In Other Rings: My Broadway Continues to Sell

Royalty statements from publishers  are at their most compelling when issued nearest to publication, when sales, if there are to be many, surge.  Gradually, they turn to token accounts as the years go by and sales naturally wane. 

But sometimes, sales can surprise you delightfully,  as when yesterday I received my semi-annual royalty report from McFarland & Company for Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History, which came out nearly 20 years ago. The book has continued to sell over the years, though the last half of last year gave me a big lift: Nearly 50 copies sold an no returns.  And they aren’t giving it away: $49.00 for both the paper and e-reader editions.  Used copies from other vendors are selling for from $35 to $146.

I have come to believe that if people really want a book, they will pay almost any price.  But you can’t give away a book that nobody much cares about. I have lived through both ends of the spectrum.

The creation of Broadway Musicals followed a decades long journey, begun the early 1990s, when I was collecting, listening to and grading original cast albums.  Since the year 2000 was conveniently up ahead, I began to see a possible book, focusing on cast albums through the century.  My working title became Broadway Scores: A Century of Musicals in Review.  McFarland would revise.

Landing a contract from McFarland marked a big turning point in my life. For now I had embarked on another subject away from the big tops.  This was when landing a contract — from a traditional publisher — was tantamount to landing in a Broadway show. You had a feeling of being discovered, of your work being validated by the pros back east --- that's where most of them were. What a thrill it was, seasons earlier,  to open a parcel from A.S. Barnes & Co. and discover, inside, my first book contract -- for Behind the Big Top!

Today, anybody can publish a book, which I think is a good thing, but no longer do I dare ask “and who is your publisher?”,  not wanting to broach a sensitive subject.  Oh, how more vital and tremendously exciting it was when an author had to find a real publisher. 

Broadway Musicals drew very good notices, though none from major media.  And not a single consumer review.

In one of my early royalty reports, came a stipend for some kind of a subsidiary sale.  It turned out, when I dug deeper, that one of my chapters, The Roads He Didn’t Take, about Stephen Sondheim, was reprinted in full in Gale’s annual Drama Criticism, an academic book that each year profiles the work of four or five major writers.  This I proudly regard as high validation.

Broadway Musicals comes third for me in sales, behind Behind the Big Top, and Big  Top Boss; John Ringling North and the Circus, which share a virtual tie. However, if you factor in discounted paperback copies, Big Top Boss is king, with nearly 4,000 copies sold.

So, once again, after maybe 10 years now, I will read my own Broadway Musicals. Of course, when you know others are reading you, it does make your own read more enjoyable.  I plead human.

Step Right Down to Half-a-Midway! ... Savor Circus History in Fantasy Fragments! ...Anonymous -- Don't Even Try

 
NINE CARS off the old Ringling train standing idle, nearly forgotten, in a place called Spring Hope (how apt) somewhere in the green of North Carolina, reports the Carolina Journal, revealing a fairly well kept secret. “Few people seemed to know it existed.”

BARABOO, ARE YOU reading? I am still seething (well, not exactly) over John Ringling North’s  not having willed at least one of the great Concello seats wagons to a museum of his choice.  How I would love to sit on one of those small chairs, and recall how not so comfortable it was while I basked in the enchantment of watching the Greatest Show on Earth in 1955.

SPRING HOPE'S Mayor Buddy Gwaltney, joking “We haven’t’ seen any elephants or giraffes running around ... monkeys swinging in the trees, but we’ve got our eyes open!”

HOLD THAT FEELING!   Me has an idea: Half a Midway hosting lost circus icons?  Stray dogs and monkeys, suspiciously talented?  Running around.  Swinging from trees.  The Ringling ghost train, parked imperially along its edge?  Admission free.  Donations on demand.  Odds and ends, props and ring curbs in poetic disarray.  Banners half raised, some full tilt. 

SCRATCHY OLD RECORDS blowing out hot Merle Evans music, like on hot summer days when Americans jammed the tents, laughed at looney clowns, thrilled to spangled daredevils, delighted over amazing animals ... Half a ring somewhere in the midst, now and then half an act in motion before half a dozen spectators. ... Harold Ronk’s thundering voice crisply crashing the air, then half-way fading away ...

AM I OVERLOOKING it by half?  I’d hoist half a tent, and in it host all of Billy Rose’s wonderful movie,  Jumbo. I just saw it the other night — can’t recall seeing it when it came out in 1962 –  I was out of the country then. What a fractured gem. A little too long and unable to end when it should   But so much to love, most of all, seeing agile circus performers flying and jumping, through the air, onto horses, in perfect freedom.

REMEMBER WHEN circus performers were just that, and not “actors” unencumbered, as they increasingly are, by heavy-handed role-playing direction, but wearing their own God-given faces?. Maybe this is what Paul Binder was referring to in affirming the joyful connection between circus performer and spectator..  And why Paul took off the masks that a visiting Cirque du Soleil director had put onto his performers..  The ring action in Jumbo harkens back to an era before the  ballet-theatre crowd began imprisoning acrobats into  PC-refined straight jackets of body movement purity and  “character arc” Before they were called “actors.”

IN JUMBO, came a showmanly young man who swooped through the air on a cloud swing, and took breathless dives with charismatic flair. And there was the reason, I remembered, why I had wanted to see this movie:  Billy Barton!  Among other free-spirited performers on the bill, the Poodles Hannefords rode furiously free, Barbette’s Aerialovelies fluttered their big wings overthe rings.  Pat Anthony and Victor Julian made cameos. The songs of Rodgers and Hart added melodic gold to the mix.. Jimmy Durante was Jimmy Durante.  This from a soft voice  in the beginning:

There was a circus in days of yore

There’ll be a circus forever more..

OKAY, PERFECT segue over or down to you, Feld of Felds: So are you the resurrection and the light?  The “forever more”?  What about that press release issued by one of your own  — check for the name Steve Yarios on your payroll---promising a return of Ringling?  A prank?  Half a trial balloon?  Are you yourself turning into half-a-showman?  I sense an irrational brain behind this, and I am reminded of another irrational brain at work when you blitzed the media over the first female ringmaster signed to blow your whistle, only, a few days later, to then announce the circus was closing for good, half a season in, the following May.

Rent the Tent, but not in Westbury

 SOMETIMES, too, on our vanishing midway, you’ll see half-thriving survivors, still putting out circus shows, such as the Big Apple Circus, promising a return to Lincoln Center in the fall of 2020.
Its strangely barren website lacks a listing of any company names. With an off season now lasting 8 months, the show offers piece-meal options: the big top for rent, “perfect for parties, concerts, photo shoots, and anything else you can dream up.”  And private show buyouts.  So far, they’ve landed a four-day, four-performance date on the stage-in-the-round of Westbury Theatre with what looks like half a show. In half a ring?  Actually, this looks like an ideal indoor venue -- while they're renting out their tent.

In these times, half a show may be more than good enough -- and something, maybe, of a smash hit on Half a Midway.

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 NOTE TO ANONYMOUS: FAREWELL

Comes the time to unwelcome you

Sure, you can be quite smart and knowing, but also profane and more.  One of you – or are all of you the same? —  despises Lilian Leitzel and revels in trashing her figure in the most vile manner.  You blast show owners whom, I assume, did you wrong.  Sour grapes is your middle name.  Some of you are barely veiled animal rights activists. I can spot you a mile away.  Some of you show a savvy grasp of things.  Altogether, I must say, you are a fairly cowardly lot. Collectively afraid of your own shadows?  And why?

Anonymous out there feels ghostly.  The Big A could be me. I am sure it is often the bloggers themselves, but I have never resorted to this pitiful exercise. Some of you have good things to say. Okay, show your face.  Cowardly is no longer an option, and if this midway must stand alone, so be it.  There is something about my decision to do this, and the meaning of social life itself, that feels  strangely philosophical. 

At the bottom feeder end of incoming "commentary," I have grown tired of your smirky put downs and your sneering digs at American circus companies.  And, yes, at me.  I would like to face my critics as they face me.  Then will you deserve the respect of my response.  Whomever you are, none of you will anymore be welcome here  – and don’t favor yourself by feeling smug and satisfied knowing that at least I will even read you. NO, I won’t even read you anymore.  In other words, I will not take the time to “review” what you have sent me before deciding whether to publish or send you to the dumpster.

How ironic, in a land that screams FREEDOM OF SPEECH morning noon and night, so many people hide behind the Big A   Even here, far from a political blog – a CIRCUS blog.  What in the world are you afraid of?   Put your name to your pen and I’ll more likely print you. I can take most of it.

You say you can only get in as Anonymous?  Then do this: STATE YOUR NAME at the beginning of your comment, such as  “from Joe Doe.” Even then, I will probably have to recognize your name in order to admit you through to my speakeasy.

Now, to face the silence. How much longer?   This I know:  Sometimes,  as has been said by others (and to think I once thought I said it first!) Nothing is better than something. Anyway, for those of you who do post comments behind your names, you will continue to be much appreciated.

Farewell, Anonymous.  Better luck ghosting elsewhere.  How about the Santa Anita race track?

MIIDWAY FLASH! ... MIDWAY FLASH! ... RINGLING BROS. BARNUM & BAILEY RETURNING! ... MIDWAY FLASH! ...

Update 2.24.20. I called Feld Entertainment this morning, and spoke with the very pleasant Laurie, who answered the phone.  She said she is usually the last person to know things, but acknowledged that, yes, Steve does work there. I read her the release and she said "it sounds pretty legit." I did not wish to press the matter beyond Laurie.  Stay tuned, for if nothing else, more intrigue. We take what crumbs we can find here on the midwayof falling and fallen big tops.

Updates: 2.23.20:  I find no information about this on the Feld Entertainment website, including press releases. However, see below.

This, by way of Don Covington:

Great News Coming out of Florida!

Feld Entertainment, Inc. of Palmetto (FL) has revealed plans to create a new, live circus experience under the moniker of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, The Greatest Show on Earth. According to SVP of Global Communications, Steve Yaros, the new venture will be “a multi-platform family entertainment franchise” that promises to “elevate its relationship with new and longtime fans, making Ringling Bros. part of their daily lives.” 

Stay tuned for further developments.

This I did find on the Feld Entertainment website:

(italics and bold are mine)

Steve Yaros 

 As Senior Vice President of Media and Global Communications, Steve develops and spearheads global public relations and corporate communication strategies for the Feld Entertainment brand and its world-class productions. He provides insight into industry trends that ultimately dictate the pulse of the company’s storytelling.

Steve began his career at Feld in 1990 as a Regional Marketing Manager, promoting shows in various top markets throughout the country.

He then advanced to Regional Vice President of the Mid-Atlantic Region in 1997 and was later tapped to serve as the first Vice President of Brand Marketing for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey^® circus. During his long career at Feld, he also served as Vice President of Event Marketing & Sales in the Northeast Region.

Steve holds a Bachelor of Arts in Marketing from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA

Circusing Into 2020: As Big Tops Topple, Museums & Movies Keep the Ageless Delight Half-a Delight.... The House of Ringling Stirs Again! ... Could It Be? ..

Originally posted on January 7 

So, why don't we begin the new year on a high note?

BACK TO BARABOO: On good news we lift off.  Ringlinglville spreading its rebounding glories in a glorious 8-sheet brochure, bright and cheery.  Next summer’s non-PC show to be themed, Go West.  Among the rootin’ tootin’ returnees, barnyard magician Jenny Vidbel promising another zany menagerie, including (but not limited to, please) horses, pones, dogs, goats, and two steers. No pig, Jenny? And what about that snippy skunk?   ... “We never know exactly what’s coming until she is here and unloading it,” chirps ringmaster Dave SaLoutos ... Half-white face clowning by goofball reliables Copeland and Combs, heading to Amsterdam for end-of-the year rollick at Wereldkerstcircus, holding court at Circus World for another summer season.  Don’t you just love their ambitious sprits?

CIRCUS WORLD’S  Piper-in-Chief Scott O’Donnell, talking up rising attendance, affirming the “majesty and beauty through the elephants and tigers that shared our summer,” dropping hints of  “live circus performances year around..” ...  New exhibits planned.  More ailing wagons readied for rehab. ((Is my beloved Foley & Burke fun house wagon still rotting away in the nether regions of criminal neglect? )  For me, Baraboo is a dream town, and how I wish Amtrak rumbled through...Does anybody know if  the lady in the grand Victorian still rent rooms, complete with visiting bats, and for breakfast, serves up a Ringling spec of a feast?
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BIG APPLE DREAMS NEVER DIE -- not yet. Post Binder and Christensen, they took the good doctor, Neil Khranvatz, on a rescue ride as mover and shaker — the press bought it --- a ride that lasted but maybe a season and a half.  Into replace the doc came rock-the-tent lawyer Gregg Walker, who’s high on upscale cuisine and a more spicy performance.  He’s cooked up what looks like a good show, and seasoned it with dabs of sleaze and sass. Will mom and dad resist?  Will younger singles and duos take the bait?  I am waiting for the show to play Cunningham Park in May, with or without innuendo.   

CAPTURED, FRACTURED on cinema.  I settled down for another look at the PBS Circus in reruns..   So much brilliant footage to die for, but to muddle through for?  Opens up wondrously, then too soon takes us back in time,  NOT to Philly l792 where the circus in this country started out, but to New York, 1843, site of Barnum’s Museum.  And they can’t let go of Mr. Barnum.   Barnum.  Barnum.  Barnum forever.  Pardon me!  HELLO! That was a bloody freak and oddities show he had up and running. NOT a circus!  Knowing what other agitations lay ahead in this ill-conceived, half-baked tribute that ends up giving up in the most lame fashion in Pittsburgh, 1956, blaming the end of circus on Ed Sullivan,  I tuned out, and, yes okay, I am wasting your time already. Let’s spin a little cotton candy.

CIRCUS IS WHERE YOU FIND IT!  These gloomy days, circus artists, struggling to land  gigs, are finding work in the most unlikely places, concert hall to half-time at football games.  The latter venue conquered with grace, stamina and charm by acrobat Christian Stolinev and Percy, his 7-year-old Mexican born golden Chihuahua. The duo logging in more than 200 shows at pro and college games since 2013.  Percy knocks ‘em dead. “He’s definitely the star,” says Christian, giving his partner credit for the half time payoffs ... Let’s hang the true magic of circus on that little dog, who, midway in Christian’s workout, pops out of a box on onto Christian and stays loyally  upright during his master’s handstands.

FELDISHLY FAITHFUL:  Fallen circus king, Kenneth Feld, in his own words, from the doc he produced about the show’s final days: “Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey will live and at some point in time Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey will reappear, and it will be quite different. It will set the standard for the time and for the future.” Chills   down    my    spine ... This I know. This man CAN be brilliant, CAN adapt, CAN pull in crowds larger than any other top out there on the planet, CDS included,  and HAS millions in chump change to play with.  So, how about it, House of Ringling?  I am in your face, Feld of Felds:  MAKE MY BLOG.

How’s that for a wrap?  Until that magic day, circus is where you find it, so go out and look!

Happy whatever, 2020!

Center ring kudos to cyber courier Don Covington, for keeping me linked in through the year to numerous circus articles and reviews.

posted 1.7.2020

Characters on the Midway: Out, Damn Judge Judy!

I have an embarrassing confession to post: I may have fallen into a Judge Judy addiction. Help! Started maybe half a year ago when I, with ample time, decided to indulge in a nightly fix of this hooky TV courtroom show. Cases are real. But it's Judy whom I question. Her hot-button vocabulary is limited to maybe 5 or 10 derisive words: moron, idiot, imbecile, and so on. Her verdicts are in black and white. She claims to know who is telling the truth and who is not. Really, she is like a loud vindictive aunt ordering everyone around. "You are a liar!" "You are stupid! Do we understand each other?" "Sit down!"

And maybe that's why we watch. We long for moral clarity. This feisty character, who spent years hearing cases in family court, draws millions to her chamber of insults and lectures. In a world of shadow morality and existential excuse making for every crime imaginable, this lady's lip sees only good or evil, right or wrong, period. And this makes her simplistic verdicts refreshing, even when we suspect they are only wild guesses, or rigged just to amuse the crowd.

I have watched her rip to shreds young people who don't deserve it, but who stand there and take it, their 15 minutes of reality TV fame the payoff.

For a while I found her entertaining, wondering how often she is onto the truth. Now the cases are growing same old same old: Man "lends" girlfriend money. Girlfriend claims it was as only a gift -- until they broke up.

In this made-for-TV courtroom, our judge's theatrical mannerisms rival in texture and subtlety those of the Three Stooges. She specializes in making faces and insulting people. "Look at me, you loser!" "Sit down and shut up!" "You are an idiot!"

I'm waiting for her, any moment, to partner up with the bailiff guy, and the two of them to break out into a song and dance. Judge Judy: The Musical?

She's due here in about thirty minutes. Out of principle, I think I will tune in NPR -- if Terry Gross is not interviewing a transsexual Seventh Day Adventist brain surgeon -- or Judge Judy.

2.12.20

On a Bleak Midway ... Where Are We Now? .... How Vacant the Air ... How Sad the Non-Shows ...

Strange, a huge number of people wandered in here on Sunday. What's up?  Just as lost and confused as I -- if you are a circus fan feeling deserted?

Are you already missing the Circus Report? The ROUTES?  It's been all of what, a month?

Out there on abandoned grass, once resplendent with tents, no longer even giving off traces of old popcorn boxes or cotton candy sticks, peanut shells neither --- the linking lights of Don Convington are still on, as he continues to send out links to circus stories.  Maybe 20 people on his list.

I once suggested to Don that he might fill in some way when CR headed for the museum. He did not exactly say no. 

I've also floated the idea --to almost no one until this moment, right here, right now -- that he and Ernest Albrecht join forces to produce  something original and relevant. Well, have you a better idea?

Oh, boy! The Super Duper Bowl is now I think in progress. Sorry for my disrespect. Or is it Hit-Attraction Envy?  Millions tuned in around the world. 

Know what? I am afraid to bring up the Carson and Barnes website, fearing the worst.

Need I say any more?

See you down the road, luvs, as Billy Barton would once write. Rest in peace, Billy.

How Hollywood Wreaks Havoc on Broadway Musicals --- Flies Higher Creating Its Own

 

LATEST EXAMPLE of how Hollywood can turn a Broadway smash into a 5-star bomb is Cats, based on the Broadway phenomenon, and declared by one of its hissing critics (20% Rotten Tomatoes) , “catastrophic.”  I saw the bloated stage show once, and once was more than enough.  And, no I am not a knee-jerk Andrew Lloyd Weber hater – I saw Phantom of the Opera five times. 

FROM THE WOBBLY  get-go, musicals are like rambunctious children refusing to grow up. And even when they manage to bust Broadway and grab a few Tony's on the run, chances are, most of them that make it back to revival row will be subjected to “rethinking” and “re-imagining,” by self-appointed experts, who are just as likely to convert  good-enough material into ground breaking drivel.   And then there is Tinseltown – beware!  All that money, all those lavish sets!  All those interfering stars and marketing hustlers behind the scenes pushing a stage darling into an overwrought embarrassment  — everything that a musical does not need.  The producers of Cats promised "astonishing new technology." Can you spell   o v e r  - p r o d u c e d? 

 It's About the Songs, Stupid!

WHENEVER I GO near a movie adaptation, I best try forgetting that I ever saw the original stage show. But with The  King & I,  how can I not be shocked by the criminal absence of three Rodgers and Hammerstein gems -- I Have Dreamed, My Lord and Master, and  the comic masterpiece,  Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?  High Treason! Worse yet,  we are made to  suffer through a tediously long middle section, devoid of song, about Anna and the King  getting ready to host their English visitors, which feels more like a period piece in  minuet-land, all of which leads to a tiresomely repetitious 14-minute-long ballet, The Small House of Uncle Thomas.             
 

The Shocking Truth About Maria

I AM NOW going to movie musicals, or they to me, with but one default expectation: Just entertain me and keep all the talking down to a bare a minimum. This new attitude was hastened by disclosures in recent years of how the The sound of Music is almost a total fairy tale.  Did you know that the real Maria could not play a guitar? That the real Maria did not teach those Trapp darlings how to sing Do-Re-Mi? That the real Maria did no fall in love with the Captain, and that the real Maria  was hated by the Captain’s real-life oldest daughter?  
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  Climb Every Mountain – At Your Own Risk
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OH AND YES, among other shameless fabrications, had the family actually  followed the dictates of Climb Every Mountain and escaped over those singing hills,  they would have ended warbling out their favorite things in the backyard of one Adolf Hitler.       

IN FACT,  by one account, the Trapp boarded a street car for Italy; by another, they walked out of town.  I will give Oscar Hammerstein II a pass on this almost fraudulent  glorification.  He  did not write the libretto, but composed more great lyrics under the cloud of a cancer diagnosis.  One of Broadway’s true giants would be gone, only nine months after his last musical reached Breakaway. 

AND THEN CAME the movie, which only made the musical sweeter and longer.  And the critics  even nastier.  They tossed out the score’s two most sophisticated songs, numbers that had given the original work a little dramatic relief — How Can Live Survive? and No Way to Stop It.  With Oscar gone, Dick composed two ditties of his own, one, the atrociously awful Something Good.  By then, the critics were onto this flimsy con job,  Pauline Kael calling it a “sugar coated lie,“ Bosley Crowther,  “romantic nonsense and sentiment.” Judith Crist deemed the film suitable  for  "the five to seven set and all their mommies.”

                          Cary Grant's Cole Porter Charade

 

ALL OF THESE revelations have given me a reformed disposition to enjoy, guilt-free, whatever Hollywood may have to offer, however flagrantly untrue.  Creating from scratch, Tinseltown  would whip up a string of captivating originals through the 1949s-1950s.  

SO LET US advance to another fairy tale (pun not intended) masquerading as a true-to-life bio, the movie Night and Day, allegedly about the life of Cole Porter. Back in 1946, had the producers even wanted to, a Hollywood code would have disallowed them from depicting any element of Porter’s well-known homosexuality.  And so the film focuses on Porter’s platonic relationship to wife Linda, with whom he spent much time abroad traveling museums and sites, oddly not shown here.

WHAT DOES Night and Day do right?  Plenty.  First and foremost, this bright winning treatment in rich technicolor from Warner Bros. keeps those fabulous Porter songs rolling steadily along, the haunting title tune, a recurring motif that I never tire of hearing.  Glib supporting players include Monte Wolly, Eve Arden,  and Mary Martin.  Cary Grant’s charm is a pleasure unto itself.  
 
ALL OF WHICH makes this treat so much easier to love than De-Lovely, the 2004 film about Porter that in its own way may be  just as much fairy tale, working overtime to build up a great heterosexual love between Cole and Linda.  Director Irwin Winkler's  straining overreach can't help itself -- speculatively, Porter experts would argue  --  from having Cole impregnate Linda, who soon after miscarries.  In fact, the real Linda did suffer a miscarriage.  But she was a social climber and lesbian who latched onto Porter's rising star, and pursued her own affairs with women while Cole pursued his, relentlessly -- not a one of them significantly fleshed out here.  No wonder the film split the critics (48% Rotten), Rex Reed libeling it  "phony .... wooden, artificial, contrived." 
                                                                                           .

Another white wash? Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd as Cole and Linda

"De-Lousy" -- Los Angeles Times
 

BACK TO Cary Grant. To its credit, Night and  Day effectively dramatizes Cole’s tragic fall from a horse, and this scene  brought tears to my eyes, knowing that, through dozens of operations  on his right leg to merely save it,  he would yet turn out more marvelous  songs.  Kiss Me Kate gave us, in my view, his greatest ballad ever, So In Love.  (I have never known a piece of music and a circus aerialist to connect so thrillingly as when Ringling star Gerard Soules flew to the  pounding pulse of this mesmerizing number.)  A noteworthy Cole  Porter 1950 flop, Out of This World, supplied an abundance of the man’s magic, including a song dropped on the road to opening night, From This Moment On, which Frank Sinatra and others would later immortalize: Two more Broadway  hits, in Can Can, and Silk Stockings, kept Cole Porter’s name alive in the l950s.                                              

Frank Sinatra’s Nearly Perfect Joey 

FRANK SINATRA'S  Pal Joey on screen is so good, I have bought the DVD.  Purists complain of its botching up the original, in which, in the end, Joey walks off alone; this, they rightly argue, marked a realism that distinguished Pal Joey from others of the day.  In the movie, Joey walks off arm in arm  with Linda English (Kim Novak in perfect form). And, all the years, later, I say – so what.  I have grown to like the sunnier ending, and, besides, how could anyone dump Kim Novak?  The witty, worldly screenplay does not flinch from  making clear the kept nature of Joey’s relationship to Vera Simpson (Rita Hayward)  All players are superb.  And what a sublime treat  are the songs of Rodgers and Heart, especially those crooned by Sinatra, then at his vocalizing prime.

Through the heather on the hill ... 

Never was a movie musical more enchanting

    
WITH THE exception of Pal Joey and Brigadoon, none of my other other favorite movie musicals are Broadway adaptions, which usually run well over two hours — Sound of Music at 174 minutes  may be longer on film than on stage. South Pacific at 166, My Fair Lady at 172.  One thing my favorites have in common is that they all clock in under two hours, thank you: The Band Wagon, Gigi, Singin' in the Rain, Holiday Inn. Joey wraps up in 114 minutes, Brigadoon in 108, Singin’ at 103. 

HOLLYWOOD MAY have learned that telling the truth won’t get you a crowd.  A recent big screen hit was Hugh Jackman’s historically empty The Greatest Showman, another high-flying fairy tale makeover with a winning modern score,  that at least in one respect meets my criteria: Only 105 minutes long.

And that’s entertainment!

1.20.20

Remembering Circus Report Founder Don Marcks: End of the Road

Seventh and last in a series 

Don in the 1970s

The day was Sunday. Don Marcks did not know that I spent my 50th birthday with him, at his house.  I did not play up my birthdays.  I had more intimate friends, and there was always that reserve about  Don, but we shared circus, the reason for my having invited myself over, as I had many times before. 

Now, that is how I intended to open this post, but that is not exactly true. I discovered, when returning to my weekly At-A-Glance booklet for the year, a more  specific reason for my seeking  Don’s company: This I wrote: “Why Marcks?  Because I’ve known him longer than any of my other friends, and we share circus”

I point this out because, memory alone can be a careless editor, which is to say that some things in these posts may be inaccurate constructions of what actually happened.  Oh, how a  single document can be such a beautiful thing!
                                    
Our personal lives were rarely if ever discussed other than Don now and then talking about a woman he was trying to date, or more likely, hoping to.  His romantic pursuits felt to me a bit more like a pattern more than a passion.

Aches and Pains -- and More

The most intimate encounter I ever had with  Don was in the ICU at Doctor’s Hospital in Richmond, only a few miles from where he lived. He had survived some medical crisis — he would suffer many — and was hopefully on the mend. I could tell it had shaken him to the core.  He looked into my eyes almost with tears, and practically reached out to hold my hand, and, as if making a sacred vow, promised to continue on and make Circus Report even bigger and better than ever. I knew it was the great love of his life.

He almost never took a vacation. And rarely, to my knowledge, exercised.  The only time that Circus Report subscribers missed copies was when Don was hospitalized, usually announcing in advance of having to take so many weeks off. He suffered many medical problems through the years.

    Resisting Rivals

Don did have an ego. He coveted his position in the CFA, as a prominent and maybe senior member of the  Joseph Andrew Rowe tent. So prominent, that when another local fan, new I think to the CFA, made waves about wanting to reboot the dormant group, Don spoke harshly of the fellow – as if a move was afoot to topple his position. 

Don  grew suspicious of people offering to help out with Circus Report.  Two locals from Berkeley wrote him with such an offer, the implication being that there would be someone to carry on when his time had passed..

Nov. 6, 1983:  “She says I ought to relax the strings a bit and not work so hard, but I’m not in favor of their helping out ... I keep getting the feeling they just want to see how things are done and go get a chance to see what money comes, in. etc.”

The next time I visited Don  he brought up the matter, pulling out the letter.  I encouraged him to consider that their motives might be genuine.  And there before my eyes, he tore it up almost in a peevish fit, and threw it into a waste basket. 

The Gift of Praise

The greatest compliment he ever gave me was to bring up the subject of my book, Behind the Big Top, and to tell me how books like mine had never been written before.  More than that, how it seemed to me like he had made a conscious effort to force himself out of his comfort zone in order to make his recognition known.  I regarded this as a supreme compliment, coming from Don.  Touched by the adulation, yet there had been other books, by Dexter Fellows and by William Coup, that candidly covered some of the darker aspects of circus life, such as grift and animal abuse.  Another time, Don offered me my own regular space in the paper for a weekly column. I wrote to him of my gratitude, telling him of my fears that I would write something that got us both in hot water. I had not contributed a single piece since my Irvin Feld story.

 A Long and Long-Forgotten-Why Silence

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There came an impasse between us, a wordless falling out if you will.  There had been no arguments, nothing dramatic, just perhaps, on both sides, a growing number of  irks and perceived slights forming a mass of vague, lingering resentment.  Either of us could easily have lifted the phone and dialed the other’s number, and likely, the conversation would have flowed on.

In his last letter to me, dated Dec. 3, 1995, Don ended by talking about a showboat model he had been working on, having discarded one and now considering a second try at another: “Only recently found some folks who have knowledge of the thing, because of their study or River Boats  - who knows, it might arise from the ashes, as they say.”

We never arose from our own ashes.  I have no letters from him during all of 1996, not a single one.  Which even intrigues me to try recalling what might have silenced our dialogue

My subscription came up that year for renewal in October. $40 a year.  I had grown, frankly, a little  disengaged by the papers particular style  — unless there was something he had done that set me off and hastened the cancellation.  In the last issue I have, Oct. 28, 1996, Billy Barton’s column is missing. Perhaps he had been gone for some time.

And so I decided to spend my money, instead, on the Bandwagon, and in a brief note, dated 10/22/96, made this known to Don, singing off  “Good luck on CR’s future ...”

Yes, I know, the sound of betrayal.

Seven years later, on  April 3, 2003, Donald Salisbury Marcks passed away at the ageof  80.  He left behind his widow, Martha.  I believe she was the woman at the post office who had through the years been of great support to Don in his weekly send outs. 

                      A Circus Auctioned to the Wind

Truly saddest of all, Don left his model circus to Richard Tuck’s then-in-the-planning Playland Not at the Beach on San Pablo Avenue in El Cerritos, where it would be displayed in separate cases. And when the museum closed in 2018, the circus, like every thing else, was auctioned off in sections.  A terrible pity that it could not have been offered to a single entity, such as one of the circus museums.

The house at 525 Oak Street  is no longer recognizable as the one I knew when I visited Don.  The large side yard of grass upon which stood the old shed where his model circus was kept, is now a faded pink, one-story motel-like apartment house. In that long-gone shed, a  twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy had once stood in rapt awe while  the builder of the wagons opened large trunks to take out one, and then another, for the boy to see and to hold.  To his eyes, they were the most magical objects he had ever seen.  And from that same house on Oak Street, for thirty four years there had gone out a weekly circus paper to subscribers near and far.

Bill and Jan Biggerstaff bought Circus Report after Don died, and did a fine job of keeping it in circulation, twice a month, for the next nineteen years.  Now it, too, is history.

And thus, the story of my friendship with fellow circus fan Don Marcks comes to a close.  One day maybe, I will be on a bus going up  San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito, and get off to walk up to Mechanics Bank on the corner of Fairmount --- where I got off a bus one day long ago, to walk five blocks up and make a left on Oak.

P.S. today at 4:35 PM, I just went down to my mail box to find the last last issue of Circus Report. It feels so bleak and sad, like a defining death that I can't put into words. I don't want to put into words. As if, trying, some kind of a reigning light above the whole of what we had has gone out. Thank you, Bill and Jan,  for keeping it going as long as you did.  Goodbye, Circus Report, good bye.

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Next week, looking back years later: A friendship formed in the church of sawdust and spangles.

All of Don’s letters will eventually join my archives at Illinois State University’s Milnar Library

first posted 12.31.19

Circus Staggering Into 2020: Say Goodbye to One Dreary Decade, But Don’t Put Your Dreams Away - Not Yet

Sequence 8 from 7 Fingers 

New Circus companies combines diverse forms, 

including aerial  and acrobatic arts 

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FACING 2020 feels more to me facing a  new century.  Blame it on my having lived through too much disappearing circus history in the last ten years —  or did I inherit this feeling the moment Kenneth Feld announced that he was shutting down Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey for good?

SO MANY CLOSINGS give me pause, and you, too?, to wonder if there is to be a future for what is now more frequently being called  “traditional circus.” I merely call it, pardon me, circus.  Is South Pacific a traditional musical?  Gone with The Wind, a traditional movie?

THOSE TWO WORDS  may mark a condescending dismissal by a class of culture vultures who inwardly despise what circus has meant to the masses.  And so they hold a patronizing stance, while waiting for the last dog to leave the tent, the last scary clown to renounce his greasepaint and join Old Clowns Anonymous.  Waiting and ready, honing their skills in classrooms and lofts, parks  and on small stages, to make their case in larger venues as the only option left, and therefore, theoretically more marketable to the public at large. Indeed, their day may be upon us.  Read the reviews in CircusTalk, and behold. 

THE TRAUMATIC FOLD fold, two years ago,  of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey opened the gates for “new circus” advocates to assume a greater,  more believable force.  In fact, I think it is far more honest  of them to call themselves “New Circus”  and let “circus” alone stand.  Drop the “traditional.” Some New Circus enthusiasts proclaim to be witnessing a “renaissance” of what they call “circus arts.” This may be so, but it is  not a renaissance  of circus, period.  Need I even try explaining why?

7 FINGERS, a collective among early-day innovators, with roots in the old Pickle Family Circus,  set out to humanize the face of performers, as if driven to prove themselves well educated, intellectually engaged, and normal.  To make clear that they are not related in any way shape or form to that vulgar  old world of Barnum & Bailey.  The exotic other worldly mystique of circus was purged, clowns and animals removed.  The luckiest of these troupes  are finding some success, albeit with funding, before audiences who patronize theater and ballet.   To its credit, 7 Fingers does not hang “circus” on its moniker, but, to be sure and safe, they talk it up aplenty, obviously to draw in the kind of ticket buyers who want some circus acts but not the circus.  

THE TEST OF WHAT SELLS:  When did you  last see a TV promo from Cirque du Soleil or any other new circus promising any of the following:

AWESOME CHARACTER ARCS!
SPINE TINGLING SOLILOQUIES! 
BRAIN-BUSTING BODY MOVEMENT!
THRILLING TEXTUAL THROUGH-LINE CONNECTIONS!

When? 

CURRENTLY FOR ME, the most interesting thing to observe is how all this will all play out. To wonder if, out there somewhere lurks a showman yet to surface who can make circus thrive again.  More likely, the ageless delight may yet rebound, come a day imagined, long in the future,  when cultural shifts favor the public’s re-embracement of circus’s  defining staples.  Americans may then again accept circus based on a new, more trusting pact between themselves and the owner-producers — a pact more open and transparent where animals may once again be welcome in the tent.

IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE so magical, instructive,  and inspiring an enterprise as animal training being outlawed forever. 

IN RECENT TIMES,  a segment of the young clamor to hear new pop recordings on vinyl, as in LP.   Down at Issues on Piedmont Avenue, near where I live, a surprising show of younger people flock to the shelves, to consider a dazzling array of books and magazines from far and wide. Can you spell p a p e r?

So, too, the circus? 

Circus may be down, but don’t count ten yet.  

To quote Douglas McPherson from London: “Let’s hope these twenties roar like the previous one!”

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:
 .

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