The Circus World Museum is a large museum complex in Baraboo, Wisconsin devoted to circus-related history. The museum, which features not only circus artifacts and exhibits, but also hosts daily live circus performances throughout the summer, is owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society, and operated by the non-profit Circus World Museum Foundation. The museum was the major participant in the Great Circus Parade held from 1985 to 2009.
Circus World Museum is located in Baraboo, Wisconsin, because Baraboo was home to the Ringling Brothers. It was from Baraboo in 1884 that the Ringling Brothers Circus began their first tour as a circus. Over six seasons, the circus expanded from a wagon show to a railroad show with 225 employees, touring cities across the United States each summer. Baraboo remained the circus's headquarters and wintering grounds until 1918, when the Ringling Brothers Circus combined with the Barnum and Bailey Circus, which the Ringling Brothers had bought out in 1908. The combined entity, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, was very successful, and is the largest surviving circus company in the United States.
In 1954, John M. Kelley, a former attorney for the Ringling Brothers, incorporated Circus World Museum with the intent of forming a museum of the Ringling Brothers Circus and circus history in general. By this time the popularity of circuses and other live shows was declining in favor of new media, such as television. After an initial period of organization and fundraising, the museum acquired a large site in Baraboo that included the former wintering grounds of the Ringling Brothers Circus. This site was deeded to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (now called the Wisconsin Historical Society) to be used as the museum's location, and Circus World Museum opened to the public on July 1, 1959.
Owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society, the museum sits on some of the land owned by the Ringlings, and includes eight of the ten remaining Ringling buildings on the grounds. Circus World Museum holds one of the largest collections of circus materials in the world, including circus wagons, posters, photography, and artifacts used by shows from all over the United States. The museum also has smaller collections of Wild West shows and carnival materials.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
....Circus World Museum..Baraboo....
Show Business: The Greatest Showman on Earth
Monday, May. 04, 1970
TIME MAGAZINE
The Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus is:
1) Just a three-ring circus
2) Owned by a brother named Ringling or North or Barnum or Bailey
3) Dying
4) All of these
5) None of these
THE right answer is No. 5. In this, the 100th year of the road show originated by Phineas T. Barnum, the Ringling Brothers extravaganza is so healthy that it is actually a six-ring circus—two separate, full-scale circuses traveling two different itineraries. Last week the "Blue company" was playing Madison Square Garden while the "Red company" was packing them in in Birmingham. Each, naturally, was billed as "The Greatest Show on Earth."
The double superlative may not be as illogical as it sounds. The Blue company features Mexico's "Flying Gaonas, the first family of the air"; Tito Gaona, who performs the triple somersault, is regarded as the greatest "flyer" in circus history. "Death-Defying Jose Guzman" rides a motorcycle up a wire to the roof of the auditorium, carrying with him a trapeze on which his wife Monique does acrobatic maneuvers. For a finale, Ringling's "human missiles," the Zacchinis, are fired from a cannon almost simultaneously. In the South, the Red company's program includes Sweden's "Unbelievable Lindstroms," who ride the high wire, all three of them balancing from a single unicycle; Bulgaria's Silagis, generally acknowledged as the world's most dazzling teeterboard act; and Gunther Gebel-Williams, a wild-animal tamer so impressive that Irvin Feld spent $2,000,000 to buy out an entire circus (belonging to Gunther's then mother-in-law) just to land him.
Folded Tent. Irvin Feld? The man behind that little-known name is the reason that the circus has lived to 100.
Feld got into the act in 1956, when John Ringling North, nephew of the founding brothers, was so beset by debt and besieged by TV that he announced the folding of his tents. The next morning Feld was on the phone, telling North, "Your methods are antiquated, and I have the solution." The solution was to get out of the big top and into the new arenas that were being built and that Feld, as a jazz and rock-'n'-roll promoter, knew how to book.
That idea alone saved the circus the salaries of 1,000 roustabouts. Feld, hired as a consultant, soon reduced the payroll even further, from 1,542 to 300.
"We cut out the freaks and the sideshow," he says, "because it was making fun of people and sickening to me."
He started a clown college to train replacements for Ringling's creaky old comic crew (average age: 66). And he changed what he calls "the Las Vegas look" of the circus—a polite way of saying that he hired showgirls who did not look quite so shopworn.
Traveling to Europe, where great acts are still born and bred, Feld at one point scouted 46 Continental circuses in 35 days. He still crosses the Atlantic six times a year to beat Ed Sullivan to the talent. "Once in a while," says Feld, "after a couple of weeks on dusty lots in the midst of a blazing Italian summer, you get the feeling you've seen everything. Then, out of the blue comes an act so spectacular that you get shivers up your spine." Feld quickly signs it up. The Blue show this year alone added 27 acts never seen in the U.S. before, while the Red boasts 21.
By 1967, the circus was worth $8,000,000, and Feld bought it, with financing from his brother Israel and Houston Astrodome Builder Roy Hofheinz. The deal, in a publicity stunt worthy of Barnum, was ceremoniously sealed in the center of the Roman Colosseum.
Payola Pioneer. Says Feld, 52 next week, "I began dreaming of owning 'the big one' when I was a kid. I'd just been bar mitzvahed when I went off with my brother to pitch snake oil on the Pennsylvania carnival circuit." At 13, Irv and Older Brother Izzie were pulling in $500 a week all summer. That led eventually to ownership of a drugstore in the black ghetto of Washington, D.C., where he took on a line of phonograph records and soon began to produce them. He helped to develop the now illegal "payola" system of bribing radio stations to plug his records, and in the 1950s, he launched concert tours with artists like Lionel Hampton, Nat King Cole and Fats Domino. "I was the first one to say," he claims, that "the big bands were going to die and be replaced by rhythm and blues." Feld's talent discoveries included Errol Garner and Paul Anka. But, in what may be the monumental show-biz goof of all times, he decided not to sign on the Beatles when he saw them in 1963.
Today, as president and producer of the circus, Feld keeps on talent hunting despite cataracts that force him to wear glasses as thick as Coke-bottle bottoms; an aide usually walks with him lest he trip over rigging hidden in the circus sawdust. Feld's major concerns today include quickening the pace of his Red and Blue shows; both are already trimmed to about two hours and 55 minutes. He is also moving into the merchandising of some 200 Ringling Bros.-labeled products from bed sheets to vitamins—an operation that will add at least $1,000,000 to the circus' $16 million gross this year. And as he puffs on a Dino cigar and pops a Gelusil tablet for heartburn, he plots his next expansion of the circus itself. By 1973, he counts on fielding a third three-ring unit in the States and another to tour Europe. "In this day of sex, violence and X-rated movies," figures Irvin Feld, "what else can you take the entire family to?"
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943813,00.html
Thursday, August 06, 2009
....RBBB Gold Unit at Coney Island....
Our daughter, Elizabeth, 15 is an aspiring film producer. She made this short presentation regarding Ringling's appearance in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York, August 2009. It runs 8 1/2 minutes and is her first "major" project.
I have a feeling that I will be investing in some more sophisticated video equipment in the very near future.
We enjoyed the show very much. Lots of energy, A+ lighting and music, very fine assemblage of International circus acts.
.........................
Mike Naughton
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
....Here Come The Elephants....
....RBBB Blue Unit Elephants 1979....
....Polack Bros Elephants....
....Ringling Elephant's....
....Hanneford's Elephants....
....The Frisco Elephants....
....Bucky and Gee Gee....
....Tarzan Zerbini Circus....
....The cast....
....The center ring....
....The Lot....
....The Big Top....
....The Elephants..Presented by Anthony Thomas..Grandson of John 'Tarzan'Zerbini....
....Set Up....
....Rocky....
....Nice shot....
....The Liberty Act....
....Getting ready for the show....
....The Figueva Dogs....
....More Elephants....
....My Favorite..Elephants....
....Anthony Thomas..son of Patty Zerbini and Gary Thomas..
....Tarzan Zerbini....
....Hunt Bros Circus 1963....
....Elephants....
....Sideshow Bally....
....Hunt Bros 1963....
....Lee and Hazel Bradley....
....Roy Bush and Chandre....
....Roy Bush....
