Circus

Monday, Apr. 18, 1932....Time Magazine....

Outside in the rain Manhattan traffic ground endlessly by with scarcely a pause where small boys cluttered the sidewalk under the big electric sign of Madison Square Garden. But inside it was a different world. Harlem Negroes, East Side Jews, a rag, tag & bobtail from the four corners of New York jostled Park Avenue socialites in the corridors. A dozen languages merged into a humming background for the sharp cries of men selling balloons, noisemakers, dolls, mickeymice, pink lemonade gone modern in bottles, popcorn, peanuts (5¢ outside, 10¢ within), frankfurters and colored parasols. Over all sounded the neighing of horses, bellowing of elephants, laughing of hyenas, screeching of monkeys. The Garden's roof was a maze of ropes and wires, its floor a carpet of earth, sawdust and manure. In the air blue with tobacco smoke hung an odor as unmistakable as it is complex— acrid wild animal mixed with sawdust, hemp, tar, leather and gunpowder—the immemorial smell of Circus.

A trumpet split the air, gates swung wide. Past the slim, tail-coated form of Ringmaster Fred Bradna lumped a big bull elephant to herald the 166th year of American circus and the 13th season of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, which no longer needs to bill itself as "The Greatest Show on Earth." For John Ringling, sole survivor of Barnum & Bailey and the seven brothers Rüngeling of Baraboo, Wis., it was his 54th season of showmanship, which began with a pin-show in an Iowa barn and now undisputedly monopolizes U. S. circus entertainment. The monopoly consists of six big tent shows, four of which this year will carry Circus into all profitable corners of the land.

Circus in the U. S. is still a glorification of the Animal Kingdom. From, the opening act ("FIVE HERDS OF GIANT AND BABY JUNGLE ACTORS PERFORMING SIMULTANEOUSLY IN FIVE RINGS. AFTER THEIR AMAZING ACTS THESE HUGE BEASTS, AUGMENTED BY YET OTHERS, WILL BE MASSED IN FORMIDABLE FORMATION, PRESENTING THE MOST IMPOSING ELEPHANTINE COLUMN OF ALL TIME") to the closing one ("HUGO ZACCHINI, THE HUMAN PROJECTILE, A LIVING PERSON SHOT HEADLONG THROUGH SPACE WITH TERRIFIC FORCE FROM THE MOUTH OF A MONSTER CANNON") 1932-5 biggest tent show is an exhibition of the glamour, fantasy, strength, skill, ingenuity and courage of animals high & low.

Sick Star. Last year's Circus premiere was saddened by the absence of Lillian Leitzel, famed trapezist who was killed in Copenhagen (TIME, Feb. 23, 1931). This year's absentee was Goliath II, the 5,000-Ib. sea-elephant who, with his friend Goliath I, brought the lower animals back into their own at a time when they were threatened with being eclipsed by aerialists, acrobats and human freaks. Circus-man Ringling bought the two Goliaths in Hamburg four years ago, exhibited the larger and elder until he died, then brought forth his understudy, who by then weighed some 4.000 Ib. and was getting his growth. For two seasons spectators gaped at Goliath II as he was carried around the arena in a motor truck, snorting like thunder, gulping fat herring by the barrel.

Insanely popeyed, ponderously oozy, hideously fierce of tusk and whisker, a full-grown sea-elephant suggests some monstrous abortion of the animal kingdom's primal urge. Shrewd John Ringling told the public about sea elephants through Calvin Coolidge. When he took his circus to Washington in 1928 Mr. Ringling called at the White House, casually mentioned to President Coolidge that he had a sea elephant in the show. Mr. Coolidge nodded his head, went to see for himself. He discovered that the sea elephant is just an overgrown species of seal (Mirunga leoninus or patagonica), carnivorous, mammalian, with a flexible proboscis, hind limbs so rudimentary that they look like a big tail; broad, flat for ward flippers for swimming and spanking the young. For Mr. Coolidge's pleasure Goliath I devoured 50 Ib. of herring. Six months later a shark got into his enclosure off Sarasota. bit a piece out of his neck, probably caused his death.

This year is Goliath IIs fifth in captivity, and as winter waned at his Florida quarters he began to grow listless, sluggish. He would not eat. His cavernous trumpetings became dismal, froggy croaks. Trainers, seeing the remaining half of a $10,000 investment shedding weight at the rate of 10 Ib. a day, called doctor after doctor, but no physician's hand could feel that flapping pulse, no stethoscope could reveal the disorder beneath a hide thick as a truck tire. Last week Goliath II still lay in Sarasota and the Circus went on without him.

But there remained some 1,000 wild animals including 40-odd elephants, twoscore lions & tigers, a pair of rhinoceroses, three giraffes (the fourth broke his neck looking at the scenery between Sarasota and New York), many a seal (the best known of which plays crazily on a horn), and a variegated assortment of porcupines, camels, cranes, storks, milgai, kangaroos, monkeys, baboons, dromedaries, tapirs, leopards, hippopotamuses, hyenas, bears, gnus, parrots & macaws, deer, pumas, an audad, a bok and a gemsbuck. There were many horses (735 by the program) and many a zebra. There were such subhuman animals as The Men from Mars (albino Negroes), Cliko the Bushman (who reads philosophy when not exhibiting himself), giants, giantesses, midgets, snake charmers, contortionists, fat ladies, a Whirling Dervish, the Rubberneck Man. five Ubangi women with wooden discs in their lips (circumference: 14 in.) and The Vegetable Man whose aberration is paring potatoes to look like rosebuds.

Three Rings, Two Stages. Though the freaks were there, they wore a casual, civilized air. For the ballyhoo of the late great Phineas Taylor Barnum is gone from the circus when it exhibits in Manhattan. It returns only in the smaller towns, increasing in intensity as the size of the towns decreases. Last week's spectators were content to sit quietly and watch the main show, going in three rings and on two stages continuously for three and one-half hours. Chief attractions:

Clyde Beatty, 27, of Chillicothe, Ohio, "THE FEARLESS & YOUTHFUL TRAINER DEMONSTRATING MAN'S POWER OVER FEROCIOUS BEASTS OF THE JUNGLE." While lurid red lights play on a circular cage in the centre ring. Trainer Beatty, armed with whip, chair and blank-loaded revolver, assembles some 40 lions & tigers, puts them through paces. The beasts snarl, hiss, roar, paw each other and Mr. Beatty, but nobody is hurt. The lions & tigers are frequently stubborn, which gives Mr. Beatty an opportunity to demonstrate his undeniable courage. Sometimes one will leap at him; then his revolver makes lightning in the dim cage and the beast receives a whiplash. Two laconic old lions, Kazan and Nero, are at once the most recalcitrant and the most easily subdued. Spectators inclined to think that it is all just good-natured fun may remember that two months ago Nero subdued Trainer Beatty, put him in the hospital with a badly torn leg (TIME, Feb. 8).

Dorothy Herbert, beauteous equestrienne, who sits glued to her sidesaddle while her horse does everything but stand on its head. Clad mostly in gauze, she goes over a flaming jump, departs reclining comfortably on the back of her rearing horse.

The Wallenda Troupe, high wire performers. Two Wallendas stand on the wire, a pole upon their shoulders. On the pole is a chair. Standing on the chair is another Wallenda. Standing on the shoulders of this Wallenda is the fourth (female) Wallenda. Spectators gasp when the chair jerks dangerously, look apprehensively at the 20 attendants holding a canvas for poles, chair and four Wallendas.

Alfredo Codona, world's No. 1 trapezist since the death of Lillian Leitzel (his wife). Slight Gymnast Codona does swings, turns, somersaults with perfect timing, nonchalantly dives into the net when something goes wrong. Only aerialist in the world able to do a triple somersault from one trapeze to the hands of an assistant, he accomplishes this feat sometimes, at other times tries twice and gives up. For the cinema he has done his triple somersault several times: once in Variety, filmed in Berlin's Winter Garden six years ago; once in Polly of the Circus (when he wore a blond wig. doubled for Marion Davies), once in Tarzan of the Apes (doubling for Johnny Weissmuller) and in a slow-motion short, Swing High, soon to be released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Hugo Zacchini. In spite of doctors' objections. Signer Zacchini climbs into the mouth of a huge cannon mounted on a motor truck, smears himself with soot, is propelled by compressed air 150 ft. into a net as a big firecracker goes off.

Clowns. One hundred "Joeys" (from Joe Grimaldi, famed clown) operate explosive Fords, ride horses, asses and zebras, tumble, fight, imitate comic strip characters, allow themselves to be shot, kicked, mashed and butted, perform circusdom's oldest act—the Fire Alarm.

Splendor, Majesty 8 Fellows— Not vastly different from its predecessors. iQ32's circus is bigger & better—by the addition of a half-dozen more elephants, one rhinoceros, a few other animals and several acts. This year of Depression the Ringling-owned Robinson and Sparks circuses will not perform. Their properties have to some extent been apportioned among the four other shows: Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey, Sells-Floto, Hagenbeck-Wallace and Al G. Barnes. Throughout the spring and summer these four circuses will play an average of five days a week (twice a day) throughout the U. S., the big show in the large cities of the East and South, if the South is not too poor (last year the Big Tent was folded early in Atlanta). Sells-Floto further west, Hagenbeck-Wallace and Barnes in smaller cities and towns.

In the chief cities it visits the big show is preceded by an oldish, gentle-voiced, persuasive man named Dexter Fellows. He will walk into newspaper offices, announce that spring (or summer or autumn) and the circus are coming, then plunge into an alliterative orgy. Reporters (as did Manhattan reporters last fortnight) will write of his arrivals in such terms as these:

"Noah, St. Vitus and P. T. Barnum. quaffing their mead in Valhalla today, felt a springtime itching in their wings. . . . Old Man Barnum called: 'Hey, Dexter!' The calliope struck up The Fountains of Rome," four blonde female heralds trotted into the ring, and cross-legged upon the forehead of Romie, the biggest elephant, Col. Fellows himself, in the flesh and in a chipper mood, approached. . . .''

"Parking a penguin and a marmoset upon the city editor's desk, Dexter Fellows . . ."

"A fine upstanding figure of a man with a long green beard and blue spectacles . . ."

They will quote him as promising "battalions of buffoons, boy; broadcasting button-bursting brusqueries; blithe boobies, bubbling with blarney; banish bile, beggar bulletins, bandy badinage. . . ."

Actually Pressagent Dexter Fellows promises nothing more universe-toppling than "more scintillating splendor, more educational effort, more magnificent majesty, peanuts 5¢ a bag." Pressed for facts, he will admit that peanuts may cost 10¢. To anyone who really wants to know the weight of an elephant, the cost of an act, the number of horses in the show. Pressagent Fellows is more likely to give a low figure than a high one. Conservative by nature, he has learned that newsmen incline naturally to hyperbole, gives them their heads. He never complains about anything they write of him. Gentle, he admits that daring stunts make his hands sweat. He would rather look at animal acts.