a pact with the AFA stipulating a $45monthly minimum for its working men. By my calculator, that allows for 45 hours of labor per week at the 25 cent minimum. Likely the men turned in more time. But given free food and shelter, perhaps the show ethically met its agreement. Now to the murky present tense, clouded by all the unspoken compromises that are made when Mexicans cross the border to supply the willing hands, often at the expense of subverting the so-called "free marketplace" of U.S. capitalism by driving down actual wages.

The missing element here is what circuses today actually pay a person to drive a truck or swing a hammer and lay out canvas. I’m told that the visa program mandates legal wages; what those wages are I would like to know — and maybe somebody will volunteer the answer. But the greater problem I fear is that, no matter the official answer, circus owners survive as do expedient farmers, relying on cheap labor that might be cheaper than legal. The realities change, and the shrewdest showman will find ways to adapt.

In 1956, John Ringling North, mired in a crippling labor strike after years of disputes with the unions, came to his senses about the impracticability of a huge traveling three ring circus. And he opted to go indoors. Other shows over the years have chosen to scale down in size and retain those romantic tents. Well, now they are all quite small. What next?

Whatever is next, I suggest less hula hoops and protracted pony ride intermissions; more dazzling artistry.


4.12.08

Big Tops in Bits & Pieces ... We Report, You Assemble

The new circus Easter arrow hunt is a challenge for our Jack Hunter, stationed somewhere I think in the Carolinas. E-mails he, a guy desperately seeking Cole Bros Circus in or around a precinct known as Murrells Inlet, “I knew there was a problem when I didn’t spot any route markers.” Turns out, not to turn this into an engineering enigma, that MI was put back or ahead or under or over ... First, now comes Wilmington, then MI. “I would assume they are on the way to NC but who knows !!!!!” My non-paid east coast stringer then chatted with some carnies in the know, who raise the Big Visa issue as the Big Question Mark. (Wanting to do my park, Jack, here is a map that I hope will help you find your way.)

To Live and Die in Deland? A few arrows later, Jack e-ushered me into Buckle’s big blog under a majestic big top, where I came upon New Cole photos, proof positive that at least the show staged an opening run at its home base. My, what a tiny tent! And my, a real ring. John Pugh has repented of his ringless ways. Let us not forget, ‘twas Sir John and not Sir Kenneth who first rendered the tent a ringless thing. So, Jack, continue being nimble and quick, one missing and/or broken arrow at a time ...

While inside Buckles Hippodrome (what lush images), I scrolled down to admire some Miles White originals for JRN’s 1947 opus. White surely designed like an exotic visionary from some distant planet. Then, there are two photos placed in embarrassing proximity by B.W., shrewdly offering the jarring juxtaposition as Exhibit One, like a courtroom lawyer accusing Ringling-Barnum of artistic malpractice. The first shows a vast three ring plus Shrine Evansville layout, the next, the charming-as-asphalt setting for the Ringless Bros. 2006 breakout — or breakdown — edition. Mr. Feld did grant the suckers half a ring, but what a perfectly ugly thing. Asks Buckles, if you were given a free ticket, to which show would you go? I might have taken in Ringless just to hiss for free.

Let’s get out of there. Bad vides are spoiling my Tranquility Mao Feng tea high here on a floating Wednesday evening at L’Amyx...

Onto Youth and hope and — brace yourself, jockey rabbits who ride doggies! Credit young trainer and contortionist Logan Jacot , swiftly recovering from a nasty auto accident suffered a few months back, who has joined the one with the other in some kind of magical motion. I am perfectly charmed, Logan. I’ve never seen performing rabbits, which may mark me as an underachieving fan of the half-ring era. YOU, in my fury opinion, must have incredible patience — or an inside track on bunny seduction. I love these types of turns around the sawdust .... E-mails the very young, 20-something Logan, “I am recovering quicker than I expected. I did my first back bend yesterday since my wreck” (which left him with a collapsed lung and multiple breaks in one leg). That back bend put Logan on a high, all except for the low that followed. “I could not get back up again myself.” I can see a horde of grateful rabbits coming to his rescue with eggs and arrows and jockey gusto to go. While he’s been putting himself back together, he’s done a friend a favor. “I trained four rabbits to ride dogs for her show.” Something about that sentence sounds so effortless, like whipping up a little picnic spread or building a model roller coaster over the weekend. YOU, kid, must have a gift.

In their own young words: I love hearing the younger set tell me what inspires them. When I learned that one of Logan's heroes is GGW, I asked him why. Now comes his reply: “I have a great deal of respect for Gunther Gebel Williams mostly due to his showmanship. I loved how he could have everybody in the arena looking at him but I do believe there were more talented animal trainers out there.” Showmanship in CAPS, glamour in NEON.

Another youthful revelation: While interviewing the ultra gentlemanly Alex Chimal at Circus Chimera just before the show (he was house manager, but stayed put next to me in the seats, wanting to answer all my questions), this he revealed about an icon who inspired him: “When I was a kid, I saw a video of Ringling, and I saw this guy who was doing wire act, I think his name was Con Colleano. I liked the style.” Jackpot! What a mutual admiration we shared, he off a video, me from a boyhood memory at the Clyde Beatty Circus when the actual Colleano thrilled me in person ...

Dell battery down to only 79%, credit my light weigh syntax. Hey, Jack the Hunter: May you reach the smaller New Cole, and give John Pugh my regards. I’ll try to send along some spare arrows. But I don’t do eggs.

And that’s a bunny wrap.

Eye on the Big Top: Mired in Cherry Pie, New Cole’s Renee Storey Could be Spinning Cotton Candy Soon...

From out of the past ...

The Circus previously known as Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros is finally up and at it, valiantly mired in shorthandedness but moving ahead with long suffering spirits — stars pitching in to drive stakes and lay out canvas. Said Renee Storey to Rosa Ramirez of the Daytona Beach News, the show is still short by about 30 workers, the brown hands waiting for green lights from U.S. immigration officials.

The article, shot my way by Jack Hunter, makes clear what most of us have observed over the years: Performers tossing aside egos between acts to dig in and rig up. “We help them so they can help us, too,” said teeterboarder Oscar Julia Preciado. Bravo, Mr. Circus Everyman!

Joked VP Renee Storey — a lady who, from what I gather, has sawdust in her spine, or spine in her sawdust — she might have to make the cotton candy. Reminds me of the song from A Chorus Line, “What I Did For Love.”

What they do for the big top. I imagine Johnny Pugh up there somewhere on the nerve-wracking advance, facing down iffy city council members hounded by two or three PETA screamers, all for the humiliating cost of a lot license. A trouper to his bones is Sir Pugh of the world-class “with it and for it" class.

Covington Connected: Don sent me a fine New York Times endorsement (I guess) of Ringling’s latest, making it sound like a fast moving spread of this and that. My only wonderment is if it’s another random Feld smorgasbord, although those sprawling samplers sometimes do the trick. This edition sounds like a fast blast.

When liberals embrace animal acts, watch out, World! During a conversation with two ex-New Yorkers here in Brooklyn West (a.k.a.: Oakland), the woman, a self described atheist from Queens, shocked me by sharing what a joy she considers circus animal acts to be for young kids. The Brooklyn man, at his wits end over some law that prohibits him from having or harboring a house cat up in the Oakland Hills, is also seeing the light. But boy, did those two dash my stereotype. They, not I, raised the issue. She, not I, went on and on about the “wonderment” of the circus world to a child. And this from the most liberal region in the country? I only listened, grinning inside. Speaking of delightful four-legged show stoppers, there’s this...

A photo not for your eyes, PETA: We know you can’t tolerate watching an elephant dash your stereotype of what it, according to you, should be up to in the wilds. Well, here’s a Michael Jordanesqe pachyderm in Thailand, 2006, going for the hoop. World travelers Angelina and Noel Andreoni, playing basketball basketball in the lovely country previously known as Siam, watched with delight as Orachi the elephant “dunked their ball,”so reported by the paper still known as the New York Times.

Johnny Pugh: The more I think about your telling me of the time when your big bulls were yelping it up to be back on a lot they hadn’t played for years, well ... well ... the more I think you were not pulling my trunk.

And that’s a Cherry Pie Wrap.

First posted April 7, 2008

Showbiz Scramble on the Oakland-Brooklyn Line

Here at L’Amyx in Oakland — and I stress Oakland (known locally as the armpit of the Bay Area), I am feeling a new coolness, for in the New York Times last Sunday, I read that Oakland and Brooklyn (as in NY) are considered kindred spirits in new wave art & stuff, stress stuff ... That is, they both exist in the shadows of the larger cities that hog all the attention. A bit of Brooklyn in my bones? My Mom, a dreamer, grew up there, worked on the Brooklyn Eagle. Her mother, Florence Simpson, made “surgical belts,” eccentrically sizing each lady up and offering her a charge based upon perceived economic status ... One of the letters she had published in a New York paper ended with “Live and Let Live.” A lesson on my young ears never forgotten.

Homesick and tired of living in a house in Gothic Golden Gate Park across the street from a roller coaster managed by my uncle that rattled on around the clock, my mom took me, my sis and bro back to Brooklyn in 1946, when my grandma lived at 493 Hart Street.

They enrolled me in what seemed a one-room school called PS 154 (if not merely 54) for a month or two... My nervous dad railed out from San Francisco, afraid, so my aunt would years later inform me, that we’d never come back. And we might not have. How close I came to seeing Ringling Bros Circus that spring, when my father one Saturday morning went out to get tickets but came back empty handed. Sold out.

Anybody Can Be A Sarasota Icon: The Ring of Fame seems to be turning itself into a haven for scoundrels and underachievers well connected to decision makers. This I reluctantly surmise with the greatest of social discomfort. Norma Cristiani, wherever you are, I love and adore you like everybody else, so please, if you are reading this, look away or skip to the next paragraph. Your Dad, BEN DAVENPORT, inducted in the Ring of Fame? Incredible! Here over Dragonwell tea in Brooklyn West, I hereby declare the launch of my own Showbiz David Ring of Shame. Names to be named later. Like who, you ask? Like a few notorious phone room operators, and like the first person ever to perform the hula hoop in a ring.

How cool was Irvin Felds’s Circus World? My honored guests of commentary (all three of them) seem to agree with me that the circus aspect of Feld’s Great Dream would have never been enough. .. Speaking of the Feld phenomenon (even their failures are epic, you gotta admire ‘em for half-way trying), Kenneth’s Kaleidoscape, named after Barnum, might have been a decadent blast had the show's official director Raffaele De Ritis had his way, and how apt it would have been — evoking the gusty old one-ring tent show ambiance. The only real director Kenneth Feld listens to is Kenneth Feld. As usual, they went for a little Disney over a little Ringling, all of it enslaved in Montreal mist.

Early blooming blogger Wade Burck likens the circus to a poor old dog on its last legs that “can’t hunt anymore.” Says I of the trendy Brooklyn-Oakland axis, despite the talk I hear about this poor old dog going the way of vaudeville, it’s still out there, thank you, Big Apple Circus and Cirque du Soleil, among others. I also am hearing of packed houses greeting Kelly Miller. Some mutts never die.

How cool was Merle Evans? Yes, I know, this lands me in the uncool category of the died-in-the-wool codger lamenting the Good Old Days. Getting ready for my hip entrance at L’Amyx, noticed only by the counter person, I replayed the ‘51Ringling score. Oh, what a way Saint Evans had of matching the action and moving it ahead with zest and zip. Then there are his awesome juxtapositions: A gigantic crescendo nearly wilts — like an Evans sigh — into the most lyrical reading of “Speak Low.” Trouble is, younger set, your Dylan or Depache Mode, your DJ Shadow or Gangsta Looney Goon have never recorded ”Speak Low,”so we’re again in two different worlds ... And I’m losing my trendy touch lost in the great American songbook ...

Speaking of modern, the Big Apple Circus band raises the tent with dazzling gusto, and they’re not playing “Entrance of the Gladiators,” chum. I hope, when I see the show next month, the music is as exciting as it was for Picturesque in 2005. I’ve had it with juke box scores randomly assembled off of a stack of CDs supplied by the acts. First inductee into my Ring of Shame: James C. Petrillo, the great union organizer who organized live circus music into oblivion. His trophy: The figure of a musician on strike.

Blame my edgy outbursts on PS 154. I was there, and I missed Ringling Bros. Circus ten years before Irvin Feld rescued it from itself.

[photos: my Grandma at her shop, 186 Irving Avenue, Brooklyn; My brother, Dick, left, sister Kathy ane me, spring residents at 493 Hart Street; Merle Evans, non stop, as the show goes on]

A Nazi Film Like No Other Grabs You With it's Searing Realism

Movie Review: The Counterfeiters

I have never felt so painfully close to the horrifying brutality suffered by the Jews in Nazi concentration camps, nor so profoundly moved by their will to survive in the face of one of mankind’s most hideous assaults on the dignity of human life. The Counterfeiters, an Austrian-German film directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, depicts the plight of a group of printers, bankers and artists by trade, given special treatment by a Nazi leader driven to marshal their talents and produce billions of fake pounds with which to flood and decimate the British economy, and then billions of American dollars to fund the crippling Nazi war machine. The Jewish prisoners are cast into a terrible conflict pitting their hunger to survive against the grim reality that, in effect, they are aiding their own oppressor and thus likely funding the death of their own people. We are dragged into a moral quagmire that has been rarely plumbed with such searing realism, the sort of a quagmire that Melville explores in his tale Billy Budd.

At the center of this extraordinary drama is Sally Sorowitsch, played by the actor Karl Markovics, who enjoys a reputation as one of the world’s most accomplished counterfeiters. This liberates him from the deathly showers of Auschwitz and into Operation Bernard, a special counterfeit printing unit. The moral decisions he faces in conflict with Adolf Burger (played by August Diehl), who rails against aiding the enemy even if it means certain death, have no easy answers — not if you are the one upon whom they are visited. Sorowitsch does show tender mercy to a young art student stricken with TB by using his privileged status to extract drugs for the young man, in effect, however, tipping the Nazis off to an ill prisoner in their midst and thus sealing the young man’s fate. The slightest sign of frailty repulses the German eye on its horrific ascent to Aryan purity. Sorowitsch also retards his counterfeiting efforts in order to prolong the result demanded of him by the Nazis.

To describe and do justice to this gripping masterpiece would require the essays that no doubt others will write in years to come. It chilled my blood. And it moved me in ways I have never before been moved. For example, when it becomes clear that the Germans are close to their own end, Hitler to his suicidal exit, overheard we hear the faint comforting murmur of arriving allied aircraft. Never has the sure distant sound of an airplane engine given me such faith in humanity’s goodness nor such gratitude for the heroism and sacrifice of the allied forces during World War II. This is an unflinchingly realistic work of cinematic art that does not attempt to bring thematic closure to the troubling moral issues it raises. It does not have to. Everything we can possible know about the terrible truths that faced these helpless Jewish victims and how they struggled to save their lives in the face of a great moral dilemma is here. And that is all that needs to be here. In the end, I wept unequivocally like I have rarely wept in a movie house. This movie earned my tears.

[photos, from top: Karl Markovics, August Diehl]

Eye on the Big Top: The Ways of John Ringling North II

Showbiz David Reports and Speculates

A year age, he was a blank slate with a famous name. We knew virtually nothing about him save for his family association to the world’s once reigning circus.

He had just purchased the Kelly Miller show, and I recall a good friend of mine in Sarasota letting out a chuckle on the phone, comparing the Ringling name to that small one ringer out of Hugo, Oklahoma.

So, you think’s it’s easy to run a small circus? Think again about any size, Sarasota. Let’s see, there’s Pugh and Binder, Byrd and Hanneford and a few others who’ve been at it for many years. New owners of tent shows that tour complete seasons spring to fall? Name them. I’m waiting ... and waiting ... Jim Judkins, who launched Circus Chimera ten years ago (after managing Carson & Barnes) remains stranded in Hugo for economic reasons. Truth is, it is not easy running a circus of any size. Never was. Even harder today, and North the Sequel has proved he may have the stuff for a long run. Keep in mind that no Ringling save for the original North (opting out of family feuds) ever walked away from the midway at any age

So, chuckling aside, here is what he has shown that we did not know a year ago:

JRN II, like his much loved father, Henry, has a friendly way of dealing with his staff. From what I have heard, people like Mr. North a lot. Number Two, and even more promising: He is taking an active hand in the show itself. Says North’s general manager and friend, Jim Royal, “John attends nearly every performance all the way through and makes mental notes.” This Ringling cares, it would appear, about showmanship. He may feel the legacy of his famous five grand uncles glancing down upon his every move. “Friday morning, John, John Moss III (our performance director) and I had an extensive production meeting and are considering changing the running order of the performance. This will tighten it up.”

Another good sign is North's ability to turn over his performing personnel, an absolute must in these tougher competitive times. Circuses simply can not afford to risk the image of artistic stagnation by having too many of the same acts back year after year. If audiences know they can expect novelty and surprise, new faces and fresh production touches, they are more likely to return.

Perhaps Mr. North is discovering a passion inherited from his legendary uncle, John Ringling North, with whom he enjoyed a close association.

John the nephew enters the big top with formidable family assets: That name ... that mystique ... They can’t take that away from him. The idea of watching a Kelly Miller truck bearing the letters “John Ringling North II Presents” rumbling onto an early morning lot sends tingles down my spine. North II also bears the fleeting evidence of his uncle’s one-time endorsement in the puzzling 1967 program magazine photo (above), turning attention onto a new generation and hinting that its time had arrived to direct The Greatest Show on Earth.

Of course, that time never came about, and North II, when I interviewed him circa 1990, remained mum on the subject other than to state that after he got married, he was informed by his father and uncle that a circus was no place for a married man. What really happened was that the married Feld brothers bought the show.

North II can accomplish some notable milestones of his own. First, he can prove that perhaps his uncle’s faith (real or the work of a press agent) was well placed. That he is not James Ringling or Richard Ringling or Stuart Lancaster, or any number of Ringling heirs who floundered on the sidelines. Second, he can bring luster to the Ringling family name. Which is not to diminish what the Felds have done, but their marketing obsessions have tended to place top level showmanship on a lower rung. Lately, the results have sometimes been downright embarrassing.

The downside for this Ringling under review? There is that Feld lawsuit attempting to prevent him from pushing his name on Kelly Miller logo and advertising. But beyond the courage to flaunt his name, North II has so far shown little evidence of a flair for promotion and advertising. If he manifests a little of Al’s leadership, Otto’s fiscal savvy, and the sensitive artistic nature of Charles, missing in his makeup so far is ad man Alf T. Ringling, who surely would have had a more aggressive and up-to-date website running by now. Goggle “Kelly-Miller Circus” and you’ll be delivered onto a dry wasteland of yesterday’s links, with little evidence of where the show is now playing or how it wishes to engage your patronage. Displayed photos on the actual K-M website seem not to have changed in a few years. Jim Royal earlier promised a revamped website over the winter. It does not appear on my pc. Kelly-Miller’s new owner seems oddly passive in this all-important department. Of course, we can speculate he may be hiding out to avoid undue attention from the animal rights radar.

North’s attention to employee satisfaction and performance appeal should both serve him well if he is to survive today’s horrendously difficult market — gas pump blues, PETA assaults, a more picky public emboldened by the force of that Cirque thing up north. Performers can negotiate at will, can say yes to whomever. If North can build up his reputation, on that cache alone he may be able to attract a higher grade of talent at affordable rates. Perhaps he already has. Can he reach the world-class artistry of the Big Apple Circus which I saw in 2005? There’s a challenge.

How good is the show itself? I have no idea, nor have I read any reviews so far. The fans, who supply good will and support, are unlikely to provide honest accounts. A lineup of the new season acts theoretically excites me, because:

Here is a one ring circus hosting an actual bareback riding act, and that raises exhilarating imagery. The program has Fridman Torales, a young showman of rare class whose upside down loop walk I enjoyed on Circus Chimera. (He did not perform his rola bola routine that day.) There are Eskimo dogs, juggling, African acrobats working hoop diving and ropes. The Wheel of Destiny is there, Elephants and tigers, clowning by Pat Cashin. As with any circus, so much of the impact depends upon how these elements are arranged, scored, costumed and paced. The mix to my eyes looks promising, even if the presence of a hula hoop turn suggests padding. And the “Ringling magic” promised by North when he took ownership of K-M appears to be in evidence in a climactic 9 foot high Oklahoma oil well rig sending forth a gusher of confetti. I can see novelty, amusement and color.

Despite rumors to the contrary, John Ringling North II is still on the road, and that in itself is the best of all signs. In 2009 at Milwaukee, his circus will play the city prior to the resumption of the Great Circus Parade. What magical symbolism —a Ringling returning to the home state where it all began back in 1884. It seems so right with the universe.

E-mailing me today, Jim Royal closed off with this: “JRN II told me today of an idea for next year’s web display. It sounds like a winner.”

Let’s see, that would mark season number three for the grand nephew of the famous five. If you ask me, he has Ringling in his blood.

Horrific Storms and Blood-Sucking Gas Pumps, Make-Do Roustabouts From Homeless America -- Desperate Big Tops Face a Season of Discontent ...

Looking back ...


"Labor," answered John Ringling North to the question I once asked him, "what was the greatest challenge you ever faced?" How the word resonates this very moment as our tenters stumble out of the barn minus the labor they desperately need to stop stumbling. Already, Cole Bros. has nixed Carolina stops pending the arrival of brown hands from Mexico bearing those coveted Visas.. Already, Ben Trumble, who in better times handles upscale matters, is this season swinging a sledgehammer and taking it like a trouper ...

“The number of workers (on Visa) was effectively cut in half this year when Congress failed to authorize an exemption for previous Visa holders.” That spells trouble for the nation’s big tops who rely on — how to kindly word this — reasonably priced help to toss canvas over weed and dirt and mud, lace it up, swing poles into place, and hoist it sky high, link ring curb to ring curb, frame to flat to chair to rail, one plank at a time ... “EVERY show is in trouble," says another source, the Savvy Insider. "I’ve heard rumors that Carson & Barnes has missed dates too.”

John Ringling North’s three ring Greatest Show on Earth bit the sawdust in Pittsburgh more than fifty still-mourned years ago. Pray nobody meets the same fate this time ... Which intersects with an issue hotly debated here by the Edgar & Burck sideshow along the commentary annexes ... They were chatting about just and fair “compensation” for performers. I am chatting about dollars for tent servers, thank them, and how grateful I feel in retrospect for all of the humble hands who down through time brought circus day to my town ...I can imagine Byrd and Pugh and Royal rejoicing in the arrival of real willing prop movers from south of the border. Those guys are now the stars of redemption. Saviors of the Sawdust. Without them, no, you don’t want to go there ...

... This season, roustabouts could be a gang of homeless lured out of cardboard shelters to help set up a limping tent show for a handout, after which, per inside sources, they opt back for shelter life over chasing after spangles. Want the truth, Wade? Here’s your latest Showbiz David exclusive Eye on the Midway: “All winter I kept reminding people what it was like when we had to round up bums from missions, the daily turnover,” says Trumble, right now laboring on Culpepper. “We’ve used mission crews for three weeks, and it’s been a monumental pain in the *###, and the guys blew every night — but we’ve successfully moved the show and now we have enough Visa workers to get the tent up.” Go, Culpepper! I cheer your Trumbling triumphs ...


Ben might be, with hammer in hand, considering life in a shelter. “Labor,” said JRN, not skipping a beat. Carson & Barnes surely faces the biggest challenge, with a sprawling three ring smorgasbord about to be trucked from coast to coast. Discount gas from a sympathetic mid-eastern despot? Into Florida, perhaps for the first time, troupes C&B, so notes Paul H. Later, near fall, they’ll be out in San Francisco testing the city’s prissy impatience with real circus, and I can’t wait.. I’ll have a pocket full of dollars, and I’m gonna tip maybe every prop hand I see. Gosh, you gotta love Mexico ...

I swung a sledgehammer on the old Wallace Bros. Circus, not then realizing the full significance of a tradition of cherry pie I was serving. Now, I feel what my real role was there. Bottom line, you might be a joey, David, but you ARE a skinny canvas kid like it or not, so go to it and help us make the date ...

End ringing it for sunny day relief: Also from Paul H. (whom I kind of think I know) John Ringling North II, feeling his tanbark power, will be pitching his Kelly-Miller top for the Great Circus Parade, slated to roll again in Milwaukee in 2009 ... Chirps Paul, “JRN II is going to show his stuff.” He will, I assume, if he’s got the person power to make it happen ... Baraboo Barb continues apace on Ringling’s Gold Unit, floating on her golden holiday working concession for the Felds, and countering “blog comments” alluding to a paltry performance. No no no, says Barb, “the public absolutely LOVES this show. The reviewers agree. Town after town, more praise. ‘Ringling gets it right!;” Well, might I suggest, it’s about time, ho-ho (I’ve yet to take in the Gold edition)... Circus World Museum’s new prince to the rescue, Stephen Freese, is high on having a scale replica of the White House play his grounds during the winter. Duh? Okay, I suppose, but, hey, ah, you’ve got stuff that is more deserving, like that hidden charm of an old fun house tucked away in one of your back sheds called the Thimble Theatre. Maybe Truman and Kennedy never walked there to sample its spooky upstairs, the shuffle boards below. Lot's more fun than gawking over a dead model where dead presidents once lived ...

Pray for Visas ...Chant for the agile hands that move the restless canvas ... Chant for fearless Barbara Byrd to get the wingpower she needs to deliver her redoubtable three-ring manifesto to all points routed. ... John Ringling North II evidently has the nice-guy way in spades. Says Alan, out of the show with an ankle injury, “I have to say Mr. North is the nicest man I ever met and great to work for” ... Which prompts this memo to all beleaguered big top tycoons with sledgehammers in hand: Be super nice to those worker bees, dispense gratitude by the bail and pray they won’t desert back to the mission. Trouper Trumble, breaking away for active duty, knows that which separates the dreamer from the showman: “Gotta pound some steaks.” Yes, I’m tipping the first two or ten roustabouts I see.

[above photo: the last unfolding at dawn: Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey offloads at the runs in Pittsburgh, PA, July 16, 1956, for the last shows it would give under the big top]

First posted March 21, 2008

Hitchcock’s Genius for Restraint Epitomizes the Essence of Great Art ...

Art gives form to expression, and getting the balance right is the greatest challenge facing the creator in any medium. Messy undisciplined expressions fall as short of the mark as do those that are a slave to an overly abstract form. A song, a play, a circus act, a painting — all manifest degrees of my offered axiom.

The other night watching Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, I was reminded of the director’s subtle genius for understatement and for shaping feelings and actions into tautly controlled stage pictures -- so unlike what I encounter in many of today’s horror flicks or serious “adult dramas” weighted down with pervasive violence. Of late, our movie houses on darker days are virtual blood bath sit-throughs.

Hitchcock holds his hand so skillfully and tight, we are made to feel many of the hidden emotions and speculations that swim through our subconscious — what did that gesture mean, why did she say what she said? Most of life is intrigue — most of it fear and desire rarely consummated. To watch a thriller today, you are likely assaulted by an unrealistic onslaught of high tech gore and low tech “quality drama” mayhem, gratuitously planted to placate a nation’s insatiable thirst for gore and revenge. If you want the monster unleashed (all expression, dubiously little form) go watch Sweeney Todd or There Will Be Blood. I can tell you this, there will not be Hitchcock there.

Expression and form. Let it all hang out, a mantra unleashed by sixties rock and roll culture, has left in its wake a scrapheap of half-baked songs. Artistically, can anybody out there make a case for the Grateful Dead? Of course, the same troubling decade also gave us lasting art in rock music, from the Beetles to the Doors. In a lesser league, I did not rue the demise of either Janis Joplin or Jimmy Hendricks, too singers who wailed on like distempered dogs abandoned to an endless night in a junkyard from hell.

Be it a juggler in motion, a dancer in tandem with others, an actor facing a soliloquy — all come close every time to breaking recklessly free of restraint and losing it. To watch Burt Lancaster in the 1981 film masterpiece Atlantic City (directed with intrepid restraint by French director, Louis Malle, who is said to have argued and prevailed against the actor's hyper theatrics) is to see Lancaster at his prime, magnificently contained and constrained in a role, rather than his jumping it, as was often his pattern, to indulge himself in his signature cliche oratory. Over the top screen icons like Lancaster and Bette Davis could get away with it, their fans allowed them, almost goaded them on.

Not so the juggler or the tumbler, the equestrian or wire walker. Over the top and they’re out of the ring, out of the tent, soon out of the show. Restraint and control are the well-honed attributes by which they live or die. But then again, they are not pretending to be someone they are not. Each time they enter the ring, they potentially create a living work of art. No second takes. No back to the drawing board. Now or never.

In the shadows of Hitchcock’s greatness, today’s film makers look a little inept. Although I was glad to see the enthralling No Country for Old Men win many Academy Awards, its inconclusive ending left me unconvinced. Left it a flawed work — unless, which is more than possible, I simply missed something. A director opting for a messy exit (arguing in his defense, well, that’s life) settled on formless expression. So, too, the over-the-top ending to Blood, like a runaway dump truck spilling garbage out for shock effect.

I can watch many of Alfred Hitchcock’s best movies (like Rear Window, Shadow of a Doubt, Psycho) and marvel at his subtle flair for escalating suspense and the quick sudden payoff. True art knows what to put in and what to leave out. Of course, true art, I suppose, is not what most ticket buyers pay to see. We live in the age of rampant unchecked free expression. Society could use a little more restraint.

[photos: May Whitty and Margaret Lockwood in The Lady Vanishes; Burt Lancaster, Hubert Castle.]

SUNDAY MORNING LOOKING BACK: Big Cage Showdown: Clyde Beatty versus Gunther Gebel Williams

 From 3.13.08

Update: New interesting comment posted

In a post that keeps on posting about Circus Compensation (I am waiting for the bible to appear on it), Henry Edger logged his “book” on this evidently lively blogging issue. He makes some informative points in favor of Clyde Beatty as being the superstar of all time. Not for me to argue for or against right now, but Edgar’s facts and positions did get me thinking, as in...

What makes you remember the greats who present the big cats? I saw Beatty when I was young enough to be riveted to his every move in the cage. I don’t remember having ever sat as still and fixated during an entire act as I did during that one. Every single moment, the audience was wondering will he get out alive? ... Clyde Beatty created dramatic tension. That was the premise to his greatness. A legendary showman he was ...


Scanning my memory, who are the trainers I recall? They can grab us in so many ways. Some of us look for stats — how may tricks turned; some for drama, some for looks and showmanship. Pat Anthony jumps to mind. So does Professor George J. Keller, possibly because the way this college art director-turned-trainer was sold and because of his relaxed nice-guy persona in the arena. So does Tarzan Zerbini for his amusing self-satirizing bravado. So does Pablo Noel (seen here), such a great humorous showman! Some of these trainers seemed to be laughing inside.. Another individual who amply entertained me was Josip Marcan. And so did the rambunctious Tabayara Maluenda, whom I saw with Ringling last year, carrying on like a befuddled Joan Rivers suddenly thrust up against the jungle challenge without preparation. Fine content, though I do go for entertainment. Nice to see trainers breaking free of the GGW mold which they tried cloning for so many seasons.

Mostly, wild animals acts blur past my eyes while I await aspects of a performance that usually hold greater appeal — to me. Some of us saw Trevor Bale as a furniture mover, which may be very unfair. There are those no doubt who have all the stats on what each trainer did. How many rollovers, sit ups, fire hoop jumps etc. I don’t.

Another trainer who caught my passing fancy was a somewhat pivotal figure bridging the more furious past with a gentlemanly future: Charlie Bauman. Beautiful act. Gracious trainer. Wonderful climactic ring picture when a tiger stood up on a rotating pedestal under a shower of globe lights while Merle Evans played Shangri-la. In that one magical moment, Ringling ruled the universe.

Gunther? I gotta tell you, what I most liked about Gunther in retrospect was his agile way with elephants. I realize there have been better trainers. I just liked his easy elegance and those voice commands, even if they were illusory. There are a number of cage trainers that I would place above GGW, mainly because I suppose Gunther was a bit to fey to generate the sort of drama I enjoy from a wild animal act. Too elegant. Which is the very reason why he was so perfect for a new era dominated by audiences wanting ultra-humane imagery. He connected perfectly with his time, and the Ringling productions and pr teams did a brilliant job of packaging and ballyhooing him to the public. Irvin Feld’s finest hour.

But for Big Cage theatrics, I would pick Clyde Beatty any day. The movie Ring of Fear gives us only a variety of camera angles and disconnected bits — nothing like sitting in one seat having a set relationship to the real Clyde Beatty in the cage, in real time, and watching his act from start to finish. In regard to which, I absolutely agree with Henry Edgar that circus art does not come through well in recorded media. When we are there, we watch performers survive by their skills in the present tense, in the flesh. It is not illusion (even if some of the theatrics are just that), for we sense that anything can happen.

So, my "circus compensation" post provoked a mini-stampede of commentators. Big Cage Theatrics — or PETA pandering love-ins? What say ye, anybody out there not already bored to death by this topic... Hey, it’s new on my midway...

[photos: The greats bring a distinctive personality to the ring. Clyde Beatty brought drama, Pablo Noel, comedy. And Gunther -- Mr. Cool?]

3/13/08