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THE  CIRCUS  KINGS 
Our  Ringling  Family  Story 


^' 


•f^ 


August  Rungeling  (Ringling)  m.  Marie  Salome  Juliar 


1 


-1898 


I 

Albert (Al) 

1352-1916 


\ 

August 

1854-1907 


Born  in  Ostheim.near 
Colmar,  Alsace-^Lorraine 

-1907 


i 


^ps»> 


'4 


\ 

Ottc      Alfred  (Alfl)    Charles 

1857-1911       1863-1919         1864'1926 

married       married 
Delia  Andrews  Edith  Conwa; 

1869- 


Richard 
married 
Aubrey  Black 

I 
Mable 


married 
James  A,  Haley 


—  Robert 

1897-1950 

married 
Virginia  Sullivan 

I — ^ — n 

^ames       Charles        p 


Hester  — 

1893- 

married 
Louis  lanaster 


1 


Stuart   Charles 


married 

Irene  Bauernfein 


matried 
Charles  E,  Sanford 


f 


Nicholas  3uUar  married  Helena  Etling 


Helena 


4'A- 


#M^^^^^ 


-^ 


1 

John 

866-1936 

Harried 
\able  Burton 

1875-1929 


married 
mily  Haag 
Buck 


1 1 

Henry        Ida 

1868-1918      1874-1950 

married 
Hem-y  W  North 


r 


ohn  RtngUng  North   Henry  Ringling  North-. 


1903- 

married 
5ane  Donelly 

married 
sermaine  Au55ey 


1909- 

married 
Ada  Thornburgh 


^ohnRitigling;  North  II 


mamed 
Elizabeth  Palmer  Barnum 


1 

Salome  — 

1907- 

married 
Roy  Stratton 

Salome' 

married 

R,L.Wad5Worth 
I 
Randolph 


UNIVERSITY 
OF  FLORIDA 
LIBRARIES 


COLLEGE  LIBRARY 


THE  CIRCUS  KINGS 


THE 
CIRCUS  KINGS 

Our  Ringling  Family  Story 


HENRY  RINGLING  NORTH 
AND  ALDEN   HATCH 


Drawings  by  Allene  Gaty  Hatch 


DOUBLEDAY   &   COMPANY,    INC. 

GARDEN   CITY,   NEW   YORK 

i960 


LIBRARY   OF   CONGRESS   CATALOG   CARD    NUMBER    6o— S877 
COP\TUGHT    ©     i960    BY    HENRY    RJNGLING    NORTH    AND    ALDEN    HATCH 

ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 
PRINTED    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 


To  John,  who  filled  a  father's  place  and 
smoothed  my  way  with  gaiety  and  affection. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2011  with  funding  from 

LYRASIS  IVIembers  and  Sloan  Foundation 


http://www.archive.org/details/circuskingsourriOOinnort 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


There  could  hardly  be  a  more  interesting  and  delightful  occupa- 
tion than  collaborating  with  so  many  of  the  North  family  in  writing 
the  story  of  the  circus.  We  include  all  of  them  in  this  tribute. 
Brother  John  Ringling  North  suppHed  many  of  the  most  amusing 
and  valuable  stories.  Mary  Salome  Wadsworth  and  her  husband, 
Randolph  L.  Wadsworth,  added  great  sections  to  the  manuscript 
at  "Mother's  crumbling  mansion"  on  Bird  Key,  as  we  ransacked 
huge  piles  of  memorabilia  to  authenticate  this  work.  And  Charles 
Ringhng's  daughter,  Mrs.  Hester  Ringling  Sanford,  was  Hkewise 
gracious. 

Many  other  people  contributed  to  the  story  from  their  crowded 
memories.  Among  them:  Arthur  M.  Concello,  once  the  world's 
greatest  living  aerialist  and  now  executive  director  of  the  circus; 
Pat  Valdo,  personnel  director,  who  has  served  the  circus  for  almost 
sixty  years;  Mrs.  Alice  Ringling  Coerper. 

Because  of  these  efforts,  we  believe  that  this  is  the  most  authen- 
tic account  possible  of  the  rise,  the  glory,  the  tribulations,  and  the 
renaissance  of  the  beloved  American  institution  which  is  known, 
not  without  justification,  as  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth. 

February  iq6o 


» 


CONTENTS 


Acknowledgments  7 

Part  I     SO  NOF   THE    CIRCUS 

I     Circus-Bom  13 

II     Sawdust  in  my  Shoes  29 

Part  II     THE    SEVEN    BROTHERS 

III  The  First  Parade  47 

IV  Ringltng  Bros.  Classic  and  Comic  Concert  Co.  59 
V     The  Wagon  Show  75 

VI     "The  Sunday-School  Circus"  92 

VII     Bills,  Banners,  and  Bloody  Heads  105 

VIII     Heyday  118 

Part  m     JOHN    RINGLING   AND    THE    NORTHS 

IX     The  Apotheosis  of  John  RingHng  129 

X     The  Broken  Wheel  142 

XI     The  Norths  152 

XII     "The  Big  One"  162 

XIII  In  the  Back  Yard  178 
XVI     The  House  of  John  194 

XV     Bust  and  Boom  206 

XIV  The  Man  from  "Dreamland"  216 
XVII     The  Last  Parade  227 

Part  IV     JOHN    RINGLING    NORTH 

XVIII      We  Norths  Again  241 

XIX     The  First  Fight  for  the  Circus  247 


10 


CONTENTS 


XX 

The  New  Circus 

256 

XXI 

"The  Most  Terrifying  Creature  the  World 

Has  Ever  Seen" 

264 

XXII 

Labor  Pains 

275 

XXIII 

Lady  Godiva  Goes  to  the  World's  Fair 

289 

XXIV 

Bird  Key 

302 

XXV 

Hell  on  Wheels 

309 

XXVI 

The  Hartford  Fire 

320 

XXVII 

How  John  Won  the  Circus 

332 

XXVIII 

"Geared  for  Glory  and  for  Gold" 

344 

XXIX 

The  Dechne  and  Fall  of  the  Big  Top 

360 

XXX 

The  New  and  Future  Circus 

370 

Parti 
SON  OF  THE  CIRCUS 


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6R  e  ATE  ST  I 


CHAPTER   I 


CIRCUS-BORN 


The  circus  is  a  jealous  wench.  Indeed,  that  is  an  understate- 
ment. She  is  a  ravening  hag  who  sucks  your  vitahty  as  a 
vampire  di-inks  blood— who  kills  the  brightest  stars  in  her 
crown  and  who  will  allow  no  private  life  to  those  who  serve 
her;  wrecking  their  homes,  ruining  their  bodies,  and  desti'oy- 


14  SON   OF  THE   CIRCUS 

ing  the  happiness  of  their  loved  ones  by  her  insatiable  de- 
mands. She  is  all  of  these  things,  and  yet,  I  love  her  as  I  love 
nothing  else  on  earth. 

The  circus  can  be  generous,  too,  especially  to  children. 
Sometimes  I  think  that  my  brother  John,  my  sister  Salom6, 
and  I  had  the  most  wonderful  childhood  ever.  Imagine  grow- 
ing up  adored  and  spoiled  by  six  uncles  who  owned  not  one 
circus  but  a  whole  flock  of  circuses,  including  the  two  out- 
standing ones  of  history:  Ringling  Brothers  and  Bamum  & 
Bailey's  "The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth."  That  slogan,  which 
we  adopted  in  1919  when  we  combined  the  two  circuses,  was 
a  stroke  of  sheer  genius  on  the  part  of  the  master  showman, 
Phineas  T.  Barnum.  It  was  also  true;  for  I  firmly  beheve  that 
Ringling  Brothers-Bamum  &  Bailey  is  still  The  Greatest  Show 
on  Earth. 

My  love  affair  with  the  circus  began  at  the  age  of  three, 
when  my  mother,  who  was  the  Ringling  brothers'  only  sister, 
took  rne  to  see  the  show  in  the  Coliseum  in  Chicago.  For  so 
small  a  boy  it  was  mainly  a  gloriously  exciting,  spectacularly 
bespangled  scene  of  utter  confusion.  But  out  of  that  riotous 
afternoon  my  memory  holds  one  picture  as  clear  as  though 
it  were  immortalized  in  Technicolor. 

It  was,  I  imagine,  the  climax  of  the  show,  the  grand  finale. 
While  elephants,  horses,  giraffes,  zebras,  camels,  and  clowns 
circled  the  auditorium  and  aeriahsts  flew  gracefully  through 
the  air  overhead,  a  magnificently  caparisoned  white  horse  was 
led  onto  a  platform  in  the  center  ring.  The  fifty-piece  band 
burst  into  frenzied  circus  music  as  the  platform  with  the  horse 
and  his  brilliantly  uniformed  attendant  began  to  rise  slowly 
upward.  Higher  and  higher  it  went,  past  the  rigging  for  the 
aerial  acts,  past  the  highest  wire,  on  up  to  the  shadowy  dome. 
Glittering  in  the  glare  of  a  white  spotlight,  the  horse  was 
dwarfed  to  pony  size  by  the  immense  height.  He  remained 
suspended  at  the  zenith  for  a  breathless  moment.  Then  tlie 


cracus-BORN  15 

spot  went  out  and  the  platform  erupted  in  fountains  of  golden 
fire  and  jets  of  bursting  stars  from  a  tremendous  display  of 
fireworks. 

Looking  back,  I  strongly  suspect  that  mv  uncle  Al  Ringling, 
who  was  equestrian  director  of  the  Ringhng  show  that  year, 
had  dreamed  up  this  fantasy  and  also  engineered  it.  Even 
tlien  I  thought  it  was  a  strange  thing  to  do  to  a  horse. 

From  the  moment  of  my  indoctrination  I  lived  and  breathed 
circus.  At  that  time,  in  1912,  we  lived  in  Baraboo,  Wisconsin, 
where  my  mother  and  uncles  had  grown  up  and  where  the 
original  Ringling  Brothers  Circus  started  on  its  long  road  in 
nine  wagons,  on  one  of  which  was  a  cage  containing  a  moth- 
eaten  hyena,  the  precursor  of  all  those  thousands  of  "Savage, 
Man-Devouring  Denizens  of  the  Jungle"  which  have  traveled 
with  our  show.  By  the  time  I  was  born  we  had  gone  a  long  way 
from  that  unhappy  hyena.  The  Ringling  show  now  traveled 
in  an  eighty-  or  ninety-car  train  commanded  by  one  of  the 
uncles,  while  Bamum  &  Bailey  toured  the  country  in  an  even 
longer  one,  also  directed  by  a  Ringhng  uncle,  since  they  had 
bought  that  circus  from  James  A.  Bailey's  widow  in  1907. 

My  uncles,  the  seven  Ringling  brothers,  had  also  gone  a 
long  way  from  poverty-stricken  country  boys  who  had 
dreamed  of  owning  a  great  circus  and  made  their  dream  come 
true  doubled  in  spades.  Uncle  Gus  died  in  1907,  two  years 
before  I  was  born,  so  I  never  knew  him,  but  the  others  were 
living  in  considerable  splendor,  each  according  to  his  taste. 
Besides  then*  fine  houses  in  Baraboo,  some  of  them  owned 
large  estates  in  what  they  considered  more  civilized  parts  of 
the  country.  In  addition.  Uncle  Charlie  and  Uncle  John  had 
pleasant  wmter  houses  in  Sarasota,  Florida,  where  I  spent 
part  of  my  childhood. 

The  only  one  who  did  not  live  part  of  the  time  in  Baraboo 
was  Uncle  John,  who  became  the  most  famous  of  them  all. 


%. 


% 


l6  SON   OF   THE   CIRCUS 

Having  achieved  one  ambition  by  masterminding  Ringling 
Brothers'  purchase  of  Bamum  &  Bailey,  he  was  just  starting  to 
build  the  great  financial  empire  which  made  him,  for  a  time, 
one  of  the  richest  men  in  the  world.  But  even  he  always  re- 
turned to  Baraboo  for  Christmas,  and  for  the  brotherly  con- 
claves in  which  the  affairs  of  the  circus  and  of  everything  else 
pertaining  to  the  family  were  decided  in  roaring,  shouting, 
acrimonious  arguments,  which,  once  settled,  were  never  re- 
opened, as  all  the  brothers  confronted  the  rest  of  the  world 
with  complete  unanimity. 

These  big,  lusty,  gusty  uncles  of  mine  dominated  the  life 
of  the  little  midwestem  city  they  had  Hterally  put  on  the  map, 
and  they  also  dominated  the  lives  of  their  vdves  and  children; 
and  my  mother  and  my  father— Henry  Whitestone  North— 
and  John,  Salome,  and  me.  But  they  were  very  kind  to  us. 

After  my  uncle  Al  died  in  1916,  when  I  was  seven  years 
old,  the  conclave  of  uncles  decreed  that  we  Norths  should 
live  in  his  great,  turreted,  Renaissance-style  mansion,  half 
castle  and  half  chateau,  built  of  Lake  Superior  sandstone.  I 
have  fond  recollections  of  that  house.  The  interior  was  as 
magnificent  as  its  imposing,  if  doubt-inspiring,  fa9ade.  The 
parlor  and  music  room  had  silk  damask  walls.  The  dining- 
room  ceiling  was  covered  with  real  gold  leaf.  The  library  was 
paneled  in  dark  lustrous  wood-  There  was  a  big  ballroom  in 
the  basement  and,  of  course,  an  amply  stocked  wine  cellar. 
Behind  the  house  were  extensive  stables,  where  Uncle  Al,  who 
was  a  fine  horseman,  kept  the  beautiful  riding  and  carriage 
horses  he  loved  so  much. 

When  I  was  growing  up,  Baraboo  was  a  true  circus  city. 
The  Bamum  show  wintered  at  Bridgeport,  where  it  always 
had,  but  Ringling  Brothers  still  had  its  winter  quarters  in 
Baraboo.  They  were  an  elaborate  establishment  tliat  ran  along 
both  sides  of  the  street  beside  the  Baraboo  River.  There  were 
many  long  brick  animal  barns  and  stables,  a  wardrobe  build- 


CIRCXrS-BORN  17 

ing,  electrical  department,  machine  shop,  wagon  shop,  and 
blacksmith's  shop,  where  the  broad  iron  tires  for  the  wagon 
wheels  were  forged  and  the  horses  shod.  At  this  time  our  press 
agents  claimed  that  the  show  had  1002  horses.  I  cannot  be 
sure,  for  I  did  not  count  them. 

In  addition,  there  were  always  about  twenty-five  or  thirty 
wild  animals  in  the  menagerie— seven  or  eight  lions,  half  a 
dozen  tigers,  a  white  leopard,  two  or  three  giraffes,  a  rhino, 
a  couple  of  hippos,  llamas,  zebras,  monkeys,  and  baboons— 
and  a  great  many  camels,  which  were  used  very  effectively 
in  the  spectacles  and  parades.  Now  there  is  hardly  a  camel 
in  any  circus  in  America  because  of  the  Department  of 
Agriculture's  restrictions  on  importing  them  from  disease- 
ridden  countries.  There  were  also  thirty  to  fifty  elephants. 

As  a  small  boy  I  had  the  run  of  Winter  Quarters,  and  most 
of  the  personnel  of  the  circus  from  Jim  Pepper,  who  drove 
the  lowly  gilly  wagon,  to  whatever  lovely  aerialist  or 
equestrienne  was  queen  of  the  back  yard  were  my  friends.  I 
was  especially  fond  of  Cliko,  a  tiny  African  Bushman  less  than 
four  feet  tall.  His  real  name  was  Franz  Tyboch,  and  he  had 
been  captured  by  the  British  during  the  Boer  War.  He  joined 
our  circus  in  1913  and  remained  with  it  until  he  died  at  an 
estimated  age  of  over  a  hundred.  Malvina  Hoffman  made  a 
bust  of  him  in  her  ethnological  series  for  the  Field  Museum, 
as  representing  a  Kalahari  Bushman.  Cliko  was  completely 
iUiterate  but  a  wonderful  mimic  who  could  imitate  everyone 
in  the  circus.  In  civiHan  life  he  liked  to  wear  a  raccoon  coat 
and  a  derby  hat,  with  a  cigar  almost  as  big  as  he  was  sticking 
out  of  liis  mouth.  For  tlie  circus  side  show  he  wore  a  leopard 
skin  over  one  shoulder,  a  pair  of  socks  rolled  down  to  the 
ankles,  and  ordinary  walking  shoes.  In  this  extraordinary 
costume,  he'd  come  roaring  out  of  his  tent  as  the  people  were 
leaving  the  Big  Top,  uttering  fearful  yells  and  native  war 


l8  SON   OF  THE   CIRCUS 

whoops  in  the  loudest  voice  I  ever  heard  and  performing  his 
conception  of  an  African  war  dance. 

This  frightening  creature  was,  in  fact,  a  sweet  and  gentle 
man  who  loved  all  small  things.  The  midgets  were  his  close 
pals  and  when  I  was  a  small  boy  he  was  very  fond  of  me. 
He'd  let  me  pull  his  kinky  hair,  which  would  stretch  out  a 
foot  or  more  and,  when  I  let  go,  snap  back  like  a  rubber 
band.  He  called  my  brother  "Johimy"  and  me  "Bonny"  to 
save  the  bother  of  adding  an  entire  new  word  to  his  limited 
vocabulary. 

Frank  Cook,  the  circus  lawyer,  legal  adjuster,  or  "fixer," 
adopted  him,  and  by  what  political  machinations  I'll  never 
know— since  Cliko  could  not  read— got  him  made  an  American 
citizen.  I'll  never  forget  Cliko's  joy  when  he  heard  the  news. 
He  came  bounding  up  to  me  on  the  lot  and  shouted,  "Bonny, 
me  American  citizen  now,  no  more  nigger  son  of  a  bitch." 

The  animals  were  my  friends  as  well,  and  I  often  went  to 
call  on  them  in  the  big  brick  barns  where  they  were  housed 
through  the  rigorous  Wisconsin  winter.  Katy  the  girafFe  I 
loved  dearly;  in  fact,  I  have  always  been  particularly  fond  of 
giraffes.  Then  I  would  run  through  the  cat  house,  where  all 
the  jungle  animals  were  kept,  greeting  my  friends  in  their 
cages,  but  circus-wise  enough  never  to  get  within  paw  reach, 
for  you  never  trust  the  cats.  Indeed,  any  old  circus  hand  knows 
that  even  the  friendliest  animal  will  have  a  bad  day  and  take 
it  out  on  unwary  humans,  so  you  never  stand  where  a  giraffe 
can  kick  you,  or  an  ape  clutch  you,  or  an  elephant  trample. 
Every  now  and  then  someone  forgets  these  cardinal  rules  and 
loses  an  arm  or  gets  booted  twenty  feet  through  the  air  into  a 
hospital  bed.  Seeing  it  happen,  as  I  often  did,  was  a  strong 
object  lesson.  I  loved  my  animal  friends,  but  treated  them 
with  great  respect. 

Most  of  all  I  loved  the  elephant  bam  filled  with  the  huge 
friendly  creatures.  I  even  loved  its  overpowering  musky- 


cmcus-BORN  -  19 

aromatic  smell.  When  I  was  a  little  boy,  there  was  tremendous 
excitement  at  the  birth  of  a  baby  elephant.  All  the  elephants 
we  had  were  born  wild  in  the  jungle,  since  it  is  almost  im- 
possible to  rear  one  in  captivity.  They  will  breed  all  right; 
but  the  mother  elephant  will  kill  her  baby— as  sentimentalists 
think,  to  spare  it  a  life  of  captivity. 

On  this  occasion  Uncle  CharHe  and  our  family  physician, 
Dr.  Kelly,  were  deteiTnined  to  save  the  elephant  child.  They 
were  close  by  at  the  time  of  delivery,  and  as  soon  as  the  little 
thing  was  on  its  feet  they  tried  to  get  it  away  from  its  mother. 
Unfortunately  for  my  uncle's  plans,  the  five-ton  principal  of 
this  maternity  case  became  violently  agitated,  trumpetmg 
loudly  and  thrashing  about.  Uncle  Charhe  told  me  that  at 
this  point  he  saw  her  leg  chain  begin  to  part.  He  dove  through 
a  small  hatch  in  the  door  of  her  stall  with  Dr.  Kelly  close  be- 
hind him.  They  landed  on  their  faces  in  a  great  pile  of  elephant 
manure.  The  motlier  elephant  bashed  her  baby  to  death. 

Undoubtedly  the  greatest  thrill  a  boy  could  have  was  to 
ride  the  circus  train.  When  Mother  was  a  girl  she  often 
traveled  with  her  brothers  in  their  private  car.  In  those  days 
the\'  did  not  have  a  car  all  to  themselves;  part  of  an  ordinary 
Pullman  was  used  for  living  quarters  and  the  rest  of  it  was  a 
dining  car  for  the  management  and  star  perfomiers.  But  by 
the  time  I  came  along,  the  uncles  were  more  luxurious.  Uncle 
Charles  had  a  splendid  car  called  the  Caledonia,  furnished 
in  magnificent  red  plush  and  gold,  with  real  lace  curtains.  It 
was  a  perfect  example  of  "Early  Pullman."  In  1917  Uncle 
John  outdid  him.  The  Jomar,  built  especially  for  him  by  the 
Pullman  Company,  was  the  longest  private  car  in  the  world. 
It,  too,  was  a  lush  example  of  railroad  interior  decoration:  fine 
mahogany  woodwork  fretted  into  intricate  de^lsigns,  brass 
chandeliers  with  Tiffany  glass  shades,  a  double  brass  bed  in 
Uncle  John's  stateroom  and  a  smaller  one  in  Aunt  Mable's. 


20  SON   OF   THE   CIRCUS 

The  food  aboard  was  magnificent.  As  I  shall  tell,  Uncle  John 
ate  only  two  meals  a  day,  but  they  were  gargantuan. 

Both  uncles  usually  invited  us  children  to  ride  for  a  week 
or  two  on  their  trains.  That  was  my  time  of  sheer  delight. 
Days  and  nights  were  equally  exciting.  Going  to  bed  at  mid- 
night after  the  show  in  the  railroad  yards,  decorated  by  the 
ruby  and  emerald  signal  lights  and  full  of  puflBng  monsters 
and  clanging  bells  and  the  fine  wet  smell  of  steam.  Waking 
in  the  night  to  feel  the  rumbling  wheels,  or  perhaps  alongside 
the  section  with  the  menagerie  aboard,  lions  roaring,  seals 
barking,  and  camels  gurgling  angrily.  Then  morning,  getting 
up  as  soon  as  possible  and  skipping  across  the  tracks  to  where 
the  wagons  were  unloading  from  the  flats,  and  hooking  a  ride 
to  the  show  grounds  perched  on  the  box  of  a  lion's  cage.  By 
the  time  I  got  there  the  Big  Top,  which  traveled  in  the  second 
section,  was  going  up  in  a  scene  of  splendidly  co-ordinated 
confusion.  An  even  thousand  men  were  working  like  de- 
mented ants  around  the  huge  rolls  of  canvas,  some  lacing  the 
sections  together  while  others  guyed  out  the  center  poles, 
which  weighed  several  tons  each,  and  then  erected  the 
thirty-six  blue  and  fifty-four  red  quarter  poles  and  one  hun- 
dred twenty-four  yeUow  side  poles  needed  to  support  the 
six-pole  top.  Working  elephants  pushed  and  pulled  with 
intelligent  strength— before  the  days  of  tractors  we  could 
not  have  gotten  the  Big  Top  up  at  all  without  them.  The 
canvas  alone  weighed  seventy-two  tons— or  so  our  publicity 
department  always  claimed,  but  it  was  really  only  sixty- 
three  tons,  wet,  about  thirty  tons,  dry. 

After  superintending  the  work  of  the  boss  canvasman,  I 
would  dash  aroimd  to  call  on  my  side-show  friends,  or  into 
the  huge  cookhouse  for  a  fine  big  lunch.  By  that  time  the 
elephants  would  have  hauled  the  bail  rings  up  to  the  peak  of 
the  poles,  the  side  walls  would  be  raised,  and  the  Big  Top 


CIRCUS-BORN  21 

ready  for  the  aerialists'  rigging  and  the  folding-seat  benches, 
or  "bibles."  The  parade  was  about  to  start. 

When  I  was  about  eleven,  John,  who  was  seventeen,  was 
already  working  with  the  circus  during  his  summer  vacation, 
and  I  had  the  tremendous  thiill  of  seeing  my  splendid  big 
brother  ride  by  in  the  parade  dressed  up  as  a  Napoleonic 
hussar. 

I  attended  every  matinee  and  evening  show  and  never  got 
tired  of  it;  for  I  had  aheady  identified  myself  with  the  circus. 
I  was  part  of  it  then  and  always.  But  I  was  deprived  of  one 
inahenable  right  of  every  American  boy.  Never  could  I  work 
my  way  into  the  circus  by  distributing  handbills  or  carrying 
water  for  the  elephants.  Nor  could  I  enjoy  the  delicious  risk 
of  sneaking  in  under  the  walls  of  the  Big  Top.  Naturally  this 
was  impossible  with  our  own  show;  but  sometimes  when  an 
opposition  circus  played  a  town  near  Baraboo,  I  would  ride 
my  pony  ten  or  fifteen  miles  to  try  my  luck.  It  did  not  work. 
Even  in  the  tents  of  mine  enemies  I  was  invariably  appre- 
hended and  escorted  to  a  front-row  seat  in  a  box  opposite  the 
center  ring. 

At  midnight,  very  tired  after  the  evening  performance,  I 
went  back  to  find  the  Caledonia  on  her  siding  in  the  yards 
and  crawl  into  my  bunk.  Mother  was  a  tremendously  good 
sport  about  the  real  risks  an  active  boy  might  run  on  such  a 
disjointed  journey.  She  had  been  indoctrinated  so  successfully 
herself  that  she  wanted  her  sons  to  have  a  part  in  the  great 
national  institution  which  the  Ringlings  were  proud  to  have 
given  America.  The  only  thing  she  worried  about  was  the 
tricky  business  of  running  around  the  raihoad  yards  at  night. 
"Be  very  careful  of  those  tracks,  Buddy,"  she  said  to  me  the 
first  time  I  went  off  with  Uncle  Charlie.  And  almost  the  last 
time  I  saw  her,  as  I  was  taking  tlie  train  out  in  1950,  she  said, 
"Buddy,  please  be  careful  in  tlie  raihoad  yards.  Watch  tliose 
trains,  tliey're  dangerousi" 


22  SON   OF   THE   CIRCUS 

The  uncles  gave  us  ponies  almost  before  we  could  walk. 
The  first  one  I  remember  was  a  tiny  Shetland  called  Minnie. 
John  induced  that  pony  to  climb  up  to  our  attic  playroom  on 
the  third  floor  of  the  house.  It  is  quite  easy  to  get  a  horse  to 
walk  upstairs  but  another  thing  to  get  him  down.  My  father 
almost  had  to  carry  the  poor  thing.  Our  next  pony  was  Maud, 
and  Uncle  Charles  Ringling  gave  us  a  beautiful  httle  cutter, 
exactly  like  a  real  one  but  pony  size.  What  fun  we  had  driving 
over  the  snowy  Wisconsin  roads  with  our  silver  sleigh  bells 
jinglingl  Most  fun  of  all  was  the  tiny  clown  police  patrol 
wagon  that  the  midgets  drove  in  the  circus.  I'd  go  over  to 
Winter  Quarters  to  borrow  it,  hitch  my  pony  to  it,  and  drive 
all  over  town  with  the  gong  clanging  furiously. 

My  favorite  pony  was  Dandy,  whom  I  got  when  I  was  five 
years  old.  Dandy  was  a  beautiful  black-and-white  pony,  who 
lived  to  a  great  age  for  a  horse.  When  I  was  twenty-one  and 
a  senior  at  Yale,  I  made  a  special  trip  to  Baraboo  to  call  on 
him  just  before  he  died. 

Salome  was  afraid  of  the  ponies,  though  she  had  to  have 
one  anyway,  but  I  always  loved  to  ride.  I  used  to  go  for  won- 
derful rides  with  my  cousin  Henry,  who  had  a  pony  named 
Robin  L.  One  of  the  great  tragedies  of  our  childliood  was 
the  day  we  went  to  the  pasture  to  get  Robin  L.  and  found 
him  lying  stiff-legged  under  a  tree.  He  had  been  struck  by 
lightning.  But  Henry  got  another  pony  and  we  continued 
om-  excursions. 

It  seems  strange  for  a  child,  but  one  of  my  favorite  rides 
was  to  the  cemetery  in  Baraboo.  It  was,  and  still  is,  a  beautiful 
place,  situated  on  a  hill  with  a  fine  view  of  woods,  the  lake, 
and  rolling  farm  land.  Even  as  a  httle  boy  I  had  many  friends 
there— old  Civil  War  veterans  with  whom  I'd  marched  in  the 
parades.  My  grandparents  were  buried  there  and  later  my 
uncles.  So  I  would  go  and  call  on  my  friends,  riding  Dandy 
up  the  hill  to  that  burying  ground  which  had  no  terror  for 


CIRCUS-BORN  23 

me,  but  only  a  sense  of  beauty  and  companionship  with 
people  I  had  loved. 

At  an  early  age  I  naturally  wanted  to  be  a  performer  in 
the  circus— an  equestrian,  of  course.  I  can  remember  riding 
bareback  when  I  was  so  small  that  I  had  to  stand  on  a  pail 
or  a  pile  of  rocks  to  scramble  aboard  my  Shetland  pony.  Of 
course,  I  had  some  fabulously  expert  coaching  from  the 
famous  equestrians  in  the  show,  and  I  got  tolerably  good.  I 
could  lean  out  of  the  saddle  and  pick  up  a  handkerchief 
from  the  ground.  I  could  ride  standing  up— and  fall  off 
standing  up,  too,  but  it  was  a  fine  trick  when  it  worked. 

Brother  John,  the  businessman,  used  to  put  on  a  children's 
circus  every  spring  with  half  the  kids  in  Baraboo  as  per- 
formers. It  was  a  real  professional  job.  In  those  days  the  circus 
owned  its  own  concessions.  Sid  Rubeen,  who  was  in  charge  of 
them,  was  a  soft  touch  for  us,  and  he  would  supply  us  with 
whips,  and  birds  on  sticks  to  whii'l  around,  paper  toys  from 
Japan,  funny  hats,  canes,  and  balloons  to  sell  outside  our 
circus.  Incidentally,  having  an  ample  supply  of  circus  whips 
around  the  house  was  a  mixed  blessing.  Mother  used  to  spank 
us  with  them  when  we  were  naughty.  We  borrowed  our 
costumes  from  the  wardrobe  department— one  year  we  were 
all  Roman  gladiators.  Of  com^se,  we  charged  a  stiff  admission, 
and  looking  back  on  it  I  believe  it  was  worth  the  money,  for 
surely  no  other  children  in  the  country  had  so  much  experi- 
ence and  assistance. 

Playing  as  we  did  in  the  circus  back  yard,  we  naturally 
picked  up  some  rather  startling  language.  John  was  espe- 
cially proficient  m  the  profane— and  still  is.  When  he  was 
about  eight  years  old  Mother  became  worried  about  his  lan- 
guage and  asked  the  Episcopal  minister,  the  Reverend  Clark 
A.  Wilson,  to  speak  to  him.  The  good  rector  approached  John 
on  the  street  one  day  and  said,  "Jolm,  I  feel  I  must  talk  to 
you  about  sometliing  I've  heard  tliat  isn't  very  nice." 


24  SON   OF   THE   CIRCUS 

Very  respectfully  John  said,  "Yes,  Mr.  Wilson?" 

"I  hear  you've  been  using  very  naughty  language." 

"Who  told  you  that?"  John  demanded. 

Full  of  tact,  Mr.  Wilson  said,  "A  little  birdie  told  me." 

Whereupon  John  indignantly  observed,  "111  bet  it's  one  of 
those  God-damned  Httle  sparrows!" 

In  fact,  the  sparrow^s  were  a  curse  in  Baraboo.  With  so  many 
animals  aroimd  they  throve  and  multiplied  exceedingly,  and 
here  again  John  showed  his  financial  aciunen.  The  livery- 
stableman,  Mr.  Holsapple,  injudiciously  offered  the  boys  with 
BB  guns  a  penny  apiece  for  every  dead  sparrow.  As  a  result 
they  were  thinned  out  considerably.  When  the  hunting  got 
poor,  John  took  his  gun  over  to  Winter  Quarters,  where  due 
to  the  enormous  manure  piles  there  was  probably  the  greatest 
concentration  of  sparrows  in  the  United  States.  He  knocked 
off  a  hundred  or  so,  put  them  in  a  basket,  and  carried  them 
back  to  the  livery  stable,  where  he  surreptitiously  spread 
them  around  and  then  ostentatiously  picked  them  up.  It  was 
very  good  business  while  it  lasted. 

A  httle  later  John  had  a  change  of  heart.  He  became  for  a 
time  very  devout.  His  musical  talent  made  him  a  great  ad- 
dition to  the  choir  of  the  Episcopal  church,  and  he  was  made 
crucifer.  I  can  still  see  him  leading  the  choir  into  church  in 
his  red  robes,  with  dark  curly  hair,  and  shining  eyes  fixed 
on  the  tall  golden  cross  he  carried. 

John  could  not  wait  to  begin  working  for  the  circus.  He 
started  at  the  age  of  twelve,  hawking  those  same  whirly  birds, 
pennants,  and  whips  which  we  had  sold  at  the  children's 
circus.  But  it  was  the  real  thing  now,  and  he  rode  the  train. 

While  we  were  growing  up  in  Baraboo  the  circus  made 
another  great  leap  forward.  In  1919  the  uncles  decided  to 
merge  Ringling  Brothers  and  Bamum  &  Bailey  into  one 


cmcus-BORN  25 

tremendous  combined  circus  which  would  in  truth  justify  the 
name  of  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth. 

It  was  the  great  show  of  the  twenties  in  which  both 
Brother  John  and  I  got  our  baptism  of  lire.  A  freshman  from 
Yale,  John  joined  the  train  in  Baltimore.  His  advent  was  less 
than  impressive.  To  test  his  mettle  Uncle  Charlie  had  put 
him  on  the  advertising  car  as  a  billposter,  a  job  which  re- 
quired him  to  get  up  at  5  a.m.  Looking  back  with  amused 
irony  at  the  brash  young  man,  John  describes  himself  as  re- 
porting aboard  wearing  a  camel's-hair  jacket  and  a  flashy 
vest.  He  carried  a  Malacca  cane  and  a  saxophone.  As  he 
walked  down  the  fusty,  paper-littered  car  between  berths 
occupied  by  weary,  unshaven  men  catching  cat  naps  in  dirty 
undershirts,  one  of  them  said,  "Here  comes  a  guy  who  thinks 
Manual  Labor  is  a  Spaniard." 

The  first  morning,  John  crawled  out  of  bed  in  the  murky 
dawn  of  the  railroad  yards.  Empty  and  disconsolate,  he 
teamed  up  with  a  Dutchman  and  pasted  bills  on  barns, 
boards,  and  telephone  poles  all  morning.  By  noon  his  mettle 
had  been  tested— to  the  breaking  point.  He  said  to  himself, 
"This  is  ridiculous,"  and  took  a  taxi  to  the  Belvedere  Hotel, 
where  he  sent  a  telegram  to  his  college  friend,  Theodore  Buhl 
of  Detroit: 

"If  you  still  want  me  to  visit  you  wire  me  one  hundred 
dollars  here." 

To  pass  the  time  of  waiting  he  went  to  see  Charlie  Chaplin 
in  Dynamite.  By  the  time  the  picture  was  finished,  the  hun- 
dred-dollar reply  was  at  the  Belvedere. 

Thus  John  disappeared  from  the  circus  train  and  from  the 
family  ken.  When  he  did  not  show  up  in  a  day  or  so,  all  the 
Ringling  resources  were  marshaled  to  find  him.  Mother  was 
reasonably  calm,  but  Uncle  Charlie  was  in  a  swivet  and  Uncle 
John  in  a  lather.  Meanwhile  Johnny  was  cruising  Long  Island 
Sound  with  Theodore  Bulil  and  liis  mother  in  her  yacht. 


26  SON   OF  THE   CIRCUS 

Now,  this  anecdote  is  not  intended  to  imply  any  lack  of 
enthusiasm  or  perseverance  on  the  part  of  my  brother.  No 
one  was— or  is— more  dedicated  to  the  circus  than  he  and  no 
one  is  wilhng  to  work  harder.  But  Uncle  John  would  have 
understood,  as  Uncle  Charlie  did  not,  that  giving  a  person 
of  Johnny's  temperament  a  dull  job,  and  making  him  get  up 
at  five  in  the  morning  to  boot,  was  pushmg  him  too  far. 

John  rejoined  the  train  with  what  he  considered  a  proper 
job— selling  tickets— and  worked  hard  at  it.  Indeed,  he  rode 
the  train  every  summer  for  six  or  seven  years  and  learned 
more  about  the  techniques  of  handling  a  modem  railroad 
circus— the  day-by-day,  hour-by-hom*  minutiae  of  ten  thou- 
sand tilings  that  must  be  done  at  every  stop— than  ever  Uncle 
John  knew.  Even  when  John  was  married  and  made  $28,000 
in  a  single  winter  selling  real  estate  in  the  Florida  boom,  he 
still  went  back  to  his  fifty-dollar-a-week  job  on  the  circus 
train  each  summer. 

It  was  only  natural  that  some  of  the  managerial  employees 
should  regard  the  advent  of  young  Johnny  North  in  the  role 
of  heir  apparent  with  eyes  turned  a  bilious  yellow  by  jealousy 
and  fear  for  cherished  perquisites.  But  it  was  typical  of  the 
underlying  violence  of  circus  life  that  they  expressed  their 
disfavor  by  trying  to  frame  him.  That  year  Johnny  was  in 
charge  of  checking  the  receipts  at  the  front  door  and  tlie  reg- 
isters of  the  concession  department,  which  naturally  put 
a  considerable  crimp  in  any  funny  business  that  might  be  go- 
ing on.  This,  too,  may  have  suppHed  a  motive. 

It  happened  after  I,  too,  had  joined  the  show,  and  it  was 
my  first  apprehension  of  perils  other  than  physical  ones  in  my 
chosen  career.  The  plot  was  hatched,  while  Uncle  John  was 
in  Europe,  between  one  of  the  staff  managers  and  the  man 
who  was  one  of  the  detectives.  It  was  particularly  cruel,  since 
if  it  had  succeeded  it  would  have  left  an  ineradicable  stain  on 
my  brother's  reputation. 


cmcus-BORN  27 

The  detective,  whom  for  the  purpose  of  this  narrative  we 
shall  call  Turnip  Bunson,  announced  one  day  that  six  hun- 
dred dollars  in  one-hundred-dollar  bills  was  missing  from  a 
wallet  he  had  left  in  the  staff  car.  Then  he  just  happened  to 
remember  seeing  young  Johnny  North  coming  out  of  the 
staff  car,  which  he  did  not  live  in.  Of  course,  Johnny  might 
have  been  looking  for  his  kid  brother,  said  Turnip.  .  .  . 

Rumors  ran  through  the  company  like  poisonous  snakes. 
Most  people  did  not  believe  them,  but  there  was  an  element 
of  doubt  evident  in  sidelong  looks  of  embarrassed  eves. 

Meanwhile  the  manager  worked  subtly  to  spread  the  poi- 
son. He  dropped  into  Lillian  Leitzel's  private  dressing  top, 
where  she  reigned  as  queen  of  the  back  yard  and  received 
callers  in  the  afternoon  between  shows.  Bringing  the  subject 
around  to  Bunson's  loss,  he  smoothly  suggested  that  wliile  he 
himself  was  giving  Johnny  the  benefit  of  the  doubt,  tliere  was 
a  doubt.  .  .  . 

Dear  little  Leitzel,  with  whom  we  had  been  friends  since 
childhood,  leaped  at  him  shrieking  curses  that  made  razor- 
backs  stare  in  envy,  and  Alfredo  Codona,  who  was  lazily  ly- 
ing on  a  sofa,  sprang  like  a  white  panther.  The  manager  saw 
murder  in  his  eye  and  took  off.  Codona  chased  him  right 
through  the  Big  Top. 

Not  all  our  people  knew  us  so  well.  Distrust  hung  like  a 
tangible  cloud  between  us  and  our  friends  and  fellow 
workers. 

Johimy  was  angry  and  hurt,  but  too  experienced  a  circus 
hand  by  now  to  go  off  hijs  rocker.  I  was  outraged.  I  was  work- 
ing during  my  summer  vacation  from  Manlius,  a  military 
school  where  the  code  of  honor  was  as  strict  as  at  West  Point. 
It  was  almost  incredible  to  my  unscarred  mind  that  anyone 
could  be  so  base  as  dehberately  to  try  to  blacken  another's 
character.  Even  more  incredible  was  tlie  idea  that  people 
could  beheve  so  mean  a  tiling  of  John.  All  my  love  and  loyalty 


28  SON   OF   THE   CIRCUS 

to  him  set  my  brain  boiling  like  lava  in  Vesuvius  before  she 
blows  her  top.  Which  I  came  close  to  doing. 

Johnny  tried  to  calm  me  by  saying,  "Now  don't  get  excited. 
Six  hundred  dollars  is  a  pretty  important  loss  to  Bunson.  Per- 
haps he  really  believes  I  took  it.  Perhaps  a  lot  of  people  do." 

"They  can't,  really,"  I  said  incredulously. 

Johnny  grinned.  "Maybe  not  really  yet,"  he  said,  "but  they 
will  soon." 

"What  can  we  do?" 

John  never  lacked  decision.  "I'm  going  to  have  W.  J.  Bums 
send  an  operative  down  here  to  find  out  the  truth." 

In  the  circus  you  cannot  even  think  of  doing  something 
without  everyone  knovmig  it  by  a  marvelous  sort  of  mental 
telepathy.  The  moment  Johnny  thought  of  hiring  that  detec- 
tive a  small  miracle  happened.  Those  six  one-himdred-dollar 
bills  reappeared  in  Bunson's  wallet  just  hke  a  magic  bunny. 
He  explained  that  they  must  have  been  shoved  under  a  loose 
lining  in  it! 

This  was  only  the  first  of  the  many  crises  and  betray- 
als which  John  faced  and  overcame  in  his  climb  to  the  pin- 
nacle of  the  circus  world.  Otliers  far  more  dangerous  and 
bitter  confronted  him.  It  was  partly  due  to  his  hard  schooling 
in  the  bare-fisted,  knife-wielding,  groin-kicking  back  yard  of 
the  circus  world  that  he  triumphed  over  them.  But  schooling 
would  have  meant  nothing  without  his  quaHties  of  imagina- 
tion, courage,  bullheaded  persistence,  outrageous  optimism, 
and  dedication  to  our  great  family  enterprise.  It  was  these 
coupled  with  that  hard,  youthful  experience  which  enabled 
him  to  win  our  circus  back  from  the  hands  of  avaricious 
creditors,  build  it  to  a  peak  of  opulence,  lose  it,  regain  it,  and 
rebuild  it  again  and  yet  again,  as  I  shall  tell,  until  by  these 
achievements  he  gained,  in  my  opinion  at  least,  the  right  to 
be  called  the  greatest  showman  now  on  earth. 


CHAPTER    II 


SAWDUST  IN  MY  SHOES 


My  own  advent  in  the  cii-cus  was  both  less  frustrating  and 
less  dramatic  than  Jolm's.  It  happened  in  1926,  when  I  was 
seventeen,  during  my  summer  vacation  from  Manlius  Military 
Academy.  I  went  with  my  mother  to  stay  with  Uncle  John  at 
his' big  house  in  Alpine,  New  Jersey.  The  first  evening,  he  ex- 


30  SON   OF   THE   CIRCUS 

pressed  the  opinion  that  it  was  time  I  went  to  work  for  the 
circus.  I  agreed  with  him  completely. 

Uncle  John  drove  me  in  his  Rolls-Royce  to  Bridgeport  to 
join  the  train.  All  the  way  over  he  kept  talking  about  my 
duties.  "You  don't  mind  getting  up  a  little  early  in  the  morn- 
ing, do  you?"  he  asked.  I  gulped— no  Ringling,  however 
youthful,  likes  to  get  up  early— and  said,  "Not  particularly." 

"You'd  better  get  used  to  it,"  he  answered,  "because  I'm  go- 
ing to  send  you  out  with  the  flying  squadron." 

At  that  point  I  nearly  died.  The  flying  squadron  was  the 
first  section  of  the  fom'-section  train.  It  caiTied  the  cook- 
house, menagerie,  and  layout  department.  It  meant  getting 
up  every  morning  at  3  a.m. 

But  Uncle  John  was  only  teasing  me.  I  was  assigned  to  the 
fourth  section— the  last  one  to  reach  town.  My  job  was  on 
the  front  door.  I  counted  tickets  and  worked  on  the  trunk. 
This  was  a  big  affair,  hke  a  theatrical  trunk,  with  compart- 
ments and  cubbyholes  for  filing  the  tickets  as  they  were 
taken  up  at  the  door.  The  system  had  not  changed  since  the 
earhest  days  of  the  show.  As  the  collectors  took  the  tickets 
they  passed  them  on  to  the  counters,  who  stacked  them  in 
bundles  of  fifty  and  a  hundred.  The  children's  tickets  were 
green,  adults'  were  purple.  I  got  to  be  a  fast  counter, 
but  never  as  quick  as  my  associate,  Willy  Downing,  who  was 
known  as  Straight-Ahead  Willy  because  he  was  deaf  and 
never  looked  around.  He  could  take  a  bundle  of  tickets  and 
feel  them,  discard  one  or  two,  and  then  there  would  be  exactly 
fifty  tickets  in  that  bundle. 

I  was  famous  as  the  fastest  man  on  the  front  door,  but  not 
as  a  ticket  counter.  The  doors  opened  for  the  matinee  at  one 
o'clock.  I  would  go  tlirough  the  door  at  five  minutes  of  one, 
through  the  menagerie  top,  into  the  Big  Top,  through  the  Big 
Top  and  into  the  back  yard,  into  the  band  top— where  my  uni- 


SAWDUST   IN   MY   SHOES  3I 

form  was  kept— change,  and  be  back  at  the  front  door  on  the 
stroke  of  one. 

We  had  to  wear  uniforms  with  no  pockets,  for  the  excellent 
reason  that  it  kept  the  collectors  honest— there  was  no  place 
to  hide  the  tickets  and  resell  them.  The  uniforms  had  a  tunic 
with  a  tight  collar.  Sometimes  I  almost  died  of  the  heat,  for  I 
had  no  time  to  take  my  civihan  suit  off  and  so  I  just  put  the 
uniform  on  over  it.  As  I  said,  we  Ringlings  like  to  sleep  late. 

When  I  was  not  busy  on  the  door  I  tried  to  learn  all  I  could 
about  the  circus.  The  easiest  way  seemed  to  be  to  ask  Carl 
Hathaway,  a  wonderful  circus  character  who  was  manager, 
or  George  Smith,  boss  of  the  front  door.  When  I  asked  them 
such  questions  as  how  many  poles  there  were  and  the  order 
of  loading,  they  gave  me  a  foolish  answer.  I  soon  found  out 
that  this  was  because  they  felt  that  if  I  really  wanted  to  learn 
I  should  go  and  find  out  for  myself  as  they  had.  So  I  got  a 
httle  notebook  and  went  all  over  the  lot  jotting  down  statistics. 
I  counted  everytliing  in  the  circus  that  first  season.  Uncle 
John  used  to  laugh  benignly  at  me  because,  as  he  said,  he  did 
not  have  the  slightest  idea  about  these  tilings.  He  said,  "I  have 
good  men  who  are  supposed  to  know  all  about  that."  But  I 
did  know,  and  it  stood  me  in  good  stead  in  later  years. 

That  fii-st  year,  I  lived  in  the  staflF  car  because  Uncle  John 
wanted  to  protect  me  a  little.  Some  of  the  great  characters  of 
the  circus  lived  in  that  car.  There  was  the  treasurer,  Charles 
Hutchinson— Mr.  Hutch,  to  all  of  us— who  had  been  with 
Barnum  &  Bailey's  in  the  old  days  and  was  a  nephew-in-law 
of  Mr.  Bailey.  He  had  a  stateroom  in  the  back  of  the  car, 
where  Mrs.  Hutchinson  lived  with  him.  It  was  their  home. 

The  rest  of  us  slept  in  bimks.  Mr.  Hutch's  assistant,  Fred- 
die Wolfe,  and  Johnny  Brice,  the  chief  detective,  who  had 
been  chief  of  police  in  Ironton,  Ohio.  Cap  Carol,  who  was 
assistant  to  the  assistant  treasurer,  was  a  mai'velous  charac- 
ter who  had  been  with  circuses  all  liis  hfe,  including  the 


32  SON   OF  THE   CIRCUS 

Sells  Brothers  Circus  in  Australia.  Frank  Cook,  the  fixer, 
bunked  with  us,  and  Doc  Shields.  Doc  was  an  excellent  doc- 
tor who  had  graduated  from  Dartmouth  and  Columbia  and 
could  have  had  a  lucrative  practice  anywhere,  but  he  got 
sawdust  in  his  shoes  and  decided  to  join  the  circus.  And 
Chick  Bell,  the  superintendent  of  tickets. 

All  these  men  had  been  with  the  circus  thirty  or  forty  years 
and  here  was  I,  seventeen  years  old,  with  eggshell  on  my  nose. 
The  way  they  treated  me  was  the  kindest,  most  tactful  thing 
possible.  They  did  not  make  any  fuss,  but  acted  as  though  I, 
too,  had  been  around  forever. 

Every  night  there  was  a  poker  game  in  the  car.  I  played 
once  a  week— on  payday.  It  took  them  only  an  hour  or  two  to 
get  my  money,  but  we  had  wonderful  times.  Johnny  Brice 
hked  to  drink  a  bit  too  much  perhaps,  but  he  did  his  job.  In 
those  Prohibition  days  he  laid  in  a  supply  of  Virginia  com 
Hquor  in  gallon  jugs  at  the  start  of  the  season.  He  told  me  it 
was  kerosene,  and  I  believed  him  until  I  saw  him  drink  it. 
On  some  Sundays  tliere  was  no  performance  and  we  made  a 
long  run.  It  was  a  great  day.  We'd  have  a  big  breakfast  in 
the  afternoon  cooked  by  Cap  Carol  and  Johnny  Brice,  who 
were  superb  chefs.  They  laid  in  their  supphes  the  day  be- 
fore. Then  Cap  Carol  would  play  his  mouth  organ  and 
guitar  simultaneously  while  Johnny  did  a  buck  and  wing; 
and  Mr.  Hutch  sat  drinking  his  own  special  brand  of  bour- 
bon, which  he  never  offered  to  anybody.  He  was  a  generous 
man  but  not  with  his  bourbon. 

Drink  was,  in  real  fact,  the  bane  of  circus  people,  and  it 
still  is.  Most  of  the  wonderful  men  in  that  car  had  the  same 
failing,  and  at  seventeen,  I  developed  a  taste  for  it,  too.  I 
had  acquired  a  case  of  sparkling  burgundy  in  Canada  and 
one  Sunday  I  drank  too  much  of  it.  As  the  train  pulled  into 
Devils  Lake,  North  Dakota,  about  one  o'clock  that  after- 


SAWDUST   IN   MY   SHOES  33 

noon,  I  came  out  on  the  platform  ready  to  rush  ofiF  to  the 
hotel  for  a  hot  bath  with  all  the  others— on  tlie  train  we 
washed  in  tin  basins.  Brother  John  was  outside  liis  car,  also 
ready  to  sprint  into  town.  As  the  train  slowed  down  I 
stepped  gaily  off  the  platform  without  noticing  that  the 
steps  were  not  down.  I  did  a  double  flip  that  would  have 
won  applause  in  Clown  Alley,  landing  on  my  back.  John 
yelled  at  me  like  a  mother  walrus  fearful  that  I  was  hurt.  I 
was  afraid  he  would  spoil  my  fun,  so  I  picked  myself  up  and 
took  oflF  up  an  alley. 

Suddenly  I  felt  terribly  dizzy  and  I  sat  down  in  the  middle 
of  the  street  and  was  sick.  Again  and  again.  It  seemed 
as  though  I  never  would  stop.  Each  time  my  new  straw  hat 
fell  oflF.  Between  paroxysms  I  put  it  on  again,  which  was  a 
tenible  error.  Finally  I  managed  to  get  to  the  best  hotel  in 
town  and  discovered  that  John  was  registered  there.  He  was 
having  a  nice  quiet  Simday-afternoon  poker  game  in  his 
room  with  some  of  his  circus  friends  when  his  httle  brother 
staggered  through  the  door  with  his  clothes  in  a  lamentable 
condition.  I  can  still  see  the  look  of  anguished  embarrassment 
with  which  John  greeted  me.  He  frog-marched  me  to  the 
bathi-oom,  turned  on  the  water,  and  threw  me  into  the  tub, 
clothes  and  all. 

So,  despite  Uncle  John's  effort  at  protection,  I  saw  the 
seamy  back  side  of  the  carefully  smiling  face  that  the  circus 
turned  to  her  public.  There  is  a  harsh  underworld  character 
to  life  behind  the  canvas  partitions.  It  is  a  world  of  sudden 
death  and  slow  disintegration;  of  rackets  and  outright  crook- 
edness; of  tawdry  passions  and  bright  knives  gleaming  in  flash 
fights;  of  hidden  brutality  toward  dumb  animals  and  callous 
treatment  of  human  beings.  A  man  may  go  to  sleep  under 
one  of  the  great  wagons  on  the  lot,  and  when  tear-down 
time  comes,  the  driver  will  hitch  up,  and  never  seeing  him, 
start  off  and  the  great  iron-shod  wheels  will  crush  liiin  like  a 


34  SON  OF  THE   CIRCUS 

broken  beetle.  If  he  is  still  alive  he  will  be  given  the  best  at- 
tention by  the  cii'cus,  but  if  he  is  dead  they  will  leave  him  in 
a  ditch,  for  an  inquest  might  delay  the  whole  show  for  days 
and  the  circus  must  keep  her  appointments  with  her  public. 

She  has  great  attributes  as  well:  deeds  of  enormous  gener- 
osity and  loyalties  beyond  the  call  of  duty  or  even  love.  There 
is  great  beauty:  superb  aeriaHsts  like  Alfredo  Codona  or 
Arthur  Concello  swooping  through  the  air  with  the  grace  of 
bam  swallows;  equestrian  acts  like  the  Christianis,  perform- 
ing their  incredible  feats  with  a  skill  that  cannot  be  taught 
in  a  single  generation,  but  is  handed  down  and  refined  from 
father  to  son,  mother  to  daughter,  through  generations  of  cir- 
cus people  dedicated  to  perfecting  their  art.  And  couragel 
They  all  are  brave,  from  Clyde  Beatty,  Alfred  Court,  and 
Mabel  Stark— the  scarred  veterans  of  the  animals  acts,  facing 
their  savage  actors  twice  every  day  including  most  Sundays 
—to  the  high-wire  performers  working  without  a  net  to  thrill 
the  pubHc.  Even  the  people  who  are  not  taking  obvious  risks 
live  in  danger,  for  the  chance  of  accident  in  the  enormously 
complicated  operation  of  the  circus,  which  is  hterally  an  army 
of  men  and  women  and  hundreds  of  animals  constantly  on 
the  move,  is  very  great. 

I  was  fascinated  by  the  intricate  logistics  of  this  operation. 
Every  day  fifteen  hundred  people  and  a  thousand  animals- 
many  of  them  savage— from  elephants  and  rhinoceroses,  Hons, 
and  tigers  down  to  trained  fleas,  together  with  the  tremendous 
amount  of  equipment  they  required,  which  included  no  less 
than  fifty  tents  besides  the  Big  Top,  were  moved  from  town  to 
town.  This  whole  city  of  canvas  was  set  up,  two  performances 
were  given,  and  the  whole  business  was  packed  up  and 
moved  to  repeat  the  operation  in  the  next  town  the  next  day. 
It  required  more  careful  advance  planning  and  more  efficient 
timing  than  the  movement  of  an  army  corps.  Indeed,  when 
Bamum  &  Bailey  was  touring  Europe  in  1899,  Kaiser  Wilhelm 


SAWDUST  IN   MY  SHOES  35 

II  of  Germany  ordered  the  Imperial  General  StaflF  to  study  the 
logistics  of  the  circus  and  apply  them  to  the  movement  of  the 
German  Army.  Unfortunately  they  did  it  only  too  well. 

Though  I  saw  it  done  uncounted  times,  I  never  got 
over  the  wonder  of  the  simple,  basic  setup  and  teardown 
of  the  circus.  In  those  days  the  six-pole  Big  Top  seated  over 
twelve  thousand  people,  and  you  could  put  a  few  thousand 
more  on  the  straw  laid  down  around  the  arena.  We  did  not 
like  to  have  the  tent  this  full,  for  it  was  uncomfortable  and 
added  to  the  ever  hanging  danger  of  iBre.  But  in  those  little 
cities  in  the  plains,  where  farm  folks  might  drive  for  a  hun- 
dred miles  to  see  the  show,  it  was  almost  impossible  to  tell 
them  they  were  too  late  to  get  in.  The  expressions  on  the  faces 
of  their  kids  undid  you. 

We  moved,  as  I  have  said,  in  four  trains.  The  first  section 
was  the  flying  squadron,  consisting  of  the  layout  department, 
side  shows,  menagerie,  and  cookhouse.  The  latter  was  a  tent 
that  could  seat  a  thousand  people  and  serve  five  thousand 
meals  a  day.  Because  the  men  had  to  be  fed  as  soon  as  they 
arrived,  it  was  the  first  thing  to  be  put  up. 

On  the  second  section  we  carried  the  Big  Top  and  its  rig- 
ging and  the  working  personnel  of  the  train  and  canvas  de- 
partments. The  third  section  brought  the  grandstand  and 
the  light  and  wardrobe  departments,  with  attendant  person- 
nel. Trucks  and  baggage  stock  were  on  the  second  section. 
Ring  stock  and  elephants  were  part  of  the  fourth  section, 
along  with  the  staff  and  performers. 

The  last  car  of  the  last  section  was  either  the  Jomar  or  the 
Caledonia,  according  to  whether  Uncle  John  or  Uncle  Charlie 
was  in  command.  But  it  mainly  consisted  of  sleeping  cars  for 
the  performers  and  management.  I  use  the  word  "sleeping 
cars"  advisedly,  for  they  were  not  Pullmans,  but  vehicles 
specially  designed  to  crowd  as  many  people  as  possible  into 


36  SON   OF  THE   CIRCUS 

double  (and  some  triple)  decker  berths,  with  some  state- 
rooms for  stars  and  staffs. 

The  circus  owned  all  its  own  cars— the  only  things  the  rail- 
road supplied  were  the  engine  and  the  caboose.  By  having 
them  built  overlength  we  were  able  to  bring  the  number  we 
needed  down  from  one  hundred  to  eighty.  They  were  all 
specially  tailored  for  particular  uses.  For  example,  the  flats 
on  which  the  giraffes  rode  were  underslung  to  give  more 
clearance  for  their  long  necks,  which  were  bent  down  in  their 
thickly  padded  wagons.  Other  cars  had  other  special  features. 

To  me  the  greatest  wonder  of  all  was  raising  the  Big  Top. 
Great  crowds  used  to  come  to  the  lot  to  see  us  do  it;  and  in 
some  ways  it  was  a  more  impressive  show  than  the  circus  it- 
self. 

First  the  great  center  poles,  as  tall  as  the  masts  of  a  clipper 
ship  and  weighing  about  a  ton  each,  were  brought  to  the  lot 
by  the  pole  wagon,  drawn  by  an  eight-horse  hitch,  and  rolled 
off  in  approximately  the  right  position.  While  these  were  be- 
ing raised  by  gangs  of  men  and  obedient  elephants,  the  long 
blue  quarter  poles  and  smaller  red  ones  were  arranged  in 
position,  with  the  short  side  poles  outlining  the  perimeter  of 
the  tent.  Meanwhile  the  gilly  wagon  drove  around  dropping 
stakes  for  guy  ropes,  followed  by  gangs  of  men  driving  them 
in  with  heavy  sledge  hammers  in  cadenced  strokes.  Special 
stakes  were  driven  to  hold  the  main  guys,  which  braced 
the  center  poles  from  outside.  These  took  the  greatest  stress, 
for  they  supported  not  only  the  enormous  weight  of  the 
tent  but  the  rigging  for  the  aerial  acts  as  well.  Tlie  main 
guys  were  steel  cables,  as  were  the  safeties  on  the  bail  rings. 

Now  the  wagons  arrived  with  rolls  of  canvas  as  liigh  as  a 
man's  head,  which  were  dropped  off  and  spread  on  the 
ground.  Men  swarmed  over  them  lacing  the  sections  together. 
There  was  a  half-round  top  at  each  end.  They  had  a  total  di- 
ameter of  210  feet.  In  between  were  five  center  pieces  each 


SAWDUST  IN   MY  SHOES  37 

60  feet  wide.  When  they  were  all  laced  together  you  had  a 
tent  510  feet  long  and  210  feet  wide. 

In  those  days  boss  canvasman  Happy  Jack  Snellen  had 
close  to  a  thousand  men  under  him.  As  you  looked  across  the 
lot  they  were  swarming  all  over  the  place  with  much  less  ap- 
parent order  than  an  army  of  ants  and  far  more  precision. 
When  the  canvas  sections  had  been  laced  together  and  the 
iron-ringed  holes  tied  to  the  bail  rings  on  the  center  poles, 
you  could  begin  to  raise  it  a  Httle.  The  elephants  strained 
against  their  padded  harnesses,  the  one-and-one-half-inch 
manila  ropes  stretched  taut  from  the  blocks,  and  the  center 
sections  Hfted  slowly  oflF  the  gi-ound.  It  was  a  Uttle  like  hoist- 
ing sail  on  a  great  old  windjammer.  For  a  fact,  much  of  the 
circus  was  rigged  like  a  ship  and  the  words  we  used  came 
down  from  the  days  of  sail— "guys"  and  "falls"  and  "bail 
rings." 

As  the  canvas  slowly  lifted,  men  got  under  it  to  set  the  big 
quarter  poles.  It  took  about  eight  men  to  a  pole,  for  each 
was  thirty-seven  and  one  half  feet  long  with  a  steel  horn  at 
the  end  which  had  to  be  maneuvered  into  the  leather-  and 
steel-bound  eyelets  in  the  canvas  so  that  they  were  partly 
supported  by  it.  With  the  elephants  pulling  the  peaks  up 
slowly,  the  poles  shd  along  the  ground  until  tliey  were  in  po- 
sition. These  were  all  related  operations,  with  the  tremen- 
dous weight  of  canvas  carefully  figured  out  so  that  center 
poles,  quarter  poles,  and  side  poles  would  never  take  too 
much  stress  and  would  not  snap  in  two.  Finally  the  peaks 
reached  the  top  of  the  poles,  all  taut  and  smooth  hke  a  well- 
cut  sail,  vidth  the  flags  and  pennants  flying  over  them. 

As  soon  as  the  tent  was  up,  in  came  the  seat  wagons.  A 
knockdown  grandstand  to  seat  twelve  thousand  people  had 
an  infinite  number  of  component  parts.  You'd  start  off  with 
the  small  A-sliaped  jacks  and  then  move  to  progressively 
larger  ones.  On  top  of  tlie  jacks  went  the  forty-foot-long 


38  SON   OF   THE   CIRCUS 

stringers,  like  jagged  saw  teeth.  The  stringers  supported  the 
hinged  planks  for  the  grandstand,  which,  strangely  enough, 
were  called  bibles  in  circus  Hngo,  because  they  folded  to- 
gether as  a  Bible  folds.  On  top  of  these  went  the  chairs— in  the 
reserved-seat  stand.  Then  you  had  to  level  oflF  all  these  things 
by  wedging  hundreds  of  little  blocks  of  wood  under  them  at 
the  right  places. 

The  whole  operation  was  dependent  on  manual  labor  done 
with  speed  and  precision— each  piece  thrown  oS  the  wagons 
in  exactly  the  right  place  and  immediately  raised  into  posi- 
tion. The  Big  Top  men  were  mostly  Negroes,  magnificent, 
stalwart  fellows  glistening  with  sweat,  their  muscles  bulging 
as  they  worked  in  perfect  rhythm  heaving  the  heavy  beams 
of  wood  o£F  the  slowly  rolling  wagons  while  other  gangs  lifted 
them  smoothly  into  position.  It  was  a  marvelous  sight,  and  a 
shame  that  it  is  lost  forever. 

The  teardown  was  nearly  as  exciting.  The  loading  order 
had  to  be  as  exactly  figured  as  setting  up,  so  that  everything 
would  be  in  place  next  day.  At  five-tliirty  in  the  afternoon 
the  last  person  was  served  in  the  cookhouse.  It  was  im- 
mediately torn  down,  hauled  to  the  raihoad  yards,  and 
loaded  onto  flatcars.  As  soon  as  the  people  were  in  the  Big 
Top  for  the  evening  performance,  the  menagerie  top  and 
side  shows  were  struck  and  loaded,  as  was  the  back  yard.  So 
by  the  time  the  performance  was  over,  there  was  nothing  left 
but  the  Big  Top  and  the  paraphernalia  required  by  the  dif- 
ferent acts. 

As  the  people  were  leaving  at  one  end  of  the  Big  Top, 
workmen  began  tearing  down  the  seats  at  the  other,  follow- 
ing right  on  their  heels,  so  that  almost  as  the  last  person  went 
out,  the  tent  was  bare  and  ready  to  be  struck.  The  perform- 
ance usually  ended  at  ten  forty-five.  Very  often,  if  we  had  a 
good  crew,  the  last  wagon  would  be  moving  off  the  lot  at  one 
o'clock  and  the  last  train  might  be  loaded  and  ready  to  go  by 
two-thirty. 


SAWDUST  IN   MY   SHOES  39 

From  all  this  you  may  see  that  the  logistics  of  the  circus, 
until  1938,  when  my  brother  John  mechanized  it,  depended 
entirely  on  men,  horses,  and  elephants.  Though  I  put  them 
last,  these  wonderful  animals  were  not  least,  for  they  alone 
were  both  workers  and  performers. 

One  elephant  whom  I  loved  well  was  Modoc.  She  was 
a  wonderfully  intelligent,  sly  old  thing  who  was  most  helpful 
in  the  teardown,  lowering  the  quarter  poles,  pushing  wagons 
around,  and  doing  whatever  else  she  was  told  to  do.  Then 
maybe  her  attendant  would  doze  in  an  idle  moment  and 
Modoc  would  drift  silently  oJBF.  Her  keeper  would  suddenly 
come  to,  and  Modoc  would  be  twenty  yards  away  looking 
over  the  littered  ground  for  something  to  eat.  She  would  pick 
up  discarded  Crackerjack  and  popcorn  boxes  with  her  trunk 
and  shake  them  over  her  mouth  to  savor  the  last  crumbs  of 
some  child's  feast. 

In  the  show  this  same  Modoc  used  to  dance  all  the  way 
down  the  hippodrome  track  and  stand  on  her  head  at  the  end. 
She  is  still  with  us. 

I  learned  a  great  deal  about  elephants  dm"ing  my  years  on 
the  train.  Because  of  working  beside  them  you  became  more 
intimately  associated  with  tliem  than  any  other  animals.  One 
thing  I  learned  was  that,  though  they  are  used  like  domestic 
animals,  they  are  still  wild— bred  in  the  jungle— so  you  can 
never  quite  trust  them.  This  is  especially  true  of  the  males. 
Unlike  most  other  animals,  it  is  not  the  female  elephant  who 
has  a  mating  season,  but  the  males.  Their  period  is  signaled 
by  a  small  gland  beside  each  eye  which  exudes  a  secretion. 
When  a  bull  is  in  "must,"  as  this  period  of  mating  urge  is 
called,  you  can't  trust  him  for  a  second.  It  does  not  help  to 
allow  them  to  mate;  in  fact,  it  makes  them  wilder.  For  from 
three  to  six  weeks  they  are  insane.  This  is  why  we  have  very 
few  males  in  the  herd. 

Another  cause  of  elephant  treachery  is  cruel  treatment  by 
some  handlers.  They  use  the  elephant  hook,  or  ankus,  with 


40  SON   OF   THE   CIRCUS 

sadistic  pleasure  on  the  tender  places  behind  an  elephant's 
ears.  I  have  frequently  taken  the  hooks  away  from  cruel 
keepers  and  fired  them.  A  bull  thus  treated  is  extremely 
dangerous,  for  though  he  may  appear  docile  and  obedient, 
there  is  a  very  good  chance  that  he  is  slyly  waiting  for  his 
moment  of  revenge.  He  may  bide  his  time  for  years,  remem- 
bering each  outrage,  and  when  his  moment  comes,  exact 
dreadful  retribution. 

Sometimes  even  the  gentlest  of  female  elephants  will  have 
a  mental  storm.  Such  a  one  was  Dolly.  She  was  a  lovely  old 
lady  who  had  been  v^th  the  show  for  many  years,  right  up  to 
the  time  John  and  I  took  over  its  management.  One  day  in 
Winter  Quarters  in  Sarasota,  a  little  girl  five  years  old  ducked 
under  the  rope  around  the  elephant  corral.  For  some  inexpli- 
cable reason  Dolly  grabbed  the  child  -with  her  trunk,  and 
holding  her  thus,  knelt  on  her,  killing  her  instantly. 

Of  course,  we  had  to  destroy  Dolly.  The  newspapers 
wanted  to  make  a  spectacle  of  her  execution,  but  however 
much  we  love  publicity,  my  brother  and  I  did  not  feel  that 
we  should  make  a  reporters'  holiday  out  of  Dolly.  So  we  told 
them  it  would  be  the  next  morning;  and  planned  it  for  tliat 
night. 

Dolly  knew  something  was  viTong.  You  could  tell  bv  her 
nervous  little  tricks  that  she  was  worried.  In  the  middle  of  the 
night  the  circus  vet.  Doc  Henderson,  and  John  and  I  led  her 
out  to  a  desolate  field  together  with  her  best  friend.  Elephants 
usually  have  an  elephant  friend  next  to  whom  tliey  are 
stabled  throughout  their  whole  lives  with  the  circus. 

When  we  reached  this  place  of  scrub  palmettos  and  long 
coarse  grass,  Doc  Henderson  took  a  hypodermic  syringe  tlie 
size  of  a  grease  gun  and,  introducing  it  as  gently  as  possible 
into  a  vein  in  Dolly's  ear,  gave  her  a  massive  dose  of 
strychnine.  She  stood  calm  and  gigantic  in  the  starhght  for  a 
few  moments.  Then  crashed  down  like  a  falling  building. 


SAWDUST  IN  MY   SHOES  4I 

Loving  animals  as  I  do,  I  got  to  know  all  the  others  as  well, 
too.  From  the  time  I  was  a  boy  to  my  last  year  with  the  cir- 
cus, I  was  always  calling  on  my  friends  and  feeding  them. 
The  shy  giraffes  are  surprisingly  affectionate.  They  breed 
splendidly  in  captivity,  and  a  baby  giraffe  is  a  great  attraction 
to  children,  and  adults,  too— a  long-legged,  soft-eyed  little  fel- 
low wobbling  around  with  his  ridiculous  neck  all  out  of 
proportion. 

The  cats  are  always  tricky,  though  charming  and  affection- 
ate when  young.  Because  they  are  smaller,  young  leopards 
make  better  pets  than  hons  and  tigers— if  you  like  that  sort 
of  pet.  Doc  Henderson  and  his  wife  Martha  brought  up  a  fe- 
male leopard  on  the  bottle.  Her  name  was  Sweetheart,  and 
even  when  she  grew  up  she  was  just  like  a  kitten— when  the 
Hendersons  were  with  her. 

The  hippopotomuses  have  always  been  friends  of  mine.  A 
hippo's  bulk  is  tremendous— they  weigh  between  two  and 
three  tons— but  they  are  practically  never  vicious.  You  could 
stick  your  hand  in  their  mouths  if  you  felt  a  Httle  daring.  At 
least  I  never  lost  mine. 

I  remember  one  whom  we  had  with  the  circus  all  my  life 
and  longer.  He  came  to  us  in  1902.  He  was  named  August 
after  my  uncle  Gus  Ringling.  In  winter,  August  lived  in  liis 
big  pool  in  Sarasota.  Almost  every  day  I  would  go  over  to  have 
a  talk  with  him.  I  would  call  "Augustl"  in  a  commanding 
voice,  and  he  would  come  over  looking  for  the  big  forage  bis- 
cuits I  always  fed  him. 

Another,  which  we  got  with  the  Al  G.  Barnes  show,  was  a 
wonderful  old  lady  named  Lotus.  She  was  so  tame  that  in 
many  a  spectacle  we  had  her  led  around  the  arena  on  a  leash. 

Baby  orangutans  and  gorillas  make  wonderful  pets.  Up  to 
the  age  of  two  they  develop  with  about  the  same  intelligence 
as  a  human  child  and  are  as  responsive  and  fun  to  play  with. 
After  that— look  outl 


42  SON   OF   THE   CIRCUS 

I  admit  I  played  favorites  with  the  animals.  Zebras  failed 
to  chaiTTi  me.  I  disliked  the  snapping,  barking  seals.  And 
snakes  left  me  cold,  although  they  actually  like  to  snuggle  up 
to  people  because  of  the  warmth  from  human  bodies.  One 
snake  charmer  whom  I  knew,  Josephine,  had  a  great  affec- 
tion for  snakes,  which  they  seemed  to  return.  She  would 
wrap  a  twelve-foot  constrictor  or  python  around  her  body 
for  a  wliile.  Then  she  would  unwrap  him  and  put  liim  back 
in  his  box  covered  up  with  blankets  all  nice  and  warm. 

The  great  snakes  v^oll  not  willingly  eat  anything  but  hve 
food.  You  have  to  put  a  hving  chicken,  rabbit,  or  small  pig 
in  their  den.  Their  ingestion  is  not  a  pretty  sight,  although 
I  have  forced  myself  to  watch  it. 

Now,  many  people  think  that  circus  animals  live  a  misera- 
ble life:  carted  from  place  to  place,  always  on  exhibition,  or 
put  through  silly  tricks  for  the  delectation  of  the  crowds,  who 
sometimes  seem  less  intelligent  and  sensitive  than  they.  My 
friend  Doc  Henderson  agrees  with  me  tliat  this  is  not  so.  In 
general,  the  animals  soon  get  used  to  circus  routine  and  ac- 
cept it  as  a  normal  way  of  living.  In  fact,  I  suspect  that  many 
of  them,  especially  the  performers,  would  miss  the  excitement 
and  applause.  The  proof  of  their  acceptance  of  their  lot  is 
that  they  are  usually  in  remarkably  good  health.  Further- 
more, they  would  not  be  so  friendly  and  affectionate  if  they 
were  unhappy.  At  least  I  like  to  think  so. 

So  much  for  the  animal  friends  I  made  during  the  years  I 
rode  the  train.  The  wonderfully  brilliant,  lovable  artists,  who 
made  the  show  great;  those  extraordinary  people  who  were 
kind  or  cruel,  steadfast  or  psychotic;  passionate  yet  rigorously 
disciplined;  demanding  but  bountifully  generous;  and  which- 
ever they  were,  or  sometimes  all  of  these  things  at  once, 
sharing  the  great  uncommon  denominator  of  superlative 
showmanship— these  marvelous  friends  wiU  walk  with  us 
throughout  this  book. 


SAWDUST  IN  MY   SHOES  43 

At  the  end  of  my  first  season,  with  my  inquiring  mind  and 
the  multitude  of  notes  I  had  taken,  I  thought  I  knew  all  about 
the  circus.  Of  course,  I  did  not.  For  the  next  thirty-four 
years— with  a  few  minor  interruptions  caused  by  family  feuds 
and  a  world  war— I  continued  to  learn  about  it.  But  one  thing 
I  knew  for  sure  even  then— I  had  sawdust  in  my  shoes. 

Now  I  am  ready  to  write  about  my  love;  write  the  whole 
story.  Not  only  the  fair  face  she  turns  to  her  admiring  pubhc, 
though  I  shall  try  to  do  justice  to  her  beauty  and  her  splendid 
vitality,  but  also  the  dark  and  wicked  side  of  her  that  I  know 
so  well.  I  will  tell  tlie  story  of  our  circus  from  the  beginning. 
It  is  a  story  of  splendid  achievement  and  of  the  passionate 
dedication  that  my  family  felt  toward  the  beloved  institution 
which  they  fathered.  But  I  do  not  propose  to  spare  even  my 
own  people  in  this  narrative.  Their  faults  were  often  as  great 
as  their  achievements  and  these,  too,  will  be  faithfully 
chronicled. 

There  are  many  strange,  great,  lovable,  or  hateful  charac- 
ters in  my  story,  but  basically  it  hinges  on  the  two  men  who 
played  the  leading  role  in  the  history  of  Ringling  Brothers— 
Barnum  &  Bailey  Circus— my  uncle  John  Ringling  and  my 
brother  Jolin  Ringling  North.  They  have  many  things  in 
common.  They  both  loved  the  circus  and  they  were  both  ex- 
tremely controversial  figures.  There  was  a  third  likeness: 
Uncle  John  and  his  nephew  were  both  nocturnal  creatures. 
Neither  liked  to  get  up  until  afternoon;  and  they  worked  or 
played  all  night. 

As  to  the  controversies,  the  sharp  battles  between  men  and 
women  of  the  same  blood  and  the  murderous  conflicts  with 
outsiders,  these  were  made  inevitable  by  their  characters  and 
necessities.  For  certainly  Uncle  John  was,  and  Brotlier  John  is, 
egotistical,  domineering,  and  eccentric;  and  dedicated  to  the 
circus.  Without  them  our  circus  would  be  a  very  different  sort 
of  thing.  In  fact,  it  is  doubtful  if  it  would  exist  at  all. 


Part  II 
THE  SEVEN  BROTHERS 


CHAPTER   III 


THE  FIRST  PARADE 


The  circus  as  we  know  it  has  always  been  a  family  business. 
I  do  not  speak  of  its  fearful  ancestor,  the  blood  baths  in  the 
Roman  Colosseimi,  but  of  the  ghttering,  laughing,  exciting 
spectacle  for  children-who-never-grow-up  which  had  its  be- 
ginnings in  the  small  European  road  shows  of  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries.  These  traveling  troupes  were  almost 


48  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

always  composed  of  members  of  a  single  family,  with  their 
wives  and  collateral  relations,  who  had  developed  some 
special  skills  either  as  equestrians,  tightrope  performers, 
acrobats,  or  tmnblers— the  aeriahsts  came  later. 

Even  in  the  present  era  of  big  business  many  individual 
acts  are  still  performed  by  big  families  like  the  Wallendas, 
who  build  a  human  pyramid  on  the  high  vvire,  or  the 
Christianis,  equestrians  extraordinary.  My  brother  and  I  like 
to  think  that  despite  its  heterogeneous  collection  of  hundreds 
of  performers.  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth  is  also  still  a 
family  aflFair. 

Certainly  it  was  in  the  beginning.  Indeed,  for  a  while  the 
five  Ringling  brothers  were  all  there  was  to  it.  However,  there 
was  one  striking  difference  between  the  Ringlings  and  other 
circus  people.  Most  of  those  famiUes  have  show  business  in 
their  blood;  but  there  was  never  a  showman  in  our  family 
until  the  spring  day  in  1870  when  my  five  uncles  were,  by 
their  accounts  of  it,  ring-struck,  dazed  and  dedicated  by  the 
sight  of  a  showboat  circus.  Indeed,  tlieir  heredity  could 
hardly  have  been  less  promising  for  the  parts  they  were  to 
play. 

They  stemmed  originally  from  a  French  Huguenot  family 
named  Richelin,  who  fled  from  France  after  Saint  Bar- 
tholomew's dreadful  fete  day  and  settled  in  the  Hanoverian 
towTi  of  Dankelshausen.  There  they  changed  their  name  to 
Riingeling  and  became  extremely  staid  and  sober  burghers 
making  an  honest  hving  and  marrying  their  neighbors'  stolid 
daughters.  Perhaps  the  Riingehngs  married  too  locally.  Again 
and  again  through  the  generations  the  name  Bauermann 
appears  as  that  of  the  bride.  My  sister  Salome  maintains 
that  this  penchant  for  marrying  their  first  cousins  is  the 
cause  of  our  family's  notable  eccentricities.  I  have  another 
theory.  .  .  . 

My  grandfather  August  Riingeling  learned  the  trade  of 


THE  FmST  PARADE  49 

harness  maker  and  carriage  trimmer  in  Germany  and,  when 
he  was  twenty-one  years  old,  departed  for  America  to  escape 
the  alarms  and  confusions  of  the  revolutionary  year  of  1848. 
He  settled  first  in  Milwaukee  and  there  his  father,  Frederic 
Riingeling,  and  his  mother,  Rosina  Bauermann  Riingeling, 
joined  him  a  year  or  two  later.  Unhappily  Great-grandfather 
Riingeling  did  not  long  enjoy  the  freedom  of  the  New  World. 
He  died  in  the  cholera  epidemic  in  Milwaukee  in  1850. 

Early  in  1852  Grandfather  Riingeling  met  and  married 
Marie  Salom^  JuHar  of  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin,  whose  par- 
ents had  left  France  in  1845.  In  my  opinion  it  is  the  JuHar 
blood  which  is  boiling  in  our  veins  when  we  orbit  out  of  the 
norm.  Certainly  my  great-grandfather  Nicholas  Juliar,  who 
was  bom  in  1797  in  the  Alsatian  town  of  Ostheim  on  the 
Rhine,  was  a  formidable  character  all  his  days.  He  stood  six 
feet  four,  and  the  turbulence  of  his  nature  was  as  homeric  as 
his  physical  proportions.  Since  he  was  seventeen  in  the  last 
years  of  the  Napoleonic  era,  he  may  have  served  the  Em- 
peror—toward the  end  of  his  life  he  believed  he  had. 

In  the  1840S  he  sold  his  vineyards  on  the  simny  slopes  be- 
hind the  Rhine,  and  packing  the  gold  louis  in  little  kegs,  set 
off  with  his  wife,  three  daughters,  and  an  infant  son,  my  great- 
uncle  Nicholas  Juhar,  Jr.,  for  America.  He  put  his  family 
aboard  a  sailing  packet  at  Le  Havre  and  informed  his  wife 
that  he  had  certain  affairs  to  attend  to  in  the  town.  The  busi- 
ness was  apparently  transacted  in  the  wineshops  of  the  port, 
and  when  Grandfather  Juliar  recovered  consciousness,  he 
found  that  the  American  packet  had  sailed. 

One  may  imagine  the  anxiety  with  which  my  tiny  great- 
grandmother,  surrounded  by  her  sobbing  offspring,  watched 
the  masts  and  spires  of  Le  Havre  fading  in  the  early  mists  as 
the  ship  bowed  and  creaked  to  the  Channel  seas.  One  may 
also  share  her  relief  as  she  saw  a  swift  cutter  pursuing  the 


50  THE    SEVEN   BROTHERS 

packet  and  recognized  a  gigantic  figure  standing  on  her  bow- 
sprit bellowing  orders  for  the  packet  to  heave  to.  But  Great- 
grandfather Juliar  was  not  permitted  to  share  her  happiness. 
He  heard  of  that  episode  all  the  rest  of  his  life. 

All  his  long  life  Great-grandfather  indulged  in  these  drink- 
ing bouts.  My  uncle  John  Ringling  remembered  him  when  he 
was  in  his  eighties,  a  magnificent  man  still,  as  straight  and 
tall  as  one  of  Napoleon's  grenadiers,  roaring  drunk  in  the 
main  street  of  Rice  Lake,  calhng  dov^ni  curses  on  all  Ger- 
mans, shooting  off  his  ancient  flintlock  musket,  and  shouting 
"Vive  V empereur!" 

My  grandparents  had  a  happy  though  peripatetic  mar- 
riage. They  anglicized  tlieir  name  to  Ringling  and  settled  in 
Chicago,  where  Albert,  the  first  of  their  seven  sons  was  born 
in  December  1852.  They  then  moved  to  Milwaukee,  where 
August  was  born  in  1854.  Grandfather  Ringling  wanted 
a  business  of  his  ovvni.  In  1855  he  moved  to  the  village  of 
Baraboo,  Wisconsin,  which  became  the  cradle  of  our  great 
enterprise.  My  uncle  Otto  was  bom  in  Baraboo  in  1858. 

Grandfather  announced  his  new  business  in  a  racy,  al- 
most circus-style  advertisement  in  the  Baraboo  Republic  of 
June  23,  1855. 

HO,  FELLOW  CITIZENS!  GIVE  ATTENTION  TO 
THE  ONE  HORSE  HARNESS  SHOP! 

He  went  on  to  describe  his  stock  of  "a  saddle  or  two,  a 
couple  of  bridles,  trunks,  valises,  whip  lashers  .  .  .  also  fly 
nets.   .  .  . 

"Now  if  any  are  desirous  to  know  where  these  cheap  things 
sta\  thev  will  crowd  their  way  to  the  shop  of  the  undersigned 
neaiiv  opposite  the  Summer  House.  A.  Ring]ing." 

It  appears  that  business  was  good  at  first,  for  the  followiag 
year  he  triumphantly  announced: 


THE  FIRST  PARADE  5I 

The   ONE   HORSE   establishment   will   now,   good 
friends,  pass  as  a  DOUBLE  HORSE  Concern. 

However,  it  seems  unlikely  that  the  Ringling  boys  in- 
herited their  business  ability  from  their  father.  Despite  his 
skill  and  the  rapidly  growing  lumber  industry  which  created 
an  excellent  demand  for  harness,  the  following  advertisement 
appeared  in  the  Baraboo  Republic  in  1858: 

A  Ringling  Announces  that  in  consequence  of  the  Hard 
Times  .  .  .  he  is  selling  out  his  entire  stock  of  Double 
and  Single  Harness,  Saddles,  etc.  At  Cost. 

In  i860  the  Ringlings  moved  to  McGregor,  Iowa.  There  the 
rest  of  the  famous  Ringling  team  were  born:  Alfred  T.,  1862; 
Charles,  1864;  John,  1866;  and  Henry,  1869. 

McGregor  was  a  boom  town  on  the  Mississippi  probably 
larger  in  those  days  than  it  is  now.  For  like  so  many  embryo 
metropohses  on  the  river,  it  starved  and  shrank  as  the  steam- 
boat traffic,  which  was  its  reason  for  being,  was  superseded 
by  the  railroads.  Grandfather  appears  to  have  had  liis  own 
shop  there  for  a  time,  and  then  joined  forces  with  several 
partners.  He  also  became  a  founder  member  of  the  new 
Lutheran  church. 

My  grandmother  bought  a  pleasant  frame  house  in 
McGregor,  and  there  tlie  Ringling  boys  grew  up  in  an  en- 
vironment almost  identical  to  that  of  the  most  famous  of  all 
American  boys,  who  hved  in  a  similar  river  town,  called 
Hamiibal,  Missouri.  Incidentally,  Grandfather  Ringlings 
sister  was  married  to  Samuel  Clemens'  first  cousin  and  my 
mother  often  visited  the  Clemens  family  in  Hannibal.  The 
slow  barefoot  days  of  siunmer  alternated  with  the  long  icy 
winters.  The  httle  schoolhouse  might  have  been  the  one  where 
Tom  and  Huck  and  golden-ringleted  Becky  scratched  with 
squeaky  pencils  on  their  slates  and  felt  the  sting  of  the 
teacher's  hickory  stick  on  their  backsides. 


52  THE    SEVEN   BROTHERS 

However,  theirs  was  not  the  circumscribed  environment  of 
the  inland  prairie  towns.  The  multifarious  life  of  the  great 
river,  which  was  the  main  artery  of  midwestern  commerce, 
poured  by  on  its  roiHng,  muddy  current,  often  pausing  at  the 
levee  to  load  cargo  or  discharge  passengers.  Even  when  they 
did  not  stop,  those  splendid  white-and-gold  steamers  with 
their  tall  twin  stacks  trailing  tumbling  coils  of  black  smoke 
led  the  children's  thoughts  to  places  beyond  the  horizon. 

Other  types  of  steamers  plied  the  river  in  those  days- 
showboats  and  circus  boats.  And  thereby  hangs  the  tale  of 
The  Greatest  Show  On  Earth. 

Fortunately  for  Ringling  liistorians,  my  uncle  Alf  T.  v^ote 
an  eyewitness  account  of  the  spring  day  that  changed  the 
Ringlings'  lives.  The  event  was  heralded  weeks  ahead  by  big 
gaudy  billboards  proclaiming  the  advent  of: 

DAN    RICE'S 

BRILLIANT  COMBINATION  OF  ARENIC 

ATTRACTIONS 

Dan  Rice,  who  deserved  his  billing  of  The  King  of  Ameri- 
can Clowns,  was  one  of  the  first  great  circus  men— he  had 
started  his  circus  in  1848.  He  was  beloved  by  the  crowds  and 
was  a  friend  of  the  great,  among  whom  were  men  of  such 
diverse  political  views  as  Horace  Greeley,  Jefferson  Davis, 
Robert  E.  Lee,  and  Abraham  Lincoln.  His  showboat  circus 
was  no  shoddy  affair.  Though  there  was  only  one  ring,  it  was 
an  excellent  show.  Indeed,  it  is  thought  to  be  the  one  Tom 
Sawyer  saw. 

My  uncle  Alf  T.  recorded  that  he  and  his  brothers  got  up 
very  early  on  the  appointed  morning.  It  must  have  been 
about  4  A.M.,  for  there  was  no  sign  of  dawn  in  the  sky  as  the 
boys— Henry  was  too  young— walked  nervously  along  pitch- 
black  streets  made  strange  by  their  utter  emptiness. 

Down  by  the  boat  landing  a  few  oil  lanterns  glimmered  in 


THE   FIRST   PARADE  53 

the  thick,  dank-smelling  mist  off  the  water.  Other  early-rising 
boys  and  men  were  moving  about  talking  in  low  tones  or 
skipping  stones  across  the  water.  In  retm-n  for  permission  to 
make  this  predawn  excursion,  the  Ringling  boys  had  prom- 
ised their  parents  not  to  mingle  with  any  crowds,  so  they 
formed  a  solid  little  group  by  themselves,  which  was  symbolic 
of  the  united  front  they  always  showed  the  world.  John,  aged 
four,  clung  to  Albert's  reassuring  hand.  He  was  too  young  to 
be  there  at  all,  but  he  was  a  willful  child. 

The  boys  stood  listening  for  the  sound  of  the  circus  boat's 
whistle.  They  could  identify  every  boat  on  the  river  by  the 
note  of  her  whistle,  but  circus  boats  were  easy.  Their  owners 
added  a  set  of  chromatic  whistles  to  the  regular  one  and  an- 
nounced themselves  by  sending  a  steam-fed  tune  shoreward. 
This  was  the  origin  of  the  music  machine  wliich  became 
symbolic  of  the  circus,  the  steam  calhope. 

When  the  mist  had  whitened  a  little  and  the  bellies  of  the 
clouds  turned  gray,  the  Ringlings  saw  lights  coming  around 
the  bend.  All  the  men  and  boys  began  to  shout  and  yell,  and 
were  suddenly  silent  again,  listening.  Let  Uncle  Alf  describe 
it: 

"Far  reaching  but  soft  came  the  melody  of  a  popular 
air.  .  .  .  There  were  no  screeching  tones— none  of  the  ear- 
splitting  screams  that  the  calliope  of  today  sends  out  to  rattle 
against  the  windows  and  walls  of  a  city  street.  The  old  river 
calliope  made  music  that  was  sweet.  All  its  sharpness  and  its 
terror  were  mellowed  as  it  passed  over  the  water,  and  by  the 
time  it  reached  the  shore  it  was  as  soft  and  soothing  as  a 
cradle  song.  .  .  ." 

Grandly  the  steamer  came  on,  pine  torches  flaring  along 
her  decks.  She  nosed  into  the  bank  with  clanging  bells  and 
hissing  steam.  You  could  read  her  name  on  the  pilothouse: 
WILL  s.  HAYS.  Alongside  her  was  a  barge  loaded  with  splendid 


54  THE    SEVEN   BROTHERS 

chariots  of  red  and  gold,  and  the  tent  wagons  piled  with  long 
poles  and  great  rolls  of  canvas.  These  were  dragged  off  first 
by  a  windlass;  then  hitched  to  six-horse  teams  and  started  for 
the  show  grounds.  The  carved  and  gilded  chariots  were  eased 
carefully  off,  as  their  teams  were  simultaneously  brought  oflF 
the  main  boat  and  hitched  up  with  the  precision  of  a  well- 
drilled  battery  of  horse  artillery.  Then  came  the  animals— a 
nose-ringed  bear  or  two,  a  grumpy  camel,  the  white  broad- 
backed  horses  of  the  equestrians,  and  finally  the  elephant, 
testing  the  gangplank  with  probing  trunk  and  one  great  fore- 
foot. Iron-gray,  the  color  of  sky  and  water,  he  was  mon- 
strously magnified  by  the  mist.  Though  later  the  Ringlings 
owned  many  larger  animals,  they  all  declared  that  they  never 
saw  another  elephant  that  looked  so  big. 

Alf  T.  Ringling  states  that  as  he  and  his  brothers  walked 
home  for  breakfast,  they  talked  together  for  the  first  time  of 
having  a  circus  of  their  own. 

The  rest  of  the  day  was  as  splendid  as  its  beginning.  First 
the  parade,  then  the  performance  itself,  which  was  more  than 
anticipation  demanded.  To  the  unsophisticated,  entertain- 
ment-starved cliildren  of  those  small  midwestern  towns,  the 
color  and  splendor,  the  music  and  lights,  the  feats  of  skill,  and 
the  uproarious  antics  of  the  clowns  were  beyond  any  imagin- 
ing of  delight.  Even  the  sleazy,  gaudy  costumes  were  trans- 
figured by  their  innocent  eyes  and,  for  that  reason  in  that 
time,  were  truly  things  of  beauty. 

The  younger  boys  were  completely  swept  up  and  out  of 
themselves  by  the  show,  lost  to  time  and  all  reahty.  But  Al 
watched  it  with  a  speculative  eye,  studying  the  techniques  of 
the  acrobats  and  jugglers.  At  eighteen  he  was  strong  and  agile, 
and  he  believed  he  could  duplicate  some  of  their  feats. 

As  is  the  way  of  circuses,  Dan  Rice's  show  vanished  in  the 
night,  leaving  no  trace  of  its  glories  but  a  terrible  mess  of  torn 


THE   FIRST   PARADE  55 

paper,  garbage,  and  old  tin  cans  on  the  show  grounds.  How- 
ever, instead  of  the  emptiness  that  usually  marks  the  day 
after  such  an  orgy  of  delight,  the  Ringlings  were  full  of 
enthusiasm.  They  had  decided  to  put  on  their  own  show. 

Their  first  circus  was  held  in  a  "mammoth  pavihon"  made 
of  scraps  of  canvas,  old  carpets,  and  moth-eaten  army  blan- 
kets. The  company  consisted  of  the  Ringlings  and  a  few 
friends.  The  admission  price  was  one  cent.  But  such  was  the 
eagerness  of  McGregor's  youth  to  see  a  show— any  show— tliat 
a  series  of  performances  netted  $8.37  ( Alf  T.'s  figures ) .  This 
was  promptly  plowed  back  into  the  business  by  the  purchase 
of  enough  mushn  sheeting  for  a  fairly  sizable  tent. 

The  Ringlings  considered  their  performance  of  1870  kid 
stuff.  In  the  summer  of  1871  they  put  on  a  real  show.  (That 
year  a  gentleman  named  Phineas  T.  Barnum  also  went  into 
the  circus  business.)  Apparently  the  Ringlings  must  have 
worked  on  their  circus  the  best  part  of  the  winter  and 
spring  and  spent  most  of  their  earnings  on  props  and  ring 
stock,  for  it  represented  quite  a  respectable  entertainment 
even  without  the  accidental  effects  that  were  funnier  than  the 
best  efforts  of  Emmett  Kelly.  Their  historian,  Alf  T.  Ringling, 
left  a  blow-by-blow  description  of  it. 

McGregor  was  notified  of  the  event  by  the  concatenation 
of  a  fife,  jew's-harp,  bugle,  and  harmonica,  and  the  booming 
of  an  enthusiastic  drum.  Rushing  to  porches  and  store  fronts, 
they  saw  the  parade,  headed  by  a  "Democrat  wagon"  painted 
in  gaudy  reds  and  yellows  drawn  by  a  desiccated  black 
mustang  pony,  with  superb  harness  by  A.  Ringling  and  a  red, 
white,  and  blue  sheep's-wool  plume  nodding  from  his  head. 
Driving  the  wagon  was  Al  Ringling,  who  also  played  the 
bugle,  while  four  of  his  brothers,  all  wearing  plumes  like  the 
horse,  made  up  the  band.  It  was  followed  by  a  small  boy 
carrying  a  sign  that  read: 


56  THE    SEVEN   BROTHERS 

RINGLING'S  BIG  CIRCUS 

Next  in  line  came  Otto  Ringling  leading  a  battle-scarred 
goat  known  locally  as  Billy  Rainbow,  which  he  had  trained  to 
perform  certain  tricks  and  reclassified  as  a  "hippo-capra,"  This 
in  turn  was  followed  by  the  whole  juvenile  population  of 
McGregor.  Indeed,  most  of  the  adults  joined  the  fun,  follow- 
ing the  Ringlings  to  the  vacant  lot  where  their  circular  tent 
was  pitched.  From  its  center  pole,  a  young  pine  tree  cut  from 
the  nearby  woods,  floated  an  American  flag,  while  the  sapling 
quarter  poles  flew  homemade  pennants.  Over  the  entrance 
was  a  sign: 

RING-LING  CIRCUS 

Admission  5  cents 

Over  a  hundred  men,  women,  and  children  handed  their 
five  cents  to  Otto  at  the  door  and  crowded  around  the  little 
sawdust  ring  in  the  middle  of  the  tent.  The  entertainment 
started  with  the  grand  entry,  known  professionally  as  the 
Spec.  Alf  T.,  representing  the  King  of  the  Sandwich  Islands 
in  a  Union  ofiicer's  old  dress  uniform,  a  cape  made  from  a 
crazy  quilt,  and  a  gilt-paper  crown,  led  it  riding  the  pony.  He 
was  followed  by  the  band  and  the  performers,  now  dressed 
in  tights  made  of  long  winter  underwear  dyed  gaudy  colors 
and  meagerly  bespangled  and  decorated  with  fancy  ribbons. 
Last  came  Billy  Rainbow,  led  by  John  Ringling  dressed  as  a 
clown— he  was  five  years  old. 

Right  at  the  peak  of  the  spectacle  occurred  the  first  of  those 
unpremeditated  incidents  wliich  convinced  the  spectators 
that  they  were  getting  their  money's  worth.  As  the  King  of  the 
Sandwich  Islands  dismounted  and  bowed  to  his  applauding 
subjects,  Billy  Rainbow  broke  loose  from  John's  feeble  hold 
and  with  instinctive  showmanship  butted  the  seat  of  the  royal 
pants.  The  King  wept  with  pain  and  everyone  else  in  the  tent 
wept  with  laughter. 


THE   FIRST   PARADE  57 

From  there  on  the  RingHngs  had  their  audience  sewed  up. 
Al  juggled  hats  and  plates,  and  the  more  plates  he  broke  the 
louder  was  the  applause.  Otto  Ringhng  was  announced  with 
his  performing  goat.  Under  the  eye  of  his  real  master,  Billy 
Rainbow  worked  like  a  veteran. 

Display  No.  4  was  a  tumbling  act  by  the  entire  company. 
Little  Johnny  Ringling  then  sang  a  clown  song,  "Root  Hog  or 
Die,"  with  the  whole  company  joining  in  the  chorus,  and  fol- 
lowed it  up  with  some  jokes  from  Dan  Rice's  show  the  year 
before.  The  next  display  was  an  exhibition  on  trapeze  and 
rings.  Then  came  the  crowning  performance.  While  Al  acted 
the  ringmaster  in  a  real  high  silk  hat,  Charhe  Ringling  ap- 
peared in  an  equestrian  display  on  the  mustang.  It  was  not 
precisely  bareback  riding,  for  the  poor  beast's  razor-sharp 
spine  would  have  defeated  Lucio  Christiani  himself.  Charhe 
had  contrived  a  riding  pad  out  of  half  a  cellar  door  and  some 
blankets.  It  had  worked  well  in  practice,  but  in  the  hurry  of 
getting  it  strapped  on  his  steed  he  had  been  careless.  Every 
time  he  leaped  onto  it,  it  tilted  and  spilled  him  off.  Thus,  in 
spite  of  themselves,  the  Ringlings  followed  that  old  theatrical 
precept:  "Always  leave  them  laughing." 

In  telling  the  story  of  Dan  Rice's  arrival  in  McGregor  and 
the  first  Ringling  circus,  I  have  adhered  strictly  to  the  facts 
as  set  down  by  my  uncle  Alf  and  related  to  me  by  my  other 
uncles.  But  I  am  not  so  naive  as  to  suppose  that  no  exaggera- 
tions crept  in.  Nor  should  it  be  otherwise,  for  without  hyper- 
bole circus  public  relations  would  be  like  a  Bloody  Mary 
without  vodka. 

For  example,  though  they  always  claimed  it  happened  that 
way,  it  seems  improbable  that  all  my  uncles  were  converted 
by  Dan  Rice's  lightning  like  six  Sauls  on  the  road  to  Damas- 
cus. This  appears  especially  doubtful  in  the  case  of  fom--year- 
old  Johnny.  Yet  one  cannot  be  sure,  for  John  Ringling  at  the 


58  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

last  was  the  most  dedicated  of  all;  and  he  was  a  precocious 
child.  Like  most  legends,  this  one  is  probably  contrary  to  fact 
but  contains  the  essence  of  truth.  For  that  May  day  did,  ia 
fact,  determine  their  lives. 

I  think  that  it  was  Albert  Ringling  who  got  the  full  charge 
and  bellwethered  his  brothers  into  a  life  of  showmanship.  But 
they  were  willing  followers,  and  in  the  end  the  disciples  out- 
ran their  master.  By  the  time  they  held  their  fii"st  circus  their 
course  was  fully  charted. 

The  townspeople  of  McGregor  may  have  regarded  the  show 
as  a  joke,  but  to  the  Ringlings  it  was  a  deadly  serious  business 
in  which  they  took  enormous  pride.  How  proud  they  were  is 
indicated  by  the  fact  that  in  all  the  years  ahead  my  shrewdly 
sentimental  uncles  numbered  their  seasons  from  that  first  five- 
cent  circus. 


chaptj:r  IV 


RINGLING  BROS.  CLASSIC 
AND  COMIC  CONCERT  CO. 


The  "hard  times"  came  again  for  August  Ringling  in  1872— 
a  year  ahead  of  the  rest  of  the  country. 

That  autumn  the  Ringlings  moved  across  the  river  to  Prairie 
du  Chien  in  Wisconsin,  where  my  grandfather  got  a  job  as  a 
carriage  trimmer  in  Traner's  Carriage  Works.  He  was  able  to 


60  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

rent  a  comfortable  house  in  the  village.  But  bad  luck  seems 
to  follow  poor  businessmen,  like  a  dog  after  a  v^histle.  The 
next  fall  Traner's  factory  burned  to  the  groimd  just  as  the 
great  depression  of  '73  hit  the  country.  It  v^as  never  rebuilt, 
and  Grandfather  was  out  of  work. 

Now  the  Ringlings  reached  their  lowest  ebb.  They  moved 
to  a  ramshackle  house  in  a  coulee,  or  dry  gulch,  outside  of 
town.  Naturally  it  had  no  plumbing,  but  a  lead  pipe  mounted 
on  wooden  blocks  brought  water  to  the  kitchen  from  a  spring 
further  up  in  the  hills.  A  narrow  strip  of  land  along  the  road 
came  with  the  house,  and  there  those  of  the  boys  who  were 
still  at  home  raised  what  food  they  could,  with  the  aid  of  the 
former  King  of  the  Sandwdch  Islands'  old  mustang  pony.  In 
that  house  my  mother,  Ida  Lorena  Wilhelmina  Ringling,  was 
born  on  February  2,  1874.  She  was  twenty-one  years  younger 
than  her  eldest  brother,  the  last  child  and  only  girl  in  the 
family.  Two  other  boys  and  a  girl,  who  all  died  in  infancy, 
had  been  born  in  between  my  uncles,  but  in  those  unsterile 
times,  to  have  eight  children  survive  was  an  excellent  per- 
centage. 

After  Ida  was  bom,  the  older  boys  began  to  fly  the  family 
coop.  Gus  was  already  working  as  a  carriage  trimmer  in  vari- 
ous small  lowan  towns.  Then  Al  went  off  to  follow  his  pre- 
carious chosen  profession.  He  had  never  ceased  to  practice 
his  jugghng  and  acrobatics.  Now  he  managed  to  get  jobs  in 
some  "haU  shows,"  as  the  small  troupes  of  traveling  enter- 
tainers were  called.  He  appears  to  have  made  his  head- 
quarters at  Brodhead,  Wisconsin,  where  he  worked  as  a 
carriage  trimmer  while  professionally  at  hberty.  In  the  sum- 
mer he  came  to  Praiiie  du  Chien,  and  while  working  that  thin 
piece  of  land,  perfected  his  most  original  trick— balancing  a 
plow  on  the  point  of  his  chin. 

Albert  Ringling  had  considerable  ability,  and  what  is  more, 
he  had  the  drive,  which  in  any  field  is  an  excellent  substitute 


RINGLING   BROS.    CONCERT   CO.  6l 

for  talent.  According  to  an  article  by  J.  J.  Schicher  in  the 
Wisconsin  Magazine  of  History,  he  was  so  successful  that  by 
1880  he  was  managing  a  show.  Two  ancient  Brodheadians 
remember  him  living  in  a  large  hotel  room  surrounded  by 
his  paraphernalia  and  practicing  his  stunts.  History  does  not 
state  how  his  fellow  boarders  felt  about  it.  However,  one  of 
Uncle  Al's  specialties  was  ropewalking,  which  he  practiced 
out  of  doors  on  a  rope  stretched  between  two  large  trees  in 
the  town  square. 

Meanwhile  August  Ringling  was  once  more  on  the  move, 
first  to  Stillwater,  Minnesota,  and  finally  back  to  Baraboo. 

Grandfather  was  surely  a  glutton  for  punishment.  He  had 
his  own  shop  in  Baraboo  again  in  1876,  which  was  burned  up 
in  a  fire  that  leveled  an  entire  block  of  wooden  shops  on  Oak 
Street  in  1878.  Even  this  did  not  daunt  him.  He  opened  up 
again  at  the  corner  of  Third  Street  and  Broadway  in  the  lower 
floor  of  a  frame  house,  while  the  family  lived  above.  In  1880 
he  won  three  first  prizes  at  the  county  fair  with  a  "splendid 
display  of  harness,"  including  a  "gold-  and  rubber-mounted 
double  carriage  harness  .  .  .  the  finest  ever  manufactured  in 
this  part  of  the  state." 

Sometime  during  those  years  Otto  went  off  to  find  work  as 
a  harness  maker,  while  Alf  T.  and  Charles  came  into  their 
father's  shop.  But  their  hearts  were  definitely  not  in  it.  Ratlier, 
they  liked  to  practice  their  musical  instruments— Charles 
played  the  violin  and  trombone;  Alf  blew  a  loud  and  melodi- 
ous cornet. 

Meanwhile  yoimg  Johnny  was  boiling  with  that  tremendous 
energy  which  later  made  him  the  most  far-ranging  of  the 
brothers,  both  in  business  and  intellectual  activities.  This 
does  not  refer  to  formal  education— he  never  even  finished 
high  school.  In  fact,  my  mother  used  to  say  that  the  only 
way  they  could  keep  John  in  school  was  to  tie  him  to  his 
desk.  Uncle  John  was  never  amused  by  this  remark. 


62  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

When  he  was  twelve  years  old  John  Ringling  struck  out  for 
himself.  He  ran  away  from  home  and  set  himself  up  in  busi- 
ness in  Milwaukee.  Long  afterward  he  described  to  me  his 
first  business  venture.  It  was  selling  a  "wonderful"  cleaner 
for  pots  and  pans  which  he  manufactured  himself  by  com- 
bining an  abrasive  powder  wdth  a  httle  bluing  to  give  it  a 
distinctive  appearance.  This  he  put  up  in  neat  little  packages. 
When  the  police,  whom  Grandfather  had  alerted,  caught  up 
with  John,  they  found  him  living  in  an  empty  warehouse  in 
Milwaukee,  industriously  mixing  up  a  batch  of  Ringling 
Cleanser.  His  only  furniture  consisted  of  packing  crates  in- 
geniously adapted  to  the  roles  of  table,  chairs,  and  a  bed.  But 
business  was  booming.  He  was  very  annoyed  at  being  sent 
home. 

In  the  next  two  years  John  ran  away  three  more  times. 
Somehow  he  never  cared  for  Baraboo.  In  fact,  as  soon  as  he 
got  enough  money  he  moved  away  permanently  and  there- 
after referred  to  residents  of  his  home  tov^Ti  as  "Baraboobians." 

John's  final  bid  for  freedom  from  education  came  when  a 
small  hall  show  played  Baraboo.  Uncle  John  caught  up  wdth 
the  show  about  ten  miles  from  Baraboo  at  the  tiny  towTi  of 
Delton,  which  has  since  disappeared  without  leaving  a  trace. 
He  asked  for  a  job,  giving  his  age  as  sixteen,  which  he  looked 
to  be.  They  promptly  hired  him  as  a  general  handyman.  He 
swept  the  halls,  packed  up  the  paraphernalia,  and  took  tickets 
at  the  door.  His  pay  was  supposed  to  be  three  dollars  a  week. 

Uncle  John  enjoyed  the  gypsy  life  immensely,  as  he  ever 
after  did;  but  he  got  very  tired  indeed  of  never  being  paid. 
Occasionally,  the  manager  would  throw  him  a  half  dollar, 
but  this  did  little  more  than  add  insult  to  his  strong  sense  of 
personal  injury.  Since  there  seemed  no  chance  of  collecting 
his  back  wages  legally,  he  decided  to  do  something  about 
it.  One  night,  when  the  audience  was  in,  he  carefully  counted 
the  take  and  found  that  it  came  to  just  about  what  he  figured 


RINGLING   BROS.    CONCERT    CO.  63 

the  show  owed  him.  So  he  put  it  in  his  pocket  and  left  town 
while  the  performers  were  still  bringing  down  the  house. 

That  was  in  Minnesota.  Correctly  deciding  that  he  had 
better  get  lost,  he  headed  for  the  great  big  city  of  St.  Paul, 
where  he  bought  himself  a  gold  watch  and  confidently  began 
looking  for  work.  Fortunately,  his  father  found  him  before 
his  former  employer  did,  and  back  he  went  to  Baraboo. 

The  Ringlings'  real  career  was  heralded  by  the  merest 
whisper  of  publicity.  An  obscure  item  in  the  Sauk  County 
Democrat  for  June  lo,  1882,  stated,  "Albert  Ringling  is  at 
home  for  several  days'  vacation  with  his  parents." 

It  was  no  vacation.  Uncle  Al  came  to  organize  a  dream- 
that  of  having  his  own  show.  If  August  Ringling  shook  his 
head  it  was  in  silence.  Charles  and  Alf  T.  were  enthusiastic 
—harness  making  was  never  a  thing  for  them.  In  addition, 
young  Ringling  recruited  three  talented  local  boys  for  his 
little  company.  Among  them  was  E.  M.  Kimball,  who  later 
made  his  mark  in  theatrical  history  by  proxy  as  the  father 
of  tlie  brilliant  star  of  the  silent  screen,  Clara  Kimball  Young. 

With  reckless  disregard  for  fact  and  splendid  alliteration, 
the  show  was  billed  as: 

Fourth  Season,  1882 

RINGLING  BROS. 

CLASSIC  AND  COMIC  CONCERT  CO. 

A  refined    and  high   class   entertainment   containing 

many  of  the  most  prominent  features  of  the  musical 

and  comedy  world 
New  Faces  New  Acts  New  Songs 

Wonderful  Dancers  Great  Specialists 

Noted  Comedians  Famous  Singers 

TWO    HOURS    OF    SOLID    FUN 

As  to  that  questionable  "Fourth  Season":  The  Ringlings 
were  not  liars;  they  just  liked  to  stretch  truth  a  little.  They 
justified  the  statement  by  counting  the  five-cent  cii'cus  as  theii* 


64  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

first  season  and  Albert's  three  years  of  managing  hall  shows 
as  the  rest. 

The  Ringlings  spent  the  rest  of  the  summer  of  1882  in 
frantic  preparation.  A  show  was  put  together  and  rehearsed. 
Handbills  and  tickets  were  printed;  wigs  and  comedy  acces- 
sories bought  or  made  at  home;  trunks  purchased  and  packed. 
A.  M.  Young  was  hired  as  advance  agent  to  map  their  route 
and  travel  ahead  to  plaster  the  towns  with  gaudy  yellow 
posters.  It  all  cost  a  great  deal  of  Albert's  hard-earned  money. 
Before  they  put  their  first  show  on  the  road  Ringling 
Brothers  were  almost  flat  broke. 

On  a  cold  November  afternoon  the  show  started  from 
Baraboo  with  the  paraphernalia  in  a  farm  wagon  and  the 
performers  in  a  three-seat  surrey.  They  drove  fourteen  miles 
over  the  wintry  hills  to  Sauk  City,  where  they  took  a  milk 
train  to  Mazomanie,  Wisconsin.  Their  object  in  taking  this 
roundabout  route  was  to  avoid  being  followed  by  friends  who 
might  come  to  jeer,  not  cheer.  It  was  not  altogether  success- 
ful. 

When  they  got  to  the  hotel  for  breakfast,  two  young 
Mazomanians,  whom  they  had  once  met,  greeted  them  with 
whoops  and  hollers.  Charles  Ringling  told  how  this  ill-timed 
welcome  affected  them. 

"When  those  two  young  fellows  dashed  into  our  faces  with 
their  guileless  effervescence,  and  their  carbonic  questions 
made  the  crowd  standing  around  wise  about  our  newness, 
we  felt  like  taking  the  train  back  to  Baraboo.  How  we  could 
shake  hands  with  the  fellows  when  we  felt  that  they  deserved 
to  be  murdered,  I  don't  know.  We  were  crushed  for  all  day." 

Utterly  despondent,  the  company  went  through  a  spiritless 
rehearsal  which  was  further  dampened  by  their  awe  of  the 
"grandeur  of  painted  hangings  and  imitation-marble  col- 
umns," which  were  the  local  theater's  stock  set. 


RINGLING   BROS.    CONCERT   CO.  65 

According  to  Charles:  "At  about  noon  we  paraded  the 
streets  of  the  small  village  with  our  little  band.  .  .  .  Alf  and 
one  of  our  hired  associates  played  on  cornets,  the  other  played 
a  bass  horn  .  .  .  and  I  must  have  threatened  the  foundations 
of  the  shops  with  a  long  and  brassy  trombone  while  Al  beat 
the  bass  drum.  ...  As  we  paraded  that  first  day,  each  one  of 
us  playing  for  dear  life,  I  was  aware  of  a  lump  that  seemed 
to  come  into  my  throat.  .  .  .  From  the  shopwindows  our 
yellow  window  hangers  boldly  proclaimed  [that  we]  would 
give  an  entertainment  of  Mirth  and  Music  in  the  town  hall, 
and  I  shuddered  at  what  in  my  own  heart  I  called  'our  awful 
gall."' 

The  historic  first  performance  took  place  on  the  evening  of 
Monday,  November  27,  1882.  It  exceeded  everybody's  worst 
expectations.  According  to  Charles:  "From  the  very  beginning 
the  troupe  in  its  entirety  seemed  to  fly  to  pieces.  Our  first 
number  was  an  introductory  overture.  We  all  played  in  this, 
ordinarily  in  a  satisfactory  manner.  .  .  .  [That  night]  it 
seemed  as  if  every  note  from  the  cornet  was  a  blue  one,  every 
tone  from  the  violin  a  squeak,  every  blast  from  the  clarinet 
a  shriek,  and  as  if  all  the  different  instruments  were  in  a 
jangle.  Oh,  it  was  an  awful  exhibition  of  faltering  nerve.  .  .  . 

"We  were  a  confused  and  demoralized  lot  when  we  left  the 
stage.  Our  trembling  limbs  seemed  unable  to  move  .  .  .  and 
we  bumped  up  against  one  another  awkwardly  as  with  bated 
breath  and  red  faces  we  shambled  off  beyond  the  wings.  .  .  . 

"You  can  imagine  how  we  felt  when  we  had  to  go  out  and 
face  the  audience  singlehanded  and  alone  to  perform  our 
specialties.  But  we  did  it.  Talk  about  a  soldier's  feeling  before 
battle  I  It  cannot  be  a  comparison  to  a  real  healthy  feeling  of 
stage  fright.  Why,  when  I  came  off  after  my  so-called  act, 
my  tongue  and  throat  were  actually  parched  from  the  fever  of 
excitement  that  was  raging  within  me.  .  .  . 

"Now  as  I  look  back  on  tliat  performance,  I  wonder  that  it 


66  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

didn't  break  up  in  a  riot.  .  .  .  The  funny  part  of  it  was  that 
not  one  of  the  fifty-nine  people  who  had  come  to  see  the  show 
got  up  and  walked  out.  They  suflFered  the  tortures  of  our  music 
and  bore  the  weariness  which  hung  upon  our  jokes  with  a 
patience  and  good  nature  which  I  feel  grateful  for  to  this  day. 
They  even  applauded  at  times.  I  hope  every  one  of  them  has 
prospered  since,  and  may  Hve  a  long  and  happy  life.  Each 
deserves  it  after  such  a  sacrifice.  .  .  ." 

When  the  Ringlings  counted  the  house  they  found  they 
had  taken  in  thirteen  dollars.  Against  this  they  had  the  fol- 
lowing expenditures: 


Livery  from  Baraboo  to  Sauk  City 
Railroad  fare  from  Sauk  City  to 

Mazomanie 
Hotel  biU 
Rent  of  hall 
Salaries 

$  8.00 

2.40 

7-50 
6.00 

2.00 

total: 

$2S.QO 

As  the  Ringling  Brothers  left  for  their  next  stand  at  a  town 
with  the  hopeful  name  of  Spring  Green,  their  working  capital 
was  two  dollars  and  fifty  cents. 

In  that  vemally  named  but  icy  city  they  got  their  first  break. 
As  soon  as  the  train  arrived  they  hurried  to  the  drugstore 
which  Mr.  Young  had  induced  to  handle  the  tickets. 

"What  is  our  advance  sale?"  Al  asked,  and  thought  the 
druggist  answered,  "Six." 

"That's  not  much,"  he  said  despondently. 

"I  think  it's  mighty  good,"  the  druggist  said.  "Fact  is,  sixty 
dollars  is  the  best  we've  ever  had  here." 

It  is  reliably  reported  that  Uncle  Al  required  a  restorative. 
Even  when  he  recovered,  he  could  not  understand  how  the 
people  of  Spring  Green  could  be  insane  enough  to  buy  nearly 
every  seat  in  the  house.  The  mystery  was  cleared  up  by  the 


RINGLING   BROS.    CONCERT   CO.  67 

janitor  of  the  hall,  who  explained  that  a  local  association  had 
announced  a  dance  for  that  night,  but  when  they  tried  to 
hire  the  hall,  it  was  already  taken.  The  farm  boys  and  their 
girls  had  been  driving  into  town  all  day.  When  they  found 
the  dance  was  off,  they  took  the  next  best  thing— the  Ringlings. 
So  from  the  depths  of  bankruptcy  the  Ringlings  shot  to  the 
very  peak  of  prosperity  in  twenty-four  horns.  By  eight  o'clock 
the  house  was  packed  with  people;  some  even  roosting  on  the 
window  sills.  The  farm  folk  were  out  to  have  a  good  time; 
and  they  had  it.  As  the  RingHng  orchestra  came  on  stage  the 
audience  whistled  and  cheered,  and  the  timbers  shivered  to 
the  stomping  of  cowhide  boots.  What  mattered  now  an  oc- 
casional blue  note  or  a  slight  squeak?  The  crowd  was  warm 
and  willing,  and  the  company  responded  by  outdoing  them- 
selves, as  is  always  the  case  when  that  wonderful  rapport 
which  makes  the  magic  of  the  theater  is  established  between 
an  audience  and  the  performers.  Indeed,  my  uncles  said  they 
never  played  better.  Albert  was  brilliant  and  sure  as  he 
juggled  whips,  hats,  and  plates.  How  the  fann  boys  yelled 
when  he  balanced  that  plow  on  his  chini  The  singing  and 
dancing  acts  were  thunderously  received.  When  Alf  T.  and 
Charles  displayed  their  versatility  by  playing  eight  different 
instruments,  the  audience  sat  in  spellbound  wonder.  Every 
threadbare  joke  brought  a  belly  laugh,  and  tlie  dramatic 
sketch  which  closed  the  show  produced  an  ovation.  It  was 
an  actor's  paradise. 

That  night  set  a  record  but  not  a  precedent.  The  company 
rocked  along  from  town  to  town,  scraping  bottom  all  the  way. 
On  December  i  and  2  they  daringly  gave  shows  in  McGregor 
and  Prairie  du  Chien  without  being  egged  off  the  stage  by 
their  former  fellow  townsmen. 

On  December  18,  at  Sanborn,  Iowa,  John  Ringling,  aged 


68  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

fifteen,  joined  his  brothers.  He  had  three  comic  roles  in  the 
show;  the  first  two  were  a  dude  and  an  Irishman,  For  his 
final  turn  he  was  billed  as  The  Emperor  of  Dutch  Comedians 
and  did  a  wooden-shoe  dance.  With  his  round  face  and  a 
false  bulging  stomach  he  was  very  funny. 

The  band  needed  an  alto  horn,  so  Albert  ordered  John  to 
learn  to  play  it.  He  went  so  far  as  to  lock  his  brother  in  his 
room  for  practice  every  day  until  John  was  able  to  produce 
an  adequate  if  not  exactly  scintillating  performance. 

By  train  or  in  hired  wagons  and  sleigh,  the  Ringlings  fol- 
lowed an  erratic  course  across  the  bleak  lowan  plains  playing 
every  night  but  Sunday.  They  even  gave  a  show  on  Christmas 
night  in  Flandreau,  South  Dakota.  Then  they  crossed  into 
Minnesota.  Experience  made  them  decide  to  avoid  the  larger 
towns  in  favor  of  the  little  rural  communities,  which  were 
both  less  critical  and  more  hungry  for  entertainment.  Their 
Route  Book  chronicles  the  almost  forgotten  names— Pipestone, 
Edgerton,  Fulda,  Jackson,  Fairmont,  Alden,  Austin,  Browns- 
ville, Dexter.  Next  to  Dexter  is  the  notation  "Snowed  in." 

There  the  final  curtain  almost  fell  on  the  Ringling  Concert 
Company.  They  were  operating  on  so  thin  a  margin  that  a 
lost  night  could  mean  bankruptcy.  Alf  T.  describes  how  they 
dragged  their  trunks  down  to  the  depot  through  a  howling 
blizzard  because  the  liveryman  refused  to  take  his  horses  out. 
Their  train  grunted  in  hours  late  pushing  a  snow  plow.  It 
was  only  twenty  miles  to  ironically  named  Spring  Valley,  but 
the  train  stuck  fast  halfway  there,  and  they  slept  on  the  plush- 
covered  seats  of  the  chilly  cars.  The  next  day  the  train  was 
hopelessly  snowbound,  but  they  succeeded  in  hiring  a  sleigh 
for  ten  dollars.  They  had  only  half  that  amount  between  them, 
but  they  figured  they  might  get  the  rest  if  they  ever  reached 
Spring  Valley.  They  did;  for  the  news  of  their  trek  spreading 
through  town  was  better  advertising  than  handbills,  and  the 
house  was  full. 


RINGLING   BROS.   CONCERT   CO.  69 

In  a  mining  town  they  ran  into  competition  from  a  prize 
fight  and  played  to  six  people.  This  time  they  had  no  money 
to  pay  their  hotel  bill,  so  Jim  Hamilton,  the  proprietor,  held 
their  trunks.  But  the  miners  felt  sorry  for  them  and  helped 
to  sneak  the  trunks  out  of  the  hotel  in  the  middle  of  the  night 
and  get  them  on  a  barge,  in  which  they  crossed  the  Missis- 
sippi River  to  Wisconsin,  leaving  Hamilton  howHng  impre- 
cations from  the  bank. 

Then  they  had  a  few  good  nights  and  sent  Hamilton  a 
money  order  for  his  bill.  How  extraordinary  such  honesty  was 
considered  is  shown  by  the  receipt  he  sent  them. 

Received  of  Ringling  Bro.  this  day  and  date  7  dolars 
witch  I  neaver  thot  Ide  get,  but  witch  I  am  sorey  I 
dident  trust  them  for  because  they  are  honest  even 
the  they  are  acters  whitch  you  cant  say  of  all  of  them. 
But  I  have  been  skined  so  many  times  by  men  who  say 
nice  words,  that  I  have  to  be  careful. 

If  you  eaver  come  this  way  agan  Ide  trust  you  but  I 
was  awful  mad  when  I  thot  you  had  skip  for  good. 

Jim  Hampton. 

About  this  time  Otto  Ringling  joined  them,  replacing  A.  M. 
Young  as  advance  man.  And  now  the  five  original  partner- 
brothers  were  all  together. 

Through  that  frozen,  desolate  countryside  the  tour  con- 
tinued. In  some  respects  their  life  was  more  rigorous  than 
that  of  the  pioneers  who  had  but  lately  preceded  them.  For 
the  first  settlers  were  at  least  properly  clothed,  housed  in  snug 
cabins,  and  equipped  to  live  off  the  country  swarming  with 
game;  whereas  the  Ringlings  were  nightly  on  the  road,  half 
frozen  in  their  thin  citified  clothes,  and  dependent  for  their 
food  on  the  fickle  favor  of  the  public,  which  was  a  considera- 
bly less  reliable  provider  than  a  Winchester  .44. 

When  they  had  time  to  sleep  at  all,  it  was  in  flea-bag  hotels 
where  the  top  price  for  a  room  was  a  dollar  and  fifty  cents  and 


7©  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

not  worth  it.  In  this  connection,  Uncle  John  used  to  tell  the 
tale  of  arriving  late  at  one  such  hostelry  and  hauling  the 
proprietor  out  of  bed,  w^hose  unsavory  appearance  and  gamy 
smell  foretold  the  conditions  ahead.  He  came  to  the  front  desk 
and  reached  for  the  key  with  his  right  hand,  vigorously 
scratcliing  his  exposed  armpit  with  his  left.  "Here's  number 
four  for  you  two,"  he  said.  With  his  left  hand  he  hooked  a 
second  key  oflF  a  nail  while  scratching  his  left  armpit.  "You 
two  gentlemen  bunk  in  number  five." 

Then  with  both  hands  energetically  scratching  his  belly, 
he  remarked  with  undue  optimism,  "Have  a  good  sleep, 
gentlemen." 

The  initial  tour  closed  in  Viroqua,  Wisconsin,  on  February 
27,  1883,  and  they  all  went  back  to  Baraboo,  no  richer,  but 
considerably  wiser.  However,  they  started  out  again  on 
March  12,  and  played  throughout  April.  One  more  brief  foray, 
which  lasted  a  week  in  May,  ended  the  season. 

What  the  Ringlings  did  throughout  the  summer  is  not 
recorded.  They  certainly  did  not  hve  on  their  profits.  Nor  did 
they  work  in  the  harness  shop;  for  August  Ringling  had  upped 
stakes  again  to  locate  in  Rice  Lake,Wisconsin.  He  hoped  to 
find  a  market  for  his  handmade  harness  by  moving  westward 
to  this  frontier  town,  which  was  so  deep  in  the  forest  that  my 
mother  remembered  being  frightened  by  a  great  black  bear 
when  she  was  picking  berries. 

Whatever  occupation  the  brothers  found,  it  was  only  a  stop- 
gap. Neither  storm,  nor  sleet,  nor  gloom  of  public  apathy  could 
stay  them  from  their  self-appointed  course.  On  August  30, 
1883,  they  started  out  again  wdth  a  more  elaborate  show.  Otto, 
Alf  T.,  Charles,  and  John  headed  it— Albert  was  traveling 
with  another  troupe,  which  had  made  him  an  offer  he  could 
not  afford  to  turn  dov^m.  In  addition,  there  were  eight  hiied 
performers,  including  a  married  couple,  and  a  brand-new 


RINGLING   BROS.    CONCERT   CO.  7I 

portable  organ.  One  thing  the  Ringhngs  had  learned  on  their 
previous  tours  was  that  the  word  "classic"  held  no  appeal  for 
their  public.  What  the  people  of  those  small  western  towns 
wanted,  and  needed  desperately,  was  entertainment,  so  this 
season  the  show  was  billed  as: 

RINGLING  BROS.  GRAND  CARNIVAL  OF  FUN 

They  headed  straight  for  the  lumber  towns,  where  tlie 
axmen  and  loggers  had  pay  in  their  pockets  and  no  place  to 
spend  it.  They  did  very  well— at  first. 

On  September  22  they  played  Rice  Lake  and  held  a  family 
reunion.  Their  deep  German  sentimentality  and  strong  family 
ties  had  survived  transplanting  to  the  New  World  as  it  was  to 
survive  the  harder  pressures  of  great  wealth  and  diverse 
interests.  Though  I  appeared  thirty  years  and  thirty  million 
dollars  later,  I  can  still  remember  the  tremendous  family 
gatherings  at  Christmas  in  Baraboo,  when  all  the  uncles  came 
home  with  their  wives  and  childi'en  to  celebrate  with  an 
enormous  meal  and  joyous  expressions  of  theii*  deep  affection 
for  one  another.  So  one  can  easily  imagine  what  a  gemiltlich 
time  they  had  that  night  in  Rice  Lake,  with  their  parents,  and 
their  baby  sister,  and  Henry,  who  gi-ew  to  be  six  feet  three 
and  weigh  three  hundred  pounds.  One  can  also  envisage 
the  meal  that  Grandmamma  cooked  for  them  of  rich,  heavy 
Gernian  dishes,  and  how  wonderful  it  tasted  after  the  slops 
that  were  served  on  the  fly-specked  tables  of  hotel  dining 
rooms. 

As  the  Carnival  of  Fun  moved  on  into  Minnesota  the 
weather  hardened,  and  the  hired  performers  became  a  good 
deal  less  enthusiastic. 

The  trouble  came  to  a  climax  early  in  November.  For  that 
date  the  Route  Book  has  the  brief  notation:  "On  November 
2'd  all  people  were  discharged,  and  on  Nov.  3'd  at  Starbuck, 
Minn.,  made  parade.  Alf  Ringling,  Cornet;  Jolm  Ringling, 


72  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

Alto;  Chas.  Ringling,  Baritone  [Trombone];  Otto  Ringling, 
Bass  Drum.  [Otto  was  tone  deaf.]" 

Fortmiately  Alf  T.  Ringling  provided  a  considerably  more 
detailed  account  of  the  crisis.  According  to  him,  the  manage- 
ment held  a  conference  at  which  one  of  the  brothers  remarked, 
"Next  season  let's  go  it  by  ourselves." 

It  was  Alf  T.  who  said,  "I'd  make  next  season  begin  to- 
morrow." 

The  next  day  happened  to  be  payday.  The  company  was 
much  gratified  and  slightly  siuprised  to  get  their  full  pay  that 
night  after  the  show.  Then  they  all  went  to  bed  in  the  hotel 
across  from  the  railway  station.  As  soon  as  the  Ringlings  were 
reasonably  sure  that  their  employees  were  asleep,  they 
sneaked  out  and  borrowed  the  baggage  truck  from  the  rail- 
way station.  Then  they  woke  the  proprietor  and  told  him  that 
they  were  leaving  and  wanted  their  trunks.  His  alarmed 
protest  was  silenced  by  being  paid  in  full  for  everybody 
through  breakfast  on  the  morrow. 

Only  one  hitch  occurred.  One  of  the  trunks  had  been  left 
in  the  hotel  parlor.  Since  every  room  was  taken,  the  proprietor 
had  put  a  cot  in  it  and  rented  it  to  a  most  respectable  widow. 
Naturally  nervous  about  inhabiting  the  same  hotel  as  a  troupe 
of  actors,  she  had  locked  her  door  and  paid  no  attention  to 
polite  rapping.  At  this  point  Uncle  John  showed  that  gift  of 
improvisation  which  took  him  so  far.  He  banged  lurgently  on 
the  door  with  his  cane  and  said  in  a  commanding  voice, 
"Quick,  madam!  I  can  still  save  you." 

The  door  opened  a  crack.  Uncle  John  inserted  his  stick.  His 
brothers  rushed  in  to  get  the  trunk.  Over  to  the  station  on  the 
luggage  truck,  and  they  were  oflF  bag  and  baggage. 

When  Otto  met  them  there  in  Starbuck  the  next  day,  he 
asked,  "Where  are  all  the  others?" 

"Shook,"  said  John. 


RINGLING  BROS.    CONCERT   CO.  73 

It  is  further  recorded  in  the  Route  Book  tliat  with  Otto  out 
ahead,  Alf  T.,  Charles,  and  John  played  the  show  alone  until 
Al  joined  them  at  Lincoln,  Nebraska,  on  January  6,  1884.  Ap- 
parently they  did  very  well,  for  by  that  time  they  were  able 
to  see  the  shimmering  mirage  of  a  Big  Top  of  their  own. 
There  is  a  picture  of  the  five  brothers  parading  in  this  final 
flowering  of  the  Carnival  of  Fun.  They  have  abandoned  the 
uniformed-band  idea  and  are  fashionably  dressed  in  Prince 
Albert  coats  with  gleaming  high  silk  hats.  Albert  and  Charles 
already  have  grown  the  glossy  black  walrus  mustaches  which 
became  a  trade-mark  of  the  Ringling  brothers.  On  his  travels 
Al  had  acquired  two  valuable  assets.  One  was  the  friendship 
of  a  grand  old  circus  man  who  was  down  on  his  luck;  the 
other  was  a  wife. 

Her  name  was  Louise  Morris,  and  she  was  a  woman  of 
many  parts,  among  them  a  dauntless  disposition  and  the 
ability  to  charm  snakes.  The  senior  Ringlings  were  somewhat 
less  enthusiastic  about  their  first  daughter-in-law  tlian  her 
merit  deserved.  This  is  implied  in  a  pathetically  polite  letter 
from  her,  written  the  following  year  while  her  husband  was 
oflF  with  the  Carnival  of  Fun. 

Baraboo,  December  21,  1884 

Dear  Mr,  and  Mrs.  Ringling: 

I  suppose  I  should  say  Father  and  Mother  but  it 
seems  kind  of  strange  to  say  that.  But  it  has  been  long 
anuff  ago  to  not  be  strange  by  now. 

Al  wrote  to  me  saying  you  want  to  now  why  I  never 
wrote  to  you.  I  wrote  last  if  I  am  not  mistaken  and  I 
supposed  you  knew  all  about  Al  and  I  being  married  as 
I  think  Al  wrote  it  to  you  last  winter  just  after  we  was 
married.  It  was  ages  ago  the  19th  of  this  month,  .  .  . 

Well  I  just  think  there  is  no  better  man  than  Al.  We 
all  got  along  spendid  last  summer  and  had  a  nice  time 
and  I  am  very  anchuss  to  see  him  here  again  as  I  am 
very   lonesome    here    all    alone    this    winter.    I    am 


74  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

doing  some  dress  making  but  don't  have  mutch  to  do 
not  hke  I  used  to  have.  But  I  am  trying  to  help  all  I  can 
so  Al  can  keep  even  with  the  rest  of  the  Boys.  .  .  . 

Well  Ida  how  do  you  do  and  how  are  you  getting 
along  with  your  music  as  I  see  by  the  Boys'  letters 
that  you  have  a  new  organ? 

I  will  close  at  this  time  hoping  to  here  from  you  soon. 

I  remain  yours  with  respect, 

Lou  RiNGLING 

Love  to  you  All. 

Despite  her  deficiencies  in  grammar  and  spelling,  Louise 
Ringling  was  a  beautiful  yoimg  lady.  A  contemporary  photo- 
graph shows  that  she  had  a  willowy,  wasp-waisted  figure,  dark 
hair  and  eyes,  and  a  small  heart-shaped  face  with  finely 
modeled  features.  In  the  picture  she  is  wearing  a  handsome 
afternoon  gown  of  satin  and  lace  adorned  with  all  the  frills 
and  furbelows  of  Victorian  high  fashion.  The  contrasting 
sash,  draped  over  the  full  skirt,  is  a  live  boa  constrictor. 

In  her  anxiety  to  help  Al  "keep  even  with  the  rest  of  the 
boys"  she  outdid  even  them.  She  and  Al  had  a  small  house  in 
Baraboo,  where  all  five  brothers  lived  when  they  were  at 
home,  eating  gigantic  meals  which  Aunt  Lou  cooked.  When 
they  got  tlie  wagon-show  circus  she  made  most  of  the  cos- 
tmnes,  cooked  for  all  hands,  and  acted  as  adviser  and  house 
mother  to  the  female  performers,  and  was  the  star  equestri- 
enne. When  necessity  arose  she  even  did  some  snake  chai-m- 
ing. 

Later,  when  Al  Ringling  was  equestrian  director  of  the 
hundred-car  railroad  show,  Aunt  Lou  always  traveled  on  the 
train  with  him.  Throughout  the  years  he  relied  on  her. 

As  to  the  friendship  Al  had  made,  that  also  fostered  great 
events. 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  WAGON  SHOW 


Al  Ringling's  new  friend  and  mentor  was  Yankee  Robinson, 
an  old  man  on  the  last  downward  slope  from  the  pinnacle  of 
the  circus  world.  Like  most  of  its  citizens,  he  had  had  a  whip- 
sawed  career.  His  first  big  success,  in  1854,  was  a  traveling 


j6  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

tent  show  which  gave  a  circus  in  the  afternoon  and  Uncle 
Toms  Cabin  at  night.  Uncle  Tom  was  dropped,  and  it  be- 
came all  circus  for  its  tour  of  the  South;  but  in  1859  a  South 
Carolina  mob  took  offense  at  Yankee's  nickname,  and  he  took 
off  with  whiskers  streaming  while  they  destroyed  his  whole 
equipage.  Prudently  remaining  in  the  North,  he  recouped 
during  the  1860s,  and  in  1869  his  huge  wagon  show  grossed 
more  than  any  American  circus  had  until  then. 

Overconfident  expansion  brought  bankruptcy  in  1876;  and 
when  Albert  Ringling  met  him,  he  was  operating  a  small  hall 
show.  My  uncle  John  once  told  me  that  all  he  could  remember 
about  Yankee  Robinson  was  his  magnificent  spread  of  white 
whiskers  and  his  passion  for  oysters.  These  dehcacies  were 
very  hard  to  come  by  in  the  inland  states,  and  whenever  he 
happened  upon  a  supply,  the  old  gentleman  prepared  to  enjoy 
himself.  He  would  sit  down  before  a  great  pile  of  oysters  and 
carefully  place  a  brass  spittoon  beside  him.  Then  he  would 
begin  to  eat,  and  when  he  could  cram  no  more  oysters  down 
his  throat,  like  the  old  Roman  he  was  in  spirit,  he  would 
vomit  into  his  spittoon;  and  start  afresh. 

Tired  of  the  halls  and  longing,  as  all  of  us  do,  to  return  to 
the  tented  arena,  Robinson  eagerly  agreed  to  throw  in  with 
the  Ringling  gamble.  He  brought  no  capital  but  his  experi- 
ence. However,  he  clothed  our  show  with  the  authority  of  liis 
tattered  fame. 

The  first  definite  proof  that  the  RingHng  dream  was  assum- 
ing concrete  form  comes  in  a  letter  from  Montello,  Wisconsin, 
dated  April  9,  1884: 

Dear  Parents,  Bro  and  Sis: 

It  froze  today.  Will  be  in  Baraboo  Saturday.  We 
bought  a  team  in  Waukon,  Iowa.  We  have  one  wagon 
in  Baraboo,  another  horse  in  Iowa.  Have  all  our  mail 
sent  to  Baraboo. 


THE   WAGON   SHOW  yj 

Hoping  this  finds  you  in  good  health  as  it  does  us. 

Yours 

RiNGLiNG  Brothers 
The  name  of  our  show  is  Yankee  Robinson's  Great 
Show  and  Ringhng  Brothers  Carnival  of  Comedy. 

This  letter  is  in  the  round,  immature  handwriting  of  John 
Ringling,  which  remained  round  and  immature  until  he  died 
at  the  age  of  seventy.  The  most  interesting  aspect  of  it  is  that 
Uncle  John,  writing  to  his  own  family,  signed  it  "Ringling 
Brothers."  That  indicates  how  proud  were  the  brothers  of 
their  partnership,  and  how  completely  they  regarded  them- 
selves as  a  single  entity  in  which  any  one  of  them  could  speak 
for  all. 

Not  that  they  did  not  have  hot  arguments  among  them- 
selves. My  mother  said  that  sometimes  when  they  were  all  at 
Grandmother's  house  discussing  business  they  bellowed  and 
roared  and  swore  at  each  other,  eyes  flashing,  fists  clenched 
as  though  they  would  assassinate  one  another  at  any  moment. 
My  tiny  grandmother  could  always  control  them  through 
their  love  and  respect  for  her.  Above  all,  no  hint  of  disagree- 
ment ever  leaked  outside  their  private  discussions  through 
all  the  long  years,  until  one  by  one  they  died. 

My  cousin  Richard  Ringling,  looking  backward  at  the  great 
circus  empire  which  they  built  from  so  small  a  start,  once 
said  to  me,  "Perhaps  it  wasn't  that  the  uncles  were  so  smart, 
but  just  that  there  were  so  God-damned  many  of  them."  He 
should  have  added,  "All  working  with  complete  loyalty  and 
a  single  piu"pose." 

The  Carnival  of  Fun  closed  and  returned  to  Baraboo  on 
April  12,  1889,  after  a  highly  successful  season.  The  Ringlings 
had  a  thousand  dollars  in  the  bank  and  a  little  over  a  month 
to  get  their  circus  together.  With  so  small  a  stake  they  had 
to  do  almost  everything  themselves.  They  ordered  tlieir  Big 
Top  (90  by  45  feet)  and  a  smaller  one  for  the  side  show 


j8  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

from  a  tentmaker,  but  according  to  Alf  T.,  they  cut  the  poles 
for  it  themselves  in  a  tamarack  sw^amp  near  Baraboo.  They 
had  bought  three  spring  wagons  to  convey  the  personnel  and 
management  across  country.  Over  these  they  put  covered- 
wagon  tops  of  sheeting  painted  vermilion,  with  lithographed 
pictures  of  wild  animals— of  which  they  had  none— and  the 
name  of  the  show  in  gold  letters.  Its  billing  had  been  changed 
to  the  more  imposing  title  of: 

YANKEE  ROBINSON  and  RINGLING  BROS. 

GREAT  DOUBLE  SHOW 

Circus  and  Caravan 

While  this  work  was  going  forward,  local  carpenters  were 
building  knockdown  benches  under  their  direction,  and 
Louise  Ringling  was  industriously  sewing  costumes. 

To  move  the  show  they  had,  in  addition  to  the  spring 
wagons,  several  farm  carts  and  a  big  dray  for  the  tent  poles. 
Whether  they  actually  owned  three  or  five  horses  is  obscure, 
but  most  of  the  animals  which  hauled  the  wagons  were  hired 
from  local  farmers,  who  drove  their  own  teams.  As  finally 
constituted,  the  caravan  consisted  of  twenty-two  horses  and 
nine  wagons,  not  counting  the  "Privilege  Wagons,"  as  the 
personnel  vehicles  were  called  in  the  Route  Book.  One  of  these 
was  sent  ahead  as  a  "Flying  Squadron." 

Meanwhile,  throughout  the  last  part  of  the  carnival  tour, 
they  and  Yankee  Robinson  had  been  negotiating  for  a  small 
group  of  performers.  As  the  time  drew  near  for  the  grand 
opening,  telegrams  arrived  from  various  parts  of  the  Midwest 
requesting  the  Ringlings  to  wire  railroad  fare  so  that  their 
indigent  employees  could  get  to  Baraboo.  These  extra  de- 
mands cleaned  out  the  last  of  their  bank  account.  On  the 
opening  day  the  Ringlings  were,  as  usual,  stony  broke. 

The  Ringling  circus  opened  at  Baraboo  on  Monday,  May 
19,  1884.  Luck  smiled  on  them  from  sunny  skies  and  a  gentle 


THE   WAGON   SHOW  79 

south  wind  full  of  the  promise  of  summer.  Shortly  before  the 
performance,  tlie  five-Ringling  band,  beefed  up  by  two  of  the 
new  performers,  made  a  parade  with  Yankee  Robinson  march- 
ing ahead.  At  the  comer  of  Third  Street  and  Broadway  he 
halted  the  procession  and  addressed  tlie  crowd  in  the  bull- 
fiddle  tones  of  a  barker  and  the  lachrymose  verbiage  of  a 
professional  tear  jerker. 

"Ladeees  and  Gentlemen,"  he  bellowed.  "I  am  an  old  man. 
For  forty-years  I  have  rested  my  head  on  a  stranger's  pillow. 
I  have  traveled  every  state  in  the  Union.  .  .  .  Soon  I  will 
pass  to  the  arena  of  life  that  knows  no  ending.  And  when  I 
do,  I  want  to  die  in  harness  .  .  .  with  my  name  associated 
with  that  of  the  Ringling  brothers.  For  I  can  tell  you  [here 
his  voice  is  reported  to  have  sunk  to  a  confidential  note  of 
prophecy],  I  can  tell  you  that  the  Ringling  brotliers  are  the 
future  showmen  of  America.  They  are  the  coming  men!" 

The  dear,  mendacious  old  gaflFer,  ballyhooing  a  forlorn 
hope,  would  undoubtedly  have  dropped  dead  if  he  had 
suddenly  foreseen  how  right  he  was. 

Amid  friendly  applause,  for  the  Ringlings  were  popular  in 
Baraboo  before  success  somehow  soured  their  relations  with 
their  fellow  tovmsmen,  the  parade  moved  on  to  the  lot  where 
the  two  tents  stood  with  proudly  waving  pennants.  Robinson 
led  them  into  the  Big  Top  and  then  took  his  station  near  the 
door,  urging  on  the  customers  and  exchanging  jokes  with 
them,  while  Otto  sold  tickets  from  the  tailboard  of  a  privilege 
wagon. 

The  tent  could  hold  six  hundred  people  around  a  ring  made 
of  red  turkey  cloth  staked  out  in  a  circle.  Six  hundred 
"Baraboobians"  paid  their  twenty-five  cents  admission.  As 
they  crowded  up  on  the  new  seats,  a  section  collapsed,  dump- 
ing a  jumbled  mass  of  men,  women,  and  children  on  the 
muddy  ground.  Yankee  Robinson  gave  the  brothers  their 
money's  worth  right  there.  He  shot  over  to  the  scene  of 


8o  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

catastrophe,  cracking  jokes  like  a  string  of  firecrackers,  help- 
ing people  up,  soothing  children,  putting  everybody  back  in 
a  genial  humor.  For  such  services  and  the  use  of  his  name, 
his  compensation  vv^as  one  third  of  the  after-show  concert's 
receipts. 

According  to  Alf  T.,  the  main  show  could  not  have  been 
much  more  sophisticated  than  the  original  five-cent  circus. 
The  entire  company,  including  the  five  Ringlings,  the  hired 
performers,  roustabouts,  teamsters,  and  Louise  Ringhng, 
numbered  twenty-one  persons.  There  was  not  even  one  horse 
in  the  ring.  As  Alf  T.  observed,  the  animals  which  the  show 
owTied  "were  fitter  for  a  glue  factory  than  an  equestrian  act." 
The  displays  consisted  of  tumbling,  horizontal-bar  acts,  a 
contortionist,  and  juggling  and  balancing  acts,  interspersed 
with  some  of  the  comedy  bits  from  the  Carnival  of  Fun.  John 
Ringhng  was  the  only  clown. 

To  wring  the  last  possible  dime  out  of  the  customers,  the 
brothers  sold  tickets  to  the  after-show  concert,  and  Yankee 
Robinson  advised  everybody  to  be  sure  to  see  the  side  show, 
the  feature  of  which  was  an  educated  pig,  whose  proprietor 
paid  half  liis  take  for  the  privilege  of  traveling  wdth  the  show. 

As  soon  as  the  customers  cleared  the  Big  Top,  the  weary 
showmen  began  loading  the  wagons  for  the  trek  to  Sauk  City. 
Because  of  confusion  and  lack  of  practice,  it  took  longer  than 
it  took  to  load  the  hundred-car  train  in  the  days  of  glory.  It 
was  nearly  midnight  when  the  caravan  started  up  the  narrow 
dirt  road  across  the  Wisconsin  hills.  The  Ringlings  in  a  spring 
wagon  led  the  way,  followed  by  the  four-horse  hitch  of  the 
dray,  stacked  with  the  long  tent  poles  bending  almost  to  the 
ground  beliind  it,  with  the  rolls  of  canvas  piled  on  top.  The 
heavily  loaded  farm  carts  followed,  each  with  its  swinging 
lantern  slung  between  the  wheels  to  guide  the  next  in  line. 
The  horses  moved  at  a  dead  walk.  Their  hoofs  were  muffled  bv 
the  thick  white  dust,  and  there  was  hardly  a  sound  but  the 


THE   WAGON   SHOW  8l 

sleepy  creak  of  harness  and  wooden  wheels  turning  slowly. 

Sleepy  indeed.  Hardly  a  person  was  awake  in  that  whole 
company  except  the  brothers  in  the  lead  wagon.  After  such 
an  exhausting  and  exciting  day,  weariness  and  the  soft  night 
air  overcame  them  one  by  one  no  matter  how  hard  the  seats 
or  cramped  their  position.  Uncle  John  told  me  that  the  thing 
he  remembered  best  about  his  days  with  the  wagon  show  was 
his  desperate  craving  for  sleep,  for  it  seemed  that  they  never 
had  time  to  lie  down  at  all. 

It  must  have  taken  them  five  or  six  hours  to  make  the 
fourteen  miles  to  Sauk  City,  for  when  they  passed  its  first 
outlying  farms  the  sun  bounced  over  the  horizon.  The  tovm 
was  astir  to  greet  them,  and  it  was  time  to  begin  putting  up 
the  tents. 

They  gave  two  performances  in  Sauk  City  that  day,  and 
moved  on  to  Black  Earth,  Wisconsin.  Two  performances  there, 
and  on  again.  Mount  Horeb  came  next,  and  Mount  Vernon; 
then,  on  Saturday,  New  Glarus.  On  Sunday  they  rested. 

That  was  the  routine  of  the  wagon  show— when  conditions 
were  good.  The  Ringlings  did  not  mind,  for  ambition  and 
inner  compulsion  drove  them,  and  every  quarter  that  Otto 
collected  for  the  cashbox  enabled  them  to  see  their  goal  more 
clearly  ahead.  Yankee  Robinson  was  a  good  old  trouper  who 
took  tilings  as  they  came,  and  Louise  Ringling  a  grand  young 
one,  who  thought  Only  of  her  Al.  In  fact,  she  later  became 
their  first  equestrienne,  in  addition  to  snake  charming,  and  in 
one  crisis  she  drove  a  four-horse  hitch,  pulling  two  wdld- 
animal  cages  over  the  muddy  roads  for  four  days. 

However,  the  farmer-teamsters  soon  got  tired  and  home- 
sick. A  loyal  canvasman  reported  to  Otto  Ringling  that  a 
group  of  them  were  thinking  of  puUing  out  with  their  teams. 
Otto  countered  this  dire  threat  by  spreading  a  Rimor  that  a 
troupe  of  giants  named  the  Ananias  Brothers  were  about  to 


82  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

join  the  show.  According  to  backstage  gossip,  they  were  eight 
feet  tall  and  very  generous  with  their  tips.  Anybody  who 
deserted  now  would  miss  a  good  thing. 

Of  course,  the  mythical  Ananias  Brothers  never  showed 
up,  and  Otto's  strategem  only  postponed  trouble.  Every  time 
it  rained,  or  the  wind  blew,  or  the  wagons  stuck  in  the  mud, 
two  or  three  farmer  boys  headed  for  home  with  their  horses. 
Then  the  Ringlings  would  have  to  beat  the  countryside  for 
some  character  with  a  team  of  horses  and  a  desire  to  see  the 
world.  Somehow  the  show  continued  to  meet  its  daily  engage- 
ments. 

One  loss  they  could  not  replace.  In  August,  Yankee  Robin- 
son must  have  had  a  premonition.  His  unfailing  good  humor 
and  cracker-barrel  wit  had  not  failed,  but  his  frail  frame  had. 
Learning  that  his  son  was  playing  in  a  hall  show  in  Jefferson, 
Iowa,  he  took  a  leave  of  absence  to  see  the  boy.  He  died  sud- 
denly on  the  tram  to  Jefferson. 

For  the  first  time  in  forty  years  of  showmanship,  he  was 
billed  under  his  right  name  in  the  Route  Book:  "Fayette 
Ludovic  Robinson  died  at  Jefferson,  Iowa,  about  August  25, 
1884."  So  Yankee  Robinson  got  his  wish. 

That  first  year  the  Ringling  circus  showed  a  profit,  though 
a  small  one.  The  ambitious  brothers  had  hardly  closed  it  for 
the  winter  when  they  took  to  the  road  again  with  the  Carnival 
of  Fun.  In  the  latter  part  of  the  season  they  were  joined  by 
talented  young  James  Richardson,  who  was  billed  as  Mon- 
sieur Dialo.  They  liked  him  so  much  that  they  engaged  him 
for  the  circus  as  well.  The  Carnival  of  Fun  played  almost 
continuously  until  May  6,  1885.  The  Ringlings  allowed  them- 
selves all  of  twelve  days  to  catch  their  breath. 

They  opened  tlie  circus  on  May  18,  at  Baraboo.  It  had 
grown,  as  the  bilhng  shows: 


THE  WAGON  SHOW  83 

RINGLING  BROS.  GREAT  DOUBLE  SHOWS 

CIRCUS,  CARAVAN,  TRAINED  ANIMAL 

EXPOSITION 

The  trained  animal  was,  of  course,  that  educated  pig,  but 
during  the  winter  they  had  acquired  a  discouraged  hyena  in 
a  secondhand  cage,  who  was  billed  as: 

HIDEOUS  HYENA-STRIATA  GIGANTIUM 

The  Mammoth,  Marauding,  Man-eating  Monstros- 
ity, the  prowling,  grave-robbing  Demon  of  all  Cre- 
ated Things,  who  while  the  World  Sleeps,  sneaks 
stealthily  under  cover  of  Darkness  to  the  Cemetery 
and  with  Ghoulish  Glee  robs  the  Tomb. 

His  Hideous  Laughter  paralyzes  with  Terror  the 
Bravest  Hearts.  He  leaves  behind  him  a  trail  of  blood; 
and  the  Wails  of  the  Dying  are  Music  to  his  Ear. 

It  took  fifteen  wagons  to  transport  the  1885  show  and  they 
had  a  round  top  eighty  feet  in  diameter. 

After  it  closed,  the  Carnival  of  Fun  again  went  barnstorm- 
ing, as  it  did  each  year  until  1889.  Indeed,  its  profits  swelled 
the  proportions  of  the  circus,  whose  growth  is  recorded  each 
year  in  the  Route  Books:  In  1886  it  is  "Ringling  Bros.  Great 
Double  Shows  and  Congress  of  Wild  and  Trained  Animals," 
with  a  ninety-foot  round  top  and  eighteen  wagons  as  well  as 
"2  cages,  Ticket  and  Band  Wagon."  The  menagerie  included 
"Hyena,  Bear,  Monkeys,  Eagle." 

A  note  states:  "Bought  the  donkey  and  Shetland  pony, 
January,  and  Minnie  at  Winnebago  City,  Minn.,  June  23.  The 
first  trick  act  with  the  show."  The  roster  of  professional  enter- 
tainers had  also  grown  to  twenty-three,  not  counting  rousta- 
bouts. 

In  the  course  of  that  season  the  Ringlings  fought  what  was 
probably  their  first  successful  engagement  in  the  circus  wars 
that  flared  up  in  every  town  where  two  rival  shows  happened 


84  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

to  meet  either  accidentally  or  on  purpose.  In  a  letter  to  James 
Van  Orden,  president  of  the  Bank  of  Baraboo,  Otto  Ringling 
described  it  with  an  early  American  exuberance  which  now 
seems  to  have  disappeared,  even  from  the  circus  scene: 

Vinton,  Iowa 
August  23,  1886 
Dear  Sir: 

This  will  notify  you  that  we  have  sent  our  draft  to 
Chicago  for  $1000. 

Today  we  have  fought  and  won  a  bloody  battle  be- 
tween Ringling  Brothers  and  the  Renier  Brothers' 
Great  European  Railroad  Show,  We  got  to  the  Court- 
house Square  [first]  for  our  billboards  and  a  great 
number  of  small  boards  [3/2  by  8  feet] .  We  had  every 
available  place  in  town.  Besides  we  Hterally  covered 
the  town,  in  fact  we  painted  the  town  red  and  we  won 
easily. 

We  again  fight  them  on  Wednesday  at  Vale.  Then 
we  may  not  get  off  so  victoriously.  They  have  put  up  a 
board  500  feet  long  [there].  We  do  not  want  to  fight 
them  since  as  a  railroad  show  they  have  a  big  ad- 
vantage over  us.  But  they  laughed  at  us  and  were  in- 
clined to  behttle  us,  and  thought  that  all  they  would 
have  to  do  was  to  teU  people  they  were  coming  and  we 
would  run  away  to  the  backwoods.  Now  they  will  be 
as  anxious  to  avoid  us  as  we  are  to  avoid  them. 

Very  sincerely, 
Ringling  Brothers. 

The  show  practically  doubled  again  in  1887.  It  was  now 
"Ringling  Bros.  United  Monster  Shows,  Great  Double  Circus, 
Royal  European  Menagerie,  Museum,  Caravan  and  Congress 
of  Trained  Animals."  It  ov^med  sixty  horses  and  the  menagerie 
consisted  of  "1  Elk,  Bear,  2  Lions,  1  Kangaroo,  Hyena  [that 
good  old  faithful  friend],  Birds,  Monkeys,  Deer,  4  Shetland 
Ponies,  1  Camel— Bought  one  on  the  road— it  died."  All  the 
new  wagons,  cages,  chariots,  and  bank  wagon  were  built  by 


THE   WAGON   SHOW  85 

their  cousins  the  Moeller  brothers,  who  continued  to  furnish 
these  gaudy  but  sttudy  vehicles  for  thirty  years. 

In  September  1886  Henry  RingHng,  a  strapping  giant  of 
sixteen  years,  had  joined  his  brothers,  though  not  as  a  partner. 
Unhappily,  even  this  early  in  life  Henry  had  a  "weakness" 
which  he  may  or  may  not  have  inherited  from  his  grand- 
father Juhar. 

When  the  big  new  show  of  1887  went  out,  it  was  decided 
to  send  Henry  out  ahead  to  map  the  parade  routes  through 
the  towns  they  were  to  play.  In  order  that  he  might  fittingly 
represent  the  dignity  and  grandeur  of  the  United  Monster 
Shows,  his  brothers  bought  him  a  stylish  phaeton  drawn  by  a 
pair  of  beautiful  trotters. 

The  first  day,  looking  very  elegant  in  a  fawn-colored  double- 
breasted  coat  and  tan  derby,  Henry  dashed  into  Pardeeville, 
Wisconsin.  Had  the  show  followed  the  route  he  laid  out,  it 
would  have  been  the  longest  parade  in  history.  For  he  kept 
right  on  going  on  a  glorious  bender  that  lasted  six  weeks. 
When  his  money  gave  out  he  sold  the  horses  and  carriage. 
Then  his  fine  clothes  went.  My  uncles  found  him,  drunk  and 
destitute,  in  a  small  Iowa  town. 

It  is  typical  of  their  family  solidarity  that  they  kept  Uncle 
Henry  on  with  the  show.  But  not  as  an  advance  man.  He  was 
put  in  charge  of  the  front  door,  where  he  kept  an  eye  on  the 
ticket  takers  and  the  uncles  kept  an  eye  on  him. 

Despite  their  gargantuan  eating,  drinking,  and  wenching, 
none  of  the  Ringlings  but  Henry  were  victims  of  their  vices, 
and  in  tlie  end  he  mastered  his.  But  before  he  did,  tliis 
tremendous  uncle  of  mine,  the  biggest  of  all  the  brotliers, 
looked  over  the  abyss.  He  was  more  conscious  than  anyone  of 
his  failure,  more  contemptuous  of  himself.  At  the  age  of 
twenty-nine,  he  saw  himself  as  a  huge  sodden  hulk.  In  a  fit 
of  despair  he  tiied  to  destroy  himself. 


86  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

His  brothers  found  him  at  the  moment  he  was  about  to  cut 
his  throat  with  a  straight  razor.  What  they  did  or  said, 
whether  Uncle  Henry  took  a  cure,  or  if  the  view  from  the 
brink  was  sufficient,  I  do  not  know.  But  this  I  do  know— from 
that  time  forward  Uncle  Henry  never  took  another  drink. 
Eventually,  when  Otto  died,  he  was  made  a  full  partner  in 
our  enterprise  and  played  his  proper  part  in  the  management. 

But  in  one  sense  he  never  recovered.  Unlike  his  gusty,  jovial 
brothers,  he  was  morose  and  withdrav^m.  As  a  boy  I  remember 
him  very  well,  storming  down  the  main  street  of  Baraboo,  a 
gigantic  Atlas  with  a  world  of  care  on  his  shoulders,  passing 
his  own  sister  on  the  street  with  never  a  glance  or  nod. 

"What  is  a  terrace  without  peacocks?"  The  Earl  of  Beacons- 
jfield  was  rhetorically  inquiring  a  world  or  so  away  from  the 
western  prairies.  "What  is  a  circus  without  elephants?"  would 
have  been  a  more  pertinent  query  for  my  uncles.  In  due  time 
they  got  terraces  with  peacocks;  in  1888  they  got  elephants 
for  their  circus.  The  two  "Gigantic  Pachyderms"  were  named 
Babylon  and  Fannie,  and  they  cost  over  two  thousand  dollars 
apiece  at  a  sheriff's  sale  of  a  bankrupt  circus.  Two  camels, 
Sampson  and  Queen,  also  joined  the  circus,  as  well  as  a  "Zebu" 
and  an  emu.  The  new  Big  Top  was  148  by  100  feet.  There 
was  also  a  menagerie  top,  three  horse  tops,  and— unparalleled 
luxury— a  dressing-room  tent.  Ringhng  Brothers  had  a  real 
circus  now,  and  they  put  the  price  of  admission  up  to  fifty 
cents  (twenty-five  cents  for  children).  This  was  the  standard 
charge  for  all  full-grown  circuses  and  remained  the  same  for 
twenty  or  thirty  years. 

But  they  were  terribly  overexpanded.  No  one  would  go  into 
the  circus  business  who  was  not  a  raging  optimist,  and  the 
Ringlings  were  no  exception  to  this  rule.  They  were  in  hock 
to  their  eyebrows  to  Mr.  Van  Orden  and  the  Bank  of  Baraboo 
when  the  show  opened  in  its  home  tov^m  on  May  5,  1888. 


TEIE  WAGON  SHOW  87 

It  was  miserably  different  sort  of  weather  from  their  first 
fine  opening  day.  The  dams  of  heaven  were  running  over  on 
the  sodden  earth— rains  continued  for  nearly  as  long  as  the 
Deluge.  According  to  the  Route  Book,  "We  did  not  see  the 
sun  for  four  weeks."  The  Ringlings  were,  in  fact,  like  a  family 
of  Noahs  with  no  ark. 

One  can  imagine  them  setting  out  on  that  muddy  trail,  a 
mile-long  caravan  of  misery;  hons  coughing  and  wheezing  in 
their  leaky  cages;  camels  stalking  and  balking;  Babylon  and 
Fannie  squashing  massive  feet  into  treacherous  slime  with 
elephantine  resignation;  red-and-gold  chariots  black  with 
mud;  and  a  hundred  or  so  human  beings,  wet,  cold,  and  in  a 
state  of  utter  exhaustion,  trying  to  give  two  gay  shows  a  day  to 
empty  tents. 

In  fact,  we  do  not  have  to  imagine  it,  for  Otto  Ringling 
described  it  in  an  understandably  incoherent  letter  to  Mr. 
Van  Orden: 

Waukon,  Iowa,  May  15,  1888 
To  the  Bank  of  Baraboo 
Gentlemen: 

We  have  had  the  worst  experience  in  business  since 
we  started  the  past  ten  days.  It  has  been  raining  and 
the  roads  have  been  in  terrible  condition.  We  were 
stuck  in  the  clay  hills  between  Ontario,  Hillsboro  and 
Cazenovia  during  the  worst  part  of  the  storm,  and  now 
looking  back  cannot  realize  how  we  ever  got  out  with- 
out being  far  behind  our  appointed  schedule.  During 
the  past  week  commencing  at  Reedsburg  we  showed 
only  one  half  of  the  time.  Our  wagons  totally  bogged 
down  near  Hillsboro  and  then  we  hired  all  the  farmers 
we  could  find  along  the  road  and  their  teams  to  draw 
them  on  into  town.  Of  course  our  expenses  were  much 
more  than  usual  and  besides  that  it  has  been  raining 
all  the  time  and  we  only  showed  6  times  instead  of  12 
all  week. 

This  week  so  far  continued  rain  has  put  the  farmers 


88  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

behind  in  their  work  and  it  will  necessarily  make  busi- 
ness dull  for  a  short  time.  After  considering  everything 
carefully,  we  have  decided  that  it  will  be  better  for  us 
to  cut  down  the  show  to  2.5/  and  reduce  our  expenses 
to  a  low  notch  and  be  entirely  safe. 

In  order  to  do  this  we  must  pay  ofiF  all  the  people 
we  do  not  want  next  Saturday  and  ship  what  stuff  we 
do  not  want  to  carry  back  to  Baraboo.  If  you  could  loan 
us  enough  to  do  this  effectively  and  before  we  suffer 
any  more  losses,  we  will  give  you  any  security  you  may 
ask  for,  houses  or  notes.  .  .  .  You  can  rest  assured  that 
we  will  meet  our  obligations  all  right,  but  we  do  not 
feel  like  borrowing  money  of  you  and  still  continue  the 
50<z?  admission  when  we  can  cut  our  expenses  right 
down  and  have  a  sure  thing  at  25(zf. 

If  you  can  loan  us  $1,000  we  will  come  out  all  right. 
Please  telegraph  it  to  Caledonia  the  17th  of  May.  If 
you  will  favor  us  in  this  manner  we  will  give  you  a  bill 
of  sale  of  everything  we  have,  the  big  elephant  which 
vidll  sell  for  $2,000  any  time,  a  bill  of  sale  on  the  house 
or  anything  you  may  choose.  .  .  . 

Very  respectfully, 
Rtngling  Bros. 

Then  comes  the  postscript  in  which  the  brothers'  despair 
reaches  back  to  us  through  the  years. 

You  cannot  form  any  idea  of  the  strain  on  us  with 
everything  at  stake  in  the  rain  and  mud  all  day  and 
night  for  over  a  week.  After  Reedsburg  it  was  almost 
unbearable,  those  clay  hills  were  almost  impassable. 
The  wagons  would  sink  down  to  the  hubs  and  the  poor 
horses  could  not  budge  them.  We  had  to  hire  farmers 
at  their  own  figure  to  help  us  with  their  horses  and  we 
had  to  put  all  our  men  to  work  with  shovels  to  get  the 
clay  away  from  the  wheels.  Our  repair  bills  besides 
were  enormous.  Wagons  continually  pulled  to  pieces, 
springs  broken,  etc. 

That  letter  would  have  melted  a  man  of  stone,  which  Mr. 
Van  Orden  was  locally  considered  to  be.  It  melted  him— of 


THE   WAGON   SHOW  89 

course,  Babylon  really  was  worth  two  thousand  dollars,  so  he 
was  not  risking  much. 
A  letter  from  Plain  view,  Minnesota,  on  May  26,  1888,  says: 

Received  money  at  Caledonia  O.K.  Thank  you  very 
much  for  the  kind  favor  shown  us  and  we  hope  it  will 
be  in  our  power  to  show  you  our  appreciation.  We  have 
been  in  the  rain  ever  since  we  left  Baraboo.  We  have 
not  used  any  of  the  money  you  sent  us  yet.  Are  trying 
our  utmost  not  to. 

However,  they  were  not  out  of  the  woods.  On  June  14,  Otto 
writes: 

I  will  give  you  one  instance  of  what  we  have  been 
through.  The  distance  from  Blooming  Prairie  to  New 
Richland,  Minn.,  is  30  miles.  We  left  Blooming  Prairie 
Friday  night  after  the  show  and  reached  New  Rich- 
land Saturday  afternoon  at  4  o'clock,  after  building 
two  bridges  which  had  been  washed  out.  Nothing  to 
eat  all  day.  We  opened  the  doors  at  5  o'clock.  Oiu*  main 
show  took  in  $22.00.  It  ended  at  6:45.  We  opened  the 
doors  again  at  7:30  PM  to  a  fair  night  house.  Every- 
body tired  out.  Left  the  next  morning  at  8  o'clock  for 
Wells,  20  miles  through  swamps  and  lowlands.  Got  18 
miles  at  dusk  Sunday  PM.  Had  to  camp  out.  Got  to 
Wells  Monday  morning  11:30  and  gave  two  per- 
formances to  fair  business. 

That  was  10  days  ago.  Have  been  doing  good  busi- 
ness since  then.  Fair  weather  now  and  we  think  we  can 
come  in  next  fall  with  a  reasonably  fair  profit.  During 
4  weeks  of  Hell  you  could  have  seen  a  cold,  muddy 
disheartened  gang  of  people  if  you  had  been  with  our 
show.  ...  It  was  our  first  experience  in  a  losing  busi- 
ness and  coupled  with  the  terrible  work  and  uncer- 
tainty of  being  able  to  get  the  show  through  the  mud 
was  disheartening.  But  now  the  sun  shines  again. 

Very  respectfully, 
RiNGLiNG  Brothers 


go  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

The  Ringlings  wrote  in  the  Route  Book,  "We  left  the  rain 
and  mud  on  June  5th."  It  was  exactly  one  month  from  the 
day  they  had  started  from  Baraboo.  The  financial  skies  cleared 
as  well,  and  drafts  began  to  go  back  to  Mr.  Van  Orden.  How- 
ever, the  brothers  soon  had  their  first  experience  of  the  violent 
tragedies  of  circus  life.  On  June  23  their  good  friend  and 
star  performer,  "Mons.  Dialo  [James  Richardson]  was  shot 
and  killed  at  Webster  City  by  Thomas  Baskett,  who  was 
sentenced  to  15  years  at  Anamosa." 

Poor  M.  Dialo  paid  the  price  of  knight-errantry.  Thomas 
Baskett,  a  bellicose  saloonkeeper  of  Webster,  had  gotten  into 
an  argument  with  a  fellow  townsman.  Roll  Brewer,  whom  he 
followed  into  the  show  grounds  and  beat  up  in  a  brutal 
fashion.  When  Brewer's  daughter  tried  to  help  her  father, 
Baskett  knocked  her  down  and  began  to  kick  her.  Several 
shov^rmen,  among  them  Dialo,  tried  to  interfere.  In  the  ensu- 
ing brawl,  Baskett  whipped  out  a  pistol  and  shot  Dialo  in 
the  abdomen.  James  Richardson  died  twenty-four  hoLirs  later. 

The  circus  did  not  miss  a  performance.  The  show  must  go 
on  or  go  broke. 

As  they  moved  back  into  Iowa  in  July,  the  sun  shone  steadily 
and  the  crop  of  green  dollars  rivaled  the  taU  rows  of  corn. 

Winterset,  Iowa,  July  7,  1888 

Mr.  J.  Van  Orden 

Bank  of  Baraboo 
Dear  Sir: 

Please  find  enclosed  draft  on  Chicago  for  $1000.  We 
resumed  ^o^  admission  last  Saturday.  .  .  .  We  have 
made  $3,000  in  one  week  and  one  day.  A  few  weeks 
Like  this  will  make  up  for  the  spring.  At  any  rate  we  are 
even  with  you  and  will  get  back  to  Baraboo  with 
enough  to  feed  the  elephant.  How  is  the  hay  crop 


THE  WAGON   SHOW  Ql 

around  Baraboo?  Crops  in  this  country  are  immense. 
The  fields  look  almost  tropical. 

Respectfully, 
RiNGLiNG  Brothers. 
N.B.  We  didn't  touch  the  1,000  dollars  you  sent  us, 
but  we  got  down  to  122  dollars  cash  on  hand  besides 
your  remittance.  That  was  the  low  water  mark. 


CHAPTER   VI 


cr 


THE  SUNDAY-SCHOOL  CIRCUS" 


Eighteen  eighty-nine  was  the  last  year  of  the  wagon  show. 
Despite  the  terribly  discouraging  start  of  the  season  of  1888, 
the  Ringlings  had  come  home  with  far  more  than  enough  to 
feed  the  elephant.  In  their  then  personally  frugal,  business- 
wise  extravagant  way  they  poured  all  tlieir  money  back  into 


"the  SUNDAY-SCHOOL  emeus'*  93 

expanding  the  circus.  In  order  to  compete  with  the  really 
big-time  shows,  they  advertised,  in  addition  to  the  "United 
Monster  Circus,  Museum,  Menagerie  and  Universal  World 
Exposition,"  something  that  they  called  a  "Roman  Hippo- 
diome." 

This  was  in  direct  imitation  of  Bamum  &  Bailey's  chariot 
races  around  an  arena.  Furthermore,  it  must  have  been  an 
even  greater  exaggeration  of  fact  than  usual;  for  two  years 
later  the  Route  Book  rather  naively  states,  "Put  in  a  real 
Hippodrome  for  1891."  However,  one  may  be  reasonably  sure 
that  their  customers  got  their  fifty  cents'  worth,  for  they 
flocked  to  see  the  show  in  droves. 

The  start  from  Baraboo  was  particularly  auspicious.  The 
weather  was  perfect,  and  my  grandfather  and  grandmother 
came  all  the  way  from  Rice  Lake  to  see  all  of  their  seven  sons 
go  out  with  their  circus.  For  Gus  had  at  last  joined  his 
brothers.  AU  this  time  he  had  been  quietly  earning  his  living 
by  his  father's  trade  in  Minneapolis,  but  now  they  persuaded 
him  to  join  them  and  share  the  family  bonanza. 

Gus  was,  perhaps,  the  gentlest  of  the  brothers.  He  had  a 
dreamy,  poetic  face  and  a  way  wdth  animals.  When  Mother 
was  a  little  girl  in  Rice  Lake,  he  brought  a  bear  cub  home 
from  the  forest  and  built  a  little  shelter  for  it  in  the  back  yard. 
It  lived  there  for  a  long  time. 

He  loved  the  woods  and  had  wonderful  hunting  dogs, 
which  he  trained  himself.  My  mother's  favorite  was  Tippy, 
which  Gus  had  taught  to  go  out  to  the  wood  box  in  the  back 
yard,  nose  up  the  hd,  take  out  a  log,  and  carrying  it  back  to 
the  kitchen,  lay  it  beside  the  big  wood-burning  stove. 

The  brothers  made  Gus  advertising  manager  of  the  circus. 

Another  Ringling  joined  the  circus  that  year,  Mrs.  Charles 
Ringhng.  The  autumn  before,  Uncle  Charlie  had  married 
nineteen-year-old   Edith   Conway,    whose    father    was    the 


94  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

Methodist  minister  in  Baraboo.  Like  Al's  wife,  Louise,  Edith 
Ringhng  turned  into  a  good  trouper,  though  she  had  been 
teaching  school  until  Charlie  married  her.  She  always  traveled 
with  the  show,  and  like  Louise,  worked  hard  at  repairing  cos- 
tumes and  sometimes  took  tickets  at  the  door. 

One  of  her  first  experiences  witli  the  circus  would  have  been 
enough  to  cure  most  girls  of  sawdust  fever.  She  was  sitting 
outside  the  menagerie  tent  one  day  when  Fannie  the  elephant 
got  irritated  by  something  her  keeper  had  done  and  decided 
to  take  it  out  on  Edith.  She  lumbered  up  and  took  a  swipe  at 
the  young  bride  with  her  trunk,  knocking  Edith  fifteen  feet 
through  the  air  and  smashing  the  chair  to  kindling.  While 
the  keeper  hooked  Fannie's  ear  with  his  ankus,  one  of  the  old 
circus  hands  dashed  over  to  pick  Edith  up,  saying,  "Daughter, 
daughter!  Are  you  hurt?"  Just  as  he  reached  her  he  fell  over 
in  a  dead  faint.  Edith  scrambled  to  her  feet  v^thout  assistance. 
She  just  took  it  as  an  occupational  hazard. 

Apparently  the  tour  of  1889  was  unusually  serene.  Only 
one  tragedy  is  recorded.  Worn  by  the  passing  of  many  a 
season  and  surely  having  given  the  brothers  far  more  than 
their  money's  worth,  the  "Mammoth,  Man-Eating,  Mon- 
strous" hyena  wearily  turned  up  its  toes  and  died. 

Serenity  means  prosperity  in  any  business,  but  particularly 
in  the  circus,  wliich  is  so  vulnerable  to  mischance.  At  the  end 
of  the  season  the  RingHngs  had  an  enormous  profit.  They  used 
part  of  it  to  build  a  v^de-verandaed  frame  house  in  Baraboo, 
where  their  father  and  mother  could  settle  dov^n  at  last.  With 
the  remainder  they  prepared  to  enter  the  big  time  in  a  big 
way. 

Take  a  look  at  them  at  this  turning  point  in  their  lives,  for 
they  would  never  be  quite  the  same  again;  yet,  in  another 
sense,  they  remained  unchanged,  but  now  able  to  expand 
their  personaUties,  each  in  his  different  way. 


"the  SUNDAY-SCHOOL  caBCus"  95 

At  first  glance  they  seem  as  alike  as  seven  Siamese  twins. 
For  this  was  the  era  when  they  introduced  on  their  letter- 
heads and  advertising  the  famous  picture  of  the  heads  of  the 
five  partner-brothers  all  with  seemingly  identical  profiles  and 
those  magnificent  mustaches— the  irreverent  called  them  The 
Mustache  Boys.  With  deliberate  conformity  Gus  and  Henry 
also  grew  mustaches.  But  this  was  as  far  as  conformity  went. 
Though  bound  together  by  their  strong  family  ties  and  their 
common  interest  in  their  circus,  they  had  sharply  different 
personalities. 

To  begin  with,  their  physical  resemblance  was  nothing  like 
as  great  as  their  identical  facial  adornment  made  it  appear. 
They  ranged  in  height  from  Charlie's  neat  five  feet  eight  to 
Henry's  elephantine  six  feet  three.  Their  faces,  unmasked, 
were  equally  disparate.  Al's  was  thin  and  eager,  at  least  in 
his  youth.  Gus  had  the  visionary  expression  of  a  poet.  Alf  T. 
appeared  to  be  determinedly  businesshke,  whereas  Charles 
looked  like  the  well-groomed  sportsman  of  the  Gay  Nineties. 
Otto's  face  wore  a  banker's  solid  look.  John,  the  only  one  with 
curly  hair,  had  the  round-faced,  round-eyed  humorous  expres- 
sion which  had  set  the  farmers  laughing  in  the  prairie  village 
hall,  whereas  Henry,  though  also  round-faced,  was  beetle- 
browed  and  slightly  sinister. 

Except  for  their  common  fondness  for  huge,  rich  meals, 
which  eventually  put  considerable  poundage  on  all  of  them 
and  doubtless  shortened  their  lives,  their  personal  tastes  and 
hobbies  were  as  different  as  could  be.  When  money  gave  them 
freedom  of  choice  each  went  his  separate  way  in  private  life, 
though  they  remained  indissolubly  bound  together  in  the 
partnership. 

Even  in  the  business  they  specialized,  though  they  all  had 
such  an  intimate  knowledge  of  circus  management  that  in  a 
pinch  any  brother  could  substitute  for  any  other.  Albert 
Ringling,  who  was  known  to  the  whole  back  yard  as  Uncle 


gS  THE   SEVEN   BROTHEES 

Al,  was  the  equestrian  director,  which  is  circus  talk  for  the 
producer  and  director  of  the  whole  show.  I  suppose  the  title 
comes  from  the  fact  that  the  early  European  circuses  were 
often  built  around  the  equestrian  act  and  therefore  the 
equestrian  director  was  the  head  man  in  the  tent.  Uncle  Al 
not  only  staged  the  show  and  dreamed  up  the  great  spectacles 
of  later  years;  he  also  paced  the  performance  from  the  ring- 
side, keeping  it  fast  and  furious  with  sharp  blasts  of  his 
whistle,  which  signaled  the  start  and  finish  of  each  display. 

Since  he  loved  horses,  his  title  was  pecuharly  appropriate, 
and  during  his  lifetime  equestrian  displays  were  sure  to  be  a 
main  attraction,  culminating  in  1899  with  his  famous  sixty- 
one-horse  finale,  in  which  sixty-one  Hberty  horses  were 
actually  in  the  arena  at  one  time.  In  order  to  accommodate 
so  many,  they  were  raised  on  stages  making  a  pyramid  of 
horseflesh,  at  the  top  of  which  was  a  single  magnificent  white 
Arabian. 

Uncle  Charles  (Mr.  Charles)  was  the  physical  man  in 
charge  of  the  tremendous  logistics  of  moving  the  army  of 
people  and  animals  over  thousands  of  miles  through  six 
months  of  one-night  stands.  He  commanded  the  train  and 
was,  in  effect,  the  general  manager.  Though  other  people 
usually  held  that  title,  he  was  the  head  man.  He  kept  what 
the  brothers  called  his  Book  of  Wonders.  This  was  a  notebook 
in  which  he  was  constantly  jotting  things  down  throughout 
the  tour.  At  the  end  of  the  season  he  would  present  the  Book 
of  Wonders  to  tlie  partners  and  managers.  It  contained  a  com- 
plete summary  of  all  the  things  that  would  have  to  be  done 
during  the  winter,  including  purchases,  repairs,  additional 
work  horses,  ring  stock,  and  animals  as  well  as  new  ideas  for 
improving  the  physical  aspect  of  the  show. 

Otto  Ringling  was  nicknamed  The  King,  because  he  held 
the  life-and-death  power  of  the  purse.  His  management  of  the 
finances  was  both  sound  and  imaginative.  To  give  an  idea  of 


THE    SUNDAY-SCHOOL   CIRCUS  97 

his  foresight,  in  1903  he  proposed  to  the  brothers  that  since 
in  metropohtan  areas  vacant  land  suitable  for  accommodating 
fifty-odd  tents  was  getting  scarce,  they  should  buy  fifteen- 
acre  plots  close  to  every  large  city  in  America.  His  brothers 
by  that  time  were  more  interested  in  spending  their  money 
on  pink  marble  palaces  or  pseudo-Norman  castles  of  their 
own,  so  they  vetoed  the  proposal.  Imagine  what  their  hold- 
ings would  have  been  worth  now  had  they  followed  his  ad- 
vice 1 

Alf  T.  Ringling  was  in  charge  of  public  relations.  This,  of 
course,  included  all  the  means  and  media  which  stimulated 
an  overwhelming  desire  to  see  the  circus  in  everybody  wdthin 
one  hundred  miles  or  so  of  any  town  where  the  show  was 
playing.  He  was  so  successful  that  railroads  used  to  run  spe- 
cial trains  from  all  parts  of  a  county  on  circus  day,  and  in  a 
town  like  Concordia,  Kansas,  of  7500  inhabitants,  the  circus 
would  play  to  a  total  of  16,000  people  in  one  performance.  An- 
other function  of  cii-cus  pubHc  relations  was  running  down  the 
opposition  shows.  How  my  uncle  Alf  T.  did  this  will  be  told  in 
the  account  of  the  great  circus  wars  of  the  1890s. 

As  soon  as  they  put  the  show  on  rails,  John  Ringling  was 
given  charge  of  routing.  This  was  a  very  intricate  job,  essen- 
tial to  the  success  of  a  season.  When  the  great  four-train 
hundred-car  show  was  on  the  road,  it  meant  planning  the 
exact  time  of  each  section  every  day  in  co-operation  with 
dozens  of  raihoads  and  hundreds  of  branch  lines.  Uncle 
John's  prodigious  memory  became  practically  a  railroad 
guide  to  the  United  States.  For  example,  if  you  wondered  in 
his  presence  how  best  you  could  get  from  Altoona,  Pennsyl- 
vania, to  North  Yakima,  Washington,  he  would  mstantly 
come  up  with  train  times,  junction  points,  and  connections. 
One  of  his  favorite  tricks  was  to  let  you  name  a  railroad  and 
timetable,  and  then  stick  a  nail  file  into  the  Consolidated  Rail- 


gS  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

way  Guide,  as  thick  as  the  New  York  telephone  book,  and 
come  within  a  page  or  two. 

In  later  years  Uncle  John  also  did  most  of  the  discovering 
and  negotiating  of  new  Em"opean  acts  for  the  show. 

Thus  the  five  brothers  worked  when  they  were  all  alive. 
Gus  out  ahead  with  the  advance  car  and  Hemy  at  the  front 
door  completed  the  Ringling  team. 

The  Ringling  brothers'  first  raihoad  show  opened  in 
Baraboo  on  Saturday,  May  2,  1890.  The  train  consisted  of 
two  advertising  cars— one  of  which  was  sent  ahead— one  per- 
formers' sleeper,  one  elephant  car,  five  stockcars,  and  eight 
flatcars— eighteen  cars  in  all.  These  transported  two  tableau 
wagons,  two  band  wagons,  fifteen  cages  (four  open  dens 
included )  and  one  hundred  and  seven  horses,  three  elephants, 
three  camels,  four  lions,  two  cub  Hons,  a  hippopotamus,  and 
assorted  other  wild  creatures,  besides  fifty-four  performers. 
However  magnificent  it  was  compared  with  the  httle  wagon 
show  that  had  started  hopefully  out  from  Baraboo  six  years 
before,  it  was  still  only  a  one-ring  show,  peanut-sized  com- 
pared with  the  great  railroad  shows  it  was  about  to  challenge. 

For  by  this  time  the  circus  in  America  had  reached  a  high 
state  of  development.  Phineas  T.  Barnum,  the  greatest  show- 
man of  them  all,  had  hurled  himself  into  the  circus  business 
with  a  tremendous  splash  in  1871,  when  my  uncles  were  hold- 
ing their  five-cent  circus.  By  1873,  eleven  years  before  the 
Ringling  wagon  show  started,  Bamum's  Advance  Courier 
could  describe  his  circus— more  or  less  truthfully— as  a 
"Colossal  World's  Fair  by  Railroad— 20  Great  Shows  consoh- 
dated;  100,000  curiosities,  5  Railroad  Trains  4  miles  long,  4 
bands,  12  golden  chariots;  100  vans  in  a  procession  3  miles 
long." 

The  lead  article,  vmtten  by  Bamum  himself  in  the  finest 
flowering  of  circus  style,  begins,  "Although  the  fire  of  Decern- 


THE   SUNDAY-SCHOOL   CIRCUS  99 

ber  24,  1872,  totally  destroyed  my  museum  building  [in  New 
York]  and  magnificent  collection  of  rare  animals  ...  I  have 
emerged  again  from  the  cinders  and  smoke  with  an  unim- 
paired constitution,  unabated  energies  and  a  more  earnest 
determination  than  ever  to  gratify  the  demands  of  the 
amusement-seeking  public. 

"Hence,  before  the  sparks  ceased  rising  from  my  burning 
museum,  I  subsidized  the  powers  of  electricity  to  such  an 
extent  as  to  enable  me  to  start  again  by  April,  1873,  with  a 
Museum  Menagerie,  Caravan,  Ornithological  Cabinet,  .  .  . 
Polytechnic  Institute  [whatever  that  was]  Coliseum  of 
Classic  and  Equestrian  Equitation,  Aquarium  for  Marine 
Monsters  .  .  .  combined  with  Dan  Costello's  Mammoth 
Double  Hippodrome,  Monsieur  d'Ataher's  Equestrian  and 
Arenic  Exposition,  making,  in  fact,  the  largest  and  most  ela1:)0- 
rate  and  exhaustive  combination  of  traveling  exhibitions  ever 
seen  on  earth.  The  Greatest  Show  on  Eaiih." 

Nor  will  I  argue  with  Phineas  T.— it  was  just  that. 

By  1890,  when  our  raihoad  show  first  went  out,  Bamum 
had  added  a  tremendous  spectacle  play— "Imre  Kiralfy's 
Grand,  Romantic,  Historical  Spectacle— Nero  and  the  De- 
struction of  Rome,  including  thrilling  Roman  Chariot  Races  in 
the  Circus  Maximus." 

All  for  fifty  cents! 

This  was  pretty  tough  competition.  In  addition,  otlier  great 
shows  of  the  time,  all  older  and  larger  than  Ringling  Brothers, 
included  Sell  Brothers'  fifty-cage,  four-ring  circus  with  a 
forty-five-car  train;  the  Great  Wallace  Railroad  Shows;  Jolm 
Robinson's  Ten  Big  Shows,  and  the  Buffalo  Bill  Wild  West 
Show,  which  though  not  a  true  circus  was  very  real  compe- 
tition. 

By  means  of  John  Ringling's  skillful  routing  to  small 
neglected  towns,  our  circus  managed  to  avoid  direct  clashes 
with  the  others  that  first  year,  except  in  five  or  six  towns. 


lOO  THE   SEVEN   BROTHEBS 

They  came  triumphantly  back  to  Baraboo  with  a  load  of 
boodle. 

Again  they  greatly  enlarged  their  show.  In  1891  it  became 
"Ringling  Bros.  World's  Greatest  Railroad  Shows,  Real  Roman 
Hippodrome,  3  Ring  Circus  and  Elevated  Stages,  Millionaire 
Menagerie,  Museum  and  Aquarium  and  Spectacular  Tourna- 
ment Production  of  Caesar's  Triumphal  Entry  into  Rome." 

It  sounds  as  though  they  were  breathing  down  Mr. 
Barnum's  neck;  but  enthusiasm  must  have  prevailed  over 
truth,  since  the  whole  show  moved  on  a  twenty-two-car  train. 

And  again  the  luck  was  with  them;  such  wonderful  luck 
that  it  seemed  as  though  the  gods  of  the  arena  were  repenting 
the  dreadful  trials  they  had  put  the  brothers  through  in  1888. 
The  Route  Book  for  1891  records,  "The  canvas  was  only  loaded 
wet  3  times  during  the  entire  season." 

There  was,  however,  a  curious  footnote  which  demonstrates 
that  circus  people  had  to  be  good  fighters  as  well  as  good 
performers.  The  unsavory  reputation  of  the  circuses  of  that 
era  sometimes  exploded  in  fierce  riots  between  town  and 
show,  even  when  that  hostihty  was  undeserved.  This  hap- 
pened. "At  Bolivia,  Mo.,  on  Sept.  26th,  a  very  fierce  battle 
was  fought  between  the  show  and  the  people  of  the  town  and 
vicinity.  Many  of  the  local  bad  men  were  badly  injured.  The 
show  got  out  after  a  very  exciting  experience  without  suffer- 
ing any  injury." 

The  affray  at  Bohvia  points  up  a  problem  that  my  uncles 
faced  as  their  first  brightly  painted  train  steamed  out  of 
Baraboo  into  the  big  time.  That  was  the  question  of  circus 
ethics.  Most  of  the  shows  operated  on  the  principle  of  taking 
the  suckers  for  all  they  were  worth.  This  was  based  on  Bar- 
num's theory  that  the  suckers  enjoyed  it.  In  his  case  there  may 
have  been  some  justification  for  the  thought. 

William  Lyon  Phelps,  an  ardent  circus  fan  who  was  my 
beloved  mentor  at  Yale,  described  how  this  worked  in  our 


THE   SUNDAY-SCHOOL   CIRCUS  lOl 

circus  program  for  1939.  In  his  article  Professor  Phelps  rem- 
inisced about  the  circus  of  his  childhood.  He  had  seen  The 
Greatest  Show  on  Earth  when  Bamum  was  aHve. 

"During  the  performance,  P.  T.  Bamum  dressed  in  formal 
black  clothes  and  looking  like  a  clergyman  was  introduced  to 
the  audience  as  one  of  the  benefactors  of  mankind,  which  I 
do  not  think  was  an  exaggeration.  He  was  broad  and  fat  and 
unctuous,  and  in  the  language  of  Dickens,  he  seemed  to  be 
one  vast  substantial  smile. 

"Bamum  was  the  Shakespeare  of  advertisers  and  has  never 
been  surpassed.  His  knowledge  of  what  the  public  wanted 
was  infallible.  He  knew  they  loved  to  be  swindled  so  long  as 
the  swindle  was  understood  to  be  a  glorious  joke  on  both 
sides.  At  one  of  his  circuses  he  had  a  big  sign  inside  the  main 
tent: 

TO  THE  EGRESS 

"Himdreds  of  people  followed  that  sign  thinking  they  were 
on  the  way  to  some  African  monstrosity,  but  soon  found  they 
were  outdoors  and  had  to  pay  fifty  cents  to  get  back.  Instead 
of  being  wild  with  rage  they  were  dehghted  and  when  the 
word  was  explained  to  them,  they  said,  'Isn't  that  just  like 
Bamum  I' 

"On  another  occasion  in  New  Haven  one  of  the  side  shows, 
which  I  beheve  had  an  admission  charge  of  twenty-five  cents, 
announced: 

CHERRY  COLORED  CAT 

"Now  people  supposed  that  a  cherry  colored  cat  was  unique. 
They  trooped  in  there  by  hundreds  and  all  they  saw  was  a 
perfectly  ordinary  black  cat.  When  they  looked  at  this  and 
demanded  an  explanation  the  attendant  said,  'Well  you  know 
some  cherries  are  black.' 

"Instead  of  being  angry  the  crowd  looked  at  each  other 
with  foohsh  grins  and  exclaimed,  'Sold  again  I'  They  even 
went  back  to  the  main  tent  and  told  every  stranger,  'Have 


102  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

you  seen  the  cherry  colored  cat?  It's  the  most  marvelous 
exhibition  ever  given.'  So  that  each  person  who  had  been 
deceived  got  five  other  persons  to  swell  the  coffers  of  the 
management." 

Barnum's  flimflamming  was  fun.  But  the  philosophy  be- 
hind it  set  a  low  moral  tone  which  corrupted  the  whole  circus 
scene.  Anything  was  all  right  to  part  the  suckers  from  their 
money. 

For  example,  ticket  sellers  were  paid  no  salary;  indeed,  they 
often  paid  the  management  for  tlie  job.  They  made  their 
living  by  shortchanging  the  pubUc,  at  which  they  were  better 
magicians  than  any  "professor"  in  the  show  itself.  I  used  to 
watch  for  crooked  ticket  sellers  myself  when  I  was  a  boy 
around  the  circus.  One  of  their  favorite  tricks  was  obviously 
to  overpay  a  customer  who  had  changed  a  big  bill,  counting 
out  as  much  as  five  or  ten  dollars  too  much.  In  his  cupidity 
the  customer  would  grab  his  change  and  rush  off  not  noticing 
that  the  seller  had  counted  one  bill  two  or  three  times.  When 
we'd  grab  a  crooked  ticket  seller  he  would  protest  that  he  was 
not  really  doing  wrong,  because  the  customer  was  trying  to 
cheat  him. 

In  addition  to  this  racket,  all  sorts  of  shady  businesses 
swelled  the  coffers  of  some  of  the  shows.  Crooked  gamblers, 
shell-game  operators,  and  confidence  men  rented  concessions 
from  the  management  just  Uke  legitimate  vendors.  Some  cir- 
cuses even  hired  professional  pickpockets,  who  circulated  in 
the  carefree  crowds  and  split  their  take  with  the  management. 
A  clever  assist  was  often  provided  by  the  management  by  hav- 
ing a  side-show  talker  (barker)  dramatically  announce  to  a 
well-thronged  midway  that  local  police  had  informed  the  cir- 
cus authorities  of  the  presence  of  well-known  pickpockets  in 
the  city  who  had  come  to  prey  upon  tlie  circus  crowds.  When 
the  grateful  yokels  so  warned  patted  their  hip  pockets  or 
caressed  their  breast  pockets  or  fondly  fingered  their  stickpins 


'the   SUNDAY-SCHOOL   CIRCXJS  IO3 

and  gold  watch  fobs,  the  very  dips  they  had  been  warned 
against  would  be  observing  their  actions  in  preparation  for 
later  lifting  their  blocks  ( watches ) ,  pokes  ( purses ) ,  etc. 

As  a  result,  a  vast  organization  of  sinister  rackets  grew  up 
in  tlie  shadow  of  the  tents.  A  rabble  of  petty  criminals 
attached  themselves  to  circuses,  with  or  without  the  owners' 
knowledge.  Cheating  and  trickery  flowered  into  organized 
crime.  Even  armed  robbery  and  murder  were  not  unknown. 

Very  early  in  their  careers  the  Ringlings  decided  to  have 
an  honest  show.  This  decision  was  partly  due  to  tlieir  financial 
integrity.  For  despite  the  amoral  attitude  of  most  of  them  to- 
ward the  minor  vices,  they  all  had  an  almost  puritanical 
financial  integrity— as  witness  Jim  Hamilton.  Their  other  rea- 
son was  that  they  believed  honesty  was  really  better  business; 
that  if  they  acquired  a  reputation  for  giving  entertainment 
at  a  fair  price  and  protecting  their  patrons,  they  would  pros- 
per accordingly.  Other  managers  and  even  their  own  employ- 
ees laughed  at  them  and  said  you  could  not  run  a  circus 
that  way.  But  they  did  it,  and  they  certainly  prospered. 

Of  course,  it  was  a  never  ending  battle.  As  long  as  there 
are  ticket  sellers  and  a  gullible  public  there  will  always  be  a 
rLsk.  In  fact,  as  late  as  1955,  my  brotlier  Jolin  and  I  had  to 
take  drastic  measures  to  clear  out  gambling  and  other  rackets 
wliich  had  attached  themselves  like  barnacles  to  our  circus. 
As  in  1890,  we  were  told  it  could  not  be  done.  But  we  did  it! 

One  thing  which  enabled  my  uncles  to  clean  up  their  show 
was  that  there  were  "so  damn  many  of  them."  Thev  were  all 
over  the  lot  constantly  on  the  alert,  and  with  Hemy  watching 
over  the  front  door  like  an  angry  grizzly  bear,  tlie  ticket  sellers 
were  pretty  careful. 

However,  as  the  show  got  bigger,  the  task  of  keeping  it  clean 
was  too  much  for  the  brothers,  and  they  retained  the  great 
William  J.  Bums  detective  agency  to  guard  their  patrons.  A 
little  later   they  went   even   further.   Realizing   that   shady 


104  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

practices  in  any  circus  redounded  to  the  discredit  of  all,  in- 
cluding their  own,  they  secretly  sent  Burns  detectives  to  cer- 
tain otlier  shows  to  seek  out  and  arrest  crooks  operating  with 
them.  A  great  many  were  brought  to  book.  The  owners  were 
not  a  bit  grateful.  They  irately  assailed  the  Ringlings  as  med- 
dlers and  ironically  christened  their  show  The  Sunday-School 
Circus.  But  George  Ade,  who  was  also  a  circus  fan,  gave  the 
Ringlings  his  accolade:  "They  found  the  business  in  the 
hands  of  vagabonds  and  put  it  into  the  hands  of  gentlemen." 


RINGLIN&  BROS. 


CHAPTER   VII 


BILLS,  BANNERS,  AND  BLOODY 

HEADS 


No  mortals  may  long  enjoy  the  favor  of  the  gods,  they  say. 
This  goes  double  in  circus  business.  After  three  tremendously 
fortunate  seasons,  the  Ringlings'  luck  broke  in  1892. 

The  two  things  we  dread  most  are  fii"e  and  train  wrecks. 
The  Ringling  show  had  three  train  wrecks  that  year.  The  first 
and  worst  came   two  weeks  out  of   Baraboo  in   tlie  rain 


106  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

near  Washington,  Kansas,  on  May  17.  In  the  tremendous 
crash  four  of  the  slatted  wooden  stockcars  were  reduced  to 
matchwood,  and  twenty-six  screaming  horses  were  killed  or 
had  to  be  destroyed.  The  human  toll  included  two  men  killed 
and  four  seriously  injured.  But  there  was  no  time  to  stand 
and  mourn.  The  Route  Book  laconically  states,  "Show  missed 
one  stand  [Washington,  May  17th]  and  showed  Concordia, 
May  18th,  with  side  wall  only.  Short  of  stock— bought  18 
[horses]  at  Concordia,  and  received  carload  of  20  at  Wichita, 
May  21st,  from  Chicago." 

The  other  two  wrecks  occurred  at  places  named  Centralia. 
On  September  18,  at  Centraha,  Missouri— "six  cages  demol- 
ished and  lost  the  day.  No  further  damage  except  marring  the 
sleeping  cars."  On  the  way  back  to  Baraboo,  at  Centraha,  lUi- 
nois— "Rear  end  collision.  No  damage  beyond  a  few  broken 
irons  on  the  cars." 

However,  railroad  inefficiency  was  not  all  that  dogged 
them.  They  dared  the  big  cities  of  Milwaukee,  Omaha,  Kan- 
sas City,  and  Topeka,  where  they  ran  head  on  into  the  great 
Bamum  &  Bailey  show.  In  other  towns  they  noted,  "Smaller 
opposition— several  stands,  Wallace  Show;  three  stands,  John 
Robinson  Show." 

In  addition,  the  weather  turned  on  them.  "This  is  the  worst 
spring  we  have  ever  seen— 30  days  rain.  [Had  they  for- 
gotten 1888  so  soon?]  Season  on  the  whole,  however,  was  very 
big." 

So  began  the  Ringlings'  bitter  battles  for  a  place  in  the  cir- 
cus sun.  If,  as  I  describe  them,  I  seem  to  dwell  more  on  oiu: 
wins  than  losses,  remember  that  most  of  the  stories  were  told 
to  me  by  my  uncles  and  that  old  soldiers  only  remember  their 
victories.  In  common  fairness,  however,  it  must  be  added  that 
the  Ringlings  ended  by  owning  virtually  all  of  their  op- 
ponents. 

Our  most  bitter  opposition  in  the  early  days  came  from  the 


BILLS,   BANNERS,   AND   BLOODY  HEADS  IO7 

four  Sells  brothers.  Their  territory,  like  ours  at  the  time,  was 
primarily  west  of  the  Alleghenies.  During  the  season  of  1894, 
when  we  invaded  Texas  for  the  first  time,  they  deliberately 
tried  to  day-and-date  us  all  over  a  state  they  thought  they 
owned.  At  one  town,  where  they  couldn't  arrange  their  sched- 
ule to  conflict  with  ours,  they  subsidized  a  free  balloon 
ascension  as  a  counterattraction.  On  that  occasion  Uncle  John 
went  out  to  see  how  many  people  had  been  drawn  away  from 
the  Ringling  show.  There  were  so  few  that  he  sent  Lew  Sells 
the  following  telegram: 

An  old  man,  a  young  boy,  a  hound  dog  and  I 
watched  your  balloon  ascension.  It  didn't  go  up. 

John  Ringling 

Uncle  John  thought  it  was  very  funny;  but  his  older 
brothers  gave  him  a  sharp  dressing  down.  They  did  not  con- 
sider it  a  nice  or  dignified  thing  to  do. 

In  fact,  these  circus  wars  were  commercial  rivalries  which 
seldom  embittered  the  relations  of  the  principals.  As  lawyers 
storm  at  each  other  in  court  and  then  have  lunch  together,  so 
the  circus  owners  called  each  other  liars,  fakes,  and  cheaters 
in  their  publicity  and  greeted  each  other  as  old  friends  when 
they  met. 

For  example,  one  time  when  we  were  having  opposi- 
tion from  the  Buffalo  Bill  Wild  West  Show  somebody  arrived 
in  Baraboo  with  a  message  from  Colonel  Cody:  "Tell  John 
Ringling  he'd  better  stay  out  of  my  way  or  he'll  bitterly  regret 
it. 

Uncle  John  said,  "Give  Colonel  Cody  my  compliments  and 
tell  him  I'm  not  very  worried.  In  fact,  the  next  time  I  see  him 
I'm  going  to  throw  him  down  and  scalp  him." 

When  they  actually  did  meet  in  a  bar  in  Philadelphia,  the 
only  argument  was  who  should  blow  whom  to  drinks. 

My  uncles  regarded  Lew  Sells  as  a  fine  old  gentleman, 
which  he  was.  In  his  own  circus  he  was  referred  to  as  Uncle 


108  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

Lew,  just  as  Albeit  Ringling  was  called  Uncle  Al.  When  I  was 
a  boy  working  with  the  circus  during  my  summer  vacations, 
we  employed  a  side-show  announcer  named  Pete  Stanton, 
who  had  formerly  worked  for  Sells  Brothers.  He  told  many 
amusing  stories  about  Lew.  For  instance,  at  that  time,  even 
as  now  and  probably  as  long  as  circuses  continue,  mothers 
would  He  to  get  their  small  fry  into  the  show  without  paying 
adult  prices.  ( Children  under  twelve  were  half  price,  babes 
in  arms  free. )  Lew  Sells  would  place  himself  by  the  main  en- 
trance to  his  tent,  and  as  the  mothers  staggered  up  tot- 
ing husky  boys  four  or  five  years  old,  he  would  shout  out,  "Let 
them  menfolks  walkl" 

When  the  tent  was  not  well  filled.  Sells  would  sit  himself 
next  to  someone  in  the  blue  seats  ( general  admission ) .  After 
a  bit  he'd  say,  "We  can't  see  a  dam  thing  from  here.  Let's  go 
buy  reserved  seats."  He  would  lead  his  new  friend  to  an  in- 
side-ticket seller  and  then  shp  away  to  work  his  wiles  on  an- 
other customer. 

Another  good  story  concerns  the  time  Sells  paid  a  high 
price  for  a  superb  black  panther,  of  which  he  was  very  proud. 
One  morning  when  they  were  setting  up  for  the  matinee  the 
panther  got  loose  just  as  Lew  Sells  walked  into  the  menagerie 
tent.  He  saw  the  crowd  of  trainers  and  roustabouts  trying  to 
force  the  dangerous  animal  back  into  its  cage  wdth  crowbars, 
pitchforks,  and  poles.  Lew  was  terribly  worried  that  an  acci- 
dent might  happen— to  his  panther.  "Be  very  careful  not  to 
injure  that  beast,"  he  shouted.  "It's  a  very  valuable  animal 
and  I  want  you  to  be  very  careful  dov^oi  there.  Get  him  back 
in  his  cage,  but  on  no  account  injure  him." 

At  that  moment  a  black  streak  soared  in  a  beautiful  thirty- 
foot  spring  over  the  heads  of  the  encompassing  crowd  and 
started  up  the  tent  with  sinuous  bounds.  Going  even  faster. 
Sells  headed  for  the  exit  yelling  over  his  shoulder,  "Shoot  the 
son  of  a  bitch." 


BILLS,   BANNERS,   AND   BLOODY   HEADS  lOQ 

Despite  the  amenities  exchanged  by  the  owners,  the  circus 
wars  were  bitterly  fought.  They  were,  indeed,  matters  of 
financial  life  and  death.  The  principal  weapons  were  show 
bills.  The  advance  men  would  hterally  plaster  a  town  with 
circus  posters  and  banners,  trying  to  hire  every  available  bill- 
board, bam  side,  and  store  window  before  the  opposition  got 
to  town.  Then  they  would  have  to  guard  their  bills  from  being 
torn  down  or  covered  over.  Our  victories  were  not  always 
bloodless.  Uncle  CharHe  told  me  of  one  occasion  when  he  was 
on  the  advance  car.  He  and  one  of  his  billposters  put  up  a 
very  important  display.  Then  they  lay  in  ambush  behind  the 
billboard  waiting  for  the  opposition  to  try  to  pull  it  down. 
Sure  enough,  one  of  SeUs'  men  came  along,  pointed  like  a  bird 
dog  as  he  saw  the  Ringling  display,  and  started  for  it  with  a 
scraper.  Uncle  Charlie  hopped  out  from  behind  the  board 
and  laid  him  out  with  a  tack  hammer. 

On  another  occasion  one  of  nature's  own  creatures  took  the 
part  of  the  opposition.  This  time  Uncle  John  was  out  in  ad- 
vance, riding  an  ordinary  day  coach  on  a  very  hot  night.  He 
was  terribly  tired  and  trying  to  sleep.  He  put  a  newspaper 
over  his  head  to  shut  out  the  hght.  It  almost  suffocated  him. 
Just  as  he  took  it  off,  the  train  stopped  in  an  open  cutting, 
where  a  skunk  basked  on  the  lingering  heat  of  sun-warmed 
earth.  Irritated  at  being  disturbed,  the  creature  took  careful 
aim  through  the  open  window  of  the  train  and  let  poor  Uncle 
John  have  it  right  in  the  face. 

My  uncle  told  me  that  it  was  the  most  horrible  experience 
of  his  hfe.  As  he  staggered  to  his  feet,  dripping  with  that  as- 
phyxiating effluvia,  and  started  blindly  for  the  washroom, 
there  was  a  riot  in  the  car.  All  the  passengers  were  screaming 
hysterically  at  him  to  keep  off  and  diving  under  their  seats 
to  get  away  from  him.  He  finally  succeeded  in  getting  his 
spare  suit  out  of  his  bag  and  changing  in  the  wasln-oom.  He 
threw  his  old  suit  out  of  the  train  window  and  cleaned  up  as 


110 


THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 


best  he  could.  Even  then  he  wsis  popular  neither  witli  his  fel- 
low^  passengers  nor  himself. 

Another  weapon  of  these  hot  and  cold  w^ars  w^as  the  inven- 
tory bill,  or  "rat  sheet."  This  w^as  a  poster  put  up  by  one  show 
to  expose  the  claims  of  another.  They  were  not  only  libelous 
but  dov^oiright  defamatory,  though  nobody  that  I  know  of 
ever  sued  for  libel.  A  typical  inventory  bill  directed  against 
us  would  read  something  like  this: 

WHY  WASTE  YOUR  MONEY  ON  A  BUNCH  OF 
FAKES,  WHEN  SELLS  BROTHERS  CIRCUS 
GIVES  YOU  TWICE  AS  MUCH  FOR  THE  SAME 

PRICE? 
The  Ringlings  are  cheap  crooks  who  try  to  inflate 
their  Pitiful  Third-Rate  Show  by  extravagant  FALSE 
claims,  as  shown  below: 


RINGLINGS'  CLAIMS 
The  Ringlings  call  themselves 
the  "World's  Greatest  Show." 

They  claim  that  Zip  is  the 
largest  elephant  in  captivity. 

They  advertise  a  Roman  Hip- 
podrome and  Caesar's  trium- 
phal entry  into  Rome. 


Millionaire  Menagerie 


THE  TRUTH 
They  have  a  22- car  train.  We 
travel  in  45  cars. 

Zip  is  really  a  runt.  We  have 
ten  elephants  that  are  bigger. 

Their  hippodrome  consists  of 
two  battered  two-horse  chari- 
ots drawTi  by  spavined  nags 
that  can't  get  out  of  a  walk. 
Caesar  would  have  blushed 
with  shame  if  he  could  have 
seen  their  cheap  depiction  of 
his  triumph. 

It  is  a  collection  of  two  sick 
lions,  three  small  elephants, 
and  a  few  other  miserable 
creatures  which  would  not 
bring  $500  on  the  auction 
block,  where  they  soon  will 
be. 


BILLS,   BANNERS,   AND   BLOODY   HEADS  111 

Museum  and  Aquarium  The  Museum  contains  some 

Indian  Arrowheads.  The 
Aquarium  is  the  size  of  a  gold- 
fish bowl  and  about  as  inter- 
esting. 

This  is  a  fair  sample  of  the  Deceit  practiced  on  the 
public  by  these  Notorious  Swindlers.  The  public  are 
not  Fooled.  Instead  they  come  in  DROVES  TO 
SELLS  BROTHERS 
ENORMOUS  UNITED  SHOWS 

The  most  vicious  and  peculiar  inventory  bill  that  ever  at- 
tacked our  show  was  put  up  by  the  crooks  and  gamblers  whom 
my  uncles  had  thrown  out.  It  read: 

When  Thieves  Fall  Out,  Honest  Men  Get  Their  Due. 

WARNINGl 

Neighbors,  unchain  your  dogs!  Get  out  your  shotguns! 
Keep  your  children  at  home!  Lock  all  doors  and  win- 
dows! 

THE   MARAUDERS   ARE   COMING 

You  uAll  know  them  by  their  Greasy  Appearance! 
They  are  Thieves,  Liars  and  Scoundrels. 
They  have  no  Show  worthy  of  the  name.  .  .  . 
We  give  you  this  warning  because  we  are  aho 
thieves,  hut  we  have  fallen  out  with  the  greasy 
pack  and  now  tell  THE  TRUTH. 

As  can  be  seen,  these  inventory  bills  lied  recklessly;  they 
diminished  the  truth  as  greatly  as  the  posters  exaggerated  it. 
Oddly  enough  this  form  of  negative  advertising  persisted 
among  smaller  circuses  right  up  to  modern  times.  I  have  at 
hand  an  inventory  bill  of  1937,  in  which  Clyde  Beatty  berates 
poor  little  Cole  Brothers  Circus  and  warns  the  residents  of 
Rochester,  New  York,  not  to  waste  their  money  on  it. 

Sells  Brothers  gave  the  Ringlings  a  very  tough  time  in  1894. 
They  fought  us  not  only  in  Texas  but  in  Iowa  and  Minnesota 


112  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

as  well.  There  they  even  reduced  their  price  of  admission  to 
a  losing  twenty-five  cents  and  tlie  RingHngs  were  forced  to 
meet  that  price.  In  the  South  both  circuses  maintained  the 
regular  fifty-cent  admission. 

The  Ringlings  survived  this  attempt  to  put  them  out  of  busi- 
ness and  came  home  to  Baraboo  with  sufficient  profit  to  en- 
large their  show  to  forty-four  cars  in  1895. 

Having  tested  their  mettle  and  emerged  victorious,  those 
optimistic  uncles  of  mine  decided  on  two  tremendous  gambles. 
Fii^st  they  would  raid  the  very  heart  of  enemy  territory;  chal- 
lenging not  only  Sells  Brothers  but  the  great  Barnum  & 
Bailey  show  itself.  And  take  on  Buffalo  Bill  as  weU. 

As  if  this  were  not  enough,  they  took,  perhaps,  an  even 
longer  chance  by  opening  their  show  in  Chicago  indoors. 
Over  sixty  years  later,  when  my  brother  John  decided  to 
abandon  the  Big  Top  and  show  only  in  coliseums,  tlie  tradi- 
tionahsts  howled  that  the  circus  would  never  be  the  same.  It 
is  interesting  to  note  that  back  in  1895  Ringling  Brothers 
faced  the  same  die-hard  caterwaulings.  An  article  in  the 
Circus  Annual  begins: 

"There  are  a  great  many  people  who  believe  that  a  circus 
cannot  be  a  real  circus  unless  it  be  seen  under  canvas,  with 
dirt  rings  and  the  sawdust  smells  that  go  with  it,  in  imaginary 
descriptions  at  least.  Doubtless  there  is  some  truth  in  this  be- 
lief, if  it  means  to  compare  the  modern  up-to-date  show  with 
the  small  travefing  concerns  of  the  past  that  would  be  com- 
pletely lost  in  an  amphitheatre."  Pretty  pompous,  considering 
that  only  eleven  years  had  passed  since  the  Ringlings  had 
proudly  set  out  with  the  very  smallest  "traveling  concern"  on 
the  road. 

TattersaU's,  which  the  Ringlings  had  chosen  for  their  great 
experiment,  had  the  general  contoms  and  all  the  charm  of  a 
carbarn.  It  was  an  enormously  long  drab  building  with  a 
curved  glass  roof  supported  by  ugly  steel  girders.  The  rectan- 


BILLS,    BANNERS,    AND   BLOODY   HEADS  II3 

gular  arena  was  surrounded  by  rows  of  backless  wooden 
benches  where  cattle  and  horse  buyers  customarily  sat 
through  public  auctions.  My  uncles  spent  a  fortune  to  change 
all  that.  Here  is  their  description,  overblown  perhaps,  of  the 
metamorphosis  they  accomplished. 

"The  grim  old  walls,  .  .  .  steel  roof  girders,  homely  wood- 
work .  .  .  had  been  transformed  into  a  veritable  fairyland  by 
the  magic  touch  of  money.  .  .  .  Everything  was  spick  and 
span.  The  grimy  rafters  were  hterally  buried  beneath  masses 
of  flags  of  every  nation,  banners  and  bunting  of  every  color 
of  the  rainbow.  The  aisles  and  corridors  had  been  transformed 
into  floral  gardens  [with]  potted  plants  and  blooming  flow- 
ers. .  .  .  The  seats  were  gone,  too,  and  in  their  place  modem, 
comfortable  folding  open  chairs,  and  in  front  of  them  a  com- 
plete circle  of  private  boxes  .  .  .  richly  draped  and  furnished 
with  artistic  chairs  of  unique  design. 

"Overhead,  amidst  the  sea  of  bunting,  depended  a  myriad 
of  ropes,  trapezes,  and  other  aerial  paraphernalia,  each  indi- 
vidual piece  of  which  was  as  white  as  pipe  clay  and  strong 
arms  could  make  it.  The  dirt  rings  were  not  there,  either,  but 
iastead  rings  of  wood  with  earth  floors,  perfect  and  complete. 
Neatly  uniformed  ushers  seated  [the  audience]  and  all  the 
hurry,  jostle,  push  and  annoyance  of  their  old-fashioned, 
ideal  boyhood  circus  had  vanished.  .  .  ." 

The  traditionalists  must  have  been  fiu-ther  disturbed  by  the 
fact  that  they  could  actually  see  the  show  at  night  perform- 
ances. For  bright,  though  crude,  electric  hghting  had  re- 
placed the  smoky  reflector  oil  lanterns  and  glaring  acetylene 
lamps  which  had  made  the  interior  of  tlie  tent  a  bewildering, 
though  picturesque,  chiaroscuro  of  shifting  shadows. 

Into  this  briUiant  amphitheater  the  Ringlings  threw  a  show 
that  really  deserved  the  magniloquent  adjectives  of  their 
perfervid  publicity  writers.  Three  days  before  the  opening, 
the  show  moved  in  a  three-mile-long   torch  hght  parade 


114  "'^^    SEVEN   BROTHERS 

proudly  led  by  Al  RingHng  on  horseback,  through  the 
narrow  pack-jammed  streets  of  Chicago— the  first  such  in  its 
history.  There  were  a  fifty-five-piece  band;  several  hundred 
horses  ridden  by  performers  or  drawing  the  red-and-gold 
chariots;  and  the  cages  containing  lions  and  tigers,  panthers 
and  pumas,  a  hippopotamus,  a  rhinoceros,  and  an  infinite  va- 
riety of  other  wildlife.  Open  glass-walled  dens  displayed 
snake  charmers  working  boa  constrictors  or  animal  trainers 
cozily  caged  with  their  charges.  Of  course,  there  was  a  whole 
herd  of  elephants,  dozens  of  clowns,  and  bringing  up  the  rear, 
a  perfectly  deafening  calliope. 

The  show  itself  consisted  of  over  twenty  displays  exhibiting 
every  familiar  feature  of  the  circus  we  love,  from  the  band 
concert  led  by  the  famous  cornetist  Signor  A.  Liberatti  ( one 
seems  to  hear  the  echo  of  a  familiar  modern  musical  name) 
tlirough  the  great  equestrians,  aerialists,  performing  ele- 
phants, and  on  and  on  to  the  finale  of  four-horse-chariot  races 
driven  by  girls  in  flowing  classic  draperies.  Special  attractions 
were  Phillion's  Aerial  Globe  display,  in  which  tliat  talented 
fellow  perfoiTned  on  a  high  spii^al  tower  standing  on  a  rolling 
globe;  and  the  nine  Landaures  in  their  Living  Statue  act. 
These  ladies  and  gentlemen,  dressed  in  nothing  but  very  tight 
tights  covered  with  white  paint,  assumed  the  attitudes  of  fa- 
mous pieces  of  classic  sculpture.  It  was  a  highlv  popular  dis- 
play, since  it  permitted  the  sex-starved  midwestern  audience 
to  enjoy  the  appearance  of  nudity  under  the  guise  of  appreci- 
ation of  Art  with  a  capital  A. 

The  most  sensational  act— a  great  deal  more  dangerous 
than  Zacchini's  modern  cannon  act— was  an  insane  character, 
calling  himself  Speedy,  diving  eighty  feet  from  the  dome  of 
tlie  roof  into  a  small  tank  of  water  tlnee  and  a  half  feet  deep. 

To  quote  the  Circus  Annual  once  more:  "The  verdict  of 
Cliicago  pronounced  it  the  largest  as  well  as  the  best  show 
ever  given  there.  .  .  .  The  Circus  became  a  fad;  it  was  the 


BILLS,   BANNERS,   AND   BLOODY  HEADS  II5 

thing  to  do  and  the  thing  to  see.  .  .  .  Hundreds  of  thousands 
saw  it;  thousands  were  turned  away." 

In  plain  fact,  the  Ringhngs  had  finally  caught  up  with  their 
splendid  boasts. 

Fresh  from  this  success  the  show  moved  on  to  St.  Louis  and, 
in  June,  to  Boston,  where,  though  it  showed  in  a  tent,  special 
grandstands  with  private  boxes  were  erected  and  lavishly 
furnished  as  in  Chicago.  In  spite  of  following  both  Barnum  & 
Bailey  and  Buffalo  Bill,  the  Ringlings  scored  another  tri- 
umph. 

This  upset  the  opposition  no  end.  All  three  of  the  other 
great  shows,  Barnum  &  Bailey,  Sells  Brothers,  and  Buffalo  Bill, 
combined  to  fight  tliem,  led  by  James  A.  Bailey. 

Now  I  think  I  should  speak  a  Uttle  of  our  chief  opponent, 
although  his  story  is  well  known.  Bailey  reached  the  top  of 
the  circus  world  by  bluff  backed  by  abiUty,  for  he  was  second 
only  to  Barnum  himself  in  imaginative  showmanship.  His  real 
name  was  James  A.  McGinnis.  When  he  was  about  twelve 
years  old  he  ran  away  from  home  and  talked  himself  into  a  job 
with  the  Cooper  and  Bailey  circus,  where  he  made  himself  so 
valuable  that,  when  Mr.  Bailey  died  a  few  years  later,  he  was 
in  a  position  to  ask  for  a  partnership.  Mr.  Cooper  agreed  that 
he  deserved  it,  but  is  reported  to  have  said,  "We  don't  want  to 
change  the  name  of  the  show.  You  can  be  a  partner  if  you 
change  your  name," 

So  McGinnis  became  James  Anthony  Bailey.  By  the  time 
he  was  twenty-six  he  had  gained  control  of  the  show.  In  1880 
he  outsmarted  his  great  rival  Barnum  on  a  deal  over  a  baby 
elephant,  which  so  impressed  the  supreme  flimflammer  that 
he  offered  Bailey  a  partnership.  This  combination  of  talented 
necromancers  produced  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth,  which 
was  without  a  serious  rival  for  fifteen  golden  years,  until  the 
Ringlings  brashly  challenged  it.  When  Phineas  T.  Barnum 


Il6  THE   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

died  in  1891  in  his  eighty-first  year,  Bailey  stood  alone  at  the 
pinnacle  of  the  circus  world. 

But  he  knew  that  you  did  not  stay  there  without  fighting, 
and  in  1895  he  went  after  the  Ringlings.  His  first  move  was  to 
buy  into  partnership  with  Colonel  Cody.  While  his  own  cir- 
cus kept  clear,  he  used  Buffalo  Bill's  cowboys  and  Indians  to 
harass  the  Ringlings  at  almost  every  stand  in  the  East.  My 
imcles  retorted  with  the  unparalleled  effrontery  of  playing 
Bridgeport  right  in  the  shadow  of  Bamum  &  Bailey's  huge 
winter  quarters. 

This  did  nothing  to  reduce  Mr.  Bailey's  blood  pressure.  He 
aheady  ov^oied  the  Forepaugh  Circus  and  in  1896  he  bought 
a  half  interest  in  Sells  Brothers  Circus,  which  he  sent  out  to  do 
battle  with  the  Ringlings  under  the  name  of  the  Forepaugh- 
Sells  Circus. 

That  year  the  Ringlings  tried  to  keep  out  of  trouble 
by  avoiding  the  East,  but  Bailey  sent  Forepaugh-Sells  raiding 
after  them  through  the  West.  The  two  shows  clashed  directly 
at  no  less  than  forty-five  stands  during  a  hectic  season  in 
which  the  batthng  billposters  painted  virtually  every  tov^Ti  in 
the  Midwest  red,  not  only  vdth  flaming  posters  but  with  their 
blood. 

That  was  the  ruggedest  campaign.  By  1897  both  Mr. 
Bailey  and  the  Ringlings  realized  tliat  nobody  wins  a  spite 
fight.  In  that  heyday  of  the  circus  there  was  plenty  of  room 
for  two  great  circuses  and  several  small  ones.  By  tacit  agree- 
ment they  arranged  their  schedules  to  avoid  each  other.  There 
was  only  one  direct  clash,  when  Barnum  &  Bailey  and  the 
Ringlings  hit  Minneapolis  at  the  same  time.  Apparently 
Bailey's  billposters  won  a  battle  but  not  the  war,  for  the 
Ringling  Route  Book  records,  "At  Minneapolis,  Minn.,  we 
were  shut  out  of  billboards— used  no  large  boards  or  walls- 
only  banners,  small  boards  and  newspapers  strong.  Turned 
people  away  each  performance." 


BILLS,   BANNERS,   AND   BLOODY   HEADS  II7 

That  day  in  Minneapolis  was  the  last  great  scene  of  carnage. 
In  a  sense  the  Ringlings  won  the  ultimate  victory  by  default. 
Whether  from  prudence,  weariness,  or  a  desire  to  gather  new 
laurels  in  fresh  fields,  Mr.  Bailey  took  The  Greatest  Show  on 
Earth  to  Europe  in  1898.  It  remained  abroad  for  five  years, 
and  if  laurels  were  indeed  his  goal,  he  reaped  a  great  harvest 
of  them.  As  they  liked  to  phrase  it  those  royalty-loving  days, 
all  the  crowned  heads  of  Europe  came  to  look  and  remained 
to  applaud.  More  important  from  a  financial  point  of  view, 
the  uncrowned  heads  turned  out  in  multitudes.  The  tour  was 
a  spectacular  success. 

While  he  was  away,  Bailey  left  Forepaugh-Sells  to  hold  the 
eastern  seaboard  for  him.  If  he  reaUy  expected  those  boys  to 
do  a  man's  work,  it  was  a  serious  miscalculation.  Perhaps,  in 
the  flush  of  his  European  triumphs,  he  did  not  really  care.  In 
any  event,  during  those  years  the  Ringlings  established  them- 
selves as  the  pre-eminent  figures  of  the  American  circus— a 
position  that  was  never  afterward  successfully  challenged. 


J 


CHAPTER   VIII 


HEYDAY 


At  the  end  of  the  century  the  American  people  were  moving 
out  of  their  homespun  phase.  Those  who  could  afford  it  were 
going  to  Europe  in  search  of  the  culture  and  amenities  of  an 
older  civilization,  while  those  who  could  not,  nevertheless 
aspired  to  a  more  sophisticated  mode  of  life.  The  adjective 
"elegant,"  instead  of  being  synonymous  with  "pretentious,"  as 


HEYDAY  119 

it  now  is,  was  an  accolade.  The  Ringling  brothers  felt  the  pop- 
ular pulse,  as  good  showmen  always  do,  and  went  in  for 
elegance  in  their  circus;  and  in  their  private  Hves  as  well. 

This  trend  was  apparent  in  the  lavish  way  they  furnished 
Tattersall's  in  1895.  In  1897  they  added  a  number  of  things 
to  the  circus  which  were  designed  to  appeal  to  this  taste.  The 
first  was  their  famous  mounted  band,  tliirty  brilliantly  uni- 
formed bandsmen  mounted  on  pure- white  horses.  The  ghtter 
of  their  highly  polished  brass  instruments  was  equaled  only 
by  the  golden  sparkle  of  their  red-plumed  hehnets  as  they 
maneuvered  their  steeds  and  simultaneously  tootled  their 
horns  in  the  parade  or  arena  v^dth  military  precision. 

The  Ringlings'  second  concession  to  culture  was  a  truly 
original  contribution  to  circus  lore,  known  as  the  Bell  Wagon. 
It  consisted  of  a  twelve-bell  carillon  mounted  on  an  ornately 
decorated  chariot  drawn  by  eight  matched  bays.  A  musician, 
perched  on  a  gilded  rumble  seat,  caused  it  to  discourse 
melodious  chimes  as  it  rumbled  along. 

The  Bell  Wagon  was  dreamed  up  by  Charles  and  Alf  T. 
Ringling,  whose  love  of  music  contributed  much  to  the  high 
standard  of  the  music  which  accompanied  the  show.  Though 
certainly  not  great  musicians,  they  composed  many  pleasing 
tunes  for  the  circus  of  that  era,  just  as  my  brother  John  does 
now.  Since  they  could  not  write  music,  they  played  the  airs 
for  the  musical  director,  George  Ganweiler,  who  wrote  them 
down  and  scored  them. 

Like  aU  our  magnificent  chariots  of  that  time,  the  Bell 
Wagon  was  built  by  our  cousins,  the  MoeUer  brothers.  Under 
its  fanciful  decorations  they  concealed  a  rugged  frame.  The 
biggest  bronze  bell  weighed  nearly  a  ton,  with  the  others  in 
proportion.  Since  the  wagon  would  be  parked  on  muddy  cir- 
cus lots,  where  under  its  weight  the  iron-shod  wheels  would 
sink  so  deep  that  a  fifty-horse  hitch  might  be  needed  to 


120  THE    SEVEN   BROTHERS 


wrench  it  free,  it  had  to  be  constructed  so  that,  speaking  quite 
literally,  wild  horses  could  not  pull  it  apart. 

Another  touch  of  elegance  with  which  the  Ringlings 
adorned  the  1897  show  was  the  English  Derby  Day  Pageant 
with  its  concourse  of  beautiful  carriages  of  the  time:  coaches, 
victorias,  landaus,  phaetons,  tallyhos,  two-wheeled  dogcarts, 
and  other  "nobby  private  equipages"  drawn  by  high-steppers 
hitched  in  fours,  in  pairs,  and  in  tandem,  in  which  rode 
fashionably  dressed  gentlemen  and  ladies  of  the  company. 

A  number  of  great  equestrian  acts  were  with  the  circus  that 
year,  among  them  the  Rooneys.  A  member  of  the  family, 
Charhe  Rooney,  who  was  also  with  the  Bamum  show  for  a 
while,  came  back  to  us  as  boss  of  the  ring  stock  when  he  got 
too  old  to  do  stunts.  Later  still  he  retired  to  hve  in  Baraboo. 

He  was  a  wonderful  horseman,  and  he  used  to  take  care  of 
my  first  pony  for  me. 

So  Charhe  Rooney  became  a  friend  of  my  youth  and 
sometimes  a  terrifying  one.  He  was  a  disastrous  drinker  and 
when  he  got  d.t.s  he  would  not  recognize  me.  I  would  go  out 
to  the  stable  expecting  to  see  my  old,  kindly  Charhe.  Instead 
he  was  a  wild  man,  seeing  snakes  and  monkeys  climbing  the 
beams  and  running  along  the  rafters.  Perhaps  he  mistook  me 
for  one  of  those  hallucinatory  monkeys,  for  he  would  take  oflF 
after  me  with  a  terribly  purposeful  look  in  his  eye.  And 
I  would  take  oflF  too. 

But  at  their  time  of  greatness,  the  Rooneys,  especially 
Lizzie  and  John,  were  as  fine  as  any  equestrians  in  the  world, 
and  they,  too,  contributed  to  the  beauty  and  elegance  of  the 
circus. 

As  a  gesture  toward  the  imperial  splendors  then  touching 
the  American  imagination,  the  parade  included  elephants 
dragging  siege  guns,  just  as  in  Rudyard  Kipling  and  as  tliey 
did,  in  fact,  with  the  British  Army  in  India.  According  to 
Kipling,  the  elephants  were  too  intelligent  to  take  the  guns 


A  solid  Ringling  front  to  the  world:  Albert,  Alf  T.,  August,  Charles,  Otto,  John, 
Grandmother,  Grandfather,  Mother,  Henry.  (Lawrence  Studio) 


The  five  who  built  the  circus,  and  their  mustache  cups. 


v*--^       r^  £<' 


The  Ringlings  always  took  part; 
left:  Uncle  John  was  known  in 
1882  as  "The  Emperor  of  Dutch 
Comedians."  below:  Brother 
John  at  seventeen  rode  in  the 
parade  as  a  hussar.  (Lawrence 
Studio) 


K 


HEYDAY  121 


into  actual  battle— I  have  always  had  great  respect  for  ele- 
phants. 

For  a  fact,  an  Indian  durbar  at  the  peak  of  Victorian  pomp 
and  circumstance  could  hardly  have  had  the  impact  on 
its  viewers  of  the  arrival  of  the  circus  at  a  small  American  city 
of  this  period  of  our  history.  Half  the  adults  and  all  the  small 
boys  would  be  up  in  the  gray  dawn,  and  the  column  of  smoke 
from  the  engine  of  the  first  section  of  the  circus  train  led  them 
to  the  railway  tracks  as  inevitably  as  Moses'  piUar  of  cloud 
led  the  Israehtes  to  the  Promised  Land.  An  eyewitness 
account  of  its  arrival  gives  a  vivid  picture  of  it. 

"The  engine  drags  its  hne  of  gaudy  yellow  stockcars  and 
flats  with  heavily  laden  wagons  carrying  canvas,  stakes,  stable 
tents,  etc.,  slowly  over  the  Main  Street  crossing  to  the  sidings. 
The  'runs'  [wooden  troughlike  planks]  are  quickly  placed  in 
position  against  the  flats.  Roustabouts  and  razorbacks  swarm 
off  the  sleeping  cars.  The  gigantic  pole  wagon  comes  slowly 
down  the  runs  and  its  ten-horse  team  hauls  it  to  the  show 
grounds.  Two-,  four-  and  ten-horse  teams  come  out  of  the 
stockcars  with  clocklike  regularity,  each  arriving  at  the  runs 
in  the  nick  of  time  to  pick  up  the  proper  wagon. 

"Meanwhile  another  long  train  and  another  and  another 
arrive  in  the  yards.  With  the  same  precision  their  contents 
are  transported  to  the  show  grounds,  which  becomes  a  city  of 
tents  as  exactly  situated  as  a  military  encampment." 

Our  anonymous  eyewitness  goes  on  to  cite  the  tremendous 
effect  of  the  parade  on  the  people:  "The  sidewalks,  curbs, 
gutters  and  streets  are  a  packed,  surging  mass  of  humanity 
when  the  first  of  the  chariots  appears  around  the  corner.  The 
enlivening  strains  of  the  superb  band  starts  the  enthusiasm, 
...  a  round  of  applause  which  develops  into  a  salvo  of 
greeting  as  den  after  den  of  the  grand  menagerie  passes  in 
review;  the  side-show  band  in  glaring  uniforms  of  red,  richly 
emblazoned  and  heavy  with  gold;  tlie  famous  English  Derby- 


122  THE    SEVEN   BROTHERS 

Day  section  .  .  .  ponderous  war  elephants  hauling  can- 
non .  .  .  the  children's  section  with  allegories  of  Mother 
Goose  and  dainty  cages  displaying  baby  animals.  The  Arabian 
Caravan;  the  representatives  of  the  standing  armies  of  the  na- 
tions of  the  world— all  these  as  well  as  each  of  the  thirty 
separate  sections  of  the  grand  spectacular  street  pageant,  be- 
wilder the  eyes  of  the  throng  with  their  very  magnificence— 
a  mile  and  a  half  of  marvels." 

The  accent  was  indeed  on  splendor.  But  do  not  suppose 
that  the  circus  was  going  sissy  then  any  more  than  it  is  now. 
There  were  plenty  of  "death-defying  feats,"  low-comedy 
clowns,  and  such  side  shows  as  Lionette  the  Lion-faced  Girl, 
human  skeletons,  fat  girls,  bearded  ladies,  and  three-legged 
men,  to  appeal  to  the  earthiest  instincts  of  the  crowd.  In  fact, 
it  had  something  for  every  taste,  which  is  exactly  what  a  cir- 
cus should  have. 

In  general,  however,  the  trend  toward  splendor,  continued 
during  the  five  years  when  freed  from  the  competition  of 
Barnum  &  Bailey,  the  Ringling  Circus  waxed  and  grew  great. 
Of  course,  they  took  the  whole  of  America  as  their  province. 
In  1901  the  circus  ranged  from  Boston,  Massachusetts,  to  San 
Diego,  California;  and  from  Montreal,  Canada,  to  Yazoo  City, 
Mississippi. 

During  each  of  those  years  the  uncles  added  to  the  beauty 
and  grandeur  of  the  show.  In  1899  Uncle  Al  staged  the  fa- 
mous sixty-one-horse  spectacle.  More  and  more  of  the  great 
European  acts  were  scouted  and  imported  by  Uncle  John, 
giving  finish  and  style  to  the  performance.  The  chariots,  al- 
though always  gaudy,  were  artistically  improved  until  some 
of  them  became  genuinely  valuable  examples  of  the  wood 
carver's  art.  And,  of  course,  the  spectacles  that  opened  and 
ended  the  show  not  only  became  ever  more  lavish  but  also 
better  staged  and  more  historically  accurate. 

Though  aU  this  striving  after  splendor  and  style  may  sound 


HEYDAY  123 

somewhat  farcical  and  phony,  it  did  in  fact  meet  a  pub- 
lic need,  and  it  gained  an  appreciative  response.  For  tliis  rea- 
son I  feel  that  my  micles  and  other  showmen  like  them 
contributed  something  of  real  value  to  American  life  by 
introducing  scenes  of  comparatively  sophisticated  magnifi- 
cence and  beauty  to  a  pubhc  that,  especially  in  the  small 
western  cities,  hungered  desperately  for  the  things  which 
they  had  read  of  but  never  seen. 

In  1903  James  A.  Bailey  brought  the  Bamum  show  home 
from  Europe  with  a  fanfare  worthy  of  Phineas  T.  Many 
splendid  things  had  been  added,  among  them  tlie  Two-Hemi- 
spheres Band  Wagon  drawn  by  the  famous  forty-horse  hitch 
of  matched  Enghsh  bays.  Another  importation  was  Ella  and 
Fred  Bradna.  She  was  the  finest  equestrienne  in  the  world. 
Dressed  in  a  beautiful  sequined  evening  gown  with  its  skirt 
slit  to  the  waist,  she  performed  an  astonishing  series  of 
equestrian  acrobatics,  including  a  bareback  ballet  dance 
which  ended  with  a  somersault  from  the  galloping  horse  to 
the  ground.  Her  husband,  Fred  Bradna,  was  a  militarily  slim 
man  of  aristocratic  birth  and  impeccable  dress,  who  was  a 
great  ringmaster  and,  later,  a  fine  equestrian  director. 

In  addition  to  these  and  many  other  European  novelties, 
Bailey  had  some  splendid  new  chariots  made  in  America,  tlie 
most  beautiful  being  the  tableau  wagon  America.  It  was  a 
massive  vehicle  of  red,  blue,  and  gold,  decorated  by  cai-ved 
medallion  heads  representing  the  different  coimtries  of  the 
two  Americas  liberally  interspersed  with  shields  of  the  United 
States. 

As  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth  landed  from  a  small  fleet  of 
chartered  ocean  hners  in  New  York,  it  looked  as  though  the 
stage  were  set  for  the  battle  of  the  new  century  between  the 
titans  of  the  circus  world.  It  never  came  off. 

There  were  two  reasons  for  this.  The  first  was  that  the 


124  '^'^^   SEVEN  BROTHERS 

Ringlings  were  by  now  so  strongly  entrenched  in  the  favor  of 
the  American  people  as  to  be  almost  impregnable.  The  second 
w^as  that  Mr.  Bailey  was  growing  old  and  weary.  Had  it  been 
otherwise,  who  knows  what  might  have  happened,  but  like 
Napoleon  at  Waterloo,  he  was  not  the  man  he  once  had  been. 

After  testing  his  strength  agaiost  us  in  the  season  of  1903, 
Bailey  ojffered  my  uncles  a  treaty  of  peace,  which  they 
sensibly  accepted.  In  that  agreement  Bailey  sold  them  a  half 
interest  in  the  Forepaugh-Sells  Circus,  which  was  sent  out 
under  the  management  of  Henry  Ringhng,  who  had  proved 
his  abihty  by  managing  the  John  Robinson  Circus,  which  the 
Ringlings  had  leased  in  1898.  All  three  circuses  were  carefully 
routed  to  avoid  any  conflict  of  dates. 

This  arrangement  prevailed  until  1906.  In  the  spring  of  that 
year,  while  Mr.  Bailey  was  directing  the  three  days  of  chaotic 
rehearsals  in  which  he  customarily  threw  a  new  show  together 
at  Madison  Square  Garden,  he  was  suddenly  stricken  with 
erysipelas.  The  fine  old  gentleman  was  carried  unconscious  to 
his  home  in  Mount  Vernon,  where  he  died  within  forty-eight 
hours. 

Control  of  the  Bamum  show  was  inherited  by  his  widow, 
who  sent  it  out  that  year  under  the  joint  management  of 
George  O.  Starr  and  her  nephew-in-law  Charles  Hutchinson, 
whom  I  later  knew  and  loved  as  Mr.  Hutch. 

The  season  was  a  disaster.  Without  the  generalship  of  Mr. 
Bailey  everything  went  viTong.  In  addition,  rainy  weather 
pursued  them  and  the  final  catasti'ophe  was  a  tornado  which 
hit  the  show  at  Iowa  City,  Iowa,  blowing  every  tent,  from  the 
Big  Top  to  the  smallest  dressing  tent,  into  shredded  canvas. 
Although  in  true  circus  tiadition  they  dug  themselves  out, 
scraped  off  the  mud,  and  gave  a  performance  in  the  open  air 
the  following  day,  it  was  a  terrible  blow. 

Sometime  during  that  fatal  season,  Mrs.  Bailey  telegraphed 


HEYDAY  125 

Henry  Rmgling  offering  him  the  position  of  manager.  He  put 
it  up  to  the  conclave  of  the  brothers,  who  told  him  to  refuse. 
Perhaps  they  were  already  contemplating  a  more  drastic 
move. 

Nineteen  hundred  seven  was  a  panic  year.  Barnum 
&  Bailey,  now  under  the  management  of  W.  W.  Cole  and 
Hutchinson,  continued  to  lose  money.  Its  stock  fell  to  eighty- 
five  cents  a  share.  John  BingUng  began  to  buy  it. 

John  was  the  most  ambitious  of  the  Bingling  brothers  and 
the  most  daring.  His  was  the  spirit  of  the  great  industrial  em- 
pire builders  of  the  day;  and  he  saw  a  chance  to  gain  a 
monopoly  of  the  circus  business.  Pride,  too,  may  have  entered 
into  it.  Even  when  Barnum  &  Bailey  was  in  Europe,  the 
Ringhngs  never  had  played  the  greatest  city  in  America,  for 
Bailey  controlled  Madison  Square  Garden,  the  only  suitable 
arena  in  New  York. 

That  summer,  stocks  were  crashing  in  Wall  Street  and 
banks  were  failing  all  over  the  country.  (Incidentally,  the 
Ringlings  more  than  repaid  their  debt  to  the  Bank  of  Bara- 
boo.  It  was  on  the  point  of  collapse  when  they  shipped  sack- 
fuls  of  greenbacks  and  silver  dollars,  direct  from  their  ticket 
windows,  to  restore  its  credit.)  In  the  midst  of  panic,  John 
Bingling  began  secretly  negotiating  with  Mrs.  Bailey  for  the 
purchase  of  Barnum  &  Bailey.  The  poor  lady  was  fearful  of 
losing  her  whole  patrimony  and  agreed  on  a  reasonable— a 
very  reasonable— price.  Then  John  laid  his  deal  before  his 
brothers. 

No  one  quite  knows  what  went  on  in  that  momentous  con- 
ference, though  it  appears  that  most  of  them  were  against 
taking  a  chance  in  such  dangerous  times.  But  Otto,  who  al- 
ways thought  big,  was  for  it;  and  they  respected  his  judgment. 

So  the  deal  was  approved  and  consummated.  The  Ringlings 
bought  The  Greatest  Show  on  Eaith  for  $410,000.  In  1908, 


126  THE   SEVEN   BROTHERS 

while  Charles  and  Albert  ran  the  Ringling  Circus,  John,  as- 
sisted by  Alf  T.  and  Otto,  commanded  the  Barnum  train.  Its 
profits  in  that  one  season  were  greater  than  the  price  they 
had  paid  for  it. 


Part  III 

JOHN  RINGLING  AND 
THE  NORTHS 


CHAPTER    IX 


THE  APOTHEOSIS  OF 
JOHN  RINGLING 


In  their  private  lives  the  Ringling  brothers,  each  according  to 
his  taste,  began  reaching  out  for  a  more  spacious  hfe.  This 
v^^as  only  natuial,  since  most  of  the  brothers  had  mairied  by 
now  and  v^ere  raising  families.  Giis,  who  had  married  Anna 
Herley,  had  three  daughters,  Mattie,  Lorene,  and  Alice.  Alf 


130  JOHN   RINGLING   AND   THE   NORTHS 

T.  was  married  to  Delia  Andrews  of  Baiaboo  and  had  a  son, 
Richard.  Charles  and  Edith  had  a  boy  and  girl  named  Robert 
and  Hester. 

In  1902  Henry  married  Ida  Palmer,  also  a  Baraboo  girl. 
Their  son,  named  after  his  father,  was  always  known  as  Little 
Henry,  even  after  he  grew  to  be  six  feet  two  and  a  half  and 
weighed  weU  over  two  hmidred  pomids,  though  he  never 
attained  the  gargantuan  proportions  of  his  father.  Al  and 
Louise  had  no  children  and  Otto  never  married.  He  always 
lived  with  the  AJf  T.'s  when  in  Baraboo. 

The  first  luxury  the  brothers  bought  themselves  was  a 
splendid  private  car  in  place  of  the  old  sleeping- dining  car 
they  had  first  used.  This  was  not  really  a  luxury  at  all,  but  a 
necessity,  since  they  and  their  v^ves,  especially  Al  and 
Charles,  spent  a  great  part  of  their  lives  on  the  circus  train. 
It  was  at  about  this  time  that  Charles  began  his  collection  of 
exquisite  old  viohns,  many  of  which  he  carried  with  him  on 
the  train.  He  loved  to  play  duets  witli  Edith,  who  accompa- 
nied him  on  a  reed  organ  or  a  piano. 

The  brothers  often  took  their  children  along  on  the  train, 
just  as  later  they  took  John  and  me.  That  the  younger 
generation  had  a  keen  sense  of  the  most  impoHant  thing  is 
shown  by  two  letters  written  to  my  grandmother  from  circus 
trains.  The  first  one  is  in  a  round  baby  hand  on  note  paper 
adorned  by  a  photograph  of  a  round-eyed  little  girl  with  long 
corkscrew  curls.  It  is  dated  Spokane,  Washington,  August  15, 

1903- 

Dear  Grandma 

I  am  with  the  show  now  but  I  am  coming  home  soon 
in  about  a  week.  We  are  all  quite  well  and  the  weather 
has  been  fine  and  business  is  good  with  the  circus.  .  .  . 

Love  to  all 
Hester  Ringling 

The  second  one,  written  from  Canada  tlie  same  year,  is 
from  an  even  yomiger  Ringling: 


THE   APOTHEOSIS  OF    JOHN   RINGLING  I3I 

Dear  Grandma 

Yesterday  it  was  hot  and  today  is  very  cold.  I  feel 
fine  and  get  my  lessons  every  day.  There  is  the  tiniest 
pony  colt  with  the  show  I  ever  saw.  His  name  is 
Meagher. 

How  are  you  and  do  you  ride  every  day?  The  cars 
are  by  the  lot.  Business  is  good. 

Your  loving  grandson 
Richard 

Soon  the  brothers  began  building  big  pleasant  houses  in 
Baraboo.  Gus  did  not  long  enjoy  his,  for  he  died  in  1907,  the 
first  of  the  brothers  to  go.  Charles',  Alf  T.'s,  and  Henry's 
homes  were  spacious  columned  pseudo-colonial  houses.  A 
little  later  Al  outdid  them  all  by  building  the  great  castle- 
chateau  LQ  which  John  and  Salome  and  I  grew  up.  As  I  said, 
when  Uncle  Al  died  in  1916,  the  conclave  of  surviving  imcles 
made  a  settlement  with  Aunt  Lou  which  gave  them  the 
ownership  of  the  house,  and  they  told  my  mother  to  go  and 
live  in  it.  The  fact  that  Aunt  Lou  had  removed  the  furniture 
and  left  the  place  as  bare  as  a  Roman  ruin  had  escaped  their 
notice.  When  my  distraught  mother  called  this  to  their  at- 
tention they  promptly  supplied  the  deficiency  with  van  loads 
of  massive  furniture  in  the  latest  style. 

The  other  brothers  developed  their  hobbies.  Alf  T.  had  his 
music.  In  addition  to  collecting  violins,  Charles  became  an 
avid  fisherman  and  sportsman.  Otto  amassed  a  Hbrary  of  fine 
books,  every  one  of  which  he  read.  Unfortimately,  his  hobby 
for  food  led  him  to  eat  more  than  any  one  person  should— 
he  would  eat  a  large  sirloin  steak  for  breakfast— which  un- 
doubtedly contributed  to  his  early  death.  Henry,  too,  was 
fond  of  reading,  and  was,  perhaps,  the  most  home-loving  of 
them  all. 

In  these  ways  all  the  brothers  but  one  opened  the  windows 
of  life,  though  remaining  based  in  Baraboo.  The  seventh 
brotlier  sought  much  wider  horizons.  John  Ringling  was  the 


132  JOHN   RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

Sport  of  the  family,  using  that  word  in  both  its  colloquial  and 
its  biological  meaning.  He  got  out  of  Baraboo  just  as  quickly 
as  he  could;  and  he  ranged  very  much  further  afield,  geo- 
graphically, financially,  and  artistically  than  his  brothers.  This 
restlessness  is  exemplified  by  the  fact  that  he  was  the  only 
brother  who  ever  ran  away  from  home.  He  kept  on  running 
all  his  life.  However,  he  was  not  running  away  from  things, 
but  toward  them. 

As  early  as  1890  he  went  to  live  in  a  hotel  in  Chicago,  only 
returning  to  Baraboo  for  circus  business  or  family  gatherings. 
He  must  have  been  a  very  gay  young  man;  indeed,  he 
basically  ever  remained  so  even  when  weighted  with  years 
and  troubles.  This  is  one  of  the  stories  he  told  me  about  the 
early  days  in  Chicago: 

"We  had  great  fun  tishing  the  girls,"  he  said.  "Do  you  know 
what  that  is?" 

Of  course,  I  said,  "No." 

"Well,"  he  said,  "it  was  what  I  used  to  do  when  I  was  a 
young  man  around  Chicago.  We  were  just  getting  started 
with  the  circus  and  didn't  have  too  much  money,  but  we 
liked  to  have  a  good  time  and  this  was  a  way  to  help  out  a 
meager  bank  roll.  We  would  go  to  the  sporting  houses  and  the 
girls  would  come  in.  Now,  it  was  the  custom  in  those  days,  in 
the  higher  types  of  places,  that  there  would  be  no  discussion 
about  payment.  Anything  Hke  that  would  spoil  the  temporary 
romance. 

"You  would  probably  order  a  bottle  of  wine  and  sit  around 
talking  about  anything  but  money.  The  gii'ls  all  wore  high 
silk  stockings  with  round  garters,  and  after  you  had  warmed 
up  a  bit  the  big  spenders  would  just  bring  out  a  fat  roll  of 
bills,  and  pulling  back  the  garter  a  little,  slip  the  roll  down  a 
gill's  stocking.  This  made  the  girl  happy  and  you  had  a  fine 
time. 

"Now,  I  didn't  have  such  important  rolls  at  that  time,  so  I 


THE   APOTHEOSIS   OF    JOHN   BINGLING  I33 

would  prepare  a  bit.  I'd  take  a  twenty  dollar  bill  and  wrap 
it  around  a  big  wad  of  tissue  paper,  so  it  looked  like  a  big, 
splendid  thing.  When  the  time  came  I  would  shove  it  down 
the  girl's  stocking  and  she  would  never  know  until  afterward 
the  nature  of  the  gift.  Your  uncle  Charlie  and  I  used  to  call  it 
'tishing  the  girls.' " 

Later,  when  Uncle  John  was  fairly  rich,  he  Hved  at  the 
famous  Palmer  House  in  Chicago,  but  he  had  not  changed 
his  ways.  The  hotel  was  very  strict  about  propriety,  and  tlie 
house  detective,  a  man  named  Bismark,  was  most  conscien- 
tious. For  years  Uncle  John  and  Bismark  fought  a  battle  of 
wits.  He  would  sneak  a  girl  into  his  room  without  being  seen, 
but  somehow  Bismark  would  sense  that  she  was  there  and 
come  barging  in  to  spoil  all  the  fun. 

Finally  my  uncle  discovered  how  the  detective  did  it.  He 
would  come  along  the  corridor  after  the  room  key  had  been 
taken  up  and  the  occupant  was  supposedly  in  bed,  and  lean 
a  wooden  match  upright  against  the  door.  If  it  was  not  still 
standing  there  the  next  time  he  came  around,  he  knew  some 
unauthorized  person  had  gone  in. 

After  he  solved  the  mystery,  Uncle  John  defeated  Bismark 
for  quite  a  while.  When  the  girl  was  safely  in  his  room,  he 
would  pull  the  door  almost  to.  Then  he  would  lie  down  and 
slip  his  fingers  through  the  crack  and  carefully  balance  a 
matchstick  against  the  door,  which  he  then  closed  very 
gently.  When  Bismark  made  his  rounds  there  was  proof  that 
the  propriety  of  the  Palmer  House  was  intact. 

Incidentally,  Uncle  John  had  one  rigid  rule  of  conduct  in 
the  matter  of  women.  He  never  went  with  any  of  tlie  girls  in 
the  show,  though  some  of  his  brothers  did.  I  am  not  sure 
whether  this  was  because  he  felt  it  was  undignified  and  bad 
for  discipline,  or  whether  he  thought  that  his  position  as 
owner  gave  him  too  great  an  advantage  and  that  it  was  un- 
sporting, like  shooting  a  sitting  bird.  In  any  event,  he  never 


134  JOHN   RINGLING   AND   THE   NORTHS 

broke  this  rule,  and  Brother  John,  who  modeled  himself  in 
many  ways  on  his  beloved  uncle,  keeps  the  same  code. 

In  the  nineties  Uncle  John  began  making  his  annual  trips 
to  Europe  to  collect  new  acts  for  the  circus.  In  his  inquiring, 
untaught  way  he  loved  beauty,  and  the  great  pictures  he 
saw  abroad  stirred  him  as  nothing  of  an  aesthetic  nature  ever 
had  before.  He  decided  he  would  like  to  have  some  that  he 
could  enjoy  at  home,  and  he  began  to  buy,  indiscriminately 
at  first,  but  never  rashly. 

Once,  many  years  later,  I  was  going  through  the  ware- 
houses at  Sarasota,  where  the  treasures  he  had  brought  home 
from  Europe  were  stored  waiting  for  the  completion  of  the 
museum  which  he  intended  to  present  to  the  state  of  Florida. 
Uncle  John  loved  to  go  through  the  storage  rooms  and  look 
at  his  great  pictures.  He  would  teU  me  which  ones  he  wanted 
to  see  and  exactly  where  they  were.  I  would  haul  them  out 
and  he  would  sit  on  a  crate  in  the  bare,  vaultlike  room  drink- 
ing in  their  beauty  by  the  hour. 

On  this  occasion  I  unearthed  a  perfectly  frightful  late- 
nineteenth-century  picture.  It  was  a  painting  of  a  nude  female 
statue  in  a  garden  setting.  The  lady  was  holding  some  cherries 
in  her  hands.  She  made  me  think  of  Venus  rising  from  a  bed 
of  concrete.  Uncle  John  sat  looking  at  it,  not  exactly  proudly, 
but  nostalgically.  "That  is  the  first  picture  I  ever  bought,"  he 
said. 

For  all  I  know,  it  is  still  in  the  cellar  of  the  museum,  for  he 
never  sold  a  picture  in  his  life. 

John  Ringling  did  not  long  make  such  mistakes.  As  his 
interest  in  pictures  grew,  he  studied  art  with  the  terrific 
intensity  which  he  applied  to  any  field  in  which  he  became 
active.  He  devoured  books  on  the  subject  by  the  authoritative 
critics  and  spent  hours  and  days  in  the  great  European 
museums  training  his  eye  to  form  and  color  and  technique. 

For  the  most  part,  this  was  because  he  Hked  what  he  was 


THE   APOTHEOSIS   OF    JOHN   RINGLING  I35 

doing;  he  seldom  did  anything  he  did  not  Uke.  But  there  was 
also  his  fear  of  being  flummoxed  by  the  art  dealers.  For  John 
Ringling  had  a  most  suspicious  nature,  and  his  misgivings 
were  indubitably  justified  at  a  time  when  many  unscrupulous 
dealers  regarded  the  whole  year  as  the  open  season  for  wide- 
eyed  American  millionaires.  Furthermore,  he  enjoyed  horse 
trading  as  much  as  David  Harum;  and  how  could  a  man  best 
another  without  expert  knowledge  of  the  matter  in  hand? 

By  the  time  he  finished  educating  himself.  Uncle  John,  if 
not  a  great  connoisseur,  had  a  very  respectable  knowledge  of 
the  subject,  which,  coupled  with  his  innate  taste  and  shrewd 
instinct  for  detecting  a  phony,  whether  in  works  of  art  or 
human  beings,  made  him  a  formidable  bargainer. 

Part  of  his  method  was  to  conceal  his  knowledge  behind 
a  bucolic  manner.  Arthur  Newton  of  the  Newton  Galleries  in 
New  York  likes  to  tell  the  story  of  the  time  in  the  1920s  when 
he  spent  days  of  hard  trading  with  John  Ringling  over  the 
pm-chase  of  several  minor  works  of  the  eighteenth-century 
English  school.  While  Ringling  was  viewing  these  pictures,  a 
fine  Sassoferrato  was  hanging  in  another  room.  Ringling 
hardly  glanced  at  it  as  he  went  past.  However,  after  offers  and 
coimteroffers  had  been  made  and  the  deal  seemed  stalled,  my 
uncle  sent  for  Mr.  Newton.  When  he  came  into  the  beautifully 
furnished  New  York  office,  where  Ringling  sat  in  suitable 
grandeur  behind  a  huge  flat-topped  desk,  he  was  greeted  by 
the  words  "You  had  better  sit  down,  Mr.  Newton,  while  you 
listen  to  this  offer." 

Newton  perched  himself  nervously  and  gripped  the  carved 
arms  of  his  chair.  "Now  I  tell  you  what  111  do,  Mr.  Newton," 
Uncle  John  said  with  affected  rusticity.  "I'll  give  you  two 
thousand  dollars  for  the  lot,  provided  you  thiow  in  the 
Sarsaparilla." 

It  was  exactly  the  minhnimi  Newton  would  take  and  the 
deal  was  made. 


136  JOHN   RINGLING   AND   THE   NORTHS 

Another  of  Uncle  John's  techniques  was  to  go  to  the  great 
auctions  at  Christie's  in  London  accompanied  by  Newton  or 
some  other  expert.  He  knew  that  the  other  dealers  would  try 
to  bid  him  up,  so  he  would  have  Newton  bid  on  the  pictures 
he  really  wanted,  while  he  ostentatiously  bid  for  pictures  he 
did  not  particularly  like. 

Now,  I  do  not  want  to  imply  that  my  uncle  never  got  stuck, 
for  he  assuredly  did.  Some  of  the  pictures  he  thought  great 
bargains  had  been  impugned  by  the  experts,  though  Uncle 
John  never  believed  these  gentlemen  if  he  did  not  choose  to. 
But  the  fact  remains  that  his  do-it-yourself  art  education 
enabled  him  to  amass  a  collection  of  old  masters— he  never 
bought  modem  pictures— which  at  the  time  of  his  death  was 
appraised  at  close  to  $15,000,000,  about  five  times  what  he 
paid  for  it.  His  collection  put  the  John  and  Mable  Ringling 
Museum  in  the  first  rank  among  the  galleries  of  the  world. 

While  John  Ringling  was  cultivating  artistic  discrimina- 
tion, he  also  acquii-ed  a  good  deal  of  social  polish.  Though 
he  had  no  affectations,  except  his  occasional  affectation  of 
vulgarity,  he  was  far  too  sensitive  not  to  perceive  the  merits 
of  good  usage.  One  of  the  first  tilings  to  go  was  that  barber- 
shop mustache.  His  store-bought  clothes  were  replaced  by 
the  products  of  Saville  Row  or  equally  well-cut  and  even  more 
expensive  garments  by  Mr.  Bell  of  New  York.  Good  horses 
were  an  inherited  love  of  all  the  Ringlings.  After  all,  such 
products  of  the  harness  maker's  craft  as  "a  gold-  and  rubber- 
mounted  double  harness"  needed  a  blooded  animal  to  show 
it  oft'  properly.  As  the  age  of  the  automobile  came  in,  im- 
patient Uncle  John  transfened  his  affection  to  them,  though 
Uncle  Al  did  not.  However,  Uncle  John  was  equally  fastidious 
about  internal-combustion  locomotion;  he  never  owned  any- 
thing but  Rolls-Royces  and  Pierce- Arrows. 

The  one  vulgar  taste  he  kept  was  food.  Though  he  could 


THE   APOTHEOSIS   OF   JOHN   RINGLING  I37 

enjoy  a  European  dinner  with  vintage  wines,  what  he  hked 
best  was  Old  Curio  scotch  and  hash— any  kind  of  hash.  He 
could  put  away  tremendous  quantities  of  hash.  I  remember 
an  occasion  when  a  Chinese  valet  who  had  left  Uncle  John's 
employ  came  to  his  Venetian  palace  in  Sarasota  to  see  him 
and  ask  for  his  old  job  back. 

"But  I  have  a  good  man  now,  Willy,"  Uncle  John  said.  "I 
don't  need  a  valet,  I  need  a  cook." 

"I  can  cook,  Mr.  Lingling,"  said  Willy,  who  had  the  oriental 
block  against  the  letter  r. 

"You  kept  your  secret  well,"  Uncle  John  observed.  "Can  you 
make  good  hash?" 

Willy  beamed.  "Mr.  Lingling,"  he  said,  "I  can  make  sleven- 
teen  kinds  of  hash." 

He  got  the  job. 

So  far  I  have  discussed  the  frivolous  side  of  John  Ringling's 
emerging  character.  But  anyone  who  supposed  that  this  was 
his  measure— and  some  did— was  apt,  in  the  words  of  the  old 
song,  to  find  "his  head  tucked  underneath  liis  arm." 

During  the  time  of  Ringling  Brothers'  great  expansion  he 
gradually  assumed  the  leadership  of  the  partnership.  Though 
in  theory  each  partner  remained  equal  with  an  equal  voice, 
in  practice  Uncle  Jolm  played  the  dominant  role.  There  were 
several  reasons  why  he  was  able  to  do  this.  For  one  thing, 
the  others  were  immersed  in  the  technical  problems  of  theu' 
respective  departments  of  the  circus,  while  John,  freewheeling 
between  Europe  and  America,  did  not  get  bogged  down  in 
details.  Coming  back  from  his  trips  with  a  fresh  point  of  view, 
he  was  able  to  see  what  military  men  call  the  big  picture.  And 
his  imagination  showed  him  the  way  to  profit  by  it. 

While  his  brothers  were  generally  content  to  progress 
slowly,  John's  tremendous  drive  and  soaring  ambition  made 
him  impatient  with  conservative  pohcies.  His  was  an  all-or- 
nothing  spirit,  ready  to  go  out  on  a  long  financial  limli  to 


138  JOHN   RXNGLING   AND   THE   NORTHS 

grasp  glittering  opportunity.  Because  he  was  also  the  most 
ruthless  and  egotistical  of  the  brothers,  he  forced  them  to  go 
along  with  him.  And  because  he  was  the  most  farsighted, 
with  the  possible  exception  of  Otto,  his  gambles  paid  golden 
dividends  for  many  years,  until  in  the  days  of  depression, 
when  opportunity  shriveled  and  all  bets  were  off,  he  came 
close  to  lonely  ruin. 

Nor  were  John  Ringhng's  ventures  confined  to  circus  busi- 
ness. As  he  traveled  around  the  country  on  the  circus  train, 
his  eyes  were  always  searching  for  opportunity.  He  loved 
money  more  than  anything  except  pictures,  and  he  never 
missed  a  chance  of  making  some.  He  might  see  a  theater  in 
some  small  city  that  was  doing  badly  and  could  be  turned 
into  a  profitable  movie  house;  or  a  streetcar  line  that  needed 
a  httle  capital;  or  even  a  steam  laundry  whose  owner  wanted 
to  retire.  It  did  not  matter  to  Uncle  John  what  the  line  was  as 
long  as  there  was  money  in  it.  As  a  result,  he  owned  businesses 
all  over  the  United  States. 

Another  of  John  Ringhng's  extraciu-ricular  activities  was 
building  short-line  railroads.  Since  he  routed  the  circus,  he 
was  as  famihar  with  rail  systems  of  the  United  States  as  a 
spider  with  its  web.  Although  the  great  railroad-building  days 
were  over  and  the  transportation  system  almost  complete, 
Uncle  John  occasionally  would  discover  a  missing  link  that 
might  be  forged  with  profit.  One  such  hne,  built  about  1911, 
was  the  fifty-five-mile  connection  between  Mark  Twain's 
home  town,  Hannibal,  Missouri,  and  BowHng  Green,  wliich 
Uncle  John  proudly  named  the  St.  Louis  and  Hannibal, 
though  it  went  nowhere  near  the  Missouri  metropolis.  It 
operated  profitably  until  the  1930s,  when  it  was  scrapped. 

Anotlier  short  line  was  in  Montana.  Before  starting  this 
railroad.  Uncle  John  took  the  precaution  of  buying  about 
70,000  acres  of  adjoining  real  estate.  He  then  built  a  twenty- 
mile  line  from  White  Sulphin:  Springs,  Montana,  to  Broken 


THE   APOTHEOSIS   OF    JOHN   RINGLING  I39 

Jaw,  whose  grateful  inhabitants  rechristened  their  town 
Ringhng— a  great  loss  of  picturesque  nomenclature,  but  very 
gratifying  to  Uncle  John.  With  his  usual  recklessness  of  geo- 
grapliical  exactitude  he  called  it  the  White  Sulphur  Springs 
and  Yellowstone  Park.  It  is  still  running,  with  my  brother 
John  as  president,  while  my  cousin  Paul  Ringling  ranches  the 
remaining  20,000  acres  of  the  original  landholding. 

My  uncle's  fondness  for  calling  his  raihoads  by  high- 
sounding  names  was  probably  a  reflection  of  circus-style 
exaggeration.  One  of  his  most  grandiose  gestures  in  this 
direction  was  the  twenty-mile  railroad  he  built  between  East- 
land and  Breakwater,  Texas,  which  he  called  the  Eastland, 
Wichita  Falls  and  Gulf.  The  family  were  teasing  him  about 
this  pretentious  title  when  Uncle  CharUe  came  to  his  rescue 
by  saying,  "It  may  be  only  twenty  miles  long,  but  it's  just  as 
wide  as  anybody's  railroad." 

The  most  profitable  of  all  John  Ringling's  gambles  in  rail- 
roading was  not  due  to  his  acumen,  but  to  pure  happen- 
stance. Perhaps  this  is  not  quite  correct,  for  Uncle  John  al- 
ways put  himself  in  the  path  of  Opportunity  and  that 
capricious  dame  did  not  even  have  to  knock  once;  she  had 
but  to  droop  her  left  eyehd. 

In  1913  one  of  her  favorite  haunts  was  still  the  old  Waldorf 
bar.  At  five  o'clock  every  weekday  afternoon  tycoons  and 
tycoonlets  gathered  under  the  potted  palms  in  its  somber 
magnificence  to  discuss  past  triumphs  and  future  amalgam- 
ations; and  to  refresh  themselves  with  old  bourbon  or  those 
newfangled  martinis.  There  might  sit  Otto  Kahn,  Frank 
Vanderlip  of  the  National  City  Bank,  and  George  F.  Baker 
of  the  First  National,  a  trio  of  Morgan  partners,  a  couple  of 
Vanderbilts,  Charles  M.  Schwab,  Payne  Whitney,  Cornelius 
Kelley  of  Anaconda,  and,  with  ears  quivering  and  his  mind 
working  like  a  still  uninvented  electronic  computer,  tliat 
brilliant  young  opportunist,  Bernard  M.  Baruch. 


140  JOHN  RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

Into  that  Utopian  gathering  where  every  man  was  a  king- 
oil  king,  steel  king,  copper  king— came  one  afternoon  an 
ambitious  but  relatively  unknown  gentleman  from  Oklahoma 
who  was  looking  for  money.  His  name  was  Jake  Hammond, 
and  he  hoped  to  get  financing  for  a  raihoad  which  he  expected 
would  open  up  the  cattle  country  of  his  native  state. 

Mr.  Hammond  sat  alone  at  a  httle  table.  He  knew  that 
almost  every  man  in  the  room  was  a  Who,  but  he  had  no 
idea  who  was  who.  Among  the  men  crowding  the  famous 
long  bar,  he  noticed  an  impressive  individual  dressed  in 
superbly  tailored  clothes.  He  was  a  big  man,  getting  a  little 
stout,  and  he  carried  himself  with  an  air  of  authority.  But 
Hammond  noticed  that  his  face  was  round  and  merry  and 
his  manner  was  simple  and  friendly. 

"Who  is  that?"  Hammond  asked  a  waiter. 

"John  Ringling,  the  circus  king,"  was  the  reply. 

Hammond  told  my  uncle  that  he  decided  that  he  was 
the  most  amiable  looking  king  in  the  room.  He  got  up  and 
shoved  his  way  to  the  bar.  In  doing  so,  he  knocked  over 
Uncle  John's  drink.  Jake  Hammond  pretended  to  be  terribly 
embarrassed  by  his  clumsiness.  Playing  Uncle  John's  own 
game  of  exaggerated  rusticity,  he  begged  him  to  show  his 
forgiveness  by  letting  him  buy  a  drink.  Uncle  John  was 
practically  always  willing  to  let  somebody  else  buy  the  drinks. 

Jake  Hammond's  guardian  angel  could  hardly  have  led  him 
to  pick  a  better  man.  John  Ringling's  short-line  raikoads  were 
doing  very  well.  He  lent  an  attentive  ear  to  Hammond's  sales 
talk  and  was  induced  to  go  to  Ardmore,  Oklahoma,  with  him 
to  look  the  ground  over.  The  upshot  of  the  trip  was  that  Uncle 
John  bought  a  townsite  in  the  cattle  country  near  a  farm 
owned  by  a  certain  Mr.  Healdt.  He  called  his  town  Ringling 
and  helped  Hammond  to  finance  a  twenty-three-mile  rail- 
road from  Ardmore  to  Ringling,  which  he  named  tlie  Okla- 
homa, New  Mexico  and  Pacific. 


THE    APOTHEOSIS   OF   JOHN   RINGLING  I4I 

Now,  the  law  of  averages  always  operates  in  the  long  run. 
The  red  and  the  black  come  up  the  same  number  of  times  if 
you  give  them  long  enough;  and  no  run  of  luck  lasts  forever. 
But  there  seems  to  be  another  law  of  chance  which  ordains 
that  a  great  gambler's  luck  is  either  very,  very  good  or 
incredibly  bad.  There  are  no  httle  swings,  no  median  range. 
These  were  the  years  when  Uncle  John's  luck  was  very,  very 
good. 

Just  as  the  railroad  was  nearing  completion,  a  wildcat  oil 
well  on  Mr.  Healdt's  farm  came  in  with  a  stupendous  roar 
that  blew  the  derrick  into  the  next  county.  Before  they  got 
it  capped  John  Ringling  had  the  circus  lav^er  John  M.  Kelly 
down  there  buying  up  oil  leases.  Kelly  stood  in  the  bar  of  the 
local  hotel  and  bought  them  from  speculators  and  farmers, 
and  from  the  Indians.  My  uncle  used  to  say,  "If  Kelly  had  not 
had  to  go  to  the  men's  room,  I  would  have  owned  the  whole 
Healdton  field.  While  he  was  there  some  good  parcels  got 
away." 

This,  of  course,  was  circus  talk,  but  he  wound  up  with  about 
eight  thousand  acres,  and  the  Healdton  field  became  for  a 
while  the  largest  oil  producer  in  the  world. 

Jake  Hammond  became  one  of  the  richest  men  in  the  state 
and  aspired  to  be  governor  of  Oklahoma.  However,  the  luck 
turned  against  him.  Mr.  Hammond  had  the  misfortune  to  be 
murdered  by  his  sweetheart. 

Uncle  John  did  very  well  indeed.  He  took  approximately 
$7,000,000  out  of  his  holdings  in  the  Healdton  field.  My 
brother  John  and  I  still  own  60  per  cent  of  the  eight  thousand 
acres,  having  purchased  them  from  John  Ringhng's  estate. 
Some  of  the  wells  are  still  producing. 


CHAPTER   X 


THE  BROKEN  WHEEL 


No  matter  how  widely  John  Ringling's  interests  ranged  he 
never  neglected  the  circus.  After  his  great  coup  in  purchasing 
Barnum  &  Bailey,  which  resulted  in  a  virtual  monopoly  of  the 
field— a  sort  of  circus  trust— he  devoted  most  of  liis  energies 
to  that  show.  In  1908,  the  first  year  it  was  under  Ringling 


THE   BROKEN   WHEEL  I43 

management,  Uncle  John  routed  both  shows.  Though  he 
hated  detail  work,  routing  the  trains  was  a  game  to  him  like 
doing  an  enormously  intricate  crossword  puzzle.  His  card- 
index  memory  and  relentless  accumulation  of  facts  enabled 
him  to  know  exactly  which  towns  in  any  state  were  to  be 
avoided  because  of  depressed  conditions,  local  strikes,  or  crop 
failure,  and  which  had  bumper  crops  of  greenbacks  to  be 
harvested.  His  routing  of  the  two  trains  was  a  tour  de  force. 

The  following  year,  1909,  the  brothers'  council  decided 
that  Ringling  Brothers  should  open  in  Madison  Square 
Garden  in  New  York  and  Barnum  &  Bailey  in  Chicago. 
Whether  Uncle  John  approved  of  this  decision  or  not,  I  can- 
not say.  He  may  have  gone  along  with  it  because  of  family 
pride— after  all,  the  Ringling  show  had  never  played  New 
York.  In  any  case,  it  was  a  mistake.  New  Yorkers  thought  that 
Barnum  &  Bailey  was  the  only  circus  worth  seeing,  and 
Chicagoans  were  equally  loyal  to  Ringling  Brothers.  Both 
cities  felt  cheated  and  neither  show  did  well.  The  experiment 
was  not  repeated. 

Though  he  routed  both  shows,  Uncle  John  took  a  prime 
interest  in  his  new  acquisition;  for  one  thing,  he  had  to  prove 
himself  right.  That  first  year,  1908,  he  rode  the  Barnum  train 
almost  all  the  way.  While  Otto  Ringling  tightened  up  manage- 
ment procedures,  John  oversaw  the  performance.  Ed  Shipp, 
who  had  been  Uncle  Al's  assistant  on  the  Ringling  Brothers 
show,  became  equestrian  director  of  Barnum  &  Bailey,  but 
John  Ringhng  was  really  in  command.  He  added  to  the 
splendor  and  precision  of  the  performance,  which  had 
deteriorated  during  the  interregnum,  and  made  notes  as  to 
the  acts  he  should  seek  in  Europe  to  strengthen  the  show. 

His  first  move  was  to  give  Ella  Bradna  and  Fred  Derrick 
the  center  ring  with  notliing  else  going  on  to  distract 
audience  attention.  They  had  developed  a  remarkable  eques- 
trian act.  May  Wirth,  who  came  to  us  from  Austraha  in  191a, 


144  JOHN  RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

may  have  excelled  Ella  Bradna,  She  easily  accomplished 
feats  few  men  could  do— the  forward  somersault,  back  somer- 
sault with  her  back  to  the  horse's  head,  and  somersault  from 
one  horse  to  another.  But  Fred  and  Ella  as  a  team  were  with- 
out a  peer  in  the  style,  elegance,  and  beauty  of  their  per- 
formance. Fred  Derrick  dressed  for  his  act  like  an  ambassador 
to  the  Court  of  St.  James's,  except  that  his  tail  coat  and  knee 
breeches  were  made  of  white  satin.  Ella  wore  a  low-cut  white 
bodice  embroidered  with  sequins.  Her  long  graceful  legs  were 
displayed  in  white  tights.  She  wore  long  white  kid  gloves  and 
carried  an  ostrich-feather  fan. 

She  opened  the  act  standing  astride  two  white  horses 
Roman  style  and  lifting  Derrick  to  her  shoulders.  From  there 
he  somersaulted  to  the  ground  and  began  an  incredible  series 
of  leaps  and  pirouettes  off  and  on  the  horse,  never  once  miss- 
ing. After  that  Ella  did  her  famous  fork  leaps  and  bareback 
toe  dance.  They  came  together  again  at  the  finale  in  a 
dazzling  series  of  equestrian  acrobatics  in  unison. 

In  1915  Uncle  John  made  Ella's  husband,  Fred  Bradna, 
equestrian  director  of  the  Barnum  show,  a  post  he  held  with 
Barnum,  and  later  with  the  Combined  Shows,  for  over  thirty 
years.  He  and  Ella  were  unique  in  their  zany,  quixotic  self- 
characterizations  of  their  Bohemian  heritage.  Fred  was  the 
son  of  a  sohd  banking-brewing  dynasty  from  Strasbourg  in 
Alsace.  He  was  a  lieutenant  in  a  crack  cavalry  regiment  in 
the  German  Army  when  the  small  circus  in  which  Ella  was 
the  star  equestrienne  came  to  Dieuze,  where  his  regiment 
was  stationed.  He  resigned  his  commission  and  chucked  his 
career  and  his  family  to  marry  her.  They  were  together  until 
his  death  sixty-four  years  later. 

Though  Fred  traded  his  uhlan's  uniform  for  the  silk  hat, 
tail  coat,  and  patent-leather  boots  of  an  equestrian  director, 
he  never  for  a  moment  lost  his  air  of  command.  He  ran  the 
circus  like  a  Prussian  drillmaster.  He  was  a  perfectionist  who 


THE   BROKEN   WHEEL  145 

would  not  tolerate  the  slightest  letdown  in  even  one  of  hun- 
dreds of  performers.  Woe  to  the  actor  who  gave  a  slipshod 
performance. 

Though  Fred  was  small  and  slight,  he  was  capable  of 
towering  rages  and  could  curse  majestically  in  at  least  nine 
languages.  I  remember  one  season  when  he  used  all  nine 
simultaneously  at  every  performance.  The  object  of  his  wrath 
was  Papa  Leers,  whose  daughter  Lucita  was  an  outstanding 
acrobat.  At  the  end  of  her  act  she  did  a  full  split  on  the 
roman  rings  and  lowered  two  ends  of  a  rope  to  the  ground, 
where  Papa  was  waiting  for  his  moment  of  glory.  The  climax 
of  the  act  was  the  spectacle  of  a  lovely  muscular  girl  with  the 
weight  of  a  fully  grown  man  dangling  from  her  torso  while 
in  the  impossible  position  of  a  full  split  on  the  roman  rings 
high  above  the  center  ring. 

But  Papa  ruined  it  every  time  by  hamming  up  his  part  to 
attract  attention  to  himself.  Though  each  day.  Bradna 
threatened  to  grind  him  into  pate  de  maison  and  eat  him 
spread  thin  on  slices  of  pumpernickel,  Papa  persisted.  Lucita 
never  quite  split  in  two;  Papa  never  became  a  sandwich 
spread;  and  Fred  never  forgave  him. 

Everyone  in  tlie  circus  knew  that  Ella  was  several  years 
older  than  Fred,  but  that  gallant  gentleman  always  insisted 
that  he  was  ten  years  older  than  she.  In  spite  of  Uncle  John's 
sensitivity  to  the  true  ring  of  a  well-turned  dollar,  he  too  re- 
mained a  sentimentahst  about  Ella.  Long  after  she  had  passed 
her  prime  and  could  no  longer  pretend  to  her  former  excel- 
lence as  an  equestrienne,  he  kept  her  in  the  center  ring  with 
"The  Act  Beautiful."  This  was  a  weird  sort  of  display  that 
she  and  Fred  dreamed  up,  in  which  Ella  made  her  entrance 
in  a  golden  chariot  drawn  by  a  white  winged  horse,  with 
large  dogs  running  under  the  chassis  and  little  ones  tread- 
milling  on  top  of  the  wheels,  and  a  supporting  cast  of  twelve 


146  JOHN  BINGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

beautiful  girls  and  a  flock  of  pigeons  dyed  to  match  the  colors 
of  the  costumes. 

It  requued  a  whole  railroad  car  to  transport  the  animals 
and  equipment,  but  Uncle  John  paid  and  smiled  benignly 
and  nostalgically  upon  the  fading  queen  of  bygone  years  as 
twice  daily  she  got  herself  inextricably  involved  vdth  that 
fantastic  collection  of  people,  birds,  horses,  and  dogs.  The 
latter  ranged  from  a  huge  Siberian  husky  named  Zero  to  a 
whole  pack  of  peanut-brained  Russian  wolfhounds  and  yap- 
ping Pomeranians. 

By  the  time  my  brother  John  took  over  the  management, 
changing  conditions  made  "The  Act  Beautiful"  impossible, 
but  the  indestructible  Ella  was  still  young  in  spirit,  so  he 
continued  to  feature  Mme.  Bradna  in  the  center  ring  on  a 
reduced  scale  of  magnificence.  Zero,  the  wolfhounds,  Ponier- 
anians,  and  pigeons  had  long  since  passed  to  the  place  where 
the  cookhouse  flag  is  always  up  and  every  day  is  payday,  but 
"Mein"  Eagle,  Ella's  favorite  Arabian  stallion,  was  as  durable 
as  she.  Until  1942  these  two  defied  the  clock  and,  in  a  deco- 
rous exliibition  of  manege,  brought  to  us  who  knew  and  loved 
them  a  daily  remembrance  of  what  circus  life  should  be— a 
combination  of  gaiety  and  pathos. 

In  1913,  when  Europe  was  quivering  in  anticipation  of  the 
First  World  War,  the  Bradnas  became  very  homesick.  Uncle 
John  sent  them  to  Hungary,  ostensibly  to  sign  up  the  Konyot 
family,  whom  he  had  scouted  the  year  before,  but  actually 
so  that  they  could  have  a  final  reunion  with  their  families. 
Like  most  of  Uncle  John's  generous  gestures,  this  profited  him 
as  well,  for  Bradna  secured  the  fourteen  Konyots,  who  were 
so  multitalented  that  they  performed  in  sLx  different  specialty 
acts.  They  were  immensely  valuable  when  the  war  shut  off 
the  supply  of  European  performers. 

Another  great  family  troupe  that  Uncle  John  imported  was 


THE   BROKEN   WHEEL  147 

the  Hannefords  of  Ireland.  They,  too,  were  equestrians— com- 
manded by  a  magnificent  matriai'ch,  Mrs.  Ehzabeth  Hanne- 
ford,  who  acted  as  their  ringmaster  clad  in  a  long  evening 
gown  ablaze  with  jewels  and  a  headdress  of  ostrich  plumes. 
The  star  of  the  family  of  six  was  Poodles  ( Richard )  Hanne- 
ford.  In  calculated  contrast  to  his  mother's  coruscating  osten- 
tation, he  staggered  into  the  ring,  apparently  drunk  and  dis- 
orderly and  dressed  in  rags  which  would  have  made  Emmett 
Kelly  seem  a  model  of  sartorial  splendor.  Clinging  in 
simulated  helplessness  around  a  horse's  neck,  he  had  a  series 
of  hilarious  mishaps  which  involved  such  skillful  equestrian 
acrobatics  as  have  seldom  been  equaled.  In  later  years 
Poodles  performed  some  of  these  same  feats  in  a  derby  hat 
and  a  ragged  coonskin  coat  that  trailed  on  the  floor. 

My  brother  John  has  often  been  accused  of  corrupting  the 
simon-pure  atmosphere  of  the  "real"  circus  by  introducing 
the  beautiful  production  numbers  designed  by  such  theatrical 
artists  as  Charles  Le  Maire,  Miles  White,  and  Max 
Weldy.  It  may  be  news  to  his  critics  that  the  circus  was 
"corrupted"  when  he  was  still  in  grade  school.  In  1914  John 
Ringling  staged  a  ballet  danced  by  eighty  trained  ballerinas, 
and  this  at  a  time  when  most  Americans  regarded  the  ballet 
as  an  exotic  and  alien  form  of  art. 

For  that  matter,  the  merging  of  theater  and  circus  was 
evident  in  the  spectacle  plays  which  Bamum  first  introduced 
and  which  Alf  T.  brought  to  a  sophisticated  peak  of  perfection 
in  such  productions  as  "Joan  of  Arc"  and  "Cinderella."  To 
stage  the  latter,  a  large  section  of  seats  was  removed  and 
replaced  by  scenery  representing  a  medieval  castle,  includ- 
ing a  broad,  practical  staircase  down  which  Cinderella  fled 
from  the  ball.  Even  Billy  Rose's  imagination  never  vaulted  to 
such  extravagant  heights  as  this  Ringling  Brothers  "spec," 
which  requiied  a  cast  of  1370  performers,  735  horses,  and 
"five  herds  of  elephants."  They  would  have  astonished  Cinder- 


148  JOHN   RINGLING  AND  THE  NORTHS 

ella,  who  must  have  thought  that  her  Fairy  Godmother  was 
drunk  with  power. 

Despite  his  ruthlessness  in  financial  matters,  John  Ringling 
was  attentive  to  the  safety  of  his  people.  He  objected  to  the 
brutality  of  wild-animal  acts  and  there  were  few  in  our 
circus  while  he  was  running  it.  He  also  disliked  uselessly 
dangerous  stunts,  though  he  was  obHged  to  have  these  to 
appeal  to  the  thrill-seeking  audience,  who  still  retained  some 
of  the  same  instincts  which  animated  the  crowds  in  the  Roman 
Colosseum.  He  had  one  of  the  most  dangerous  acts  ever  staged 
in  the  Bamum  show  just  before  World  War  I.  Ernest  Gadbin, 
a  mad  German  acrobat  who  appropriately  billed  himself  as 
Desperado,  did  a  swan  dive  from  a  height  of  eighty  feet, 
landing  on  his  chest  on  a  sort  of  toboggan  slide  made  slippery 
with  a  layer  of  com  meal.  He  landed  going  more  than  a  mile 
a  minute,  shot  down  the  slide  and  up  its  curving  end  to  soar 
off  into  a  net. 

Such  acts  were  gradually  toned  down,  but,  of  course,  you 
could  never  completely  eliminate  risk  in  running  a  circus, 
and  Uncle  John  did  not  expect  to.  He  just  tried  to  make  it  as 
safe  as  possible. 

An  example  of  this  is  described  by  Fred  Bradna  in  his  book 
The  Big  Top.  It  was  in  1928  and  the  circus  was  located  on 
a  muddy  lot  in  Washington,  D.C.  That  year  the  Wallendas 
had  joined  the  show.  The  climax  of  their  act  came  when  four 
members  of  the  family,  in  human-pyramid  formation,  rode  a 
bicycle  across  a  tight  wire  stretched  across  the  very  top  of 
the  tent  with  no  net  beneath  them.  The  wire  had  to  support 
about  a  thousand  pounds  of  people  and  equipment.  If  it 
sagged  during  the  perilous  trip,  the  Wallendas  were  in  bad 
trouble.  Once,  when  a  storm  hit  tlie  Big  Top,  the  Wallendas' 
wiie  loosened.  As  the  bicycle  went  over,  Karl  Wallenda,  who 
was  riding  it,  grabbed  the  wire  and  caught  Helen  by  the  neck 
with  a  scissors  grip  of  his  legs  as  she  went  past.  He  held  her 


THE   BROKEN   WHEEL  I49 

until  a  hand  net  was  rushed  under  them.  Meanwhile  Herman 
Wallenda  caught  his  brother  Joseph  in  the  same  fashion  and 
went  hand  over  hand  along  the  wire  to  the  platform. 

In  Washington,  John  Ringling  was  dissatisfied  with  the  way 
the  Wallendas'  wire  was  rigged,  and  so  was  Karl.  They  tried 
various  means  of  mooring  it,  without  success.  Finally,  about 
midnight,  Fred  Bradna  suggested  putting  two  heavy  poles 
outside  the  Big  Top  and  bracing  the  wire  to  them  with  a 
series  of  stays.  "But  where  are  you  going  to  get  poles  at  this 
time  of  night?"  he  asked. 

"Take  me  to  a  telephone,"  said  Uncle  John. 

Within  an  hour  an  emergency  squad  from  the  Chesapeake 
and  Potomac  Telephone  Company  was  driving  two  telephone 
poles  into  the  ground. 

Though  his  working  hoiurs  drove  people  crazy  and  his  dis- 
taste for  detail  made  him  prone  to  rely  too  much  on  his  sub- 
ordinates, Uncle  John  was  both  an  imaginative  policy  maker 
and  a  magnificent  field  commander.  He  was  at  his  best  in  an 
emergency,  and  there  were  plenty  of  them  to  test  his  quality. 
In  those  days  the  tents  were  waterproofed  with  paraffin, 
which  made  them  horribly  combustible.  One  season  both 
Bamum's  and  Ringling  Brothers'  Big  Tops  burned  up  within 
a  few  weeks  of  each  other.  Luckily  no  one  was  badly  hurt. 
The  audience  dropped  between  the  seats  and  crawled  out 
under  the  bottom  of  the  tent.  We  were  not  always  so  fortu- 
nate. ... 

Despite  his  distaste  for  Baraboo  and  his  far-ranging  travels, 
abroad  and  on  the  circus  train,  Uncle  John  had  the  same 
strong  fraternal  feeling  which  kept  the  family  so  closely 
united.  As  I  have  said,  Christmas  was  the  time  when  they  all 
got  together  at  my  grandparents'  home.  As  long  as  his  father 
and  mother  lived,  Uncle  John  always  came  home  for  Chiist- 
mas.  Only  once,  in  1907,  he  did  not  quite  make  it. 


150  JOHN   RINGLING   AND   THE   NORTHS 

When  my  grandmother  heard  that  her  son  was  unable  to 
reach  Baraboo  until  mid-January,  she  simply  postponed 
Cliristmas.  In  this  connection,  we  have  a  check  for  fifty  dollars 
drawn  to  her  order  by  Otto  Ringling  and  dated  December 
24,  1907.  She  even  refused  to  cash  it  until  John  came  home. 
The  check  was  never  cashed. 

Grandmother  decreed  that  Christmas  should  fall  on  Janu- 
ary 16, 1908.  That  evening  all  seven  of  her  surviving  children, 
their  wives  and  offspring,  gathered  as  always  in  her  home. 
My  brother  John  was  there;  I  was  not  yet  bom.  As  always, 
they  had  a  roaring  wonderful  reunion  with  plenty  of  rousing 
arguments  and  homeric  gustatory  exploits.  That  night  my 
grandmother  died  in  her  sleep.  One  may  be  sure  she  was  very 
happy. 

On  April  4,  1911,  Otto  became  the  first  of  the  partner- 
brothers  to  go.  Though  he  died  in  New  York  with  the  Bamum 
show,  Otto  was  brought  home  to  Baraboo  to  be  buried  from 
Uncle  Al's  great  house,  which  was  directly  across  the  street 
from  the  little  frame  dwelling  where  he  was  born.  There  was 
no  circus  that  day.  Bamum  &  Bailey  in  New  York  and  Ringling 
Brothers  in  Chicago  canceled  all  performances.  All  the 
brothers  came  to  Baraboo,  and  special  cars  from  Chicago  and 
New  York  brought  people  from  the  two  shows  to  pay  their 
respects  to  "The  King."  Perhaps  the  most  touching  tribute 
was  a  floral  piece  in  the  shape  of  a  wheel  from  a  Roman 
chariot,  with  one  of  its  five  spokes  broken  as  a  token  that 
one  of  the  five  founders  had  gone. 

Though  John  Ringling  began  to  play  a  leading  role  in  the 
councils  of  tlie  brothers  as  early  as  the  turn  of  the  century, 
his  final  position  as  absolute  czar  of  the  circus  world  was  due 
to  his  powers  of  survival.  Until  1932  Ringling  Brothers  was 
not  a  corporation,  but  a  simple  partnership.  As  one  by  one 


THE   BROKEN   WHEEL  151 

the  partner-brothers  died,  the  survivors  made  a  settlement 
w^ith  their  heirs  and  carried  on. 

Since  Otto  had  no  descendants,  they  divided  his  share 
among  themselves,  giving  some  of  it  to  Henry  Ringling  and 
making  him  a  partner  in  Otto's  place.  Hov^^ever,  Henry, 
though  hard-w^orking  and  competent,  could  not  fill  Otto's 
shoes.  "The  King"  had  the  most  financial  acumen  of  them 
all.  The  inevitable  result  was  that  Uncle  John  became  more 
dominant  than  ever,  taking  Otto's  place  as  arbiter  of  Ring- 
ling  Brothers'  finances. 


CHAPTER   XI 


THE  NORTHS 


So  far  I  have  spoken  of  things  of  which  I  had  no  direct  knowl- 
edge, but  the  time  is  past  due  for  my  appearance,  as  I  was 
born  in  1909.  In  order  not  to  confuse  tlie  narrative,  I  have 
hardly  even  mentioned  my  motlier.  However,  since  her  chil- 
dren later  played  a  not  insignificant  part  in  the  history  of 


THE   NORTHS  153 

our  circus,  it  is  time  she  was  introduced.  Her  upbringing— 
and  ours— was  very  different  from  that  of  her  brothers  and 
exemphfies  the  changes  that  money  brought  to  the  Ringlings' 
way  of  Hfe. 

Ida  RingHng  was  only  sixteen  when  our  show  first  went  on 
rails,  and  therefore  her  brothers  were  able  to  give  her  ad- 
vantages they  had  never  had.  Of  course,  she  lived  with  her 
father  and  mother  in  the  house  my  uncles  had  given  them  in 
Baraboo  and  was  graduated  from  Baraboo  High  School  in  due 
time.  At  that  time  she  was  very  lovely,  a  tall  girl  with  olive 
skin  and  dark  auburn  hair  which  was  so  long  she  could  sit  on 
it,  a  highly  thought-of  accomplishment  for  young  ladies  of 
that  era. 

Her  life  was  extremely  sheltered.  No  young  woman  of  to- 
day would  stand  for  the  restrictions  which  an  old-fashioned 
German  father  and  mother  and  seven  sedulous  older  brothers 
imposed  on  her.  Even  when  she  was  a  grown  woman  they 
would  never  allow  her  to  come  home  from  dances  or  evening 
parties  with  one  of  her  beaux.  Either  her  father  or  one  of 
the  brothers  would  always  call  for  her.  She  found  it  very 
embarrassing  but  could  do  nothing  with  them.  On  one  oc- 
casion, when  the  party  she  was  at  broke  up  early,  she  walked 
home  a  block  and  a  half  with  a  young  doctor.  Her  parents 
and  brothers  treated  her  as  though  she  were  a  fallen  woman. 

On  another  occasion,  when  her  brother  Alf  T.  took  her  to 
call  on  some  old  friends  in  Baraboo,  she  decorously  crossed 
her  ankles— not  her  knees— in  the  parlor.  When  he  brought 
her  home.  Uncle  Alfred  was  livid  with  rage  at  her  unseemly 
conduct,  and  not  only  her  father  and  mother  but  every  one  of 
her  brothers  and  tlieir  wives  spoke  to  her  severely. 

In  fact,  all  her  life  Ida's  menfolk  bossed  her.  It  was  not 
that  she  lacked  spunk;  but  they  were  all  so  utterly  immovable 
in  their  ideas  of  right  and  v^Tong  and  propriety— for  women. 
And,  of  course,  there  were  "so  damn  many  of  tliem." 


154  JOHN   RINGLrNG  AND   THE   NORTHS 

Like  Alf  T.  and  Charles,  Ida  was  very  musical,  and  her 
brothers  gave  her  every  opportunity  to  develop  her  talent. 
That  new  organ  which  Louise  Ringling  mentions  Grand- 
mother getting  was  bought  for  Ida.  And  as  soon  as  they  could, 
her  brothers  gave  her  a  piano.  When  she  had  exhausted  the 
extremely  limited  tutelage  of  the  best  piano  teachers  in 
Baraboo,  she  was  sent  to  the  Chicago  Musical  College,  run  by 
Professor  Florenz  Ziegfeld,  the  father  of  the  famous  Florenz 
Ziegfeld,  Jr.  In  Chicago,  Mother  also  studied  with  Professor 
Emil  Liebling,  who  was  recognized  as  one  of  the  best  piano 
teachers  in  America. 

Ida  became  a  very  fine  musician,  but  her  accomplish- 
ments were  only  for  the  enjoyment  of  her  family  and  friends. 
She  never  played  prof  essionally— the  brothers  would  not  allow 
it. 

Naturally,  Ida  was  not  allowed  to  live  alone  in  a  big  bad 
city  like  Chicago.  Her  brothers  arranged  for  her  to  stay  with 
an  Italian  family  named  Allegrhetti,  of  whom  she  became  very 
fond.  Already  an  expert  in  German  and  Akatian  cookery, 
she  learned  to  make  wonderful  ItaHan  dishes  from  them.  In 
fact,  she  was  as  much  a  virtuoso  at  the  cookstove  as  on  the 
piano— and  equally  temperamental.  In  later  years  it  was 
absolutely  impossible  for  us  to  keep  a  cook.  Mother  was  al- 
ways out  in  the  kitchen  giving  orders,  and  finally  taking  over 
herself  because  she  thought  she  could  do  much  better  than 
the  professionals.  She  could. 

In  all  her  life  Ida  Ringling  defied  her  family  only  once— 
when  she  married  my  father. 

Henry  Whitestone  North  was  an  engineer  on  the 
Chicago  and  Northwestern  Railroad.  However,  his  ancestry 
was  considerably  more  distinguished  than  that  of  the  Ring- 
lings.  He  came  from  one  of  those  aristocratic  English  families 
who  had  acquired  land  in  Ireland  during  the  British  con- 


THE   NORTHS  I55 

quests  of  that  unfortunate  island.  The  family  place  in  Galway 
was  Northbrook,  a  small  eighteenth-century  manor  house  set 
in  wide  lawns,  shaded  by  great  oaks  and  copper  beeches.  The 
stables  were  far  more  impressive  than  the  residence,  as  be- 
came the  fox-hunting  Norths.  Built  around  three  sides  of  a 
flagstone  court,  they  were  made  of  red-hued  field  stone  with 
slate  roofs  the  color  of  mist  off  the  western  sea.  The  fields  of 
Northbrook  spread  over  some  600  Irish  acres,  equivalent  to 
1500  of  ours,  and  were  watered  by  a  small  clear  stream  which 
ran  under  a  massive  single-arch  stone  bridge.  My  brother  and 
I  recently  bought  Northbrook  back. 

My  great-grandfather  was  Captain  William  North  of  the 
British  Army.  Many  people  know  their  great-grandfathers. 
But  so  long  is  the  span  of  generations  in  the  North  family 
that  mine  was  commanding  a  company  of  infantry  at  Gi- 
braltar during  the  Napoleonic  wars  and  there  my  grandfather 
was  bom  in  1812.  This  foreshortens  history  for  me.  He 
married  a  Spanish  lady,  about  whom  I  know  only  that  her 
name  was  Letizia. 

Samuel  Wade  North,  my  grandfather,  being  a  younger  son, 
came  to  America  about  the  same  time  as  the  Ringhngs.  After 
pausing  in  Montreal  to  abstract  a  pretty  seventeen-year-old 
Irish  girl  named  Mary  Fahey  from  her  convent  and  marry 
her,  he  settled  in  Onalaska,  a  village  near  Lacrosse,  Wisconsin. 

There  he  lived  the  life  of  a  displaced  Irish  gentleman.  Down 
the  main  street  of  that  little  frontier  town,  among  trappers  in 
fringed  buckskin,  farmers  in  overalls,  and  Indians  in  blankets 
and  feathers,  he  would  stroll  wearing  formal  gray-striped 
trousers,  a  cutaway  coat,  and  a  high  silk  hat.  He  never,  never 
did  a  stroke  of  work. 

It  is  hard  to  imagine  anyone  living  in  a  land  of  such  vast 
opportunities  and  bustling  enterprise  that  it  was  difficult  to 
make  a  move  without  making  a  fortune,  and  not  doing  any- 
thing at  all.  My  father  remembered  being  lined  up,  when  he 


156  JOHN   RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

was  a  very  small  boy,  with  his  two  older  brothers  by  my 
grandfather,  who  told  them,  "You  must  remember  that  a 
gentleman  never  works." 

Unfortunately,  he  neglected  to  provide  his  sons  with  the 
means  of  following  this  precept.  But  he  did  give  them  a 
knowledge  of  Greek  and  Latin  and  other  impedimenta  of  a 
classical  education  far  beyond  the  capacity  of  a  one-room 
schoolhouse. 

I  remember  my  father  very  well,  though  I  was  only  eleven 
when  he  died  of  a  heart  ailment.  He  inherited  a  Spanish  cast 
of  features  from  his  grandmother  Letizia,  with  thick  dark  hair 
and  an  olive  skin.  He  was  a  short,  powerfully  built  man  with 
enormous  strength  in  his  arms— a  natural  athlete.  As  a  youth, 
he  was  catcher  for  the  Lacrosse,  Wisconsin,  baseball  team. 
In  those  days  they  wore  no  gloves,  but  the  catcher  used  a 
hunk  of  raw  meat  to  protect  his  left  hand. 

Harry  North  came  to  Uve  in  Baraboo  about  1891,  because 
it  was  a  division  point  on  the  Chicago  and  Northwestern.  He 
was  in  his  early  thirties  at  the  time,  with  all  the  devil-may-care 
gaiety  and  charm  which  even  tlie  English  acquire  after  a  few 
generations  in  Ireland.  My  mother  met  him  soon  after  she 
graduated  from  high  school,  and  they  appear  to  have  fallen 
in  love  for  keeps.  But  their  courtship  was  hardly  as  rapid  as 
the  ignition  of  love.  It  lasted  for  ten  years. 

The  delay  was  due  to  parental  and  fraternal  objections  to 
Harry  North.  Ida's  family  had  nothing  against  him  person- 
ally; in  fact,  they  liked  him  immensely,  as  did  everyone  who 
knew  him;  but  there  was  an  insuperable  objection  rooted  in 
his  past.  Harry  North  had  been  divorced. 

It  is  diflBcult  now  to  recall  the  terrible  stigma  attached  in 
the  nineties  to  those  who,  whether  at  fault  or  not,  had  broken 
the  bonds  of  matrimony.  But  it  existed  even  in  the  most 
sophisticated  society.  Imagine,  tlien,  the  horror  with  which 
Ida's  naive,  strait-laced  family  regarded  the  prospect  of  their 


THE   NORTHS  157 

sheltered  darling's  marriage  to  a  man  under  so  dark  a  cloud. 

The  struggle  between  love  and  filial  duty  continued  un- 
abated all  those  years.  However  medieval  their  attitude  to- 
ward women,  the  Ringhngs  could  not  prevent  the  young 
people  meeting  frequently.  For  Harry  North  was  very  popu- 
lar in  Baraboo  and  was  invited  to  many  parties  that  Ida  also 
attended.  One  of  the  great  amusements  of  that  sweet  time 
was  amateur  theatricals,  and  they  both  took  part  in  these.  But 
it  must  have  been  a  difficult  and  heartbreaking  period  for 
them  both,  and  a  stringent  test  of  the  strength  of  their  love 
and  the  constancy  of  their  characters. 

In  the  end,  prejudice  appeared  to  triumph  over  love.  Under 
extreme  pressure  Ida  gave  up  Harry  North  and  became 
engaged  to  a  young  man  of  her  family's  choice.  The  invitations 
were  out;  the  house  was  full  of  wedding  presents;  when,  like 
Lochinvar  on  an  iron  horse,  my  father  swept  my  mother 
off  and  married  her  in  Chicago. 

That  was  in  1902.  For  a  whole  year  no  member  of  the  Ring- 
ling  family  spoke  to  my  mother.  She  hved  in  Baraboo  because 
of  her  husband's  job;  and  she  suffered  the  misery  and  shame 
of  being  cut  dead  on  its  familiar  streets  by  those  she  loved 
most  next  to  him.  Only  when  her  first  son  was  born  and 
christened  John  Ringling  North  did  her  parents  and  brothers 
forgive  her.  The  family  circle  opened  to  enclose  her  and  hers 
in  its  protective  shield  against  the  world. 

My  brother  John  was  born  in  1903.  Four  years  later  came 
my  sister,  who  was  named  Mary  Salome  Ringling  North, 
after  our  grandmother.  And  I,  Henry  Wliitestone  Ringling 
North,  was  bom  in  1909. 

The  Baraboo  where  we  grew  up  was  still  quite  close  to 
pioneer  times.  Not  too  many  years  before,  the  streets  had  been 
full  of  Indians,  and  even  in  my  memory  the  Winnebagos  and 
Cliippewas  came  back  every  year  for  their  spring  encamp- 
ments. They  pitched  their  tepees  just  outside  of  town  and 


158  JOHN  RINGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

held  a  sort  of  fair  to  sell  beadwork  moccasins  and  baskets. 
They  were  exciting,  picturesque,  and  smelly,  though  perhaps 
not  in  that  order. 

Old  Indian  John,  who  lived  in  a  shack  outside  of  town, 
was  a  friend  of  mine.  His  face  was  etched  with  wrinkles  like 
an  engraver's  copper  plate,  and  he  said  he  was  a  hundred 
years  old.  Mother  hired  him  in  Prohibition  days  to  make  some 
wine  for  us,  which  was  his  specialty.  When  Mother  went  dovim 
to  the  cellar  to  see  how  he  was  doing,  she  found  him  chewing 
tobacco  and  casually  spitting  into  the  great  mash  of  grapes. 

"Now  you'll  have  to  throw  it  all  away,"  she  said  sadly. 

"No,  ma'am,"  said  Indian  John.  "It  wiU  work  ofiF." 

Very  good  wine  it  was,  too.  My  cousin  Henry  Ringling  and 
I  sampled  it  by  sticking  a  rubber  hose  into  the  kegs  and 
sucking  hard.  That  was  my  first  hang-over. 

Having  forgiven  my  mother,  the  uncles  set  about  spoihng 
her  children.  They  were  experts  in  this  pleasant  art,  having 
had  a  great  deal  of  practice  with  our  numerous  older  cousins. 
I  have  already  given  some  description  of  the  wonderful  times 
they  gave  us. 

In  those  days  the  Moeller  brothers  were  stiU  builduig  our 
wagons.  My  cousin  Heinrich,  or  Henry,  Moeller,  though 
many  years  older  than  I,  was  a  great  friend  of  mine.  Some  of 
the  happiest  times  of  my  childhood  were  spent  in  his  black- 
smith-wagon shop,  where  I  took  my  ponies  to  be  shod.  He 
was  the  one  who  used  to  ride  out  to  the  cemetery  with  me  ui 
later  years  on  my  periodic  returns  to  Baraboo.  I'd  say, 
"Come  on,  Henry,  let's  go  to  the  cemetery."  And  he  would 
always  reply  with  a  ritual  joke:  "O.K.,  Buddy,  I'll  go,  but 
you'll  have  to  promise  not  to  leave  me  there." 

However,  he  had  no  horror  of  it.  When  his  brother  and 
partner  Corwin  died,  Henry  had  a  tombstone  made.  To  save 
future  expense  he  had  his  own  name  carved  on  it  as  well  as 
Corwin's,  leaving  his  date  of  death  blank.  To  my  great  dehght 


THE   NORTHS  I59 

it  wasn't  filled  in  for  many  years  and  Henry  lived  to  be  ninety. 

Once  Henry  saved  me  from  being  expelled  from  Baraboo 
High  School.  The  principal,  Mr.  Kingsford,  though  a  fine 
man  and  a  splendid  educator,  had  a  violent  temper.  One  day 
it  flared  at  a  small  boy  named  Calflish.  Mr.  Kingsford  threw 
him  down  on  the  floor  and  began  belaboring  him.  It  was  more 
than  I  could  stand,  so  I  tapped  his  shoulder  and,  calling  him 
by  his  nickname  to  enrage  him  further,  I  said,  "Hey,  Dingl 
If  you  want  to  fight,  why  don't  you  pick  on  somebody  your 
own  size?" 

Mr.  Kingsford  dropped  the  Httle  Calflish  boy  and  took  off 
after  me.  But  I  was  fast  in  those  days.  Not  being  able  to 
catch  me,  Mr.  Kingsford  expelled  me. 

I  went  to  Cousin  Henry  with  my  troubles.  He  took  me  by 
the  arm  and  led  me  back  to  school  and  into  Mr.  Kingsford's 
office.  And  Henry  said,  "Mr.  Kjngsford,  my  cousin  Buddy 
says  you've  discharged  him  from  school.  He  told  me  the 
circumstances  leading  up  to  it.  I  don't  think  you're  right,  Mr. 
Kingsford.  I  think  you'd  better  let  Buddy  back  in  school." 

Mr.  Kingsford  looked  at  my  cousin  Henry,  who  might  have 
posed  for  Longfellow's  blacksmith  with  his  big  brawny  arms. 
He  stood  looking  at  those  aims;  and  finally  he  said,  "Buddy 
can  come  back  to  school." 

Another  cousin  Henry  was  a  close  pal  of  mine;  this  was 
Henry  Ringling,  Jr.,  "Little  Henry."  He  was  a  sickly  child, 
though,  as  I  have  said,  he  grew  to  be  a  perfectly  enormous 
man.  Henry  was  just  as  imbued  with  love  of  the  circus  as  we 
were,  and  after  Brother  John  put  away  childish  things  and 
went  with  the  real  circus,  it  was  Henry  who  helped  to  stage 
our  annual  children's  show  in  Baraboo. 

To  show  you  how  crazy  Henry  was  about  the  circus :  when 
he  was  about  twelve  years  old  and  at  summer  camp  at  Culver 
Military  Academy,  he  heard  that  the  Ringling  Circus  was 


l60  JOHN   RINGLING   AND   THE   NORTHS 

going  to  be  at  Portage,  near  Baraboo,  and  that  we  were  all 
going  to  see  the  show.  He  ran  away  from  camp  and  beat  his 
way  home,  hooking  rides  on  trains  when  his  money  ran  out. 
We  found  him  early  in  the  morning  asleep  on  our  porch  with 
his  white  sailor  suit  looking  as  though  he  had  ridden  in  a  coal 
car.  The  consensus  of  the  family  was  that  anybody  who  cared 
that  much  about  the  circus  ought  to  be  allowed  to  go,  so 
Mother  cleaned  him  up  and  took  him  along. 

He  and  I  disappeared  as  soon  as  we  reached  the  show 
grounds  to  call  on  our  friends.  Uncle  Charles  finally  found 
us  playing  craps  with  some  roustabouts  under  a  lion's  cage— 
we  had  won  most  of  their  money.  Nothing  much  happened  to 
us,  but  the  roustabouts  caught  hell,  which  seems  hardly  just. 

As  I  said,  I  knew  almost  all  the  circus  people,  either  from 
riding  the  train  with  Uncle  Charles  or  from  meeting  them  at 
Winter  Quarters.  Most  of  them  went  ofiF  for  part  of  the  winter 
to  do  their  acts  in  indoor  shows,  such  as  Shrine  circuses;  but 
there  were  always  a  few  who  remained  in  Baraboo.  And  in 
the  spring  they  came  drifting  back,  so  that  the  place  was 
swarming  and  hustling  with  all  the  activity  of  getting  the 
show  on  the  road,  until  the  great  day  came  when  the  long 
gaudy  trains  pulled  out  on  their  way  to  Chicago.  Everybody 
in  town  was  lined  up  along  the  railway  tracks  yelling  and 
cheering;  and  people  on  the  trains  yelling  back,  and  cIovntis 
doing  funny  tricks,  just  because  they  felt  like  it;  and  the  lions 
and  tigers,  catching  the  excitement,  roaring  and  screaming 
in  their  cages.  It  was  a  great  day.  But  when  it  was  over,  the 
town  seemed  empty  and  dead  and  you  had  a  gone  feeling  in 
the  pit  of  your  stomach. 

One  spring  the  trains  went  out,  and  they  never  came  back. 
This  was  in  1918,  when  Uncles  John  and  Charlie  decided 
to  consohdate  the  two  shows  at  the  Barnum  winter  quarters 


THE   NORTHS  l6l 

in  Bridgeport.  Bridgeport  was  more  convenient  from  every 
point  of  view  than  Baraboo,  The  move  made  good  sense,  but 
their  fellow  townsmen  never  forgave  them.  For  without  the 
circus  Baraboo  was  dead. 


CHAPTER   XII 


"THE  BIG  ONE" 


In  1903,  at  thirty-seven  years  of  age,  John  Ringh'ng  had 
finally  married.  His  bride  Mable  Burton  of  Columbus,  Ohio, 
was  in  her  twenties.  She  and  her  sister  were  dancers  in  one 
of  the  great  specs  of  the  circus.  Though  John  Ringling  would 
never  trifle  with  the  performers,  he  could  and  did  fall  com- 
pletely in  love  with  one.  Marriage  was  different. 


"the  big  one"  163 

Of  all  the  Ringling  wives.  Aunt  Mable  was  by  far  the  most 
beautiful.  In  describing  her,  one  is  forced  to  fall  back  on  all 
the  old-fashioned  adjectives  out  of  Victorian  novels.  She  had 
a  lovely,  piquant  little  face  with  delicate  features  and  large 
brown  eyes  that  always  seemed  to  have  laughter  close  be- 
hind them,  just  as  her  lips  always  seemed  to  be  on  the  point 
of  smiling.  Her  dark  hair  was  piled  in  a  Gibson-girl  pompa- 
dour. She  had  the  figure  knowni  as  willowy  and  was  able  to 
wear  the  long  elaborate  gowns  of  the  Edwardian  era  with 
beauty  and  distinction. 

Aunt  Mable  was,  in  fact,  exactly  the  right  wife  for  Uncle 
John,  and  their  marriage  came  as  close  to  perfection  as  any 
imion  between  mortals  may,  which  is  astounding  in  view  of 
John  Ringling's  character.  Not  that  he  was  completely  faith- 
ful to  her.  When  he  was  with  her  he  was  a  devoted  husband, 
showing  her  the  gentle  consideration  which  could  come  only 
from  deep  aflPection.  She  usually  accompanied  him  on  the 
circus  train,  but  when  he  was  on  it  alone  or  off  on  his  busi- 
ness trips,  he  was  apt  to  relapse  into  his  bachelor  ways. 

With  far  more  wdsdom  than  most  women,  Aunt  Mable 
realized  that  her  husband  was  too  old  and  gay  a  dog  to  learn 
new  tricks  of  behavior.  She  treated  his  infidelities  as  though 
they  had  never  happened.  So,  of  course,  they  did  not  exist 
for  her.  In  this  she  was  far  more  intelligent  than  Aunt  Edith, 
who  soured  her  happiness  with  constant  worry  about  what 
Uncle  Charlie  might  be  up  to. 

When  they  were  first  married  the  John  Ringlings  lived  in 
an  apartment-hotel  on  Dearborn  Avenue  in  Chicago.  It  was 
there  that  Uncle  John  bought  his  first  Fierce-Arrow— a  clear 
sign  in  those  distant  days  of  opulence  and  distinction.  By 
1910  my  uncle  had  moved  to  New  York,  where  for  many 
years  he  resided  in  a  handsome  apartment  at  636  Fifth 
Avenue.  I  have  two  outstanding  boyhood  memories  of  it.  One 
is  of  an  exciting  parade,  viewed  from  the  windows  of  the 
Fifth  Avenue  side,  celebrating  tlie  state  visit  of  King  Albert 


164  JOHN   RINGLING   AND   THE    NORTHS 

of  the  Belgians  right  after  World  War  I.  The  other  is  of  the 
wonderful  ice-cream  desserts  that  were  the  creation  of  some 
nearby  confectioner,  and  my  uncle's  and  my  chief  delectation 
at  every  dinner— Uncle  John  often  said  that  he  wasn't  finicky 
in  the  shghtest  degree  about  dessert,  as  long  as  it  was  always 
ice  cream.  I  can  see  him  still,  sitting  erect  and  dignified  in  the 
back  seat  of  his  chauffeur-driven  Rolls  consuming  with 
obvious  relish  and  childish  delight  a  huge  ice-cream  cone 
which  he  had  sent  me  to  procure  in  the  course  of  an  after- 
noon's drive. 

Uncle  John  also  bought  a  country  place  at  Alphine,  New 
Jersey,  with  a  huge  field-stone  house  and  hundreds  of  acres 
of  lawns  and  meadows,  great  trees,  and  little  lakes.  We  Norths 
often  stayed  with  them  there,  and  it  was  from  that  house  that 
I  started  with  Uncle  John  oflBcially  to  begin  my  career  with 
the  circus. 

The  John  Ringlings  went  to  Sarasota,  Florida,  in  1909  and 
fell  in  love  with  it  at  first  sight.  At  that  time  it  had  less  than  a 
thousand  inhabitants,  a  very  small  town  on  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  with  a  huge  harbor  protected  by  the  long,  unin- 
habited outer  keys.  A  few  discriminating  wealthy  people  had 
recognized  its  charm,  however,  and  built  winter  cottages 
along  the  bay  front.  Uncle  John  bought  one  of  these,  about 
three  miles  north  of  town,  from  Charles  Thompson.  It  was  a 
spacious  frame  house  with  the  gabled  roof  and  columned 
verandas  that  made  the  dwellings  of  that  period  such  com- 
fortable, happy  places  to  live  in.  With  it  the  Ringlings  ac- 
quired about  a  thousand  feet  of  water  front  and  a  long 
wooden  dock.  The  house  looked  over  the  bay  toward  the  dark 
green  tangled  wilderness  of  Longboat  Key.  To  the  northwest 
you  could  see  the  open  Gulf. 

With  his  strong  family  feeling.  Uncle  John  wanted  his 
relatives  around  him.  In  1912  he  persuaded  Uncle  Charlie  to 
buy  a  similar  place  adjoining  his.  The  next  year  Uncle  Al 


"the  big  one  165 

came  to  Sarasota  for  a  few  months,  and  Uncle  Alfred  rented 
the  Ralph  Capleses'  big  bungalow  next  door  to  Uncle  John. 
Uncle  Henry,  who  liked  to  be  different,  moved  to  Eustis, 
Florida,  some  one  hundred  miles  away. 

In  1913  we  Norths  also  came  to  Sarasota.  At  this  time  my 
father  was  a  semi-invalid  who  could  no  longer  withstand  the 
bleak  Wisconsin  winters.  The  year  before,  we  had  gone  to 
Biloxi,  Mississippi.  Incidentally,  it  was  there  that  I  first  gave 
promise  of  a  littie  literary  bent  and  a  large  tendency  to  say 
the  wrong  thing.  My  mother  introduced  me  to  a  southern 
lady  named  Mrs.  Brown,  who  had  come  to  call.  I  acknowl- 
edged the  introduction  by  saying: 

"Mrs.  Brown 
Came  to  town 
Riding  on  a  billy  goat 
Upside  down." 

I  meant  no  harm;  I  was  very  fond  of  billy  goats. 

There  were  no  proper  houses  for  rent  in  Sarasota,  so  Uncle 
Charlie  got  us  half  of  a  double  bungalow  on  what,  I  believe, 
was  then  Fourth  Street.  The  John  Burkets  lived  in  the  other 
half.  It  was  the  beginning  of  a  friendship  that  has  lasted  until 
the  present  time. 

So  Uncle  John  brought  all  the  Ringlings  together  again,  a 
long  way  from  Wisconsin.  It  may  seem  strange,  but  Florida 
reminded  them  of  their  childhood  in  the  northern  woods  be- 
cause of  the  great  pine  forests  which  existed  there.  Now  they 
have  mostly  been  cut  down  or  burned  off  to  make  room  for 
jungles  of  modern  housing,  but  forty  years  ago  there  were 
long,  solid,  fragrant  stretches  of  pine. 

The  Sarasota  I  knew,  before  the  Florida  boom,  was  half 
fishing  village,  half  western  cow  town.  The  level,  grassy 
plains  inland  provided  fine  pasturage  for  animals,  and  tlie 
great  cattle  industry  which  now  makes  Florida  one  of  the 
leading  beef -raising  states  was  just  getting  started.  The  herds 


l66  JOHN   RINGLING   AND   THE   NORTHS 

were  still  the  runty  native  cattle,  scarcely  larger  than  Shetland 
ponies.  They  looked  very  strange  to  a  boy  from  Wisconsin's 
lush  valleys. 

On  Saturday  nights  the  cowboys  rode  in  from  the  ranches 
and  turned  Sarasota  into  a  reasonable  facsimile  of  a  TV  serial. 
As  the  raw  corn  liquor  took  hold  there  were  shootings  and 
knifings  on  Main  Street.  The  sheriff  was  a  very  busy  man. 

I  remember  Sheriff  Hodges  well  because  he  was  the  most 
important  man  in  town  (at  least  on  weekends)  and  a  char- 
acter right  out  of  Owen  Wister.  In  fact,  I  hoped  to  grow  up 
to  be  like  him.  I  can  see  him  now  with  his  drooping  mustache 
and  black  slouch  hat,  riding  a  big  western-bred  horse,  with  a 
shotgun  in  his  saddle  holster  and  a  pair  of  handcuffs  chnking 
ready  on  a  hook  behind  his  saddle. 

The  sheriff  was  also  fire  chief.  When  a  blaze  broke  out,  he 
fired  off  his  shotgun  to  sound  the  alarm  and  galloped  to  the 
shed  where  they  kept  the  hose  wagon.  At  the  signal  the 
volunteer  firemen  dropped  everything  and  hurried  to  rally 
round  him.  So  did  everybody  else  in  town.  So  you  see,  Hfe 
was  not  dull  in  Sarasota. 

During  those  years  when  Father  was  so  ill,  we  children 
spent  a  great  deal  of  time  at  Uncle  Charlie's  place.  Though 
Aunt  Edith  was  well  into  middle  age,  she  was  one  of  the 
nicest  companions  I  ever  had,  for  she  had  a  wonderful 
faculty  for  making  young  people  enjoy  themselves.  Some- 
times in  the  early  morning,  when  the  tide  was  out,  we  would 
walk  way  out  on  the  glistening  sand  flats  collecting  the 
curious,  beautiful  shells  for  which  the  Gulf  coast  is  famous. 
Quite  often  Uncle  Charlie  would  go  along,  and  he,  too,  was 
a  good  companion.  He  invented  imaginative  games  for  us  to 
play— one  day  I  would  be  Captain  Kidd  and  the  next,  George 
Washington. 

When  I  was  about  ten  Aunt  Edith  taught  me  to  shoot  her 
favorite  gun,  a  fine  little  28-gauge  Parker  Double  Barrel.  A 


"the  big  one"  167 

little  later  I  used  to  go  hunting  with  an  old  Negro  named 
Cummins,  who  worked  on  the  Charles  Ringhng  place.  He 
used  an  ancient  10-gauge  shotgun  held  together  by  copper 
wire,  a  regular  blunderbuss  that  sounded  like  a  cannon  and 
belched  great  clouds  of  black  powder  smoke.  I  must  shame- 
fully admit  our  victims  were  meadow  larks  as  often  as  quail. 

One  of  Cummins'  jobs  was  to  take  care  of  the  chickens.  In 
summer,  when  Uncle  CharHe  and  Aunt  Edith  were  away  with 
the  circus,  my  uncle  kept  getting  monumental  bills  for 
chicken  feed.  He  could  not  understand  how  so  few  could 
eat  so  much.  When  he  got  home  a  httle  detective  work  un- 
covered a  still  in  the  pinewoods  back  of  the  house,  where 
Cummins  was  turning  the  com  into  moonshine. 

Another  colorful  retainer  of  whom  we  were  all  very  fond 
was  Julius,  who  worked  for  Uncle  John.  I  suppose  everybody 
looks  big  to  a  little  boy,  but  JuHus  must  have  been  a  gigantic 
man  by  any  standard.  He  got  into  a  fight  one  Saturday  night 
in  town  and  the  police  were  called  in.  Julius  refused  to  sur- 
render, and  my  friend  Sheriff  Hodges  shot  him  three  times. 
Julius  ran  at  least  a  block  with  three  forty-five-caliber  slugs 
in  him  before  he  toppled  over  dead.  And  there  was  great 
sadness  at  Uncle  John's. 

I  did  not  see  much  of  Uncle  John  in  those  days  except  at 
family  parties.  I  remember  meeting  him  on  the  street  one  day 
and  his  asking  me,  "Why  do  you  always  go  to  Uncle  Charlie's? 
Why  don't  you  visit  me  more  often?" 

I  could  not  think  of  the  right  answer,  but  the  truth  was 
that,  though  he  liked  having  us  around.  Uncle  John's  schedule 
did  not  coincide  with  that  of  a  httle  boy. 

A  few  years  later,  when  I  was  thirteen  or  fourteen,  I  used 
to  skin  out  the  window  of  our  bungalow  at  night  and  set  off  to 
see  life  on  Main  Street.  Sometimes  I'd  meet  Uncle  John  on 
the  street  around  midnight.  He  would  never  express  any  sur- 
prise at  seeing  me  out  at  that  hour;  perhaps  he  felt  none.  He 


l68  JOHN   RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

would  likely  say,  "Buddy,  would  you  like  to  borrow  the  Fierce- 
Arrow  tomorrow?" 

Of  course,  I  would  answer,  "Yes,  Uncle  John,"  and  he  would 
say,  "Come  up  and  get  iti" 

When  we  first  moved  to  Sarasota,  John  and  Salome  and  I 
went  to  Miss  Pierce's  private  school,  which  she  ran  for  the 
children  of  winter  visitors.  It  consisted  of  a  one-room  wooden 
building,  in  which  she  taught  children  of  all  ages— I  believe  I 
was  the  youngest.  Miss  Pierce  taught  us  reading,  writing, 
arithmetic,  history,  literature,  and  French.  I  was  very  fond 
of  her  despite  the  fact  that  I  was  very  bad  in  school  and 
spent  most  of  the  time  behind  the  wood  box. 

At  school  we  met  the  children  of  the  winter  visitors.  It  was 
a  small  but  rather  distinguished  colony,  which  received  the 
final  accolade  when  Mrs.  Potter  Palmer,  leader  of  Chicago's 
Four  Hundred,  or  whatever  the  magic  number  was  in  that 
city,  built  The  Oaks  near  Sarasota.  She  also  went  in  for  real 
estate  in  a  large  way,  buying  over  a  hundred  thousand  acres 
of  inland  fields  and  pine  forests.  Her  aunt  by  marriage,  Mrs. 
Benjamin  Honor6,  also  built  a  rather  elaborate  residence, 
called  The  Acacias.  When  Mrs.  Honore  died,  her  niece  Mrs. 
Frederic  Dent  Grant,  daughter-in-law  of  the  President,  in- 
herited it.  Mrs.  Grant's  daughter,  Juha  Grant,  had  married 
Russian  Prince  Michael  Cautacuzene.  In  1918,  when  the 
Cautacuzenes  got  out  of  Russia  just  ahead  of  a  Bolshevik 
posse,  they  came  to  live  at  The  Acacias. 

The  princess  had  lost  most  of  her  possessions  in  Russia,  but 
not  her  grand  manner.  She  decreed  that  my  sister  and  I  were 
among  the  few  children  ehgible  to  play  with  the  httle 
Cautacuzenes.  It  was  always  a  big  deal.  Mother  would  dress 
us  in  our  very  best  clothes  and  we  would  be  taken  to  the 
big  solemn  house,  where  we  would  play  decorously  with  the 


"the  big  one**  169 

little  prince  and  princesses.  Then  we  would  be  served  a 
nursery  tea  and  sent  home  in  the  limousine.  It  seemed  pretty 
dull  after  our  freewheehng  Hfe.  We  were  glad  our  uncles 
were  only  circus  kings. 

It  took  a  very  sad  occasion  to  bring  all  the  brothers  back 
to  Baraboo  once  more.  On  New  Year's  Day  1916,  Al  RingUng 
died.  He  was  the  real  founder  and  anchor  man  of  our  enter- 
prise, balancing  the  Concert  Company,  like  the  plow,  on  his 
chin,  and  equestrian  director  of  the  show  from  that  first  per- 
formance of  the  circus  in  Baraboo  until  the  summer  before  he 
died.  While  his  brothers  branched  out  into  finance  and  social 
hfe,  he  remained  a  working  circus  man. 

In  fact,  his  illness  dated  from  one  of  those  fires  which  have 
played  such  a  tragic  role  in  circus  history.  In  Cleveland  the 
cars  had  been  run  on  a  siding  near  a  lumberyard.  The  yard 
caught  fire  and  the  blaze  spread  to  the  circus  train.  Though 
the  equipment  and  animals  had  luckily  been  unloaded,  many 
of  the  cars  were  destroyed.  As  equestrian  director,  Uncle  Al 
was  determined  that  the  show  would  meet  the  next  day's 
engagement.  He  worked  all  that  day  and  night;  dragooning 
the  railroad  to  divert  other  cars  to  him,  double-loading  those 
that  remained,  and,  somehow,  fitting  the  other  equipment 
and  cages  into  the  cars  borrowed  from  the  railroad.  Then  he 
directed  two  shows  the  following  day. 

The  excitement  and  a  forty-hour  stretch  of  work  was  too 
much  for  him.  He  developed  a  heart  condition  which 
culminated  in  the  fatal  attack  on  New  Year's  Day. 

Al  Ringling  had  the  sweetest  disposition  of  all  the  brothers; 
he  was  the  one  whom  the  circus  people  really  loved.  When 
the  news  reached  Winter  Quarters,  clowns  and  cooks, 
hostlers  and  equestrians,  wept  for  "Uncle  Al." 

He  was  buried  from  his  great  house  in  Baraboo,  with  all 
his  remaining  brothers  and  their  wives  and,  of  course,  my 


170  JOHN  EINGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

mother  and  father  present,  as  well  as  circus  people  from  all 
parts  of  the  comitry.  His  fellow  townsmen  were  there,  also 
deeply  affected.  For  they  knew  that  Al  was  the  only  Ringling 
who  really  loved  his  home  town.  Alf  T.  had  built  a  magnificent 
place  in  New  Jersey.  Charles  was  settled  in  Evanston  and 
Sarasota,  while  Henry  spent  comparatively  Httle  time  in 
Baraboo. 

But  Al  had  built  his  life  in  Baraboo  and  spent  his  money 
there.  Only  the  year  before  he  died,  he  gave  a  further  proof 
of  his  affection  for  the  little  city.  He  built  a  small  exquisite 
opera  house,  which  he  intended  to  present  to  Baraboo.  It  was 
an  almost  perfect  copy  of  the  theater  Marie  Antoinette  built 
at  Versailles.  His  last  pubhc  appearance  was  his  attendance 
at  the  opening,  on  November  17, 1915.  Unluckily  for  Baraboo, 
he  died  before  he  signed  a  deed  of  gift. 

After  Uncle  Al's  death  the  conclave  of  uncles  took  over  his 
affairs,  as  they  always  did  at  the  death  of  a  brother.  As  I  have 
said,  they  handed  down  their  ukase  that  my  mother  should 
live  in  Uncle  Al's  mansion.  They  also  decided  not  to  present 
the  theater  to  Baraboo. 

This  was  typical  of  their  highhanded  ways.  Their  reason 
was  that  the  city  fathers  were  taxing  circus  property  in  what 
they  considered  an  extortionate  manner.  By  their  reckoning 
they  had  contributed  far  more  to  Baraboo  than  Baraboo  to 
them.  Their  indignation,  righteous  or  otherwise,  ran  high. 
Here  was  one  way  to  get  back  at  the  townspeople.  The 
theater  just  went  back  into  tlie  family  pot.  Had  gentle  Uncle 
Al  been  at  the  conference,  the  result  would  have  been  far 
different. 

That  was  the  last  great  avuncular  conclave.  The  Ringling 
brothers  were  not  very  old— Uncle  John  was  just  fifty— but 
the  scythe  swung  fast  among  them.  Henry  was  already  facing 
death;  he  died  in  Baraboo  in  1918,  aged  forty-nine.  Uncle 


"the  big  one" 


171 

Alfred  died  in  1919.  He  lived  just  long  enough  to  see  the  first 
performance  of  Ringling  Brothers-Barnum  &  Bailey  Com- 
bined Shows— The  Big  One,  as  circus  people  called  it— at 
Madison  Square  Garden  in  1919. 

The  decision  to  combine  the  shows  had  been  taken  by  John 
and  Charles  Ringling  the  year  before,  in  1918.  That  was  the 
summer  when  the  First  World  War  reached  its  crisis  of 
slaughter  and  national  effort;  and  its  climax  of  victory.  The 
brothers  had  managed  to  keep  both  shows  on  the  road  despite 
wartime  shortages  of  labor,  material,  and  transportation.  This 
presented  a  tremendous  problem  and  would  have  been  im- 
possible without  government  co-operation.  But  then,  as  in  an- 
other war,  the  authorities  took  cognizance  of  the  circus  as  a 
national  institution  and  a  morale  builder. 

However,  wartime  stringencies  had  little  to  do  with  the 
decision  to  combine  the  shows.  Two  other  factors  were  con- 
trolling. The  first  was  the  canny  conclusion  of  Charles  and 
John  that  the  American  people  would  no  longer  support  two 
circus  colossi.  With  the  coming  of  the  movies  and  the  auto- 
mobile, the  farm  communities  were  no  longer  so  isolated; 
their  tremendous  hunger  for  entertainment  was  appeased  if 
not  yet  sated.  They  would  still  go  to  the  circus— all  America 
loved  the  circus— but  it  was  no  longer  the  single  great  event 
of  the  year,  no  longer  an  absolute  must.  Also,  with  the  new 
mobihty  they  could  travel  farther,  and  therefore  one  com- 
bined show  playing  the  large  centers  of  population  could  take 
care  of  them. 

The  second  factor  was  the  question  of  management.  Tliere 
were  no  longer  "so  damn  many  of  tliem."  One  or  more  of  the 
partner-brothers  had  always  been  on  the  trains  to  nfake 
instant  decisions,  quell  revolts,  or  meet  emergencies  with  the 
full  authority  and  confidence  of  all  the  others  behind  him. 

What  then  of  the  younger  generation,  who  might  have  been 


VJT.  JOHN   RINGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

expected  to  be  waiting  like  heirs  apparent  to  grasp  the 
scepters  their  elders  let  fall?  They  were  not  there. 

The  seven  brothers  between  them  had  only  three  sons. 
Little  Henry  was  a  big  good-natured  fellow  whose  mother 
had  deliberately  alienated  him  from  circus  life.  And  besides, 
he  was  only  twelve  when  his  father  died. 

Uncle  Charlie's  son,  Robert  Ringling,  had  made  a  fine 
career  for  himself  in  a  different,  though  aUied,  world.  In  fact, 
he  had  two  careers  in  unusual  juxtaposition.  The  lesser  one 
was  as  a  sportsman— a  daring  and  successful  owner-driver  of 
very  fast  racing  boats.  By  profession  he  was  an  opera  singer. 

I  can  personally  testify  that  Robert  had  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  baritone  voices  I  have  ever  heard.  This  opinion  is 
confirmed  by  the  fact  that  during  his  fruitful  years  Robert 
sang  in  half  the  great  opera  houses  of  Europe  and  also  with 
the  famous  Chicago  Civic  Opera  Company. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  Uncle  John  could  not  stand  him. 
I  remember  one  evening  when  Robert  came  to  Ca'  d'Zan  with 
his  music,  prepared  to  give  us  a  marvelously  enjoyable 
evening,  and  Uncle  John  naughtily  said,  "I  have  a  treat  for 
xjou,  Robert." 

He  called  in  his  valet,  Taylor  Gordon,  who  was  studying 
voice  on  the  side,  and  Manny  (as  we  called  him)  sang  for 
hours  while  Bob  listened  as  gracefully  as  possible. 

Shortly  after  his  musical  evening  Manny  asked  my  uncle 
John  for  the  loan  of  a  thousand  dollars  so  that  he  could 
seriously  pursue  liis  studies.  I  would  like  to  report  that  my 
uncle  promptly  granted  the  loan  which  started  Manny  on 
his  road  to  fame  and  world  acclaim,  but  that  would  be  only 
half  the  truth.  What  actually  happened  was  that  Uncle  John 
recognized  Manny's  preoccupation  with  his  music  by  firing 
him  for  paying  more  attention  to  the  perfection  of  his 
cadenzas  than  to  the  pressing  of  my  uncle's  suits  and  the 
shining  of  his  shoes. 


THE   BIG   ONE  1/3 

Little  more  than  a  year  after  his  dismissal  Manny  stopped 
my  micle  in  the  foyer  of  the  Palace  Theatre  on  Broadway 
and  proudly  called  his  attention  to  the  lobby  posters  which 
announced  that  Taylor  Gordon  was  to  make  his  debut  that 
same  night  as  a  headliner.  With  rehsh  he  also  presented  his 
former  employer  with  two  complimentary  tickets,  and  Uncle 
John  and  Aunt  Mable  attended  happily.  Manny  went  on  to 
become  a  highly  successful  concert  singer. 

Richard,  Uncle  Alfred's  only  son,  was  a  very  different  sort 
of  person.  He  was  the  best  companion,  the  wittiest,  the  most 
imaginative,  and  the  worst  spoiled  of  all  my  cousins.  He  once 
told  me  that  at  the  age  of  twelve  his  father  took  him  to  task 
for  smoking  and  drinking  too  much.  He  promised  Uncle 
Alfred  that  he  would  take  only  one  drink  and  smoke  one  cigar 
a  day.  He  kept  his  word,  but  he  made  the  drink  in  an  oversize 
beer  stein  and  had  specially  procured  cigars  that  were  a  foot 
long.  That  is  Richard's  own  story;  perhaps  he  exaggerated  it, 
for  after  all,  he  too  belonged  to  the  circus. 

Rick  was  indeed  enterprising;  he  was  also  so  unstable  that 
it  ruined  all  his  enterprises.  That  and  the  fact  that  he  was  a 
two-bottle  man— two  bottles  of  whisky  a  day  did  little  to 
sharpen  his  judgment.  His  biggest  investment  was  in  Montana 
ranch  land.  But  he  at  one  hilarious  period  of  his  too 
short  career  owned  a  billiard  parlor  on  Broadway.  He  loved 
the  life  along  the  Main  Stem  and  was  always  surrounded  by 
a  cast  of  Broadway  characters  straight  out  of  Damon  Runyon 
—prize  fighters,  theater  people,  racing  men,  and  gamblers, 
though  he  was  no  gambler,  except  in  business.  Shortly  before 
he  died  Rick  realized  the  heavy  price  he  was  paying  for  over- 
indulgence and  went  on  the  wagon.  Unfortunately,  it  was 
too  late,  as  his  health  had  already  been  irreparably  damaged. 

Rick  was  a  circus  fan,  but  he  never  worked  in  the  Ringling 
show.  He  told  Uncle  Alfred  that  he  wanted  to  work  up  as 
his  father  and  his  illustrious  uncles  had,  with  his  own  show. 


174  JOHN   RINGLING   AKD   THE   NORTHS 

In  other  words,  he  wanted  to  start  at  the  top.  Uncle  Alfred 
was  willing  to  give  his  only  son  anything  he  wanted.  He  set 
him  up  with  a  truck  circus.  It  was  small  but  completely 
equipped  from  excellent  acts  to  a  little  menagerie.  It  had 
everything  but  managerial  ability.  Rick  took  it  out  as  the 
R.  T.  Richard  Circus.  In  half  a  season  it  went  into  bank- 
ruptcy. 

So  the  trucks  and  the  new  tent  and  the  cages  of  animals 
rolled  sadly  back  to  Alf  T.'s  country  estate.  Until  they  could 
be  disposed  of,  the  lions  and  tigers  were  housed  in  the  big 
stables,  where  their  nlulations  shattered  the  peace  of  the  well- 
groomed  New  Jersey  countryside.  Guests  who  wandered 
down  to  those  formal  brick  stables  with  their  coach  house 
and  box  stalls,  courtyard  and  belvedere  with  a  gilt  trotting- 
horse  weather  vane,  were  considerably  startled  by  a  sign  that 
read: 

WILD  ANIMALS 
BEWARE! 

Richard  was  the  only  one  of  the  boys  who  inherited  a 
financial  interest  in  the  circus.  Alf  T.  left  him  his  share  of 
the  partnership  by  will— a  full  third.  Theoretically,  this  gave 
Rick  a  voice  in  the  management.  Practically,  it  did  nothing 
of  the  sort.  Uncle  John  and  Uncle  Charlie  simply  ignored 
him.  This  may  have  been  reasonable  in  view  of  his  record. 
But  they  would  probably  have  done  so  even  if  he  had  been 
a  second  Barnum. 

So  much  for  the  second  generation  in  1919,  for  I  was  only 
ten  and  Brother  John  sixteen;  and  no  one  could  know  that  he 
was  destined  to  be  the  true  heir.  I  have  said  that  Richard  was 
the  only  boy  who  inherited  a  financial  interest  in  the  circus. 
This  is  true,  for  John  and  I  bought  our  shares  many  years 
later.  The  only  thing  that  Brother  John  inherited  was  the 
most  valuable  of  all— tlie  Ringling  touch. 


THE   BIG   ONE  I75 

It  was  easy  for  Charles  and  John  Ringling  to  decide  to 
combine  the  shows.  Doing  it  was  as  intricate  and  explosive 
an  exercise  in  diplomacy  as  a  Em^opean  peace  conference. 
When  the  Ringling  show  was  ordered  to  winter  in  Bridgeport 
instead  of  Baraboo,  the  performers  became  uneasy.  Tensions 
built  up  which  exploded  in  panic  when  the  combination  was 
announced.  Everyone  was  frantic  about  his  job  or  possible 
loss  of  prestige  through  the  competition  of  other  similar  acts. 
Nor  were  the  uncles  unmindful  of  these  human  problems. 

During  the  strain  of  operating  under  wartime  conditions 
the  show  people  had  been  extraordinarily  loyal  to  them.  Both 
circuses  were  short  of  everything.  With  no  new  acts  coming 
from  Europe  and  foreign  performers  being  called  back  to 
serve  in  their  respective  armies,  there  were  simply  not  enough 
to  go  around.  Everybody  had  to  double  in  brass.  In  the 
Bamum  show,  for  example,  the  Konyots  appeared  six  times 
under  their  own  name  and  five  times  as  the  Spelvins.  Great 
equestrians  risked  their  necks  riding  as  jockeys  in  the  hippo- 
drome races;  and  acrobats  learned  to  walk  the  tightwire. 
Finally,  because  the  labor  shortage  was  even  more  acute— 
80  canvasmen  instead  of  250— everybody  pitched  in  to  move 
the  show.  Equestrian  director  Fred  Bradna  would  be  out  at 
6  A.M.  swinging  a  sledge  to  drive  stakes  for  the  Big  Top; 
aerialists  and  clowns  manhandled  the  poles,  seats,  and  can- 
vas; great  women  stars  loaded  wardrobe  trunks  on  the  wagons. 
Now,  as  the  war  suddenly  ended  and  two  shows  were  tele- 
scoped into  one,  there  was  too  much  of  everytliing.  And  the 
extra  people  had  to  be  taken  care  of. 

Part  of  the  problem  was  solved  by  natural  attrition.  Per- 
formers drifted  off  and  were  not  replaced.  Others  hastily  got 
new  jobs  on  their  owoi.  A  few  retired  on  their  savings,  or  were 
pensioned.  There  was  room  for  most  of  the  rest  in  the  greatly 
enlarged  Combined  Show— if  they  would  work  together  and 
accept  some  downgrading.  An  act  that  had  been  guaranteed 


176  JOHN   RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

the  center  ring  might  have  to  go  in  a  wing.  There  was  the 
rub! 

Since  Uncle  Charles  had  been  more  intimately  associated 
with  the  Ringling  show,  and  Uncle  John  with  Barnum  & 
Bailey,  each  had  his  favorite  people  whom  he  wished  to  put 
in  the  top  spots.  The  most  touchy  question  was  who  would 
be  equestrian  director  of  tlie  Combined  Show.  Charles 
promised  the  post  to  John  Agee,  who  had  succeeded  Uncle 
Al  in  the  Ringling  show.  John  gave  a  similar  promise  to  Fred 
Bradna.  It  looked  as  though  an  immovable  force  had  met  an 
irresistible  object. 

Bradna  and  Agee  were  in  a  dither.  The  two  Ringlings  were 
worried.  They  both  knew  that  although  Agee  was  an  excellent 
equestrian  director,  Bradna  was  an  inspired  one.  However, 
Agee  had  Charles'  promise  and  my  uncle  was  a  man  of  his 
word.  Finally  John  Ringling  came  up  with  a  face-saving 
suggestion.  "A  great  show  like  this  needs  two  equestrian 
directors,"  he  said.  "Let's  make  Agee  equestrian  director,  and 
Bradna  general  equestrian  director." 

So  it  was  done.  John  Agee  did  not  like  it  much,  but  honor 
was  satisfied. 

One  of  Uncle  John's  favorites  with  the  Barnum  show  was 
an  enormous  giil  named  Katy.  She  lay  down  flat  on  her  back 
in  the  ring.  Her  assistant  put  a  plank  over  her  stomach  and 
then  led  a  hefty  work  horse  over  the  plank.  One  season  Katy 
was  pregnant,  but  she  continued  the  act  until  the  last  month. 
A  few  days  after  the  baby  was  born.  Uncle  John  dropped 
in  to  see  the  show  and  did  not  beheve  his  eyes.  There  was 
Katy  with  the  horse  walking  over  her.  He  insisted  on  keeping 
Katy. 

The  two  brothers  spent  most  of  the  winter  of  1918-19  in 
Bridgeport,  planning,  programming,  and  placating.  There 
were  168  different  acts  to  be  fitted  into  the  performance. 
When  the  Combined  Show  opened  in  New  York  on  March 


THE   BIG   ONE  I77 

29,  1919,  it  was  a  tremendous  and  harmonious  aggregation 
of  talent,  noise,  and  glitter.  There  was  not  room  for  all  of  it  in 
Madison  Square  Garden,  Some  of  the  side  shows  and  lesser 
acts  had  to  wait  until  it  went  on  the  road  under  the  enormous 
new  six-pole  Big  Top.  Nor  did  it  reach  its  full  effulgence  in 
that  first  year.  Throughout  the  twenties  new  acts  were  added 
and  the  best  of  the  old  ones  retained.  At  its  zenith,  about 
1928,  it  was  in  very  truth  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth.  There 
had  never  been  anything  like  it  before;  and  I  am  willing  to 
prophesy  that  there  will  never  be  again. 


CHAPTER   XIII 


IN  THE  BACK  YARD 


I  have  already  spoken  of  some  of  the  gi-eat  artists  of  the  circus 
during  the  twenties,  especially  the  Bradnas  and  the  Hanne- 
fords.  There  were  even  greater  ones  with  us  during  those  years 
of  glory.  When  I  was  a  little  boy  May  Wirth  was  queen  of  the 
back  yard.  In  his  book,  Fred  Bradna  unequivocally  states 


IN  THE  BACK  YABD  I79 

that  she  was  the  greatest  equestrienne  of  all  time;  a  true  and 
generous  tribute,  since  May  was  a  rival  of  Fred's  beloved 
Ella.  It  is  doubtful  if  there  will  ever  be  another  like  her,  for 
the  family  discipline  that  made  her  great  is  out  of  fashion. 

When  May  came  to  Barnum  &  Bailey  from  Australia  in 
igi2,  she  was  sixteen  years  old,  a  small,  softly  rounded  girl 
with  lovely,  pure  features.  She  wore  her  hair  tied  httle-girl 
fashion  with  a  big  bow  of  pink  ribbon.  May  had  been  an 
equestrienne  under  her  mother's  tutelage  since  she  was  five 
years  old  and  was  a  star  at  thirteen.  Perhaps  her  greatest 
trick  was  the  back-backward  somersault.  She  stood  with  her 
back  to  the  horse's  head  and  did  a  complete  somersault  with 
a  twist  so  that  she  landed  facing  forward.  Though  a  terrific 
athlete  and  one  of  our  brightest  stars,  she  was  so  sweet  and 
gentle  that  we  all  loved  her. 

Another  charmer  was  Bird  Millman,  the  first  American  girl 
to  work  on  the  tightwire  with  no  pole  or  parasol  for  balance. 
Dressed  in  short  fluffy  skirts,  with  her  long  hair  piled  on  top 
of  her  small  head  and  a  fittle  balloon  in  her  hand,  she  made 
a  series  of  birdlike  runs  on  the  wire,  chirped  a  couple  of  popu- 
lar songs,  and  danced  a  hula  while  a  chorus  sang  "Aloha." 
Con  Colleano,  of  course,  far  exceeded  her  in  daring  and 
agility  on  the  tightwire.  This  dashing  if  unpredictable  fellow 
of  Spanish-Irish-Australian  descent  wore  toreador  pants  and 
a  flowing  white  shirt  as  he  danced  a  dazzling  bolero,  and 
wound  up  his  act  with  a  feet-to-feet  forward  somersault.  He 
was  the  first  man  ever  to  accomplish  this  most  difficult  of  all 
tightwire  stunts. 

Toward  the  end  of  this  period,  we  acquired  Mabel  Stark 
and  her  tigers  when  Uncle  John  bought  the  Al  G.  Barnes 
Circus.  Mabel  was  an  Amazonian  lady  with  masses  of  yellow- 
dyed  ringlets  on  her  head  and  a  body  covered  with  scars. 
And  no  wonder  I  For  her  specialty  was  wrestling  with  a  full- 
grown  Bengal  tiger.  Without  whip  or  gun  or  fear  in  her  heart, 


l8o  JOHN  RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

she  worked  sixteen  of  the  great  cats  in  the  most  commanding 
manner  a  lady  ever  had. 

Though  Mabel  was  so  formidable,  she  could  not  have  been 
without  feminine  wiles,  for  she  had  two  ardent  suitors  whom 
she  played  off  against  each  other  to  the  delight  of  the  entire 
circus.  One  of  them  was  our  manager,  Fred  Worral.  Quarter- 
Pole  Worral  we  called  him,  because  he  seemed  always  to  be 
leaning  against  a  quarter  pole  with  his  great  paunch  im- 
pressively decorated  with  an  elk's-tooth  watch  charm  and  a 
skimpy  little  pipe  sticking  out  from  under  his  handle-bar 
mustache,  the  perfect,  pompous  picture  of  an  old-time  circus 
man. 

Also,  Andrew  the  giraffe  man  fell  in  love  with  Mabel.  He 
must  have  been  seventy-odd;  but  spring  came  into  his  life 
for  the  first  time.  As  far  as  anyone  knew,  he  had  never  before 
shown  affection  for  anything  but  ghaffes. 

With  extraordinary  dexterity  Mabel  kept  these  suitors 
separate  and  unknown  to  each  other,  while  each  lavished  gifts 
upon  her  and  no  doubt  dreamed  of  sharing  a  rose-embowered 
cottage  when  Mabel  should  finally  forsake  her  tigers  for 
domestic  bliss.  It  was  an  awful  shock  to  both  of  them  when 
they  finally  discovered  the  mutuality  of  their  courtships.  Poor 
Andrew  was  the  worse  affected,  having  waited  so  long  for 
love.  He  went  to  Mabel  and  demanded  his  presents  back. 
Hopeless  rebellion!  Eyes  that  could  quell  a  Bengal  tiger 
pierced  and  confounded  him.  Back  he  went  to  the  gentle 
giraffes. 

My  favorite  clown  as  a  boy  was  Herman  Joseph.  Herman 
was  Jewish  and  played  the  role  to  the  liilt,  exaggerating  his 
already  adequate  nose.  He  worked  in  the  main  show,  but 
his  moment  of  limelight  came  in  the  Wild  West  after  show 
which  we  still  had  in  those  days— twenty-five  cents  extra. 
Then  he  would  dress  himself  up  in  a  cowboy  suit  calculated 


m  THE   BACK  YABD  l8l 

to  end  all  cowboy  suits,  and  clown  throughout  the  show 
with  a  constantly  varied  repertoire  of  gags  and  impromptu 
wisecracks.  For  the  finale  Herman  fired  off  an  ancient  blun- 
derbuss that  seemed  to  kick  him  halfway  across  the  track. 

Another  clown— not  a  great  one,  but  a  great  person— whom 
I  love  dearly  is  Pat  Valdo.  He  came  to  the  Bamum  show  in 
1902,  seven  years  before  I  was  bom.  He  was  a  tall  skinny 
lad  of  twenty-one  who,  like  my  uncles,  had  seen  one  circus 
in  his  home  town— Binghamton,  New  York— and  became 
insanely  inspired  to  become  part  of  it.  Pat  worked  up  from 
walk-ons  to  a  good  clown  spot  and  married  a  circus  girl.  To- 
gether they  developed  a  wonderful  boomerang  act  which  we 
used  for  many  years.  Pat's  executive  ability  was  early  noted 
by  my  uncle  John,  who  made  him  assistant  equestrian  direc- 
tor to  Fred  Bradna. 

When  he  was  over  seventy  years  old  my  brother  and  I 
retired  him  on  a  pension,  but  Pat  refused  to  stay  retired.  He 
is  still  a  tall  lanky  lad  with  the  sawdust  oozing  out  of  his  ears; 
and  happy  as  a  circus  seal  doing  a  great  job  as  general 
director  of  The  Greatest  Show.  He  is  seventy-nine  years  old. 

Bobby  Clark  was  also  with  us  when  I  was  a  boy.  He  was  a 
good  clown  who  became  a  great  comedian. 

There  were  others  almost  as  great,  many  others.  Merle 
Evans,  the  superb  bandmaster  who  for  thirty-seven  years 
produced  the  blare  and  cacophony,  the  sweet,  soft  strains,  or 
the  roll  of  drums  that  accompanied  each  act;  responding  to  a 
couple  of  hundred  cues  twice  every  day  and  sending  the 
audiences  with  the  brazen  clangor  of  the  loudest  cornet  in 
show  business.  There  were  the  Wallendas  with  their  pyramid 
of  people  riding  a  bicycle  across  a  wire  at  the  top  of  the  tent; 
Charlie  Sigrest,  a  good  acrobat,  flier,  tightwire  man,  and 
equestriaii,  but  spreading  his  talents  too  tliin  to  be  quite  great; 
Clyde  Beatty  was  with  us  for  a  while.  In  the  Wild  West  after 
show  we  had  Tom  Mix,  the  good  cowboy  in  the  white  hat 


l82  JOHN  RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

who  in  real  life  was  just  that,  for  he  always  played  himself. 
We  paid  him  $10,000  a  week  one  season,  and  he  lost  it  all 
when  he  started  his  own  show.  He  was  not  quite  smart  enough 
for  the  black  hats. 

Another  great  character  whom  Uncle  John  brought  to 
America  in  the  twenties  was  Hugo  Zacchini,  who  had  himself 
fired  out  of  a  cannon.  Of  course,  other  people  had  done  it 
before.  I  think  the  genesis  of  the  act  was  in  1870,  when  some 
Italian  invented  a  cannon  that  was  supposed  to  shoot  a  soldier 
over  the  enemy  lines.  The  idea  was  that  he  would  float  down 
on  a  parachute  and  wreak  havoc  in  the  rear.  Lulu,  a  man 
dressed  up  as  a  girl,  first  did  it  in  the  circus  in  1879.  But 
Zacchini  brought  the  act  to  dramatic  perfection,  with  a  huge 
cannon  actuated  by  a  spring— but  lots  of  noise  and  smoke— 
which  hurled  him  in  a  great  arc  the  whole  length  of  Madison 
Square  Garden  into  a  net.  It  is  very  dangerous,  for  if  you  do 
not  fall  into  the  net  just  right  you  can  be  badly  hurt.  To  say 
nothing  of  the  total  damage  if  one  misses  the  net  entirelyl 

There  were  dozens  more  with  us  in  the  twenties,  many  of 
whom  might  have  been  greats  today  but  who  were  over- 
shadowed them  by  those  who  were  even  greater.  It  is  im- 
possible to  speak  of  them  all,  though  I  knew  and  liked  them 
all.  But  there  was  one,  or  rather  two  in  one,  whom  I  have 
saved— the  best  and  dearest— for  the  last. 

They  were  Lillian  Leitzel  and  Alfredo  Codona,  who  in  the 
circus  firmament  belong  together  like  the  Gemini.  As  in  the 
case  of  all  those  inseparable  pairs  of  lovers  who  walk  forever 
side  by  side  through  history  and  myth,  many  fine  writers  have 
told  their  story.  However,  having  known  and  loved  Leitzel 
from  the  time  I  was  five  years  old,  and  watched  Alfredo  at 
his  apogee  of  greatness  swooping  as  effortlessly  as  a  bam 
swallow  imder  the  luminous  peaks  of  the  Big  Top,  perhaps  I 
can  add  a  fresh  touch  or  two  to  their  portraits. 

Leitzel  came  first— she  always  came  first,  for  she  was  the 


IN   THE  BACK   YABD  183 

greatest  star  of  them  all,  personifying  in  her  tiny  lambent 
person  the  quintessential  glamour  of  the  circus.  Like  most 
of  our  otlier  greats,  she  was  a  child  of  the  tented  arenas; 
reared,  trained,  and  disciplined  from  babyhood  for  her  pro- 
fession. Unhke  most  of  them,  she  was  beautifully  educated, 
knowing  the  hterature  and  philosophy  of  five  languages,  and 
the  language  of  music  as  well.  Had  she  chosen,  she  could 
have  been  a  fine  concert  pianist. 

She  came  to  America  from  her  native  Bohemia  with  a  family 
trapeze-and-bicycle  act,  of  which  her  mother  was  the  star. 
From  the  age  of  nine  she  had  been  stealing  the  show  from 
her  mother,  and  when  the  family  act  went  back  to  Europe, 
Leitzel  elected  to  remain.  She  got  her  big  break  in  a  Hoboken 
honky-tonk  and  became  a  star  of  vaudeville  before  she  joined 
the  Ringling  show  in  1915. 

At  the  time  I  met  her,  Leitzel  was  not  only  our  brightest 
star  but  om:  smallest.  She  was  only  four  feet  ten  inches  tall, 
and  her  luxuriant  golden  hair  covered  her  in  glory.  In  all 
things  but  one  she  was  exquisitely  formed;  with  an  incredibly 
narrow  waist,  lovely  legs,  and  feet  so  small  that  she  wore  a 
child's  size- 1/2  shoe.  Exquisitely  dainty  and  femmine,  she 
had  the  shoulders  of  a  Notre  Dame  tackle.  This  was  due  to 
the  exigencies  of  her  act. 

It  consisted  of  two  parts.  Wearing  silk  tights  and  a 
diaphanous  short-short  skirt,  Leitzel  would  go  up  the  web- 
as  the  dangling  ropes  for  the  aerialists  are  called— in  a  series 
of  apparently  effortless  roll-overs  until  she  reached  a  pair  of 
roman  rings  high  above  the  center  ring.  There  was  no  net 
beneath  them— Leitzel  never  used  a  net.  For  technique, 
grace,  and  style,  her  performance  on  the  rings  was  unequaled. 
Where  others  labored,  she  floated;  where  others  assumed 
grotesquely  contorted  positions,  her  body  held  the  grace  of  a 
Grecian  marble;  where  others  wore  the  set  smile  of  stress  and 
fear,  she  laughed  as  joyously  as  a  Httle  girl  playing  on  a  swing. 


■■C> 


184  JOHN   RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

Though  Leitzel's  artistry  reached  its  height  on  the  rings, 
it  was  the  second  part  of  her  act  which  appealed  to  the 
Roman-hohday  instincts  of  the  crowd.  When  she  had  de- 
scended from  the  rings  and  taken  a  bow,  she  grasped  another 
rope  and  was  flown  aloft  to  the  top  of  the  tent.  Now  every- 
thing in  the  whole  great  arena  was  stilled.  Even  the  candy 
butchers  were  forbidden  to  hawk  their  sweets  while  Leitzel 
did  her  final  turn. 

As  a  single  spot  focused  on  her  tiny  glittering  figure,  she 
slipped  her  right  wrist  through  a  padded  loop  attached  by 
a  swivel  to  a  hanging  rope.  Then  she  got  up  by  momentum 
and  hurled  her  entire  body  in  a  full  circle  over  itself.  This  is 
called  the  full-arm  plange,  or  "dislocate,"  for  each  time  she 
did  it  her  right  shoulder  was  dislocated  and  was  snapped 
back  by  its  powerful  muscles. 

Over  and  over  and  over  Leitzel  went  while  the  drums 
signaled  each  turn  with  a  roll  and  crash  and  the  audience 
chanted  the  count:  "one— two— three— four  .  .  .  twenty-five— 
twenty-six  .  .  .  fifty-one~fifty-two  .  .  .  eighty-five— eighty- 
six  .  .  ."  Often  she  did  a  hundred  turns;  her  record  count  was 
two  hundred  and  forty-nine.  Incredible  endurance!  On  a 
blazing  August  day  up  there  in  the  peak  of  the  tent,  where 
the  temperature  was  twenty  or  thirty  degrees  liigher  than  at 
ground  level,  she  would  still  complete  the  dizzy  century  of 
turns.  As  she  spun  around,  her  long  hair  gradually,  artfully 
loosened  from  its  pins  and  swung  free,  following  the  parabolas 
her  body  made  like  a  golden  comet's  tail.  .  .  . 

Sensational  as  her  performance  was,  it  was  not  what 
Leitzel  did,  or  even  how  she  did  it,  that  made  her  so  great  a 
star.  It  was  her  own  self.  She  could  walk  out  and  simply  stand 
there  before  ten  thousand  people,  and  win  and  own  them 
before  ever  she  made  a  move.  They  felt  the  incandescence  of 
her  personality  back  to  the  last  row  of  the  "blues." 

Sometimes  we  wondered  that  she  was  not  consumed  by 


IN   THE   BACK   YABD  185 

the  violence  of  her  passions.  Oh,  she  was  a  violent  personl 
Without  doubt,  part  of  her  flaming  temperament  was  calcu- 
lated showmanship.  But  where  artifice  ended  and  Leitzel 
took  over,  no  one,  not  even  Leitzel,  knew.  When  she  flew  into 
one  of  her  terrible  rages  everyone  took  cover.  I  think  that 
even  Uncle  John  was  afraid  of  her.  Cursing  in  all  five  lan- 
guages, she  often  let  fly  with  a  right-arm  slap  that  stunned 
the  recipient.  On  the  other  hand,  she  could  move  in  the  most 
sophisticated  society  with  perfect  decorum;  and  talk  at  ease 
witli  kings. 

She  could  be  tender,  too.  There  was  no  artifice  in  her  love 
of  children.  There  were  many  youngsters  traveling  with  us  in 
family  troupes.  They  all  called  her  Aunty  Leitzel,  and  adored 
her.  Wlienever  she  went  shopping  she  came  back  loaded  with 
presents  for  them,  and  she  was  always  giving  them  birthday 
parties  with  cake  and  all  the  trimmings. 

There  was  no  proper  schooHng  for  the  performers'  young 
families  at  that  time,  so  every  weekday  Leitzel  kept  school  in 
her  luxurious  dressing  tent  for  the  children  of  the  circus.  With 
infinite  patience  she  taught  them  to  read  and  write,  and  enjoy 
the  beauty  of  music  and  poetry;  and  to  understand  noble 
thoughts.  She  also  had  a  fittle  trapeze  rigged  up  in  her  tent, 
on  which  she  showed  the  tots  who  wanted  to  emulate  her  the 
rudiments  of  her  art. 

It  was  because  Leitzel  first  knew  Johnny  and  me  when  we 
were  young  that  she  always  loved  us.  In  her  blackest  mood, 
when  all  else  failed  to  move  her,  Johnny  would  go  into  her 
tent  and  whisper  some  secret  magic  words  to  her.  She 
would  start  to  laugh  and  quickly  be  on  her  way  to  the  Big 
Top  to  charm  the  audience  with  her  graciousness. 

I  remember  one  time  when  I  was  at  Manlius  she  came  to 
Syracuse  with  a  little  "winter  circus"  that  Fred  Bradna  had 
put  together.  Some  of  my  best  friends  at  the  Academy  and 
I  got  leave  to  go  over  to  see  the  matinee.  As  I  entered  the 


l86  JOHN   RINGLING   AND   THE   NORTHS 

auditorium  Bradna  came  up  to  me  looking  desperate.  "That 
God-damned  Leitzel  is  having  a  tantrum,"  he  said.  "She 
claims  I  hung  her  rigging  wrong,  and  she  won't  go  on.  See  if 
you  can  do  anything  with  her,  Buddy." 

So  I  went  to  knock  on  her  dressing-room  door,  and  she 
screamed  between  lurid  oaths  that  she  wanted  to  be  let  alone. 

"It's  me,  Buddy  North,"  I  yelled. 

The  door  flew  open  and  a  radiant  Leitzel  jumped  at  me 
and  hung  around  my  neck.  After  the  eff^ervescence  of  her 
greeting  subsided,  she  admired  my  uniform  and  I  admired 
her  lack  of  same,  for  she  was  nude  to  the  waist.  I  asked  her 
how  things  were  going. 

The  lightning  flashed  around  my  head.  "That  triple- 
blanked  son  of  a  gim  Fred  Bradna  hung  my  rigging  wrong," 
she  yelled. 

"He's  a  dope,"  I  said  sympathetically.  "But  I've  brought 
some  friends  over  from  Manlius  just  to  see  you,  and  we  feel 
pretty  bad  that  you  aren't  going  on  today." 

"What  Gk)d-damned  fool  told  you  I  wasn't  going  on?" 
Leitzel  demanded.  Then  she  added  sweetly,  "Of  course,  I 
am.  And  you  are  going  to  introduce  my  act." 

I  was  horrified,  but  I  knew  better  than  to  refuse.  So  when 
the  time  came  I  stood  on  the  stage  and  went  through  the 
spiel  I'd  heard  Lew  Graham  give  a  hundi-ed  times  to  introduce 
Leitzel's  act.  Looking  over  my  shoulder,  I  can  see  myself 
standing  there  very  tall  and  lanky  and  young  in  my  cadet 
uniform,  with  big  frightened  blue  eyes  and  a  small  squeaky 
voice  saying  those  grandiloquent  phrases.  The  audience 
loved  it.  It  was,  in  fact,  superb  showmanship,  which  Leitzel 
knew  very  well  when  she  made  me  do  it. 

Leitzel  was  married  three  times,  but  only  once  that  counted. 
The  fii'st  time  she  was  very  young.  She  always  claimed  she 
could  not  remember  her  first  husband's  name.  Certainly  no- 


IN  THE   BACK   YARD  187 

body  else  could.  The  second  time  she  married  Clyde  Ingalls, 
our  great  side-show  manager.  On  a  certain  tempestuous  night 
she  cut  oflF  one  of  his  fingers  with  a  butcher  knife.  Her  tliird 
and  true  husband  was  Alfredo  Codona. 

Again  I  say  without  fear  of  contradiction  that  Codona  was 
tlie  greatest  flier  of  all  time.  Though  he  was  not  the  first  to 
do  a  triple  somersault  from  the  flying  trapeze  to  the  hands  of 
his  catcher,  who  was  his  brother,  Lalo  Codona,  he  did  it 
better  than  anyone  before  or  since.  Arthur  and  Antoinette 
ConceUo  both  did  tlie  triple  later,  but  they  were  never  able  to 
emulate  Alfredo's  apparently  effortless  style.  Indeed,  that 
word— style— was  tlie  mark  of  Codona's  greatness.  Whether 
in  the  most  difficult  feats  or  a  simple  pirouette  from  tlie 
catcher  back  to  the  bar,  his  form  was  as  classic  as  Nijinsky's 
in  ballet.  When  he  caught  the  bar  he  seemed  merely  to  touch 
it  weightlessly;  and  when  he  ffew  through  the  air  it  was  as 
though  he  were  moving  in  his  natural  element.  Even  if  he 
missed  and  fell  to  the  net,  it  was  gracefully  done. 

Indeed,  one  of  Alfredo's  most  hair-raising  stunts  was  based 
on  the  time  Lalo  missed  his  catch  and  he  fell  into  the  net 
far  off  center,  bounced  high  in  tlie  air,  and  came  down 
through  the  spreader  ropes  at  the  side  of  the  net.  They  broke 
his  fall,  but  he  hit  ground  quite  hard.  He  got  up  and  dusted 
himself  off.  Then  he  climbed  up  again  to  complete  his  famous 
triple  amid  a  perfect  tornado  of  applause. 

Frequently  after  that,  Alfredo  would  do  this  dangerous 
trick  on  purpose.  Fred  Bradna  tells  of  how  he  got  Codona  to 
do  it  one  time  when  Uncle  John  was  in  the  house.  He  says 
that  in  his  agitation  Uncle  John  swallowed  his  cigar. 

Alfredo  Codona  was  of  Mexican-German  extraction.  His 
father  flew  in  a  small  one-ring  circus  in  Mexico.  He  came  to 
us  first  as  a  talented  young  flier,  and  promptly  fell  in  love 
with  Leitzel,  as  who  did  not?  She  had  no  time  for  liim  then, 
and  he  went  away  and  married  someone  else.  He  came  back 


l88  JOHN  BINGLING  AND  THE    NORTHS 

to  US  about  1925  as  a  full-fledged  star.  By  that  time  Leitzel 
was  married  to  Clyde  Ingalls,  but  no  bonds  of  God  or  man 
could  keep  those  two  fated  and  fatal  people  apart.  Codona 
became  a  fixture  in  Leitzel's  tent,  which  was  furnished  with 
oriental  rugs  and  always  adorned  with  fresh  flowers  provided 
by  the  management.  There  she  taught  him,  as  she  taught  the 
circus  children,  the  pleasures  of  hterature  and  the  social 
graces. 

Leitzel  got  a  divorce  and  she  and  Alfredo  were  married  in 
Chicago  in  1928. 1  have  a  wonderful  snapshot  of  them  leaving 
the  show  grounds  in  an  open  landaulet  plastered  all  over 
with  Just-Married  signs.  Though  Leitzel  was  well  into  her 
thirties  that  year,  she  looks  hke  a  high-school  girl,  and  a 
small  one  at  that;  while  Alfredo  looks  like  the  boy  next  door. 
They  were  so  radiantly  happy  that  their  faces  wore,  not  pro- 
fessional smiles,  but  broad  grins. 

Alfredo  Codona  was  nearly  as  great  a  star  and  almost  as 
violently  temperamental  as  his  wife.  No  one  could  describe 
their  marriage  as  serenely  happy.  It  was  gloriously  impas- 
sioned. It  lasted  for  three  years. 

In  February  1931  Alfredo  was  flying  at  the  Winter  Garden 
in  Berlin  while  Leitzel  was  performing  at  the  Valencia  Music 
Hall  in  Copenhagen.  Frank  McClosky,  who  later  became 
general  manager  of  our  circus,  was  her  head  rigging  man  for 
this  winter  engagement. 

On  Friday  the  thirteenth— so  obvious  are  the  coincidences 
of  real-hfe  tragedy— Leitzel  was  doing  the  first  part  of  her 
act  on  the  roman  rings.  McClosky  was  standing  beneath  her 
anxiously  watching  every  move.  Something  distracted  his  at- 
tention, and  in  that  instant  the  swivel  supporting  one  of  the 
rings  crystalHzed  and  snapped.  Leitzel  plunged  headfirst 
twenty  feet  to  the  ground. 

McClosky  was  beside  her  in  a  flash— too  late  a  flash.  In  a 
moment  or  two  she  stood  up  shaking  her  golden  head.  The 


IN  THE  BACK   YARD  189 

audience  cheered  wildly,  and  Leitzel  said,  "I'm  all  right.  I 
can  go  on." 

McCIosky  would  not  let  her  and  took  her  to  the  hospital. 
Codona  canceled  his  performance  in  Berlin  and  rushed  to 
her.  On  Saturday  she  seemed  so  weU  and  gay  that  he  let  her 
persuade  him  to  go  back  to  Berlin.  On  Sunday,  February  15, 
1931,  Leitzel  died. 

Leitzel's  death  saddened  her  admirers  all  over  the  world. 
It  stunned  us  who  had  known  and  loved  her  so  well.  It 
destroyed  Alfredo  Codona. 

For  many  months  he  disappeared  into  some  accursed 
sohtude.  Then  he  came  back  to  fly  again  with  the  circus. 
Never  had  he  been  so  briUiant.  But  now  his  brilliance  had 
the  raw  edge  of  recklessness.  Even  the  crowds  watching  him 
sensed  that  the  flashing  figure  doing  impossible  feats  was 
inviting  death.  As  is  his  way,  Death  declined  the  invitation. 

In  his  frantic  effort  to  escape  memory,  Alfredo  was  married 
again,  to  Vera  Bruce  of  the  Austrahan  equestrian  family.  He 
continued  his  reckless  performances,  with  the  inevitable 
result— not  death,  but  a  fall  that  tore  his  shoulder  Hgaments 
so  that  he  could  never  fly  again. 

Now  the  descent  from  glory  quickened.  If  he  had  saved 
any  money,  it  quickly  disappeared  and  he  was  forced  to  take 
unsuitable  jobs— Vera's  equestrian  director  in  a  one-ring 
show.  That  was  too  bitter  to  be  borne.  Then  he  was  part 
proprietor  of  a  gas  station.  One  wonders  if  the  casual 
customers  were  frightened  by  the  bright  gleam  of  hatred  in 
his  eyes;  hatred  or  madness.  .  .  . 

No  one  could  live  with  a  man  who  could  not  live  with  him- 
self. Vera  sued  for  divorce.  A  conference  was  arranged  at  her 
lawyer's  office. 

Alfredo  came  there  very  calm  and  reasonable.  He  asked  the 
lawyer  if  he  might  have  a  moment  alone  with  his  wife.  At 
Vera's  nod  the  attorney  went  out,  closing  the  door. 


igO  JOHN  KINGLING   AND   THE    NORTHS 

On  cue,  at  the  click  of  the  latch,  Alfredo  pulled  a  forty-five 
automatic  from  under  his  coat.  As  fast  as  his  finger  could  puU 
and  release  the  trigger  he  fired  five  shots  into  Vera  Bruce's 
body— three  of  them  unneeded.  The  sixth  shot  pierced  his 
own  brain.  Thank  God,  at  least  he  did  not  miss. 

Alfredo  Codona  was  buried  beside  Uttle  Leitzel. 

The  dolorous  story  of  Leitzel  and  Codona  emphasizes 
again  my  underlying  theme  of  the  violence  and  tragedy  that 
stalk  the  back  yard  of  the  circus.  This  is  the  inevitable  nature 
of  an  entertainment  which  endeavors  to  appeal  to  all  the  basic 
ideas  of  diversion— not  only  the  enjoyment  of  beauty  and 
glamour,  courage  and  skill;  but  also  the  taste  for  the  strange 
and  exotic  in  the  wild  animals  and  primitive  people,  and 
titillation  by  the  unnatural,  such  as  the  strange  and  often 
revolting  deformities  of  the  side  shows.  It  is  implicit  above 
all  in  the  circus'  legacy  from  imperial  Rome  of  a  spectacle 
in  which  death,  if  no  longer  inevitable,  yet  plays  a  leading 
role,  walking  those  high,  thin  wires  in  the  peak  of  the  Big  Top 
and  standing  beside  each  Clyde  Beatty  and  Mabel  Stark 
every  time  they  enter  the  arena  cage. 

Violence  was  made  inevitable,  also,  by  the  heterogeneous 
collection  of  people  and  wild  animals  which  made  the  back 
yard  a  little  like  a  tented  jungle.  Consider  the  labor  force 
which  manned  the  great  trains  of  the  twenties.  Apart  from 
the  wonderful  and  skillful  people  who  were  our  permanent 
emplovees  and  the  mainstays  of  the  show,  these  thousand 
roustabouts  and  razorbacks  came  from  the  floating  residue  of 
labor.  It  was  financially  impossible  to  give  so  large  a  group 
permanent  employment  when  the  circus  spent  five  months  in 
Winter  Quarters  with  no  money  coming  in  and  nothing  for 
them  to  do.  Therefore,  each  spring  we  had  to  recruit  a  whole 
new  army.  Thev  were  mostly  men  who  lacked  either  the 
capacity  or  the  desire  to  hold  permanent  jobs.  Rootless,  reck- 


EST  THE  BACK  YABD  IQl 

less,  and  feckless,  owing  no  loyalty  to  us— why  should  they? 
—nor,  in  most  cases,  to  families  or  communities,  they  were  a 
tough,  anonymous  lot— a  sort  of  Foreign  Legion  of  the  Labor 
Army.  Throw  a  thousand  such  as  these  together  in  one 
nomadic  community  and  you  have  the  makings  of  trouble 
every  day.  It  is  wonderful  that  we  had  so  Httle  of  it. 

Sometimes  the  stench  that  rose  from  the  crew's  cars  was 
awe-inspiring.  The  performers  were  very  clean  even  though 
on  the  road  they  had  to  wash  in  pails  of  water.  We  had  ar- 
rangements on  the  lot  and  in  the  dressing  rooms  to  bring  them 
pails  of  hot  water  and  you  could  get  very  good  at  taking  a 
bath  out  of  a  bucket. 

But  we  could  not  possibly  provide  hot  water  for  a  thousand 
roustabouts  and  razorbacks.  Most  of  them  managed  to  do 
surprisingly  well  wiih  cold  water,  but  some  became  famous 
for  their  polluted  condition.  I  recall  a  character  named  Willy 
Green,  who  boasted  that  he  had  not  had  a  bath  for  forty 
years.  Willy  came  out  of  Bridgeport  and  was  really  a  dis- 
reputable character;  but  by  the  inevitabihty  of  his  arrival 
every  spring  and  his  blatant,  almost  impish  uncleanliness,  he 
became  a  legendary  and  privileged  figure. 

I  remember  one  night,  when  I  was  a  boy,  Willy  approached 
Uncle  John  on  the  lot.  He  looked  like  Red  Skelton  in  his  char- 
acter of  Freddy  the  Freeloader  and  smelled  like  a  camel. 
Uncle  John  was  standing  there  with  his  hat  and  his  cane, 
his  clothes  beautifully  pressed,  and  his  shoes  pohshed  mirror 
bright,  looking,  as  he  always  did,  as  though  he  were  just  start- 
ing out  for  the  Easter  Parade. 

"Hello,  Jawn,"  said  Willy.  Nobody,  not  even  Fred  Bradna, 
addressed  John  Ringling  as  anything  but  Mr.  John. 

"Hello,  Willy,"  said  Uncle  John,  who  had  knovini  him  for 
thirty  years.  "How  are  you?" 

Willy  said,  "Pretty  good,  but  give  me  a  light." 

Uncle  John  puffed  up  the  fire  in  his  great  double  corona 


192  JOHN   BINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

and,  bending  over,  held  his  cigar  solicitously  to  Willy's 
cigarette  while  he  puffed  away.  When  he  had  the  hght,  Willy 
said  airily,  "Thanks,  Jawn."  And  strolled  away  like  a  circus 
king. 

Another  source  of  potential  violence  was  the  continuing 
tradition  from  the  bad  old  days  linking  the  circus  and  the 
underworld.  Even  the  argot  of  the  circus  stemmed  from  it. 
Oddly  enough,  it  did  not  come  from  contemporary  criminal 
jargon,  but  straight  from  the  imibrageous,  fetid  alleys  of 
eighteenth-century  London,  from  Polly  Peachum's  Newgate 
and  the  rogues  who  swimg  from  Tyburn  Tree. 

When  I  first  joined  the  circus  I  wrote  my  mother  a  show-off 
letter  that  was  full  of  such  words  as  dip  (pickpocket),  block 
(watch),  shiv  (knife),  keyster  (suitcase).  She  could  not 
understand  a  word  of  it,  but  it  would  have  been  perfectly 
intelligible  to  Dick  Turpin. 

The  price  of  comparative  freedom  from  criminal  camp 
followers  was  eternal  vigilance.  With  all  our  efforts,  and  those 
of  the  Bums  detectives  as  well,  we  could  not  keep  it  com- 
pletely clean.  Shell-game  operators,  confidence  men,  pick- 
pockets, gamblers,  and  bootleggers  all  preyed  on  the  circus. 
The  parasites  would  attach  themselves  to  the  circus  train 
like  barnacles  to  the  bottom  of  a  ship  in  tropical  waters.  Every 
so  often  we  would  have  the  engineer  stop  in  the  middle  of 
nowhere,  preferably  a  desert,  and  delouse  the  train.  We 
would  go  through  it  from  end  to  end,  digging  the  human 
rats  out  of  baggage  wagons  and  from  under  cages  on  tlie  flats 
and  heaving  them  ungently  to  the  ground,  where  enthusiastic 
assistants  would  urge  them  on  their  way.  Somehow  they 
seemed  to  manage  to  rejoin  us  soon  thereafter,  but  at  least 
they  had  a  nice  long  walk. 

This  was  the  sort  of  world  in  which  Brother  John  and  I 
served  our   apprenticeships   to   the   circus.   One   thing  we 


IN  THE   BACK  YARD  103 

learned.  Because  it  was  a  tough  world,  raw  and  savage, 
management  had  to  be  even  tougher.  To  maintain  the  accu- 
rate timing  of  setup  and  teardown,  the  exact  scheduling  on 
wliich  the  whole  great  operation  depended,  required  an  iron 
discipline  enforced  by  stem  measures.  But  because  these 
were  very  human  sort  of  people  and,  in  the  case  of  the  per- 
formers, very  high-strung  ones,  it  also  requii^ed  diplomacy 
and  understanding. 

The  man  who  ran  a  circus  train  had  to  be  harsh  and  utterly 
ruthless,  wise  and  sympathetic;  a  general  of  the  army,  rail- 
road executive,  showman,  and  psyclriatrist  combined.  He  had 
to  be  a  howhng  optimist,  a  compulsive  gambler,  and  also 
capable  of  taking  infinite  pains  to  avoid  disaster.  Above  all, 
he  had  to  be  dedicated  to  the  circus. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


THE  HOUSE  OF  JOHN 


There  had  never  been  anytliing  but  love  and  loyalty  between 
the  Ringling  brothers  until  AK  T.  died.  But  when  Charles 
and  John  were  left  to  divide  their  world  between  tliem,  a 
ground  mist  of  jealousy  rose  to  cloud  their  relationship.  This 
did  not  aflpect  their  management  of  the  circus.  There,  as  al- 
ways, tlrey  acted  in  concert.  But  in  tlieir  outside  business 


THE   HOUSE   OF    JOHN  I95 

ventures  and  their  social  life,  the  rivahy  between  them  be- 
came more  acute,  even  bitter.  John  Ringling  went  his  own 
freewheeling  way,  and  his  wife  Mable  was  very  easygoing 
and  still  one  of  the  most  beautiful  women  in  America;  but 
Edith,  though  handsome,  was  gray-haired  and  matronly. 
She  kept  prodding  Charles  to  outdo  his  rambunctious  younger 
brother. 

Whatever  the  cause,  they  carried  this  competition  to 
ridiculous  lengtlis.  If  Uncle  John  got  a  yacht,  the  Zalophiis, 
Uncle  Charles  had  to  have  an  even  bigger  one,  the  Symphon.a. 
Because  John  had  formed  the  Bank  of  Sarasota,  Charles 
founded  the  Ringling  Trust  and  Savings  Bank.  Sarasota  of 
tliat  time  needed  two  banks  considerably  less  than  a  dog 
needs  two  tails;  today,  however,  it  boasts  at  least  six,  although 
the  two  Ringling  banks  are  no  more. 

There  is  an  amusing  story  in  connection  with  the  banks. 
Charley  Kannally,  Uncle  John's  circus  secretary,  worked  in 
the  winter  in  Uncle  Charlie's  bank.  As  the  circus  train  started 
North  one  spring,  Kaimally  came  to  see  Uncle  John  in  the 
Jomar.  "I'm  flat  broke,  Mr.  John,"  he  said.  "Could  you  lend 
me  fifty  dollars  until  payday?" 

"Mable,  come  here,"  Uncle  John  called.  "I  want  you 
to  witness  a  wonderful  example  of  loyalty.  Kannally, 
here,  works  at  Charhe's  bank  but  he  still  gives  us  his  busi- 
ness." 

One  way  in  which  Charles  indicated  his  disapproval  of 
his  brother's  offbeat  hours  was  always  to  make  business  ap- 
pointments with  him  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning,  knowing 
full  well  that  he  habitually  breakfasted  at  tluee  in  the  after- 
noon. John  was  invariably  late  for  ordinary  business  confer- 
ences; in  fact,  his  tardiness  at  one  vital  meeting  helped  to 
bring  about  his  financial  downfall.  But  his  retort  to  Uncle 
Charlie  was  always  to  appear  on  the  exact  stroke  of  nine.  I 
suspect  he  stayed  up  all  night  to  make  it. 


196  JOHN  RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

The  rivalry  between  the  brothers  reached  its  climax  in 
the  palaces— no  lesser  word  describes  them— that  they  built 
side  by  side  facing  the  bay  in  Sarasota.  Uncle  Charles  began 
his  in  1924,  immediately  after  hearing  of  Uncle  John's 
grandiose  plans  for  a  Venetian  palazzo.  Charles  Ringling's 
home  was,  and  still  is,  an  uncommonly  beautiful  house.  Fol- 
lowing tlie  classically  simple  lines  of  eighteenth-century 
English  architecture,  it  was  built  of  Georgia  marble  tinged 
by  the  palest  shade  of  pink.  The  spacious,  beautifully  pro- 
portioned rooms  were  filled  with  appropriate  graceful  furni- 
ture built  by  Sheraton  and  Hepplewhite  in  England  nearly 
two  hundred  years  ago.  Because  Charles  Ringling  loved 
music  so  much,  he  installed  a  magnificent  organ,  and  the 
music  room,  with  its  carefully  planned  acoustics,  was  often 
filled  by  the  voices  of  the  great  singers  of  the  time,  most  of 
whom  were  his  son  Robert's  friends. 

Such  a  beautiful  house,  and  $10,000,000  with  which  to 
maintain  it,  should  have  been  enough  to  satisfy  any  man.  It 
probably  did  content  Uncle  Charles,  but  not  Aunt  Edith.  The 
trouble  was  that  by  1924  Uncle  John  was  reported  to  be  one 
of  the  twenty  richest  men  in  the  world.  This,  like  so  much 
else  in  our  peculiar  environment,  was  a  wild  exaggeration. 
Nevertheless,  the  oil  wells  were  pouring  out  their  wealth;  the 
railroads  were  running  to  the  limit  of  capacity;  theaters, 
turned  into  movie  houses,  were  packing  them  in;  and  in  ad- 
dition, the  Florida  boom  was  on,  and  John  Ringling  had 
bought  those  jungled  islands  across  tlie  bay  from  Sarasota— 
Bird  Key,  St.  Armands,  Coon,  and  Otter— and  several  miles 
of  Longboat  Key.  He  pom^ed  $700,000  into  building  the 
John  Ringling  Causeway  with  its  drawbridge  to  connect  his 
islands  with  the  mainland,  and  began  the  business  of  laying 
them  out  in  lots  with  streets  and  sewers,  landscaping,  and 
all  the  trimmings.  In  addition,  with  Iris  friend  Albert  Keller 
of  the  Ritz-Carlton  Hotel  in  New  York,  he  began  to  build  a 


THE   HOUSE   OF    JOHN  107 

luxury  hotel  on  Longboat  Key  at  an   estimated   cost  of 

$2,000,000. 

In  1925  Brother  John  brought  him  a  firm  oflFer  of  $10,000,- 
000  for  his  islands;  which  he  turned  down  without  blinking 
his  heavy-lidded  eyes.  That  year  John  Ringling  was  worth 
$100,000,000— on  paper. 

Then  Uncle  John  built  Ca'  d'Zan— the  name  is  Venetian 
patois  for  "House  of  John."  At  a  time  when  the  east  coast  of 
Florida  was  being  dotted  with  extravagantly  ornate  castles 
from  Spain  whose  fantastic  design,  evolving  in  the  fecund 
brain  of  Addison  Mi^izner,  genuflected  only  slightly  to  the 
pm-ported  land  of  its  origin,  John  Ringling  out-M^iznered 
M^izner. 

This  must  be  said:  Ca'  dTIan  was  not  built  to  wipe  Uncle 
Charlie's  eye,  or  even  to  gratify  Uncle  John's  and  Aunt 
Mable's  luxurious  tastes.  It  was  part  of  a  long-range  plan 
John  Ringling  had  evolved  to  give  the  state  of  Florida  a 
memorial  to  Mable  and  himself  that  would  be  at  once  as 
magnificent  and  much  more  useful  than  the  Pyramids. 

The  plan  also  included  a  museum  to  house  the  superb  old 
masters  he  was  buying  at  an  ever  accelerating  rate.  A  corps  of 
art  experts,  headed  by  Julius  Boehler,  whom  everybody  called 
Lulu,  combed  the  crumbling  palaces  of  Europe  for  these 
pictures  which  Uncle  Jolin  stored  temporarily  in  a  warehouse 
in  Sarasota  and  with  Manhattan  Storage  in  New  York. 

Perhaps  his  most  important  purchase  was  the  four  huge 
Rubens  cartoons  for  tapestries.  These  marvelously  painted 
scenes  from  the  Bible  were  bought  from  the  then  Duke  of 
Westminster.  When  Uncle  John  went  out  to  the  Duke's  estate 
to  see  them,  he  was  horrified  to  find  tliem  stored  in  an  out- 
building, rolled  up  like  old  rugs. 

Though  Lulu  Boehler  advised  him.  Uncle  John  liked  to 
make  die  final  deal  himself,  for  he  loved  a  horse  trade  like 
David  Harum.  He  did  not  enjoy  simple  little  business  deals, 


igS  JOHN  RINGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

but  preferred  intricate  negotiations.  The  key  to  the  moment 
when  he  was  about  to  exert  all  his  wizardry  as  a  trader  was 
when  he  would  drape  one  arm  over  his  victim's  shoulder  and 
say,  "Now  I  want  to  be  fair  to  you."  Then  look  outi 

My  uncle  had  another  trick  of  trading  which  he  employed, 
whether  consciously  or  not.  He  would  never  sit  down;  so,  of 
course,  his  adversary  could  not  either,  with  John  Ringling 
standing  imposingly  or  striding  around  the  room  puffing  his 
long  cigar.  He  would  keep  it  up  for  hours,  and  I  think  the 
other  fellow  often  yielded  from  sheer  exhaustion. 

In  this  way  Uncle  John  acquired  a  great  many  pictures 
at  bargain  prices.  For  example,  on  a  trip  to  Europe  in  1927, 
he  purchased  a  Frans  Hals  for  about  $100,000.  On  the  very 
day  it  was  unpacked  in  New  York,  Lord  Duveen  saw  it  and 
offered  Uncle  John  $300,000.  He  was  turned  down.  Hence  it 
now  hangs  in  Sarasota  rather  than  in  Washington,  D.C.,  as 
Duveen  was  bidding  for  Andrew  Mellon, 

In  addition  to  pictures,  John  Ringling  was  piu"chasing 
ancient  sculpture.  Renaissance  columns  and  colonnades, 
heavily  carved  cinquecento  furniture,  tapestries;  in  fact,  any- 
thing and  everything  that  represented  the  ancient  culture  of 
Europe— particularly  of  Italy— which  so  many  years  ago  had 
opened  the  eyes  of  a  midwestern  countiy  boy  to  the  beauty  of 
great  art. 

John  Ringling  bought  literally  by  the  shipload.  On  one  oc- 
casion at  least,  he  chartered  a  freighter  to  bring  his  purchases 
directly  from  Genoa  to  Port  Tampa.  The  lesser  statuary  he 
scattered  among  his  keys  to  add  a  touch  of  ancient  grace  to 
his  real-estate  development.  Aithur  Vining  Davis'  roaring 
tractors  dug  them  out  of  tlie  renascent  jungle  thirty-five  years 
later.  The  best  pieces  were  reserved  for  the  future  Jolin  and 
Mable  Ringling  Museum  of  Art. 

But  though  Ca'  d'Zan  was  designed  as  a  cultural  monument. 
Uncle  John  and  Aunt  Mable  proposed  to  have  fun  with  it 


THE   HOUSE   OF    JOHN  I99 

while  they  lived.  It  was  built  for  them  according  to  their 
specifications  as  to  the  smallest  detail.  Armed  with  sketches 
by  Italian  designers,  they  went  to  see  New  York  architect 
Dwight  James  Baum  and  told  him  what  they  wanted— a 
Venetian-Gothic  palazzo  which  would  embody  the  best 
features  of  the  Doge's  Palace  and  the  old  Madison  Square 
Garden,  which  Stanford  White  had  designed  after  the  Ve- 
netian manner.  Mr.  Baum  is  said  to  have  turned  pale. 

In  the  end  he  succeeded  in  modifying  their  ideas  some- 
what, but  Ca'  d'Zan  was  still  one  of  the  most  fantastic  houses 
ever  built  anywhere.  Two  hundred  feet  long,  the  basic 
material  of  its  exterior  was  rose-cream  stucco,  but  you  could 
see  very  little  of  that  because  of  the  elaborate  decorative 
designs  of  glazed  terra-cotta  tiles  baked  in  soft  red,  yellow, 
blue,  green,  or  ivory  tints.  Columns  faced  with  polished 
Mexican  onyx  supported  the  rounded-arch  windows  wliich 
exfoliated  into  clover-shaped  Byzantine  oriels. 

Above  the  main  body  of  the  house  rose  a  square  tower,  also 
embellished  with  colored  tiles,  which  contamed  an  open 
loggia.  The  landward  side  was  ornamented  by  medallions 
with  bas-relief  figures.  The  central  one,  by  the  designer's 
whimsy,  contained  easily  recognizable  full-length  sculptures 
of  John  and  Mable  Rmgling  costumed  like  Adam  and  Eve 
before  the  Fall.  It  happened  that  I  was  walking  with  Uncle 
John  the  day  this  medalhon  was  unveiled.  He  looked  up  at  it 
and  for  the  only  time  in  my  remembrance  blushed.  "We've 
got  to  do  something  about  that,"  he  said.  "Jesus,  look  at  that  I" 

It  was,  in  fact,  plastered  over,  but  later  the  state  of  Florida's 
great  museum  director.  Chick  Austin,  would  countenance  no 
such  prudery.  Uncle  Jolm's  fig  leaf  was  removed. 

The  interior  of  Ca'  d'Zan  was,  if  anything,  more  gorgeous 
than  its  fagade.  You  came  into  an  immense  tluee-story  hall 
with  a  balcony  running  around  three  sides  of  it.  Its  pavement 
consisted  of  squares  of  black  and  white  marble  and  its  high, 


200  JOHN  RINGLING   AND  THE   NORTHS 

cambered  ceiling,  from  which  hung  the  biggest  Venetian- 
glass  chandeHer  I  ever  saw,  was  made  of  carved,  pecky  cy- 
press framing  a  stained-glass  skylight.  Tall,  small-paned  win- 
dows of  colored  glass  diffused  the  brilliant  sunhght  reflected 
from  sky  and  water.  The  walls  were  hung  with  Renaissance 
tapestries.  There  was  a  great  organ  and  perfectly  enormous 
carved  and  gilded  furniture.  Aunt  Mable  worked  for  three 
years  making  exquisite  needle-point  upholstery  for  it. 

On  the  right  was  the  long  ballroom  divided  halfway  down 
by  antique  columns.  It  was  much  more  gaily  furnished  and 
the  lighthearted  medallions  in  tlie  ceiling  were  painted  by  a 
Hungarian  artist,  Willy  Pogany.  John  and  Mable  again  ap- 
peared in  one  of  them;  this  time  waltzing  together  in 
full  evening  dress.  To  the  left,  through  the  breakfast  loggia, 
was  the  state  dining  room,  paneled  in  dark  walnut  with 
crimson  draperies.  Its  most  starthng  feature  was  a  wall-sized 
still  life  by  the  Flemish  painter  Frans  Synders  depicting  the 
trophies  of  a  hunt.  Painted  with  meticulous  realism  was 
a  heap  of  dead  animals,  including  a  deer,  a  swan,  peacocks, 
rabbits,  small  birds,  and  a  great  boar  sliced  down  the  middle 
and  running  with  gore.  Weak-stomached  guests  faintly 
turned  tlieir  eyes  away.  Uncle  John  suffered  no  qualms. 

A  catalogue  of  innumerable  rooms  grows  exhausting,  so  let 
me  but  touch  a  few  high  spots— the  barroom,  with  its  long, 
pohshed  bar  bought  complete  with  colored-glass  panels 
from  the  famous  Cicardi  Winter  Palace  Restaurant  in  St. 
Louis;  Uncle  John's  balhoom-sized  bedroom,  furnished  in 
Empire  for  a  change,  with  an  anachronistic  modeiTi  barber's 
chair,  in  which  he  was  shaved  every  day;  the  master  bath- 
room, walled  with  Siena  marble,  its  tub  cut  from  a  solid  block 
of  the  same,  with  gold-plated  fixtures;  Aunt  Mable's  suite,  all 
curvilinear  rococo  Louis  XV  decor;  Uncle  John's  ofiice,  a 
plain,  businesslilve  room,  but  the  telephone  was  repousse  sil- 
ver; and,  finally,  the  rumpus  room,  occupying  most  of  the 


THE   HOUSE   OF    JOHN  201 

third  floor,  its  groined  ceiling  frescoed  by  Pogany  with 
a  Venetian  carnival  scene  featuring  John  and  Mable  in  fancy 
dress  surrounded  by  their  exotic  pets. 

Ca'  d'Zan  stood  right  on  the  edge  of  the  bay.  A  vast  terrace 
of  differently  colored  marbles  in  a  streak-of-lightning  pattern 
ended  at  tlie  dock,  to  which  the  Zalophiis  was  usually  moored. 
Alongside  her,  hitched  to  a  striped  pole  topped  by  a 
golden  ball,  lay  an  imported  gondola.  With  its  furnishings, 
not  including  the  tapestries  and  works  of  art,  Ca'  d'Zan  cost 
Uncle  John  $1,650,000. 

If  I  have  made  fun  of  my  dear  uncle's  house,  it  is  not 
malicious  but  affectionate  teasing.  For  I  loved  Ca'  d'Zan. 
What  roaring  wonderful  times  we  had  there  1  What  magnifi- 
cent meals  were  cooked  in  its  great  kitchens!  What  superb 
wines  we  drank  around  tliat  long  refectory  board!  And  what 
wonderful  talk  we  heard  from  the  brilliant  guests,  whose 
names  were  a  Who's  Who  of  the  twenties!  Flo  Ziegfeld  and 
vivacious  Billie;  Irvin  Cobb,  his  brisket  bulging  with  good 
food  and  jollity;  S.  Davies  Warfield,  whose  niece  Wallis  almost 
made  Queen  of  England;  Tex  Rickard;  Al  Smith;  Frank 
Phillips,  who  started  as  a  barber,  married  a  banker's  daughter, 
became  a  checker  for  the  bank  at  the  Coliseum  in  Chicago 
when  the  circus  was  there,  and  finally  founded  Phillips 
Petroleum;  W.  J.  Burns,  the  top  private  eye;  John  McGraw  of 
the  Giants,  who  gave  me  a  uniform  and  let  me  practice  with 
them;  Fred  Albee,  vaudeville  king;  Jimmy  Walker;  Will 
Rogers;  dozens  more,  and  all  their  lovely  ladies.  The  echo  of 
their  long-stilled  laughter  may  yet  break  the  museum  pall  of 
that  great  house  nights,  when  the  tourists  are  tucked  in  their 
motels— at  least,  I  like  to  think  so. 

And  mistake  me  not!  Ca'  d'Zan  was,  with  all  its  excesses, 
neither  ugly  nor  vulgar.  It  was  so  riotously,  exuberantly, 
gorgeously  fantastic,  so  far  out  of  the  world  of  normality,  that 
it  surpassed  the  ordinary  criteria  of  such  things  and  emerged 


202  JOHN  RESTGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

a  thing  of  style  and  beauty  by  its  magnificent  indifference  to 
all  the  so-called  canons  of  good  taste.  It  was,  in  fact,  the  epit- 
ome of  its  owner. 

Take  a  look  at  him  as  I  knew  him  at  this  his  opulent  peak, 
an  intelligent,  daring  gambler  whose  luck  was  riding  high 
and  whose  personality  was  as  extravagant  as  Kublai  Khan's. 
He  stands  better  than  six  feet  tall,  heavy,  as  all  the  Ringlings 
were.  But  there  was  nothing  paunchy  about  Uncle  Jolin  in 
his  superbly  tailored  clothes.  You  felt  only  massive  power.  He 
still  had  a  moon-shaped  face,  but  there  was  power  in  it,  too, 
and  in  liis  round  heavy-lidded  eyes.  Power?  Arrogance?  Per- 
haps—reinforced by  a  temper  of  torrential  violence.  But 
its  blast  was  as  short-lived  as  a  thunderstorm.  Ten  minutes 
after  he  had  laid  you  out.  Uncle  John  was  as  warmly  sunny 
as  a  summer  day.  This  was  not  true  of  Uncle  Charles.  He  was 
far  more  gentle  and  considerate,  and  his  resentment  was 
harder  to  arouse.  But  once  ignited,  it  smoldered  for  years. 

Even  at  his  autocratic  apogee  Uncle  John  still  loved  fun. 
He  was  still  and  forever  a  wonderful  clown.  One  of  the  de- 
lights of  my  youth  was  watching  him  have  breakfast.  Often 
my  sister  Salome  and  I  would  go  over  to  Ca'  d'Zan  in  the 
afternoon  just  to  see  the  show.  Uncle  John  always  put  on  a 
special  performance  for  our  benefit. 

We  would  find  him  in  the  breakfast  room  surrounded  by 
as  strange  a  group  of  companions  as  ever  Alice  saw  through 
her  looking  glass.  On  its  perch  was  a  gray  African  parrot 
named  Jacob,  with  whom  my  micle  conversed  in  German. 
Both  John  and  Jacob  were  very  fond  of  the  coffeecake 
my  mother  baked.  My  uncle  would  dunk  some  in  his  coffee 
and  give  it  to  his  friend,  who  would  say  politely,  "Schmecks 
gut,  Johann."  Then  the  bird  would  whistle  shrilly  and  call, 
"Komme  Tell  Komme  Tel!"  and  the  big  German  police  dog 
would  arrive  in  a  series  of  liquid  leaps.  Aunt  Mable's  white 
cockatoo,  Laura,  watched  from  another  perch,  while  two 


THE   HOUSE   OF    JOHN  203 

lovely  little  African  bullfinches  perched  nearby.  The  com- 
pany was  completed  by  six  or  seven  delicately  built  little 
gray  pinschers,  who  sat  in  a  semicircle  looking  hopefully  up 
at  Uncle  John. 

Then  the  butler,  Frank  Tomlinson,  entered  carrying  an 
enormous  dish  of  fruit.  Uncle  John  devastated  it.  I  have  seen 
him  eat  twelve  king  oranges  and  five  grapefruits;  or  two 
pounds  of  Tokay  grapes.  Mangoes  were  the  most  fun.  Nine 
was  a  fair  average  for  him.  He  would  wade  into  the  soft  pulpy 
fruit  with  juice  running  all  over  his  face  and  hands  and  the 
special  oilcloth  bib  he  wore.  Then  Tomlinson  would  bring  him 
a  silver  basin  of  water,  and  he  would  make  a  circus  of  his 
ablutions  for  our  benefit,  dunking  his  face,  snorting,  puffing, 
and  blowing  wliile  he  rolled  those  round  clown  eyes  of  his 
and  made  marvelous  faces. 

After  the  fruit  he  got  dovini  to  the  serious  business  of 
breakfast— a  king-sized  sirloin  steak  or  a  heaping  dish  of 
corned-beef  hash  with  poached  eggs  aU  over  it.  Then  the  cof- 
feecake  and  coffee. 

When  the  show  was  over  he  disappeared  to  his  room  to 
dress.  This  process  usually  took  about  three  and  a  half  hours. 
I  never  knew  what  mysteries  of  toiletry  he  practiced  that  took 
so  long;  for  he  locked  the  door,  and  no  one  was  allowed  in, 
not  even  Aunt  Mable;  not  even  Tomlinson. 

As  I  have  indicated.  Uncle  John  was  very  close  with 
money  in  some  ways,  despite  the  splendor  of  liis  establish- 
ment. He  would  haggle  over  the  price  of  a  window  screen  or 
a  small  tradesman's  bill.  Yet  when  the  Mexican  onyx  for  Ca' 
d'Zan  failed  to  arrive  on  time,  he  had  it  sent  from  California 
by  railway  express.  The  shipping  bill  was  several  thousand 
dollars. 

And  sometimes  Uncle  John  made  magnificent  gestures.  A 
brand-new  two-tone  Cadillac  might  drive  up  on  Mother's 
birthday.  He  paid  for  my  education  at  Manlius  and  Yale;  and 


204  JOHN  RINGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

gave  me  a  big  allowance.  In  fact,  he  took  great  pride  in  my 
academic  career,  and  sometimes  forgetting  our  exact  relation- 
ship, would  introduce  me  as  "my  son  who  is  at  Yale." 

I  admit  I  loved  him;  never  more  than,  when  broken  physi- 
cally and  financially,  he  leaned  on  me  to  be  chauffeur  and 
handyman  and  sometimes  even  cook  in  the  great  empty 
kitchen  of  Ca'  d'Zan.  So  be  warned  that  I  am  a  prejudiced 
witness.  For  his  very  inconsistencies— his  splendor  and  his 
meanness,  his  arrogance  and  kindness,  his  lasliing  temper  and 
his  bubbling  humor,  which  he  kept  when  all  else  was  gone- 
made  him  the  most  fascinating  man  I  have  ever  known. 

You  may  imagine  what  chance  gentle,  conservative 
Charles  Ringling  had  of  rivaling  Uncle  John.  Nor  did  the 
competition  long  continue.  In  the  spring  of  1926  Charles 
Ringling  had  a  stroke.  Aunt  Edith  would  never  admit  the  na- 
ture of  his  illness,  but  it  was  plainly  evident.  He  came  to  Bara- 
boo  that  summer  with  the  writing  of  death  on  his  face.  Uncle 
John  was  there  as  well.  The  brothers  conferred;  and  for  the 
only  time  in  the  history  of  the  family  there  was  talk  of  selling 
the  circus.  Charles  knew  that  he  would  ride  the  train  no  more, 
and  John  was  deeply  involved  with  his  great  affairs. 

It  was  a  momentary  weakness.  They  agreed  that  economi- 
cally it  was  tlie  wise  thing  to  do.  But  when  it  came  to  the 
point  of  decision  neither  brother  could  imagine  tlie 
circus  without  a  Ringling. 

That  fall  Uncle  Charlie  came  to  Sarasota  as  usual.  One  day 
word  came  to  Ca'  d'Zan  that  he  had  had  another  stroke.  Uncle 
John  almost  ran  across  tlie  big  lawns  separating  the  two 
houses.  When  he  arrived  Aunt  Edith  said  liis  brother  was  too 
ill  to  see  him.  So  he  waited  alone  all  day  in  one  of  those  splen- 
did rooms.  In  the  late  afternoon  he  was  told  that  he  could  go 
upstairs. 

He  found  his  brother  lying  unconscious,  with  our  family 


THE   HOUSE   OF    JOHN  205 

physician.  Dr.  Joseph  Halton,  sitting  beside  the  bed.  John  had 
no  need  to  question  Dr.  Joe;  the  enormous  struggle  each 
breath  cost  Charles  was  plainly  too  great  a  strain  to  be  borne 
long.  John  sat  down  in  a  chair.  He  did  not  make  a  sound,  but 
Dr.  Joe  saw  that  the  tears  were  Hterally  pouring  down  his 
cheeks. 

So  they  sat  silent  and  helpless.  One  would  never  know  what 
Uncle  John  was  thinking  in  his  grief,  though  there  may  be  a 
clue  in  what  he  said.  Quite  suddenly  the  horribly  harsh 
sound  of  breathing  stopped.  Dr.  Joe  jumped  up  to  feel  his  pa- 
tient's pulse.  John  Ringling  heaved  himself  to  his  feet  witli  the 
diflficulty  of  an  old  man.  As  he  stood  beside  the  doctor  looking 
down  at  Charles,  pawing  at  his  eyes  to  clear  his  vision,  he 
said  somberly,  "I'm  the  last  one  on  the  lot." 


CHAPTER   XV 


BUST  AND  BOOM 


On  the  death  of  his  last  brother,  John  RingHng  considered 
himself  the  sole  proprietor  of  Ringling  Brothers-Barnum  & 
Bailey  Combined  Shows.  True,  Aunt  Edith  had  inherited  a 
third  share  of  it  from  her  husband,  and  Cousin  Richard  also 
owned  a  third.  But  Richard  had  aheady  been  discounted  in 


BUST  AND  BOOM  20/ 

Uncle  John's  mind  and  Edith  Ringhng  was  only  a  woman. 
The  Ringlings  traditionally  paid  no  attention  to  women  in 
business. 

The  fact  was  that  he  had  been  making  circus  policy  for  a 
long  time.  He  could  always  dominate  Charles  in  big  decisions, 
tliough  the  latter  had  more  to  do  with  the  actual  management 
of  the  show. 

One  of  the  most  important  decisions  that  John  Ringling 
had  made,  almost  unilaterally,  was  to  abandon  the  old 
Madison  Square  Garden  and  build  a  new  one.  He  had  been 
closely  associated  with  Tex  Rickard,  that  eminent  promoter 
of  lucrative  sport,  for  a  long  time.  Indeed,  it  was  Uncle  John 
who  financed  Rickard's  promotion  of  the  first  "million-dollar 
gate,"  the  Dempsey-Carpentier  fight  in  1921,  and  the  build- 
ing of  Boyle's  Thirty  Acres,  the  arena  in  which  it  was  held. 

Whether  Rickard  came  to  Ringling,  or  vice  versa,  I  do  not 
know,  but  they  both  decided  that  New  York  needed  a  new 
amphitheater.  The  New  Madison  Square  Corporation  was 
formed  with  John  Ringling  as  its  largest  stockholder  and  first 
chairman  of  its  big-name  board  of  directors.  Of  course,  this 
was  an  enterprise  tliat  went  far  beyond  the  necessities  of  the 
circus  for  a  five-  or  six-week  stand  in  New  York.  Rickard  re- 
garded it  mainly  as  a  place  for  prize  fights,  and  the  promoters 
of  other  professional  sports  had  their  special  interests  at 
heart.  But  in  John  Ringling's  mind  it  was  built  primarily  for 
the  circus.  Ringling  Brothers-Barnum  &  Bailey  opened  there 
in  the  spring  of  1926. 

It  was  not  long  before  Uncle  John  got  disputatious  with  his 
fellow  directors  and  resigned  as  chairman.  However,  it  is  not 
true  that  he  quan-eled  with  Tex  Rickard.  In  fact,  when  Tex 
got  into  trouble  over  his  allegedly  amorous  attentions  to  a 
young  lady  who  had  not  reached  tlie  age  of  consent,  Uncle 
John  raised  $50,000  in  a  hurry  and  hired  Max  Steuer  to  de- 
fend him. 


2o8  JOHN   RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

Nineteen  twenty-six  was  in  other  ways  a  trying  year  for 
John  Ringhng.  For  it  was  then  tliat  the  Florida  boom  burst 
with  the  second  loudest  financial  bang  of  the  century.  It  had 
been  one  of  those  seizures  of  mass  madness  which  occasionally 
turn  the  public,  and  the  smart  guys,  too,  into  packs  of  lem- 
mings rushing  to  fiscal  destruction.  Though  vast  tracts  of  land 
were  bought  and  sold  at  skyrocketing  prices,  very  little  prop- 
erty actually  changed  hands.  So  hectic  was  the  pace  that 
the  trading  was  done  in  contracts  to  purchase  with  lo  per 
cent  down.  Nobody  had  time  for  formal  deeds.  As  a  result, 
when  the  bottom  fell  out,  everybody  owed  everyone  else  and 
nobody  owned  anything.  An  exception  was  Uncle  John,  who 
still  owned  his  islands. 

However,  he  realized  that  you  could  not  even  give  land  in 
Florida  away,  so  he  cut  his  losses.  Overnight  the  bulldozers 
stopped  snorting,  the  trucks  stood  still,  concrete  solidified  in 
the  mixers,  and,  as  silence  settled  on  the  keys,  the  jungle 
thrust  its  first  tentative  tendrils  under  roadways  that  led  no- 
where. Most  melancholy  spectacle  of  all  was  the  rusting  steel- 
work of  the  Sarasota  Ritz-Carlton  rising  from  the  mangrove 
swamps  like  the  skeleton  of  a  gigantic  dinosaur  which  had 
become  obsolete  before  it  had  even  evolved. 

Though  the  Florida  debacle  put  a  considerable  crimp  in 
John  Ringling's  finances,  it  did  not  really  shake  them.  His  in- 
terests were  too  vast  and  too  far-flung,  and  in  those  years, 
when  the  whole  nation  was  exhibiting  the  preliminary  symp- 
toms of  the  speculative  hysteria  which  had  lured  the  Floridi- 
ans  to  destruction,  tliey  were  enormously  profitable. 

Though  he  stopped  his  grandiose  plans  for  its  development. 
Uncle  John  did  not  forsake  Sarasota.  He  now  regarded  it  as 
his  home  town,  and  he  sought  means  to  restore  its  fortunes. 

He  had  been  thinking  up  ways  to  publicize  Sarasota  for 
years.  Back  in  1923  he  had  conceived  the  idea  of  preparing 
the  big  Worcester  house  on  Bird  Key  as  a  winter  White  House 


BUST  AND  BOOM  209 

for  his  friend  President  Harding.  It  was  a  felicitous  thought, 
for  at  that  time  Bird  Key  could  only  be  reached  by  water  and 
therefore  would  be  easy  to  guard.  And  the  spacious  white 
mansion  even  had  a  circular  veranda  with  Corinthian  columns 
like  the  south  portico  of  the  real  White  House.  The  only 
trouble  with  the  plan  was  that  President  Harding  died  in  a 
miasma  of  government  scandal  that  summer. 

In  the  spring  of  1927  Uncle  John  had  an  even  better  plan, 
which  was  to  move  the  circus  winter  quarters  from  Bridge- 
port to  Sarasota.  He  foresaw  that  it  not  onlv  would  be  a  great 
tom-ist  attraction  for  his  beloved  little  city  but  would  reduce 
circus  overhead.  The  great  cost  of  heating  those  block-long 
brick  animal  barns  in  Bridgeport  would  be  viitually  elimi- 
nated, for  only  the  most  delicate  animals  would  need  artificial 
heat  in  Florida,  and  then  only  for  a  short  time.  In  addition, 
he  thought  the  circus  people  could  live  far  more  comfortably 
and  cheaply  in  Florida.  He  was  right,  of  course,  but  his 
abrupt  decision  caused  considerable  dismay  at  first. 

Fred  Bradna  describes  being  called  from  Bridgeport  to  Ca' 
d'Zan  in  March  1927  and  watching  Mr.  John  absorb  one  of 
his  huge  afternoon  breakfasts.  Then  my  uncle  told  him  of  his 
decision  to  buy  the  old  fairgrounds  for  winter  quarters.  Ac- 
cording to  Bradna,  he  said,  "I  can  buy  the  land  for  twenty- 
nine  cents  on  the  dollar,  now.  I'm  going  to  make  Sarasota  one 
of  the  sights  of  the  South.  Think  of  the  tourists  who  would 
visit  our  winter  quarters  here  and  pay  for  it.  Revenue  in  mid- 
winter, that's  the  ticketl" 

He  ordered  Bradna  to  break  the  news  in  Bridgeport,  which 
the  equestrian  director  was  afraid  to  do.  He  knew  tliat  many 
of  the  permanent  staff  were  born  and  bred  Bridgeportians, 
and  he  thought  they  would  take  it  hard.  However,  Fred  was 
even  more  afraid  of  Uncle  John,  so  he  finally  carried  out  his 
orders;  and  he  was  agreeably  surprised  tliat,  after  the  first 
gasp  of  horror,  most  of  the  circus  people  sensibly  began  to 


210  JOHN   MNGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

look  forward  to  wintering  in  the  South,  In  fact,  the  only  per- 
son who  was  really  upset  was  "Good  Luck"  Lombard,  who 
ran  their  favorite  speak-easy.  He  just  kept  on  moaning,  "Say 
it  isn't  sol" 

Uncle  John  gave  a  banquet  for  seventy  prominent  Floridi- 
ans  and  imported  big  shots  to  announce  liis  coup.  On  the 
menu  were  terrapin  soup,  to  which  his  special  terrapin  pool 
at  Ca'  d'Zan  contributed,  and  Sophie's  (the  Alsatian  cook) 
chef-d'oeuvre,  roast  pheasant  with  wine  kraut.  The  next  day 
he  went  to  the  faugrounds  with  Bradna  and  personally  laid 
out  the  proposed  winter  quarters,  staking  out  the  bams, 
menagerie,  workshops,  roads,  and  railroad  sidings,  and  an 
outdoor  arena  exactly  the  size  of  Madison  Square  Garden,  in 
which  the  performers  could  practice  and  he  could  earn— while 
they  learned— the  dollars  of  gaping  tourists. 

However,  according  to  Bradna,  John  Ringling's  enthu- 
siasm, for  once,  was  generated  less  by  the  money  than  by  what 
he  was  doing  for  Sarasota,  which  now  commanded  his  loyalty 
second  only  to  the  circus  itself. 

For  a  few  years  more,  life  in  Ca'  d'Zan  went  on  at  full  tilt. 
The  house  was  filled  with  people  all  winter  long,  and  often 
the  kitchens  produced  dinner  for  a  hundred  guests.  There 
were  lawn  parties  to  which  all  Sarasota  was  invited  to  eat 
and  drink  on  the  great  terrace  while  Uncle  John's  favorite 
orchestra,  which  he  had  imported  from  Czechoslovakia, 
played  on  tlie  deck  of  the  Zalophiis.  On  Sunday  tlie  band 
gave  free  public  concerts  on  St.  Armands  Key. 

Uncle  John  did  not  much  care  for  sailing,  and  the  yacht 
was  more  oiTiamental  than  useful  to  him.  However,  he  often 
lent  it  to  his  friends.  Indeed,  his  generosity  led  to  the  sad 
end  of  Zalophus,  wliich  might  have  been  much  sadder  but 
for  his  quick  thinking.  He  was  in  New  York  one  spring,  when 
he  offered  the  boat  to  Mayor  Jimmy  Walker  and  his  lovely 


BUST  AND  BOOM  211 

lady  of  the  theater,  Betty  Compton,  for  a  Florida  cruise.  A 
well-known  banker,  who  shall  not  here  be  named,  and  his 
sweetheart  were  also  in  the  party. 

The  next  tiling  Uncle  John  heard  was  a  telephone  call  from 
his  red-faced  captain,  Al  Roan,  who  said,  "I  don't  know  how 
to  tell  you  this,  Mr.  John,  sir.  But  the  fact  is  we  hit  an  un- 
charted sand  bar  right  in  Sarasota  Bay,  and  Zalophus  sank." 

"Jesus I"  said  Uncle  John.  "Anybody  drowned?" 

"No,  sir.  I  got  'em  off  in  the  launch,  but  they  act  like  they 
wish  they  had.  They're  scared  wild  of  the  publicity." 

"Who  knows  about  it?" 

"Nobody  yet.  It  was  black  night." 

"Listen  carefully,  Al,"  Uncle  John  said.  "You  take  those  peo- 
ple to  Tampa  and  put  them  aboard  a  train  for  New  York  or 
anywhere  there's  a  train  going.  That  boat  won't  sink  until  to- 
morrow morning!"  Nor  did  she— according  to  the  newspapers. 

Maintaining  the  enormous  flow  of  liquor  at  Ca'  d'Zan  in 
Prohibition  days  required  some  illegal  ingenuity.  Supplies  of 
run-of-the-mill  stuff  were  easy  enough  to  get,  but  the  fine 
wines  and  whiskies  which  my  uncle  loved  were  less  easy  to 
come  by.  Though  he  was  a  moderate  drinker,  or  because  of 
this,  perhaps,  he  was  very  particular.  His  favorites  were 
Peter  Dawson's  Old  Curio  scotch  before  dinner  and  either 
Pilsner  or  Beck's  beer  from  Bremen  afterward.  A  rumrunner's 
craft  once  felicitously  foundered  off  Ca'  d'Zan  and  my  uncle, 
with  his  friend  and  neighbor  Ralph  Caples,  profited  thereby. 
They  bought  and  salvaged  the  entire  cargo. 

To  conserve  his  supply  of  Old  Curio,  which  he  had  laid  in 
years  previously  by  direct  piuchase  from  his  friend  Sir  Peter 
Dawson,  he  ordered  Tomlinson  to  keep  the  dusty  cobwebbed 
bottles  and  refill  them  with  bootlegged  White  Horse.  "I  leave 
it  to  your  discretion,"  he  said  to  his  butler,  "which  guests  get 
the  real  thing  and  which  won't  know  the  difference." 

Nevertheless,  John  Ringling  was  generous  with  liquor.  His 


212  JOHN  KCsTGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

standing  order  to  Tomlinson  was  "Never  ask  a  guest  if  hell 
have  another  drink.  Even  if  he's  faUing  down  drunk,  just  say, 
'Will  you  have  a  drink,  sir?' " 

There  was  one  time  when  Tomlinson  got  into  trouble  by 
following  these  instructions.  It  was  during  a  visit  by  Jimmy 
Walker,  who  came  to  open  a  dog-racing  track  which  my 
uncle  had  promoted.  As  the  time  drew  near  for  the  mayor  of 
New  York  to  go  to  the  track  to  speak,  Uncle  John  observed 
that  he  was  incapable  not  only  of  speech  but  even  of  locomo- 
tion. A  hurricane  blew  up  around  poor  Tomlinson's  head. 
"You  ought  to  have  better  sense  than  to  let  him  get  like  this," 
Jolin  Ringling  thundered.  "He's  got  to  make  a  speech. 
Do  somethingl" 

Tomlinson  told  his  wife  Hedwig,  "Make  some  strong  coflFee. 
Make  it  hke  licorice." 

He  fed  cup  after  cup  to  the  mayor,  who  drank  it  docilely— 
he  was  always  courteous  and  amiable  even  when  half-seas 
over.  Tomlinson  laced  the  last  cup  of  coffee  with  brandy  to 
complete  His  Honor's  restoration.  Those  who  heard  him,  say 
that  Walker  made  one  of  the  best  speeches  of  his  life. 

Meanwhile  the  grand  design  of  the  museum  was  tak- 
ing shape  on  the  land  just  south  of  Ca'  dTian.  It  must,  of 
course,  be  Italian  in  feeling,  and  so  Uncle  John,  with  his  ar- 
chitect, John  H.  Phillips  of  New  York,  planned  it  on  the 
classic  lines  of  an  Italian  villa.  From  the  severely  simple  east 
fagade,  two  long,  low  wings  stretched  westward  toward  the 
bay  enclosing  a  formal  garden  filled  with  lovely  ancient 
bronze  and  stone  sculptures.  The  garden  ended  in  a  mirror 
pool,  beyond  which  stood  the  heroic  "David"  of  Michelan- 
gelo. It  was  one  of  three  bronze  replicas  cast  from  the  original 
marble  on  the  four  hundi-edtli  anniversary  of  Michelangelo's 
biith  in  1874.  O^  the  others  one  remains  in  Florence  and  the 
thiid  is  in  the  Vatican  Museum  in  Rome.  The  museum  itself 


BUST  AND  BOOM  213 

was  made  of  rose-pink  stucco,  and  the  rounded  arches  of  the 
colonnades  of  the  garden  court  were  supported  by  nearly  a 
hundred  slender  ancient  marble  columns  brought  from  Italy. 
The  flat  balustraded  roof  was  lined  with  the  best  statues  in 
the  collection.  It  was  by  any  standard  a  tiling  of  rare  beauty, 
and  it  housed  beauty  incomparable. 

By  this  time  the  John  Ringling  Collection  consisted  of  over 
seven  hundred  pictures,  not  all  of  them  good,  but  some  of 
them  great.  In  the  museum  the  first  room  you  entered  was 
designed  for  the  four  great  Rubens  cartoons.  They  hang 
there  now.  As  you  come  in,  their  sheer  magnificence,  the 
glory  of  color  and  design,  literally  stuns  you,  so  that  it  takes 
a  little  time  to  compose  yourself  sufficiently  to  study  tliem 
rationally. 

Inevitably,  the  rest  is  something  of  an  anticlimax,  but  a 
magnificent  anticlimax.  Uncle  John  loved,  above  all,  the 
seventeenth-century  Baroque,  whose  splendid  exuberance 
was  in  harmony  with  his  character.  His  taste  was  out  of  fash- 
ion then,  so  he  was  able  to  obtain  great  works  of  tliis  period 
for  a  fraction  of  the  price  which  the  changing  vogue  makes 
them  worth  today.  However,  he  did  not  let  liis  personal  pref- 
erence unbalance  the  collection  which  he  designed  for  the 
benefit  of  the  people  of  Florida.  Instead,  he  acquired  master- 
pieces of  all  the  great  classic  schools  of  painting,  stopping,  as 
though  a  curtain  had  fallen,  at  the  beginning  of  modernism. 

Since  catalogues,  even  of  the  beautiful,  are  boring,  I  will 
drop  only  a  few  eminent  names  to  show  the  range  of  the  col- 
lection. In  it  are  represented  Fra  Bartolommeo,  Veronese, 
Tintoretto,  Titian,  Andrea  del  Sarto,  Canaletto,  Bassano, 
Sassoferrato,  Piero  di  Cosimo,  Lucas  Cranach,  Rem- 
brandt, Frans  Hals,  Breughel,  Cuyp,  Jan  Fyt,  El  Greco, 
Velazquez,  MuriUo,  Goya,  Jean  Marc  Nattier,  Raeburn, 
Reynolds,  Gainsborough,  and  Lawrence;  and  so  on  and  so  on, 
through  pages  and  pages  of  great  names  whose  mention  stiis 
but  a  dim  anticipation  of  tlie  beauty  they  created. 


214  JOHN  RESTGLING   AND  THE   NORTHS 

In  1928,  when  work  was  only  starting  on  the  great  project, 
though  most  of  the  pictures  were  aheady  safely  housed 
in  warehouses  in  New  York  and  Florida  and  in  Ca'  dTian, 
John  Ringling  publicly  announced  his  gift  to  Florida.  Mark 
you,  he  signed  no  deed  of  gift  or  any  legal  document.  The 
whole  great  collection  was  still  in  his  name  and  remained  so 
on  the  day  he  died.  But  having  given  his  word,  he  regarded 
himself  merely  as  a  trustee.  So  when  the  time  came  when  tlie 
sale  of  just  one  of  those  masterpieces  would  have  pulled  him 
back  from  the  verge  of  ruin,  he  refused  to  consider  it.  Thus, 
tliis  uncle  of  mine,  who  began  life  as  a  barefoot  boy  on  the 
banks  of  the  Mississippi,  made  himself  a  millionaire,  and 
loved  to  live  the  life  of  a  Renaissance  prince,  ultimately  risked 
all  to  leave  intact  tlie  dream  he  had  created. 

Now  the  circus  was  having  its  golden  autumnal  age.  Every 
year  Uncle  John  brought  back  the  cream  of  the  European 
crop  of  new  acts.  He  kept  the  best  of  the  old  ones  and  intro- 
duced such  new  faces  as  Con  Colleano,  the  Wallendas,  and 
Zacchini.  I  suspect  that  at  this  time  it  was  not  only  The 
Greatest  Show  on  Earth  but  the  greatest  show  there  ever  had 
been  on  this  planet. 

Of  course,  such  entertainment  was  dated.  The  world  had 
moved— how  it  had  movedl  Because  they  have  mellowed  in 
retrospect,  we  forget  what  a  violent  contrast  the  twenties 
presented  to  tlie  serene  and  secure  years  which  had  preceded 
World  War  I.  This  change  was  even  more  shattering  than  the 
difference  between  our  era  and  the  one  which  was  blown  to 
bits  by  the  first  atom  bomb.  For  by  now  we  have  grown  un- 
happily accustomed  to  mechanization,  to  ruthless  war  and 
genocide,  to  tlie  disintegration  of  moral  standards,  and  to  a 
sense  of  total  insecurity.  But  the  adult  population  of  those 
days  Jiad  grown  up  believing  that  mankind  had  become 
civilized.  They  were  utterly  appalled  by  the  sudden  revela- 


BUST  AND  BOOM  215 

tion  of  savagery  erupting  through  its  well-bred  surface  when 
for  the  &st  time  the  whole  world  went  to  war. 

Despite  the  flush  of  materialistic  triumphs,  the  great  surge 
forward  of  mechanical  and  industrial  techniques  which  were 
bringing  tremendous  advances  in  our  standard  of  living  dur- 
ing the  postwar  years,  people  were  afraid.  They  were  fright- 
ened by  the  very  progress  they  had  made  and  the  changes  it 
had  brought  about.  Even  while  they  gloried  in  their  new 
freedoms  from  the  necessity  of  long  hours  of  drudgery  and 
from  the  tyranny  of  puritanical  conventions,  they  secretly 
longed  for  something  permanent  and  unchanging.  I  tliink 
that  is  why  the  circus  was  so  popular. 

For  it  was  almost  the  only  thing  in  that  era  of  flux  which 
had  not  changed  at  all.  In  its  essentials  it  followed  the  formula 
of  the  show  which  Mr.  Barnum  had  put  on  rails  in  1871— 
better,  certainly,  less  crude  and  more  artistic,  but  basically 
the  same.  Millions  of  people  came  to  see  it  every  year  in  a 
nostalgic  return  to  remembered  serenity.  They  brought  their 
children  to  see  the  last  remaining  bit  of  tlie  simple,  happy 
America  they  had  grown  up  in. 

Uncle  John  was  perfectly  cognizant  of  this  public  reaction. 
In  fact,  it  was  why  he  worked  so  much  harder  for  the  circus 
than  for  all  his  other  enterprises,  though  they  were  far 
greater  in  scope  and  far  more  lucrative.  No  matter  how  mod- 
em his  personal  hfe,  how  deeply  he  was  involved  in  the 
hectic  finance  of  tlie  twenties,  and  how  much  he  enjoyed 
the  frenetic  pace,  he  worked  to  keep  the  circus  inviolate.  Con- 
cerning it  he  was  a  starry-eyed  romantic,  for  he  felt  that  The 
Greatest  Show  on  Earth  was  a  precious  part  of  the  American 
heritage,  which  it  was  his  responsibility  to  preserve. 


CHAPTER    XVI 


THE  MAN  FROM  "DREAMLAND" 


John  Ringling's  troubled  times  began  in  1929.  Nothing  unu- 
sual in  that,  except  that  in  his  case  personal  grief  compounded 
them.  For  several  years  Aunt  Mable  had  been  keeping  a 
secret.  So  well  did  she  counterfeit  that  no  one,  except  her  doc- 
tor, certainly  not  Uncle  John,  knew  that  she  was  mortally  ill 
of  a  complication  of  diabetes  and  Addison's  disease.  Early  in 
1929  strength  of  will  could  no  longer  overcome  their  ravages. 
That  spring  she  took  to  her  bed,  and  with  her  customary  con- 


THE   MAN  FROM     DREAMLAND  217 

sideration  for  her  husband,  died  very  quickly  in  June  1929. 

Uncle  John  was  desolated.  He  was  so  much  older  than  Ma- 
ble  and  she  was  so  vital  and  beautiful  and  gay  that  until  the 
last  few  days  he  had  never  contemplated  life  without  her.  So 
Httle  was  he  prepared  that  he,  who  hated  black,  had  no  proper 
clothes  to  wear.  Tomlinson  stripped  the  braid  off  his  butler's 
trousers  and  lent  them  to  his  master  to  wear  at  the  funeral. 

I  saw  my  uncle  in  New  York  soon  after  that.  He  was 
desperately  grief-stricken,  and  completely  convinced  that  "I 
will  never  be  gay  again."  So  sure  was  he  of  this  that  he  pre- 
sented me  with  his  entire  wardrobe  of  magnificent  suits  made 
for  him  by  Bell.  They  hung  like  curtains  on  my  lanky  frame, 
but  I  was  able  to  sell  them  very  profitably  to  a  secondhand- 
clothes  dealer  in  New  Haven.  I  am  sure  that  part  of  the  price 
was  due  to  the  labels  sewn  in  the  linings,  which  said,  "Made 
expressly  for  John  Ringling." 

The  violence  of  John  Ringling's  grief,  hke  the  storms  of  his 
rage,  was  bound  to  exhaust  itself  quickly.  Nor  could  such  a 
lusty  man  stop  living.  Within  the  year  he  was  back  at  Bell's 
ordering  a  whole  new  outfit.  In  the  summer  of  1930  he  fell 
in  love,  or  thought  he  did,  with  an  attractive  widow  named 
Mrs.  Emily  Haag  Buck,  whom  he  saw  lose  $32,000  one  night 
in  Monte  Carlo.  He  was  married  to  her  by  Mayor  Frank 
Hague  of  Jersey  City  in  December  1930. 

Why  they  ever  married  is  beyond  all  understanding;  for 
two  less  compatible  people  have  seldom  promised  to  cleave 
only  to  each  other.  That  my  uncle  was  not  easy  to  live  with 
must  be  clear  by  now.  Eccentric,  egocentric,  and  arrogant, 
able  to  impose  his  will  on  outsiders  by  tlie  power  of  his  wealth, 
and  accustomed  to  Aunt  Mable's  loving  acquiescence  in  his 
home,  John  Ringling  was  unable  to  change  even  if  he  had 
wanted  to. 

Emily  Buck  was  equally  set  in  her  ways.  She  was  rich,  at- 
tractive, and  spoiled.  She  flitted  around  the  house  so  much 


2l8  JOHN  KENGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

that  Uncle  John  would  roar  at  her,  "For  God's  sake,  Emily, 
hght  somewhere." 

Quite  early  in  their  marriage  Uncle  John  borrowed  $50,000 
from  his  new  wife,  pledging  three  of  his  fine  pictures  for  the 
loan.  This  is  not  an  exception  to  my  statement  that  he  would 
not  part  with  his  pictures.  At  the  time  he  was  not  yet  seriously 
embarrassed  and  thought  it  was  merely  a  temporary  accom- 
modation. 

Under  such  circumstances  the  marriage  could  hardly  be  ex- 
pected to  last.  It  did  not.  They  were  separated  within  two 
years  and  their  divorce  was  within  one  week  of  becoming  final 
when  Uncle  John  died  in  1936. 

John  Ringling's  first  step  on  the  facile  descent  to  insolvency 
was  due  to  his  faults  and  his  virtues,  to  his  pride  and  his 
ideals.  In  the  spring  of  1929  it  was  time  to  negotiate  the  usual 
circus  contract  with  Madison  Square  Garden  for  the  season 
of  1930.  A  date  was  set  for  a  meeting  with  the  ojQBcials  of  the 
Garden.  Uncle  John  did  not  show  up. 

There  is  no  explanation  of  why  he  did  not  keep  this  critical 
engagement,  but  it  is  no  great  mystery,  either.  He  was  quite 
accustomed  to  making  engagements  with  important  people 
and  breaking  them  cavalierly.  However,  the  directors  of  the 
Garden  corporation  were  aheady  irritated  with  him.  When 
the  meeting  finally  took  place  they  told  him  that  they  would 
sign  only  on  condition  that  the  circus  did  not  play  Friday 
nights  in  order  to  permit  the  very  profitable  prize  fights  to 
take  place.  At  the  end  of  a  violent  scene  Uncle  John  told  them 
with  anatomical  exactitude  precisely  where  they  could  put 
their  contract,  and  announced  that  the  circus  would  open  at 
the  22nd  Regiment  Armory. 

The  Garden  promptly  made  a  contract  with  the  American 
Circus  Corporation,  our  only  serious  rivals,  for  April  1930. 

John  Ringling  was  thunderstruck.  He  was  so  stricken  and 


THE   MAN   FROM   "dREAMLANd"  219 

hurt  that  for  a  little  while  he  was  not  even  angry.  Then,  as  he 
pondered  what  he  thought  of  as  blackhearted  treachery,  his 
rage  generated  in  itself  until  it  was  all-consuming,  destroying 
his  business  judgment. 

There  is  considerable  excuse  for  his  intense  emotion.  For 
over  fifty  years  either  Barnum  &  Bailey  or  Ringling  Brothers 
or  the  Combined  Shows  had  opened  in  Madison  Square 
Gai  den.  In  fact,  both  the  old  Garden  and  the  new  had  been 
bui't  for  this  very  purpose.  It  was  unthinkable  to  my  uncle, 
and  indeed  to  many  other  people,  that  a  rival  circus  should 
play  there. 

In  John  Ringling's  fiery  brain  there  were  only  two  possible 
alternatives— either  to  buy  the  Garden  or  the  American  Circus 
Co -poration.  The  first  he  discarded  because  the  other  circus 
would  still  have  a  contract.  He  bought  the  American  Circus 
Corporation  from  its  owners,  Jeremiah  Mugivan,  Albert 
Bowers,  and  Edward  Ballard— all  old  circus  friends  of  his 
—for  about  $2,000,000.  He  paid  only  a  little  cash  down  and 
gave  his  personal  note  for  $1,700,000  to  the  Prudence  Bond 
and  Mortgage  Company,  which  financed  the  deal.  "I'm  play- 
ing the  Garden  next  year,"  said  Uncle  John. 

Now,  this  transaction  was  not  quite  as  foolish  as  it  seemed; 
or  to  put  it  another  way,  it  did  not,  at  that  time,  seem  as  fool- 
ish as  it  was.  The  American  Circus  Corporation  owned  five 
good  little  circuses— Sells-Floto,  Hagenbach-Wallace,  John 
Robinson,  Sparks,  and  Al  G.  Barnes.  They  had  bought  the 
last  two  in  1928.  Their  total  assets  included  150  railroad  cars, 
2000  animals,  tents,  baggage  stock,  and  4500  people.  It  was 
definitely  a  going  concern. 

John  Ringling  proposed  to  incorporate  a  new  company  and 
sell  its  shares  to  the  stock-avid  public,  thus  paying  oft  the  note. 
His  Wall  Street  associates  told  him  that  they  would  have  no 
trouble  floating  such  an  issue,  backed  as  it  was  by  very  real  as- 
sets and  his  own  great  name.  That  was  the  grave  miscalcula- 
tion. 


220  JOHN   EINGLING  AND  THE  NORTHS 

Everyone  who  was  in  any  way  connected  with  finance  re- 
members the  terrible  days  in  October  1929,  when  the  great 
American  dream  of  boundless  prosperity  bm^st  on  the  floor  of 
the  New  York  Stock  Exchange  in  a  bedlam  of  bellowing 
brokers  and  chattering  tickers,  punctuated  by  occasional 
pistol  shots  and  the  thuds  of  falling  bodies.  Everyone  knows 
that  it  was  no  local  adjustment  of  the  stock  market,  but  a  mo- 
ment of  truth,  when  the  fact  that  they  had  been  living  beyond 
tlieir  means  began  to  dawn  on  the  whole  American  people.  It 
was,  in  fact,  the  end  of  a  historical  era.  It  was  also  the  end  of 
John  Ringling's  hope  of  selling  an  issue  of  circus  stock. 

Throughout  the  dismal  years  of  the  great  depression,  that 
debt  was  a  killing  encumbrance  to  John  Ringling.  He  suc- 
ceeded in  transferring  it  and  the  ownership  of  the  American 
Circus  Corporation  to  Ringling  Brothers,  despite  the  justified 
reluctance  of  Aunt  Edith  and  Richard  Ringling,  but  it  was, 
nevertheless,  his  obligation. 

Of  course,  his  other  great  interests  went  bad,  too— almost 
every  business  in  America  did.  The  circus,  which  had  netted 
$1,000,000  in  1929,  was  doing  so  badly  that  in  1931  it  closed 
down  on  September  14,  the  earliest  date  thus  far  in  its  long 
history.  But  Uncle  John  would  have  been  able  to  ride  out  the 
storm  had  it  not  been  for  that  piece  of  paper  as  heavy  as  a 
granite  boulder  dragging  him  down  into  ever  deeper  water. 

Another  aspect  of  his  character  did  not  help.  He  had  an 
amazing  faculty  for  ignoring  bad  news.  It  was  as  though  his 
mind  were  divided,  like  the  hull  of  a  ship,  into  thought-tight 
compartments  and  he  could  close  the  doors  on  any  fact  he 
did  not  want  to  face. 

I  remember  once  years  later,  after  Uncle  John  had  had  his 
stroke,  in  the  darkest  days  at  Ca'  d'Zan,  we  were  having  din- 
ner when  the  doorbell  rang.  TomHnson  had  long  since 
departed  along  with  most  of  tlie  cash-consimiing  luxuries,  so  I 


THE   MAN   FROM     DREAMLAND  221 

went  to  the  door.  It  was  a  United  States  deputy  marshal,  and 
he  wanted  to  see  Mr.  Ringling. 

Knowing  well  that  this  meant  another  action  for  debt- 
there  were  over  a  hundred  suits  pending— I  went  back  and 
told  Uncle  John. 

"For  God's  sake,  tell  him  I'm  not  here,"  he  said. 

"I'm  afraid  he  knows  you  are." 

"How  does  he  know?" 

"You  haven't  gone  out." 

"Buddy,  don't  argue  with  me,"  Uncle  John  said  sharply. 
"Tell  the  man  I'm  not  in." 

But  I  was  young  and  inexperienced  and  had  let  the  marshal 
follow  me  far  enough  to  see  and  hear  Uncle  John.  So  I  had  to 
biave  my  uncle's  ire  and  tell  him  that  the  man  was  in  and 
refused  to  leave. 

"Very  well,"  said  Uncle  John.  "Tell  him  to  wait." 

Then,  just  as  though  nothing  had  happened,  we  went  on 
with  dinner,  which,  incidentally,  was  the  result  of  a  com- 
bined operation  of  his  trained  nurse,  myself,  and  Uncle  John. 
As  we  hngered  over  coffee  he  was  never  more  charming,  tell- 
ing wonderfully  amusing  stories  of  the  old  days.  You  would 
have  thought  that  he  had  not  a  care  in  the  world,  and  the  fact 
is  he  did  not,  while  the  meal  lasted.  Then  I  helped  him  into 
the  great  hall,  where  we  found  the  marshal  looking  a  little 
lonely  amid  its  splendors.  Uncle  John  put  him  at  ease  with 
the  charming  affability  of  an  English  duke  greeting  his  favor- 
ite bailiff,  was  served  with  the  papers,  and  undoubtedly  for- 
got all  about  tliem. 

This  strange  ability  to  ignore  trouble  was  probably  an  as- 
set to  John  Ringling  in  the  good  days.  It  saved  him  from  un- 
necessary worry,  which  has  reduced  other  men  in  positions  of 
great  stress  to  ulcer-ridden  misantliropes.  But  it  was  almost 
fatal  in  such  a  time  of  crisis.  So  Httle  did  Uncle  John  concern 
himself  about  his  crumbling  fortunes  that  in  1931,  when  they 


222  JOHN  mNGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

were  tottering  toward  the  final  disaster,  he  went  to  Europe  as 
usual  and  attended  a  sale  at  Cliristie's  in  London,  where  he 
bought  more  paintings  for  his  beloved  museum. 

That  year  my  cousin  Richard  Ringling  died.  He  had  gone 
through  five  or  six  million  dollars  and  his  estate  was  a  tangled 
mess  whose  principal  asset  was  his  one-third  interest  in  the 
Combined  Shows.  To  help  his  widow,  Aubrey  Barlow  Ring- 
ling,  in  her  distress,  Uncle  John  squeezed  some  money  for  her 
out  of  the  hard-pressed  circus. 

John  Ringling's  personal  crash  came  in  1932.  In  the  spring 
of  that  year  he  suffered  a  clot  in  an  artery  in  his  leg  which 
threatened  blood  poisoning  and  amputation.  His  superb  con- 
stitution and  ability  not  to  worry  pulled  him  through,  but  he 
was  told  he  must  have  a  period  of  rest  free  from  the  pressure 
of  affairs  and  the  importunities  of  creditors.  For  his  hideaway 
he  chose  the  Half  Moon  Hotel  in  Coney  Island,  which  along 
with  Dreamland  Amusement  Park  was  owned  by  his  great 
and  good  friend  Sam  Gumpertz,  with  whom  he  had  been  as- 
sociated in  several  business  ventures  and  who  sometimes  ac- 
companied him  to  Europe.  There  he  would  be  peaceful  and 
safe— so  he  thought. 

Samuel  W.  Gumpertz  was  an  ambitious  man  who  had 
started  his  career  as  an  acrobat  at  the  age  of  nine.  He  had 
been,  in  turn,  a  candy  butcher,  usher,  actor,  singer,  press 
agent,  and,  in  an  off  moment,  a  cowboy,  before  he  became  a 
producer  of  kinetoscopes,  as  the  earliest  moving  pictures  were 
called.  He  was  on  the  road  with  a  flicker  called  The  Corona- 
tion of  the  Czar  in  1897  when  the  fantastically  extravagant 
Bradley  Martin  fancy-dress  ball  hit  all  the  newspapers.  Gum- 
pertz changed  the  name  of  his  picture  to  The  Bradley  Martin 
Ball  and  raised  the  price  from  a  nickel  to  fifteen  cents.  That 
put  him  on  the  road  to  fortune  as  a  successful  theatrical 
producer,  showman,  and  real-estate  operator.  What  Uncle 


THE   MAN   FROM     DREAMLAND  223 

John  did  not  know  was  that  Sam's  ambitions  included  owning 
The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth. 

While  John  Ringling  was  recuperating  at  the  Half  Moon 
Hotel,  two  things  were  happening.  An  interest  payment  on 
tlie  circus  note,  which  had  been  reduced  to  $1,017,000,  was 
defaulted;  and  Sam  Gumpertz  organized  two  groups  of  busi- 
nessmen, who,  under  the  corporate  titles  of  Allied  Owners 
and  New  York  Investors,  bought  the  note  from  tlie  Prudence 
Company. 

Gumpertz  also  gained  the  confidence  of  Edith  and  Aubrey 
Ringling.  This  was  easy  enough  in  the  case  of  Aunt  Edith, 
who  had  disliked  her  brother-in-law  for  years  and  who  had 
been  further  incensed  by  his  cavalier  treatment  of  her  rights 
in  the  circus.  Aubrey  was,  I  believe,  fond  of  Uncle  John,  but 
her  share  of  the  circus  was  the  only  support  of  herself  and  her 
children.  Gumpertz  succeeded  in  convincing  her  that  John 
Ringling  had  lost  his  grip  and  was  bringing  the  show  to  ruin. 

Now  only  one  thing  more  remained  before  they  snapped 
tlie  trap  on  tlie  unsuspecting  invalid.  This  was  to  get  a  com- 
plete list  of  John  Ringling's  vast  and  scattered  assets.  This 
they  did,  down  to  the  very  last  laundry,  through  one  of  his 
most  trusted  employees. 

In  July  1932  John  Ringling  was  summoned  to  a  meeting  of 
the  circus  creditors  and  his  relative-partners.  When  he  limped 
into  that  luxurious  office  he  was  utterly  dumfounded  and  con- 
fused to  find  who  were  his  enemies.  He  looked  dumbly  from 
Edith  to  Aubrey,  his  close  Wall  Street  friend  William  Greve, 
who  represented  Allied  Owners,  and  to  Sam  Gumpertz. 
Though  he  may  have  been  autocratic  and  foolish  in  his  deal- 
ings witli  Aunt  Edith,  he  believed  he  had  guarded  her  inter- 
ests. To  Aubrey  he  had  shown  great  kindness.  To  find  them 
arrayed  against  him  was  a  fearful  shock  because  of  liis  strong 
feeling  of  family  solidarity. 

He  was  almost  as  shaken  by  the  implacable  attitude  of 


224  JOHN  RINGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

Gumpertz,  who  up  to  that  moment  had  been  so  solicitous  for 
his  health,  so  warm  in  his  professions  of  friendship. 

It  was  Gumpertz  who  deHvered  the  carefully  thought-out 
ultimatum.  Because  one  installment  of  interest  on  the  note 
had  not  been  paid,  Allied  Owners  claimed  they  were  in  a 
position  to  throw  Ringling  Brothers-Bamum  &  Bailey  into 
bankruptcy  and  to  take  it  over.  They  would  refrain  from  do- 
ing so  only  on  the  following  conditions: 

1.  The  circus  would  be  turned  into  a  stock  company  to  be 
chartered  in  Delaware. 

2.  The  creditor  groups  would  receive  lo  per  cent  of  the 
stock  as  a  bonus  for  their  work  in  forming  the  corporation. 
The  remainder  of  the  stock  would  be  divided  one  third  to 
each  of  the  partners— Edith,  Aubrey,  and  John  Ringling. 

3-  The  note  for  $1,017,000  would  be  assumed  by  the  new 
corporation;  but  to  secure  it  John  Ringling  would  pledge  all 
of  his  personal  assets,  a  full,  itemized  list  of  which  was  ap- 
pended. The  banking  group  would  hold  them  as  collateral  un- 
til the  note  was  paid  off. 

Probably  for  the  first  time  since  he  had  started  his  own  busi- 
ness at  the  age  of  twelve,  John  Ringling  felt  unable  to  cope 
with  a  situation.  He  was  in  a  state  of  shock,  beaten  down  and 
bewildered  by  the  sudden  onslaught  of  misfortune,  and  un- 
done by  the  disloyalty  of  his  friends  and  kin.  In  fact,  he  did 
not  even  have  a  lawyer  to  consult,  for  the  circus  attorney, 
John  M.  Kelly,  was  advising  the  opposition.  Had  Uncle  John 
had  a  good  lawyer  of  his  own,  he  would  have  been  advised 
that  it  was  legally  impossible  to  throw  the  circus  into  bank- 
ruptcy without  a  long-drawn-out  lawsuit.  As  it  was,  John 
Ringling  did  not  know  where  to  turn. 

Even  a  year  or  two  previously  he  would  have  fought  back 
with  flashing  power  that  would  have  left  his  enemies  holding 
their  severed  financial  heads.  But  Uncle  John  had  been 
enfeebled  by  his  illness.  Now  he  broke  under  the  strain. 


THE   MAN   FROM     DREAMLAND  22$ 

The  terrible  dilemma,  to  his  mind,  was  that  the  ultimatum 
posed  a  conflict  of  loyalties  between  the  things  dearest  to  his 
heart:  the  circus  and  his  magnificent  gift  to  the  state  of 
Florida— his  pictures.  For  Allied  Owners  demanded  that  these 
be  pledged  as  collateral  as  well.  Even  in  those  depression  days 
Uncle  John  could  have  sold  a  few  masterpieces  and  cleared 
himself— but  this  was  unthinkable  to  him.  So,  too,  was  the 
idea  of  hocking  them  to  the  creditors.  Most  unthinkable  of 
all  was  permitting  the  circus  to  be  thrown  into  bankruptcy 
and  losing  it  forever. 

In  the  end  he  surrendered  almost  unconditionally.  The  one 
concession  he  demanded,  and  got,  was  that  another  corpora- 
tion be  formed  called  the  Rembrandt  Corporation,  to  which 
he  deeded  his  art  collection.  He  then  put  up  the  stock  of  his 
corporation  as  part  of  the  collateral  his  creditors  demanded. 
AH  his  other  assets  were  also  pledged. 

Ringling  Brothers-Barnum  &  Bailey  Combined  Shows,  In- 
corporated, was  duly  formed  in  Wilmington,  Delaware.  Then 
came  the  dramatic  moment  of  the  first  stockholders'  meeting, 
at  which  John  Ringling  received  the  ultimate  blow.  After  the 
preliminaries  had  been  completed,  it  was  proposed  and 
seconded  that  John  Ringling  be  elected  titular  president  of 
the  new  corporation— for  the  sake  of  his  name— at  the  token 
salary  of  $5000  a  year— his  drawing  account  had  always  been 
$50,000.  Sam  Gumpertz  was  to  be  general  manager  in  com- 
plete charge  of  running  the  circus— he  had  no  experience  in 
circus  management.  Edith  and  Aubrey  Ringling  and  Jolm  M. 
Kelly  were  to  be  vice-presidents. 

Almost  incredulous  of  his  hearing,  John  Ringling  voted  his 
30  per  cent  of  the  stock  against  the  proposition.  Edith  voted 
her  30  per  cent  for  it;  and,  of  course,  Gumpertz's  group  voted 
dieir  10  per  cent  of  the  stock  in  favor.  Thus  the  balloting  stood 
40  per  cent  for,  30  per  cent  against.  At  this  moment,  Aubrey, 
who  seemed  terribly  unhappy  about  the  situation,  said,  "Now 


226  JOHN  RINGLING  AISTD  THE   NORTHS 

there  have  been  enough  votes  cast.  It's  all  settled,  so  I  don't 
have  to  vote  at  all." 

Uncle  John  focused  his  bulldog  eyes  on  her.  He  would 
spare  neither  her  nor  himself.  "You  will  vote,  Aubrey,"  he  said. 
"I  must  know  where  you  stand." 

Aubrey  voted,  and  the  balloting  now  stood  70  per  cent  for 
the  opposition  slate,  30  per  cent  against.  Thus  the  last  of  the 
brothers  lost  control  of  their  circus. 

There  remains  a  tragic  anticlimax.  That  autumn  John 
Ringling  began  negotiating  a  contract  with  the  Christiani 
family,  who  had  the  greatest  equestrian  act  left  in  the  world. 
One  afternoon,  as  he  was  sitting  in  his  little  oflBce,  he  suflEered 
a  paralytic  stroke.  He  managed  to  stagger  part  way  to  the  door 
in  an  attempt  to  get  home,  and  collapsed. 

Crumpled  in  the  pocket  of  the  suit  he  was  wearing  we 
found  a  telegram  informing  him  that  he  must  cease  his 
negotiations  with  the  Christianis— they  afterward  came  to  the 
show— and,  furthermore,  if  in  the  future  he  tried  to  take  any 
part  in  the  operation  of  the  circus,  "we  will  hold  a  stockhold- 
ers' meeting  and  turn  you  out."  It  was  signed  "Sam  Gum- 
pertz." 


CHAPTER   XVII 


THE  LAST  PARADE 


In  one  sense.  Uncle  John  made  an  amazing  recovery  from  his 
illness,  due  to  that  tremendous  vitality  of  his.  After  five  or  six 
weeks  rest  his  speech  cleared  and  he  partly  recovered  the  use 
of  his  paralyzed  right  side.  In  another  sense,  he  never  recov- 
ered. His  power  of  instantaneous,  imperious  decision  was 


228  JOHN  RINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

gone.  He  was  frightened  and  suspicious  of  everyone.  Nor  can 
I  blame  him. 

These  were  the  years  when  my  brother  John  and  I  came  to 
know  him  well  and  love  him;  for  there  was  no  one  left  to  look 
after  him  but  us  and  our  mother.  At  this  time  Johnny  was 
working  for  the  fine  old  Wall  Street  firm  of  Parish  and  Com- 
pany, but  he  devoted  the  best  part  of  his  energies  to  what  can 
only  be  described  as  a  desperate  struggle  to  help  Uncle  John 
regain  control  of  his  fortune  and  the  circus.  After  I  graduated 
from  Yale,  I  was  with  my  uncle  almost  constantly. 

Remembering  an  incident  in  the  early  spring  of  my  junior 
year,  I  realize  how  much  I  owe  him.  We  were  coming  down 
in  the  elevator  from  his  apartment  when  he  said  to  me 
casually,  "Buddy,  do  you  really  care  about  going  back  to  Yale 
next  year?" 

Astonished,  I  said,  "Of  course  I  do.  Uncle  John.  It's  my  sen- 
ior year,  the  best  one  of  all." 

He  just  said,  "O.K.,  Buddy." 

So  I  went  back  with  the  same  allowances  and  unrestricted 
charge  accounts  at  the  co-op  I  had  always  had.  When  I 
learned  how  hard-pressed  he  then  was  for  ready  cash,  I  real- 
ized what  an  effort  it  had  been  for  him  to  give  me  that  final 
uninliibited  year.  If  he  had  told  me  of  his  circumstances  I 
would  probably  have  said,  "No,  Uncle  John,  I'll  go  with  the 
circus."  The  casual  way  he  put  it  to  me  showed  an  unsus- 
pected sensitivity  in.  his  character. 

From  the  time  he  desperately  signed  his  assets  over  to  the 
banking  groups,  John  Ringling's  position  was  increasingly 
precarious.  The  fact  is  that  the  last  four  years  of  his  life  were 
a  period  of  financial  cliff  hanging.  Though  he  still  had  a  great 
fortune,  he  also  had  large  fixed  charges,  such  as  the  taxes  on 
his  properties  in  Florida,  the  rent  of  his  apartment  at  the 
Marguery  in  New  York— 636  Fifth  Avenue  was  torn  down  to 


THE  LAST  PARADE  220 

make  room  for  Rockefeller  Center— and  many  other  unavoid- 
able obligations.  According  to  his  agreement  with  the  bank- 
ers, a  large  percentage  of  his  income  was  automatically 
diverted  to  paying  ofiF  the  note.  They  could  have  allowed  him 
to  keep  a  Httle  more  to  Hve  on  without  imperiling  their  inter- 
ests; but  they  would  not.  With  all  his  capital  assets  frozen  in 
their  hands,  he  had  no  room  to  maneuver. 

It  is  not  only  fraternal  aflFection  which  makes  me  state  that 
my  brother  John  was  remarkably  resourceful  and  steadfast  in 
his  handling  of  Uncle  John's  affairs.  He  had  absorbed  a  busi- 
ness know-how  during  his  Wall  Street  experience  and  with  his 
real-estate  agency  in  Florida  and  his  service  with  the  red 
wagon  of  the  circus;  but  his  financial  ingenuity  was  his  own. 
He  displayed  it  a  hundred  times  in  those  years,  particularly 
in  the  worst  crisis  of  all— the  attempt  to  tlirow  Uncle  John  into 
bankruptcy  in  1934. 

When  the  Florida  boom  broke  in  1926,  Owen  Burns, 
a  friend  and  business  associate  of  my  uncle's,  had  almost  com- 
pleted a  beautiful  hotel  in  Sarasota.  It  was  advantageously 
situated  on  the  bay  close  to  the  business  district.  He  went  into 
bankruptcy,  and  the  Prudence  Company— mother  of  all  our 
misfortunes— took  it  over.  John  RingUng  bought  it  from  them; 
paying  no  cash,  just  giving  his  personal  note  for  $55,000.  It 
was  a  bargain  even  for  those  depressed  prices,  as  everyone 
knows  who  has  stayed  at  the  John  Ringling  Hotel.  Of  course, 
the  hotel  was  part  of  the  collateral  held  by  Allied  Owners.  It 
was  frozen. 

In  1934  the  note  came  due,  and  payment  was  demanded 
on  the  threat  of  bankruptcy  proceedings  against  my  uncle. 
Two  other  small  debtors  joined  in  what,  I  believe,  was  a  con- 
certed effort  to  finish  him  off  financially.  We  had  to  get  the 
$55,000,  and  we  had  hardly  enough  cash  to  eat  on.  But 
Brother  John  discovered  some  hidden  assets. 

One  was  a  disbanded  branch  of  one  of  the  short-line  rail- 


230  JOHN  BINGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

roads  that  the  creditors  had  not  thought  worth  taking.  John 
sold  the  old  rails  for  $20,000.  He  sold  some  bonds  of  our 
mother's  with  her  consent  and  threw  that  money  into  the  pot. 
Then  he  succeeded  in  borrowing  $25,000  from  a  money- 
lender in  New  York  for  six  months  at  the  incredible  rate  of  in- 
terest of  25  per  cent.  When  he  heard  about  it,  Uncle  Jolm 
screamed,  "For  God's  sake,  Johnny,  are  you  trying  to  break 
me?" 

We  needed  $10,000  more.  I  knew  that  in  a  special  closet  in 
the  New  York  apartment  Uncle  John  had  400  cases  of  bourbon 
whisky  distilled  in  1893,  which  he  had  bought  fiom  Ed 
Ballard  just  before  Prohibition  went  into  eflFect.  However, 
even  though  the  Eighteenth  Amendment  had  been  repealed, 
we  needed  a  wholesale  liquor  license,  costing  $4000,  to  sell  it. 
As  John  says,  "We  did  not  have  four  cents";  nor  could  we 
borrow  a  nickel  more.  And  we  had  to  procure  the  money  in 
two  days. 

In  this  emergency  John  went  to  a  friend  who  was  in  the 
hquor  business.  This  man  agreed  to  buy  the  whisky,  paying 
$40  a  case  for  300  cases— he  sold  the  last  few  bottles  for  $50 
apiece.  Uncle  John  agreed  to  the  sale  by  telephone  and  we 
had  $12,000. 

So  John  got  the  money  and  Uncle  John  was  saved.  It  was 
like  those  old-fashioned  melodramas  with  the  prodigal  son 
galloping  up  just  in  time  to  pay  off  the  mortgage.  In  the  last 
confused  months  of  his  life  Uncle  John  told  people  in  Sar- 
asota that  Johnny  had  stolen  tlie  whisky. 

Life  was  very  strange  during  the  years  I  spent  at  Ca'  d'Zan 
with  Uncle  John,  serving  him  as  business  agent,  chauffeur, 
handyman,  and  sometimes  cook.  The  only  employees  were  liis 
trained  nurse.  Miss  Saunders,  and  faithful  Al  Roan,  the 
yacht  captain  in  happier  days,  who  did  his  best  to  keep  the 
grounds  and  gardens  from  going  back  to  the  jungle. 


THE   LAST  PARADE  23I 

Yet  we  lived  in  a  setting  of  magnificence.  The  huge  house 
was  so  well  built  that  there  were  few  signs  of  decay  even 
though  nothing  was  spent  on  upkeep.  The  substantial  fur- 
nishings got  very  little  wear  and  tear;  and  the  superb  paint- 
ings still  hung  on  the  walls  to  light  the  rooms  with  beauty. 

Since  Uncle  John  could  not  make  up  his  mind  to  part  with 
any  of  his  personal  possessions,  he  still  had  two  Fierce-Arrows 
and  five  Rolls-Royces,  some  in  New  York,  but  most  of  them 
at  Ca'  d'Zan.  One  of  the  Rollses  had  been  built  especially  for 
the  Czarina  of  Russia  in  1914.  It  got  as  far  as  Berlin  when 
World  War  I  broke  out.  Uncle  John  bought  it  there  in  1919. 
We  used  only  two  of  the  cars,  a  Fierce-Arrow  and  Uncle 
John's  favorite  1924  Rolls-Royce  touring  car. 

With  all  this  I  was  terribly  pressed  to  find  cash  to  buy  our 
groceries— our  credit  with  the  local  merchants  was  nil.  Out  on 
the  rejungled  keys  were  piles  of  hardware  from  the  old 
Waldorf  Astoria  and  vast  supplies  of  plumbing— bathtubs, 
toilets,  and  other  fixtures— intended  for  the  Sarasota  Ritz- 
Carlton.  We  survived  by  selling  these  piecemeal  for  the  new 
buildings  that  were  beginning  to  spring  up  in  Sarasota.  I  be- 
came a  very  good  salesman  of  sewer  pipe. 

Another  source  of  revenue  was  big  piles  of  Spanish  tiles  on 
the  grounds  of  Ca'  d'Zan.  While  the  house  was  being  built 
Uncle  John  had  gone  to  Barcelona,  where  a  lot  of  old  build- 
ings were  being  torn  down.  He  had  bought  the  softly  weath- 
ered tiles  from  the  roofs  and  sent  two  shiploads  of  them  direct 
to  Port  Tampa.  That  was  more  than  was  needed  for  Ca' 
d'Zan  and  the  museum.  We  ate  off  the  proceeds  from  the  rest. 

A  thing  that  troubled  me  greatly  was  the  deterioration  of 
the  paintings  in  that  sea-damp  climate.  Varnish  was  cracking 
and  paint  peeling  off.  Though  the  museum  was  open  and 
some  money  came  in  through  tlie  turnstiles,  it  was  not  enough 
to  keep  the  place  staffed,  let  alone  keeping  it  up.  So  I  bought 
or  borrowed  books  from  the  library  and  studied  a  quarterly 


232  JOHN   RINGLING  AND   THE  NORTHS 

technical  paper  from  Harvard  University,  giving  myself  a 
how-to-do-it  course  in  art  restoration.  Then  I  went  through 
the  museum,  the  house,  and  the  storage  vaults  carefully  clean- 
ing the  paintings  that  seemed  most  in  need  of  it,  stripping 
and  re  varnishing  those  whose  varnish  had  cracked,  patching 
weakened  canvases,  and  gluing  back  peeling  patches  of  paint. 

It  makes  my  curly  hair  stand  straight  up  to  think  back  on 
messing  with  works  of  art  that  are  the  heritage  of  all  man- 
kind. But  it  was  better  to  have  a  dub  get  some  good  mucilage 
and  stick  the  paint  back  on  than  to  lose  it  altogether.  Uncle 
John  was  very  pleased  with  me. 

The  extraordinary  thing  about  our  penury  was  that  it  was 
all  unnecessary.  In  spite  of  the  crippling  restrictions  placed 
on  John  Ringling's  resources.  Brother  John  worked  out 
several  deals  that  would  have  relieved  us;  only  to  lose  them 
through  Uncle  John's  fatal  suspicion  and  indecision.  One  time 
Johnny  came  to  him  with  a  firm  oflFer  from  one  of  the  big  oil 
companies  of  $200,000  cash  and  25  per  cent  of  the  gross  to 
be  allowed  to  sink  a  well  on  one  of  his  unencumbered  oil 
properties.  Uncle  John  said  furiously,  "Those  crooks  are  tiy- 
ing  to  steal  my  oil." 

The  oflFer  was  good  for  sixty  days.  Just  after  it  expired  Uncle 
John  decided  to  accept  it.  He  was  too  late. 

One  would  tliink  that,  subject  to  such  frustrations,  the  life 
of  a  young  man  in  a  great  empty,  fading  mansion  with  an 
elderly  invalid  who  was  facing  ruin  would  be  distinctly  grim. 
The  contrary  was  true.  It  had  for  me  a  curious  kind  of  charm. 
Of  course,  I  had  many  young  friends  in  Sarasota,  with  whom 
I  occasionally  went  out,  but  in  the  main  I  was  tied  pretty 
closely  to  the  house.  It  was  Uncle  John  himself  who  made  it 
bearable. 

This,  again,  came  from  that  thought-compartmented  mind 
of  his  which  could  lock  out  not  only  monetary  difficulties  but 
also  the  evident  signs  of  failing  health.  He  was  as  gay  a  com- 


THE  LAST  PARADE  233 

panion  as  though  the  sap  of  youth  were  boihng  through  his 
veins  and  the  money  were  rolHng  in.  He  even  threw  off  a 
near-fatal  heart  attack  he  had  in  1934  without  losing  his 
nerve,  or  his  verve. 

In  the  evening  we  would  dine  in  the  loggia,  looking 
through  tall  windows  at  silvered  waters  with  a  quarter  moon 
sinking  over  Longboat  Key.  The  china  we  ate  from  was 
delicate  spode;  the  glasses  were  Venetian  crystal;  the  wines 
were  light  and  dry;  and  the  food,  however  hardly  come  by, 
was  delicious.  My  uncle  was  a  perfectionist  at  table  and  I 
reckon  that  I  inherited  some  of  his  taste.  My  mother,  as  I 
have  said,  was  a  master  of  Alsatian  cookery.  There  was  noth- 
ing my  uncle  liked  better  than  to  have  dinner  at  our  house, 
when  she  would  cook  for  him  all  those  dishes  he  had  loved 
from  the  time  they  were  children  together. 

At  Ca'  d'Zan  I  would  push  him  into  the  cavernous  kitchen 
in  his  wheel  chair  and  he  would  sit  there  directing  operations 
while  Miss  Saunders  and  I  prepared  the  food.  With  this  and 
that  I  became  quite  an  accomplished  chef. 

But  the  best  part  of  the  meal  came  when  we  lighted  our 
cigars  and  sipped  our  coffee  and  liqueurs  while  Uncle  John 
bubbled  with  the  fun  of  living,  clowning  outrageously  for  our 
benefit.  One  night,  when  his  divorce  proceedings  from  Emily 
were  in  full  swing,  the  telephone  rang.  It  was  long  distance 
calling  "Mrs.  John  Ringling."  Uncle  John  screwed  his  face  up 
in  a  wonderfully  woebegone  expression  and  said,  "Tell  them 
that  Annie  doesn't  live  here  anymore." 

During  these  sessions  he  told  hilarious  tales  of  the  old  times 
and  made  witty  comments  on  current  affairs.  These  were  the 
early  days  of  the  New  Deal,  when  Franklin  Roosevelt's 
liberal  leadership  offered  plenty  of  opportunity  for  amusingly 
acrid  comments  by  an  old  die-hard  who  believed  that  the 
income  tax  was  unconstitutional;  and  did  not  pay  a  cent  of 
it  for  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life. 


234  JOHN  RINGLING   AND  THE   NORTHS 

However  reactionary  his  political  views,  there  were  many 
nuggets  of  real  wisdom  and  insight  gleaming  through  my 
uncle's  conversation.  I  remember  him  saying  of  my  brother, 
"The  trouble  with  Johnny  is  that  every  time  he  gets  fifty  cents 
he  thinks  he's  a  millionaire."  This,  of  course,  was  perfectly 
true,  but  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  Johnny's  ineradicable  opti- 
mism that  eventually  made  him  a  millionaire. 

A  bit  of  prudent  advice  from  Uncle  John  on  business  tactics 
was  "Never  go  after  a  Masai  warrior  with  a  buggy  whip." 

On  another  occasion  he  said,  "Don't  put  your  faith  in 
receiving  gold  coins  from  the  little  bluebirds— they  are 
definitely  more  prone  to  drop  an  entirely  different  sort  of 
commodity." 

One  of  my  uncle's  great  pleasures  and  mine  was  to  have  me 
wheel  him  tlii-ough  the  museum,  stopping  before  his  favorite 
pictures  while  he  reveled  in  their  radiance  and  made  illumi- 
nating critical  comments.  Guercino's  rendition  of  Joseph's 
spurning  of  Potiphar's  opulently  proportioned  wife  invariably 
provoked  my  uncle  to  remark,  "What  a  chump!"  Never  one 
to  defer  his  judgment  to  the  experts,  he  always  made  me  stop 
in  front  of  a  certain  painting.  Unfailingly  he  remarked,  "They 
say  it's  not,  but  I  am  convinced  it's  an  early  Titian."  And 
years  later  it  was  authenticated  as  such  by  no  less  an 
authority  than  Dr.  Wilhelm  Suida. 

Certainly  his  judgment  had  frequently  been  vindicated, 
as  once  when  he  was  walking  past  a  small  art  shop  in  New 
York  and  a  picture  in  the  window  caught  his  eye.  There  was 
something  about  the  painting  of  tlie  head  that  rang  a  bell  in 
his  brain.  He  bought  it  for  $200.  When  the  overpainting  was 
scraped  off,  it  turned  out  to  be  a  Tintoretto,  which  was  valued 
by  the  appraisers  of  his  estate  at  $50,000. 

And  how  he  would  have  chuckled  at  having  overruled 
Boehler  and  bought  the  Duke  of  Westminster's  Rubens  for 
$150,000  if  he  could  have  known  tliat  in  1959  the  Duke's 


THE   LAST  PAEADE  235 

"Adoration  of  the  Magi"  by  the  great  Flemish  master  was 
sold  at  auction  in  London  for  $770,000. 

Perhaps  the  finest  times  we  had  together  were  our  long 
automobiles  rides.  Uncle  John,  who  seldom  forgot  anything, 
might  say  to  me,  "There  is  a  wonderful  royal  pomciana  tree 
south  of  Fort  Myers  that  must  be  in  bloom  now.  I'd  like  to  see 
it  once  again." 

So  we  would  drive  a  hundred  miles  or  so  to  see  a  tree. 
And  well  worth  it! 

This  brings  me  to  what  was  almost  our  last  drive  together. 
It  was  just  before  the  cloud  of  suspicion  was  aroused  in  his 
failing  mind  that  broke  the  close  bonds  between  him  and 
my  brother  and  me.  I  shall  write  of  that  in  a  later  chapter,  but 
not  here.  For  Brother  John  expressed  our  feelings  about  it 
when  he  said,  "Nothing  that  Uncle  John  did  or  said  in  the 
last  six  months  of  his  life  makes  any  difference.  What  counts 
is  the  years  before." 

The  ride  came  about  when  Uncle  John  looked  up  from  the 
local  paper  and  said,  "The  Cole  Brothers  Circus  is  going  to 
parade  in  Pensacola  next  Thursday.  I'd  like  to  see  it." 

It  was  fifteen  years  since  either  of  us  had  seen  a  circus 
parade.  When  we  combined  the  shows,  "The  Big  One"  proved 
too  monstrous  to  parade.  The  last  time  we  did  it,  in  1919,  the 
three-mile-long  line  of  tableau  wagons,  cages,  band  wagons, 
elephants,  horses,  clowns,  and  steam  calliopes  snarled  up 
traffic  for  hours.  In  one  parade,  only  the  spectacular  driving 
of  Jake  Posey  at  the  reins  of  the  forty-horse  hitch  of  the  band 
wagon  averted  a  massacre  when  the  brakes  failed  on  the 
seven-ton  vehicle  with  its  iron-shod  wheels.  The  horses  began 
to  run  down  Beacon  Hill  in  Boston  like  a  cavahy  charge  to- 
ward the  crowd  massed  at  the  end.  No  one,  not  even  Posey 
himself,  knew  how  he  managed  to  turn  that  torrent  of  horse- 
flesh safely  around  the  comer  at  the  bottom  of  the  hill. 

On  the  appointed  day  I  drove  Uncle  Jolm  in  the  open 


236  JOHN  KENGLING  AND   THE   NORTHS 

Rolls  to  Pensacola.  There  was  a  small  hotel  with  a  second- 
story  balcony  overlooking  the  main  street,  and  I  arranged  a 
comfortable  chair  on  it  for  my  uncle.  While  we  waited  he 
sat  absolutely  silent  staring  down  at  the  gathering  crowd— 
the  small  boys  running  about  and  roughhousing,  parents  and 
just  people  buying  pennants  and  whips  and  those  familiar 
whirly  birds  from  the  vendors,  little  girls  in  frilly  dresses  star- 
ing big-eyed  up  the  cleared  roadway,  and  the  inevitable 
mongrel  pups  dashing  madly  back  and  forth.  I  was  silent,  too, 
with  a  rising  sense  of  excitement  mixed  with  sometliing  like 
dread  of  nostalgia  too  bitter  to  be  borne. 

The  thump  of  a  drum  and  a  wind-borne  blast  of  music 
brought  a  complete  hush.  Just  like  the  kids,  I  was  straining 
my  eyes  up  tlie  street.  I  saw  the  eight  horses  with  nodding 
plumes  of  the  band  wagon  round  the  corner.  Then  the  full 
blast  of  sound  hit  us,  tlie  gay,  raucous  blare  of  brass  playing 
circus  music.  It  got  louder  and  louder  and  behind  the  tootling 
musicians  I  could  see  red-and-gold  howdahs  rolling  and 
pitcliing  on  the  stately  gray  backs  of  the  elephants. 

As  the  procession  passed  beneath  us  my  professional  eyes 
automatically  noted  certain  deficiencies— gold  paint  flaking 
from  gaudy  tableau  wagons,  spangles  missing  from  worn 
costumes,  the  decrepit  condition  of  a  tired  Bengal  tiger.  And 
these  things  did  not  matter  at  all.  I  was  almost  choking  with 
excitement,  my  eyes  riveted  on  the  spectacle.  Then  I  tliought 
to  look  at  Uncle  John. 

He  was  sitting  absolutely  motionless  in  his  chair  and  tears 
were  streaming  like  miniature  cascades  fi'om  his  eyes.  That 
he  could  not  see  that  terribly  gay  scene  below  him  was 
evident;  but  having  been  so  close  to  him,  I  shared  his  inward 
vision.  At  no  other  time  would  I  presume  to  hypothesize  what 
went  on  in  my  uncle's  mind;  but  that  afternoon  I  knew. 

As  though  our  brains  were  meshed  together  in  telepathic 
television,  I  saw  with  him  the  Ringling  band  led  Iw  white- 


THE  LAST  PARADE  23/ 

whiskered  Yankee  Robinson  come  down  Broadway  in  Bara- 
boo— Al  and  Alf  T.,  Charles  blowing  mightily  on  his  trombone, 
and  Otto  lambasting  the  big  bass  drum.  And  capering  along 
with  a  French  horn  wound  around  his  shoulder,  a  gangling 
young  musician-clown  .  .  . 

I  saw  the  heavy  work  teams  and  the  farmer  boys  guiding 
our  spring  wagons  with  their  pathetic  homemade  decorations. 
Then,  in  an  Einsteinian  relativity  of  time,  the  procession 
lengthened.  There  went  the  ferocious,  man-eating  hyena,  the 
dusty  brown  bear,  and  the  glowering  bald  eagle;  elk,  lions, 
monkeys,  a  deer;  Aunt  Louise  wrapped  in  a  boa  constrictor; 
and,  very  proudly,  Babylon  and  Fannie,  those  first  ponderous 
pachyderms. 

Time  accelerated  and  vision  overlapped.  Now  came  a 
multi-team  hitch  of  horses  that  filled  the  whole  thoroughfare 
from  curb  to  curb,  pulling  a  crimson-and-gold  band  wagon 
as  long  as  a  railroad  car  with  thirty  musicians  playing  for 
dear  life.  A  herd  of  forty  elephants  in  gorgeous  trappings 
with  gorgeous  girls  on  their  backs  went  past;  a  white  horse 
curvetting  all  alone  carried  young  Ella  Bradna,  while  further 
back  rode  a  schoolgirl  named  May  Wirth.  Smiling  from  a 
splendid  carriage  was  little  Leitzel.  Another  stream  of  horses 
drew  the  Bell  Wagon,  its  carillon  chiming  sweetly  after  the 
noise  of  the  band.  Clowns  cavorted  along,  led  by  old  Herman; 
cage  after  cage  of  sleek,  pacing  jungle  beasts  were  followed 
by  the  open  dens  with  tamer  creatures— Louise  the  hippo, 
and  Katy,  bowing  her  long  reticulate  neck.  More  and  ever 
more  magnificent  tableau  wagons,  iron  wheels  rumbling  on 
cobblestones;  riding  on  them,  glimpsed  for  only  an  instant 
but  with  brilhant  clarity,  familiar  faces— young  radiant 
faces  .  .  . 

Then,  blasting  us  with  its  cacophony  until  the  buildings 
seemed  to  rock,  came  the  biggest  steam  calliope  of  them  all. 

Time  stopped.  The  real  calliope  was  passing  out  of  sight 


238  JOHN  RESTGLING  AND  THE   NORTHS 

followed  by  a  swarming  mass  of  children  young  and  old. 
Uncle  John  pushed  himself  out  of  his  chair  with  enormous 
difficulty,  and  clung  to  my  shoulder.  "Time  to  go  home, 
Buddy,"  he  said. 

On  December  2,  1936,  John  Ringling  died.  He  had  $311  in 
the  bank.  His  estate  was  ofiBcially  appraised  at  $23,500,000. 


i 


Part  IV 
JOHN  RINGLING  NORT 


CHAPTER   XVIII 


WE  NORTHS  AGAIN 


In  following  the  fortunes  and  misfortunes  of  Uncle  John,  the 
personal  aflFairs  of  my  brother  and  me  have  been  left  behind. 
What  we  were  doing  while  the  main  narrative  proceeded  to 
its  almost  Aeschylean  conclusion  is  important  only  in  its  bear- 
ing on  what  we,  and  more  particularly  John,  did  later,  and  to 
show  the  impact  of  the  circus  on  our  private  hves. 


242  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

As  to  Brother  John,  then.  He  had  curly  dark  hair  and 
piercing  hazel  eyes  under  heavy  brows.  His  powerful  stocky 
body  radiated  vitality.  He  looked  more  than  a  little  like  Uncle 
John,  with  a  dash  of  the  Black  Irish  to  him. 

In  his  youth  he  was  a  genuine  romantic.  In  fact,  despite 
his  hard-boiled  exterior,  he  still  is  one;  otherwise  he  would 
have  taken  the  easy,  sensible  way  out  and  no  show  would 
now  have  the  right  to  call  itself  The  Greatest  on  Earth. 

As  a  young  man,  John  fell  in  and  out  of  love  with  the  same 
apparent  ease  tliat  Cadona  flew  through  the  air.  There  was 
the  time  he  loved  a  lass  in  the  circus.  The  lass  was  May  Wirth, 
who  gave  him  lessons  in  bareback  riding  when  he  was  twelve. 
Unfortunately  he  sprained  his  ankle,  and  there  ended  a 
promising  equestrian  career. 

In  a  more  adult  state,  but  before  his  position  became  so 
powerful  as  to  make  him  follow  Uncle  John's  precept  that 
trifling  with  performers  was  unsporting,  he  loved  another 
circus  girl  and  nearly  broke  his  neck.  He  was  riding  the  train 
on  a  long  night  haul.  The  cars  were  not  connected  like 
ordinary  Pullmans,  and  if  you  desired  to  visit  someone  in 
another  part  of  the  train,  you  waited  until  it  stopped  and 
then  ran  like  a  son  of  a  gun  alongside  until  you  reached  the 
fair  one's  car.  Johnny  had  paid  his  call  and  it  was  time  to 
retire  to  the  staff  car,  where  he  bunked.  The  train  stopped  in 
a  deserted  countryside  and  John  got  off  and  started  running 
tlirough  the  darkness  alongside  the  rails.  Suddenly  solid 
ground  vanished.  He  caught  the  end  of  a  tie  as  he  dropped, 
and  found  himself  hanging  under  the  train  on  a  trestle  over 
a  gorge.  The  only  lesson  this  taught  him  was  to  wait  until 
the  train  reached  a  station. 

When  John  turned  twenty-one  he  was  in  love  with  a  girl 
named  Anne.  Her  claim  to  fame  is  that  he  composed  the  first  of 
his  many  lovely  songs  to  her.  Oddly  enough,  it  was  called 
Anne. 


WE   NORTHS    AGAIN  243 

As  he  passed  the  magic  milestone  that  made  him  officially 
a  man  John  went  to  Baraboo  to  collect  a  legacy  of  $20,000, 
which  Uncle  Al  had  left  him.  His  plan  was  to  return  to  New 
York  and  marry  Amie.  Instead,  he  met  Jane  Connelly  of 
Connellsville,  Pennsylvania;  Jane  was  visiting  her  amit,  who 
was  married  to  our  family  physician.  Dr.  Dan  Kelly  of  Bara- 
boo. They  were  married  without  giving  it  too  great  thought 
in  1924,  Since  in  those  days  Yale  students  were  not  permitted 
to  marry,  John  left  college  at  the  beginning  of  his  jimior  year. 

Jane  was  a  very  nice  girl— in  fact,  all  tlie  women  we  have 
ever  married  were.  Blame  our  matrimonial  failures  on  our- 
selves if  you  like,  for  they  were  not  the  ladies'  fault.  Or  blame 
them  on  the  circus.  It  was  probably  half  and  half.  This, 
though,  I  will  repeat:  to  be  happily  married  to  a  cii-cus  man, 
a  girl  must  be  part  gypsy.  Whether  hereditarily  or  merely 
figuratively,  all  the  great  circus  people  who  Hved  and  loved 
and  raised  fine  families  with  the  show  had  more  than  a  drop  of 
Romany  blood  in  their  veins. 

John  and  Jane  had  a  lovely  long  honeymoon.  It  lasted  six 
months.  He  went  through  the  $20,000  in  that  time.  Then  he 
had  that  lucrative  year  as  a  real-estate  salesman  in  the  Florida 
boom,  during  which  he  came  to  New  York  and  sold  Texas 
Guinan  a  lot  for  $5000— Hello,  suckerl 

However,  each  summer  he  went  off  on  the  circus  train  for 
six  to  eight  months.  Once  Jane  went  with  him,  but  she  could 
not  stand  a  hfe  to  which  she  was  so  unaccustomed  and  in 
which  she  could  take  no  active  part.  So,  in  sum  total,  they 
spent  about  four  months  a  year  together.  It  was  not  enough. 
They  were  divorced  in  1927. 

Now,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  after  his  divorce  John 
led  a  celibate  existence.  Far,  very  far,  from  it.  Life  with  the 
circus  is  hardly  conducive  to  that.  (Later,  when  he  was  in 
Wall  Street,  he  was  more  noted  for  his  taste  in  beauty  than 
his  acumen  in  finance.)  Thus,  in  an  astonishing  maimer  he 


244  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

eventually  reversed  the  life  cycle  of  the  Lepidoptera.  From 
an  emperor  moth  fluttering  in  the  spotlights  of  a  hundred 
night  clubs,  responsibility  turned  him  into  a  sort  of  financial 
caterpillar,  whose  voracious  appetite  for,  and  uncanny  ability 
to  acquire,  the  lovely  green  leaves  printed  by  the  United 
States  Mint  earned  him  the  respect  and  credit  of  the  banking 
community.  However,  his  mutability  included  the  ability  to 
change  himself  back  again  each  night,  when  the  sun  set  and 
the  baby  spots  came  out  over  Broadway.  He  remains  a 
nocturnal  creature. 

Our  sister  Salome  was  twice  wedded  by  this  time.  She  was 
a  lively  but  amiable  girl  raised  in  the  Ringling  tradition  of 
female  obedience.  As  she  often  says,  "The  only  time  I  diso- 
beyed my  mother  was  when  I  got  married  while  she  was  out 
shopping." 

Sally's  first  husband  was  Lieutenant  Roy  Biggs  Stratton, 
U.S.N.,  whose  bulky  build  earned  him  the  nickname  of  Beef. 
He  sailed  into  Sarasota  Bay  on  a  destroyer  and  promptly  fell 
in  love  with  my  sister.  When  he  sailed  on  to  Port  Tampa  she 
motored  up  there  with  Mother  to  lunch  with  him  and,  quite 
literally,  married  him  while  Mother  was  in  Tampa  shopping. 

The  marriage  had  Httle  chance  of  perpetuity.  Beef  was 
away  in  his  ship  for  months  at  a  time.  When  he  was  home  on 
leave  the  young  couple  Hved  with  Mother,  who  despite  her 
many  virtues  was  intensely  possessive  of  her  family.  She  made 
poor  Beef  feel  like  an  intruder.  Soon  after  their  daughter, 
Salome,  Jr.,  was  born,  they  were  divorced. 

Sally's  second  marriage  was  forever.  Randolph  L.  (Duck) 
Wadsworth  was— and  is— a  tall,  rangy  gentleman  from  Fort 
Thomas,  Kentucky,  who  was  several  years  older  than  she.  He 
came  to  Sarasota  in  1930.  Despite  his  conventional  upbring- 
ing, Duck  fitted  into  the  ebullient  North  family  like  the  last 
piece  of  a  pictme  puzzle.  Even  Motlier  loved  him.  Uncle 


WE   NORTHS    AGAIN  245 

John,  who  had  recently  married  Emily,  oflFered  to  have  the 
wedding  at  Ca'  d'Zan  on  Christmas  night  1930. 

There  was  a  slight  difficulty  about  the  ceremony.  The 
Episcopal  minister  refused  to  marry  them  because  of  Sally's 
divorce.  The  Methodist  minister  stood  on  his  dignity  because 
his  colleague  had  first  refusal.  Finally,  a  young  Presbyterian, 
who  had  just  been  called  to  the  church  of  that  faith  in 
Sarasota,  agreed  to  perform  the  ceremony. 

Duck  and  Sally  talked  the  arrangements  over  with  him. 
Wadsworth,  a  stout  Episcopalian,  said  that  he  would  not  feel 
truly  married  with  the  plain  Presbyterian  service.  The  ami- 
able young  minister  had  no  objection  to  using  the  Episcopal 
form.  Then  Duck  asked,  "What  are  you  going  to  wear?" 

"Since  it  is  in  the  evening,  I  thought  I  would  wear  my  tux." 

Broad-minded  though  he  was,  Wadsworth  turned  a  trifle 
pale  at  the  thought  of  being  married  by  a  minister  in  a  "tux." 
"A  friend  of  mine  was  married  by  a  Presbyterian  minister 
who  wore  his  doctor's  robes,"  he  suggested  tactfully. 

The  poor  young  fellow  blushed.  "I  have  not  taken  my 
doctorate  yet,"  he  admitted,  "so  I  have  no  robes."  Then,  see- 
ing Wadsworth's  consternated  expression,  he  added,  "Til  try 
to  an-ange  something." 

He  hurried  oflF  to  call  on  our  wonderful  Catholic  priest, 
Father  Elslander,  who  quickly  agreed  to  provide  suitable 
habiliments. 

So  Salome  was  married  amid  the  splendor  of  Ca'  d'Zan  with 
the  Episcopal  service  said  by  a  Presbyterian  minister  wearing 
the  full  canonicals  of  a  Catholic  priest.  It  was  a  wonderfully 
happy  occasion.  Most  of  the  hving  Ringlings  were  present, 
and  for  once  they  were  all  speaking  to  each  other.  The  tri- 
sectarian  nature  of  the  ceremony  was  a  good  omen,  for  tliirty 
years  later  Duck  and  Sally  are  as  much  in  love  as  any  two 
people  I  know. 


246  JOHN  KINGLING  NORTH 

For  the  record,  I  was  first  married  on  New  Year's  Day  1933. 
No  doubt  luckily  for  my  young  bride,  her  parents  interfered 
before  the  marriage  could  be  consummated,  and  it  was 
annulled. 

After  the  break  with  Uncle  John  in  1936,  I  went  to  work 
for  the  Chronicle  Pubhshing  Company  in  Marion,  Indiana, 
under  my  friend  David  Lindsay,  There  I  met  Ada  Mae 
Thornburgh,  a  lovely  petite  blonde.  We  were  married  in  the  1 

autumn  of  1936.  Ada  Mae  and  I  were  very  happy  together  J 

until  the  circus  recalled  me  to  her  exacting  service.  " 


i 


CHAPTER   XIX 


THE  FIRST  FIGHT  FOR  THE 

CIRCUS 


In  his  time  John  Ringhng  made  many  wills,  but  I  have  definite 
knowledge  of  only  the  last  two  and  a  half.  In  the  first  of  these 
he  left  the  art  Museum  and  Ca'  d'Zan  to  the  state  of  Florida 
and  the  residuary  estate  to  his  only  sister,  my  mother.  About 
1934  Brother  John  suggested  that  since,  if  all  the  residuary 


/. 


248  JOHN   RINGLING  NORTH 

estate  were  left  to  Mother,  the  new  high  inheritance  taxes 
would  take  most  of  it,  he  leave  only  half  of  it  to  Mother  and 
the  rest  in  trust  to  Florida  to  maintain  the  museum  and  add 
to  the  collection.  This  he  did,  naming  my  mother  and  John 
co-executors  of  the  will,  and  Randolph  Wadsworth,  John,  and 
myself  trustees  for  the  state  of  Florida. 

Now  came  our  unhappy  falling  out  with  Uncle  John.  My 
brother  had  proposed  that  he  use  a  new  law  firm.  Uncle  John 
gaily  said,  "Who  is  this  new  mouthpiece  you're  bringing  me?" 
and  agreed. 

However,  a  little  later,  when  the  new  lawyers  demanded 
that  he  post  security  for  their  ultimate  fee,  Uncle  Jolin  flew 
into  one  of  his  towering  rages  and  blamed  John  bitterly  for 
"this  horrible  mistake."  He  evidently  felt  that  I  shared  John's 
guilt  by  association,  for  while  he  was  still  fuming.  Uncle  John 
had  Eugene  Garey  of  Garey  and  Garey  draw  a  codicil  to  his 
will  specifically  cutting  John  and  me  off— though  we  had 
never  been  legatees— and  reducing  Mother's  legacy  to  $5000 
a  year  for  life.  However,  nothing  was  said  about  new 
executors. 

Later  still.  Uncle  John  was  sued  by  the  first  firm  for  a  large 
fee.  My  brother  testified  on  his  uncle's  behalf,  and  he  won. 
After  that  Uncle  John  told  a  mutual  friend  of  ours  that  he  had 
torn  up  the  codicil. 

However,  none  of  us  ever  saw  my  uncle  ahve  again.  It  is 
my  belief  that  during  those  last  months  we  were  deUberately 
kept  apart.  He  was  tired  and  sick  and  a  prey  to  suspicions, 
which  may  well  have  been  famied  by  the  jealous  people  who 
surrounded  him.  Whether  this  be  true  or  not,  I  agree  with 
my  brother  that  whatever  he  did  then  should  not  affect  our 
feehngs  for  him. 

That  was  the  situation  when  Uncle  John  died.  It  was  typical 
of  his  shifting  suspicions  that  after  tlie  funeral  that  infernal 


TEDE   FIRST   FIGHT    FOR  THE   CIRCUS  249 

codicil  turned  up  in  the  office  of  still  another  lawyer,  whom 
he  had  secretly  employed. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  day  we  were  smnmoned  to  this 
gentleman's  office  to  hear  it  read.  It  may  have  been  my 
imagination,  but  he  seemed  to  take  an  evil  glee  in  our  dis- 
comfiture. 

Naturally  we  were  grieved  by  it.  I  do  not  expect  to  be 
believed  when  I  say  that  this  feeling  was  more  because  it 
showed  our  loss  of  Uncle  John's  affection  than  because  of  the 
money;  but  diis  statement  will  seem  more  plausible  if  I  add 
that  at  this  time  we  did  not  think  there  would  be  any  money 
left  after  the  bequest  to  Florida. 

However,  we  had  our  moment  of  triumph.  John  handed 
a  copy  of  the  will,  of  which  tlie  document  we  had  just  heard 
was  a  codicil,  to  the  lawyer,  who  had  never  seen  it,  and  asked 
him  to  read  it.  When  he  came  to  provisions  naming  John  and 
Mother  co-executors,  and  myself  a  trustee,  he  looked  abso- 
lutely thunderstruck.  The  codicil  had  no  effect  on  that.  So 
we  Norths  were  struck  out  of  inheriting  what  seemed  un- 
hkely  to  be  worth  anything,  but  given  the  whole  responsi- 
bility for  the  administration  of  the  estate,  together  with  the 
large  executor's  fee. 

What  a  welter  of  imbroglios  resulted!  There  were  at  least  a 
hundred  lawsuits  pending  against  my  uncle  when  he  died. 
Soon  a  whole  new  crop  arose.  Emily  sued  for  her  widow's 
tliird— she  had  previously  waived  her  dower  rights.  Nine 
Ringlings,  headed  by  Robert,  sued  to  have  Jolm  and  Mother 
ousted  as  executors  on  the  grounds  that  the  codicil  indicated 
John  Ringling's  intention  to  cut  them  out  of  the  will  and  left 
the  disposition  of  Mother's  original  bequest  unclear.  Lots  of 
other  people  got  into  the  act,  and  on  top  of  it  all  the  United 
States  Government  put  foi-ward  a  claim  for  $13,500,000  for 
estate  taxes  and  unpaid  income  taxes. 

John  Ringling  North,  aged  thhty-tliree,  with  the  reputation 


250  JOHN  MNGLING  NORTH 

of  a  playboy  and  a  contested  claim  to  be  executor  of  the 
estate,  was  the  only  hope  of  averting  utter  chaos,  and 
incidentally,  of  saving  the  circus.  It  looked  as  though  he  did 
not  have  a  chance. 

I  very  much  doubt  if  John  himself  knows  how  he  got 
through  the  next  year.  Looking  back,  it  seems  to  me  that  in 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  tliere  were  at  least  a  thou- 
sand crises,  which  works  out  at  about  three  a  day.  Of  course, 
twenty-four  hours  sometimes  passed  without  any  new  emer- 
gency, but  on  really  busy  days  we  had  at  least  ten.  John  met 
them  by  a  combination  of  bluff  bravado,  ruthless  determi- 
nation, and  some  of  the  fanciest  financial  footwork  since  the 
Mississippi  Bubble. 

In  his  maneuvers  John  had  extremely  able  assistance  from 
Leonard  G.  Bisco  of  Newman  and  Bisco.  He  was  attorney  for 
the  Manufacturers  Trust  Company,  which  held  a  personal 
loan  from  John  Ringling  for  $200,000  made  back  in  the  lush 
days.  John  liad  met  Bisco  when  he  was  helping  Uncle  John 
stave  off  bankruptcy  and  he  had  proved  very  helpful.  John 
asked  Bisco  to  handle  an  appeal  case  in  New  York.  When 
he  won,  John  appointed  him  general  counsel  for  the  estate. 
Meanwhile  I  had  given  up  my  job  in  Indiana  and  come  East 
to  act  as  John's  assistant.  Because  the  worse  things  got,  the 
less  Uncle  John  wished  to  know  about  them,  his  books  and 
records  in  Florida  were  in  a  state  of  confusion  that  would 
have  baffled  Univac.  John  engaged  James  A.  Haley,  a  Sarasota 
accountant,  for  the  herculean  task  of  ordering  this  chaos. 
Haley  did  an  excellent  job,  but  added  another  comphcation 
to  this  tangled  tale. 

In  dealing  with  the  multiple  lawsuits  we  adopted  tlie  tactics 
by  which  the  foxy  old  Roman  General  Fabius  wore  Hamii- 
bal's  armies  down— delay  after  delay,  and  never,  if  possible, 
coming  to  grips  with  the  enemy.  In  this  way  we  exhausted 


THE  FIRST  FIGHT   FOR  THE  CIRCUS  25I 

many  of  the  litigants  until  they  were  willing  to  settle  on  easy 
terms. 

But  where  offensive  action  was  possible,  John  moved  with 
a  daring  that  would  have  been  foolhardy  had  our  case  not 
been  so  desperate.  One  of  his  strategic  coups  was  not  to  fight 
the  codicil,  but  to  probate  it  uncontested.  This  put  the  state 
of  Florida  on  our  side— a  powerful  ally.  Since  practically  the 
entire  estate  was  a  charitable  bequest,  we  claimed  that  this 
knocked  out  the  federal  government's  right  to  estate  taxes. 
Naturally,  Florida  backed  us  ardently.  Eventually  John  was 
able  to  settle  with  the  government  for  $850,000.  As  Leonard 
Bisco  put  it,  "That  thirteen  million  was  only  a  telephone 
number.  There  was  no  real  basis  for  it." 

When  we  came  to  look  into  the  affairs  of  the  circus  we 
were  appalled.  With  a  $2,500,000  gross  in  1929,  Uncle  John 
had  cleared  nearly  $1,000,000.  The  total  net  for  five  years 
under  Gumpertz's  management  was  only  $300,000  on  a  gross 
of  over  $20,000,000  from  the  Ringling  show  and  all  its  sub- 
sidiaries. Furthermore,  in  order  to  get  even  this  meager  re- 
turn, everything  had  been  allowed  to  run  down.  Wagons  and 
cars  were  shabby  and  unpainted;  the  quahty  of  the  perform- 
ance had  deteriorated  because  penny-pinching  salaries  failed 
to  attract  first-class  new  acts;  even  the  big  cats  and  other 
animals  looked  mangy.  All  this  was  reflected  in  loss  of 
patronage.  By  1937  the  circus  was  losing  money  like  a  broken 
hydrant  gushing  water.  As  has  often  been  the  case  since 
ancient  Rome,  people  said  the  circus  was  done  for.  They 
would  be  proved  right  unless  something  were  done  fast. 

Saving  it  and  gaining  control  of  it  by  hook  or  crook  became 
my  brother's  main  motivation,  as  it  still  is.  Whether  by 
hereditary  or  environmental  influence,  he  was  dedicated  to 
this  purpose  almost  to  the  point  of  fanaticism.  As  will  be  seen, 
he  recklessly  sacrificed  far  more  lucrative  assets,  throwing  oil 
wells,  lands,  and  other  sohd  cargo  overboard  to  lighten  the 


252  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

leaky  ship.  No  rules  bound  him.  Had  he  seen  such  tactics  in 
the  prize  ring,  the  Marquis  of  Queensbury  would  have 
fainted. 

On  November  6, 1937,  the  circus  note  to  Allied  Owners  and 
New  York  investors  would  become  due.  It  had  been  some- 
what reduced,  but  still  amounted  to  approximately  $850,000. 
The  banking  groups  were  as  anxious  as  ever  to  take  control  of 
the  Combined  Shows.  Not  only  would  they  give  us  no  time, 
but  they  stood  on  every  technicality  in  an  endeavor  to  grab 
it.  Although  by  now  John  Ringling's  estate  had  been  ap- 
praised at  $23,500,000,  there  was  virtually  no  cash  in  the  till. 
Almost  all  the  assets  were  still  frozen  as  collateral  for  the  note; 
and  the  federal  government  was  still  suing  for  that  thirteen 
milhon.  November  6  rushed  upon  us  with  the  inevitability  of 
an  avalanche. 

Late  in  October  not  even  hope  was  left.  It  was  then  that 
John  went  to  pay  a  caU  on  his  friend  Harvey  Gibson  of  the 
Manufacturers  Trust  Company.  He  was  quickly  shown  into 
Mr.  Gibson's  walnut-paneled  office.  He  walked  across  the 
deep  pile  rug  with  his  bouncy,  confident  stride  and  greeted 
the  banker  with  his  open-faced  Irish  charm  working  at  full 
throttle. 

When  they  were  seated,  Mr.  Gibson  asked,  "Well,  Johnny, 
what  can  I  do  for  you?" 

"Lend  me  a  million  dollars,"  said  John. 

Without  the  quiver  of  an  eyeUd  Mr.  Gibson  said,  "Just  give 
me  the  facts,  Johnny." 

John  gave  him  the  facts  and  figures  wdth  a  command  of 
convincing  detail  that  must  have  impressed  the  banker. 
John's  proposition  was  that  the  Manufacturers  Trust  should 
lend  the  Ringling  estate  $950,000  to  pay  off  the  circus  note 
and  take  care  of  some  other  minor  matters.  This  would  not 
only  reclaim  the  circus  but  get  all  the  collateral  out  of  hock 
and  enable  the  executors  to  dispose  of  the  assets,  which  were 
at  least  twenty-three  times  tlie  value  of  the  loan. 


THE   FIRST  FIGHT   FOR  THE   CIRCUS  253, 

This  in  brief  was  the  plus  side  of  John's  case.  Against  him, 
besides  his  youth  and  rafiBsh  reputation,  were  all  those  law- 
suits and  the  federal  government's  gigantic  claim. 

"What  makes  you  think  that  the  circus  can  still  make 
money?"  Mr.  Gibson  asked. 

"If  I  run  it,  it  will,"  John  said  confidently. 

"Are  you  going  to  run  it?"  the  banker  asked. 

"If  I  can't  get  my  relatives  to  agree  to  that,  the  deal's  off," 
John  said. 

"I  beheve  you,"  said  Mr.  Gibson. 

He  sent  for  Bisco  and  asked  him  whether,  in  view  of  the 
htigation,  "we  will  come  out  all  right." 

Bisco,  bless  his  black  heart,  said,  "Yes." 

Then  Gibson  said,  "Yes,"  provided  Edith  and  Aubrey 
Ringling  agreed. 

If  that  was  John's  greatest  piece  of  salesmanship,  his  great- 
est stroke  of  diplomacy  followed.  His  aunt  and  his  cousin 
were  inclined  to  think  of  him  as  an  ally  of  Uncle  John's  against 
them,  which  was  the  truth.  To  make  an  agreement  placing 
him  in  charge  of  the  circus  for  five  years  or  imtil  the  note  was 
paid  off  was  abhorrent  to  them.  In  fact,  it  sounded  crazy. 
John  told  them  that  it  was  the  only  chance  of  the  Ringlings 
keeping  control  of  the  great  institution  which  they  had 
founded. 

Whatever  may  have  been  oin:  differences  before  or  since. 
Aunt  Edith  and  Cousin  Aubrey  had  strong  family  feelings. 
Though  Ringlings  by  marriage  only,  they  were  completely 
imbued  with  oiu:  tremendous  loyalty  to  The  Greatest  Show 
on  Earth.  Among  ourselves  we  might  fight  like  alley  cats;  but 
for  our  circus  we  stood  together  against  the  world.  John's 
evident  emotion  and  total  sincerity  overcame  their  prejudice. 
With  shghtly  wry  faces  they  swallowed  the  pill,  bit  the  bullet; 
and  signed  on  the  dotted  hne. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  banking  groups  fought  to  the  end. 
Even  after  the  loan  was  repaid,  their  representative  refused 


254  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

to  resign  from  Rmgling  Brothers-Barnum  &  Bailey's  board  of 
directors.  Their  lo  per  cent  of  the  stock  was  entitled  to  special 
voting  privileges  by  the  fatal  agreement  Uncle  John  had 
made  with  them.  We  finally  signed  a  contract  with  them  for 
the  circus  to  purchase  their  lo  per  cent  ( lOO  shares )  holding 
of  its  stock  for  $137,000,  paying  $52,000  down  and  giving 
them  its  note  for  $85,000.  They  were  to  hold  the  stock  as 
collateral,  but  since  it  was  no  longer  in  their  name  they  could 
not  vote  it. 

A  Httle  later  the  bankers  got  their  comeuppance.  The  circus 
was  in  such  bad  financial  shape  that  it  could  not  meet  the 
second  payment  on  the  note.  John  consulted  Bisco,  who  ad- 
vised, "Let  them  keep  the  stock.  The  voting  trust  was  broken 
by  its  sale,  so  it  won't  do  them  any  good." 

Later  still,  New  York  Investors  went  into  bankruptcy.  Bisco 
bought  their  18  shares  of  Ringling  stock  for  $3000.  At  the 
same  time  he  secured  a  ninety-day  option  to  purchase  the 
82  shares  held  by  Alhed  Owners  for  $25,000.  Thus,  the  cost 
of  the  whole  100  shares  was  $28,000.  "I  bought  them  in  my 
own  name,"  Bisco  says,  "but  I  wanted  them  for  Johnny." 

At  a  meeting  with  Edith,  Aubrey,  and  Robert  Ringling, 
Bisco  persuaded  them  to  let  John  have  70  shares  while  they 
divided  the  remaining  30.  This  insignificant  7  per  cent  of  the 
stock  was  the  small  beginning  of  John  RingHng  North's  hold- 
ings in  Ringhng  Brothers-Barnum  &  Bailey's  Combined 
Shows. 

After  we  first  got  rid  of  the  bankers,  the  circus  stock  was 
held  as  follows: 

Edith  Conway  Ringling  300  shares  (30%) 

Aubrey  Ringling  300  shares  (30%) 

Estate  of  John  RingHng  (voted 
by  John  Ringling  North,  Execu- 
tor) 300  shares  (30% ) 

Treasury  stock  ( not  voted )  100  shares  ( 10  %  ) 


THE  FIRST  FIGHT   FOR  THE   CIRCUS  255 

According  to  our  voting  trust  agreement,  Aubrey  and 
Edith,  though  holding  60  per  cent  of  the  stock,  were  entitled 
to  only  three  directors  on  the  board.  John  was  entitled  to 
name  three  directors.  The  seventh  director,  with  the  deciding 
vote,  was  William  P.  Dunn,  Jr.,  of  the  Manufacturers  Trust 
Company.  The  new  board  elected  John  Ringling  North 
president  of  the  circus.  I  was  elected  vice-president  and 
assistant  to  tlie  president. 

Thus,  in  a  few  hectic  weeks  John  achieved  his  first  great 
ambition— absolute  control  of  the  management  of  the  circus. 
And  as  yet  he  owned  not  a  share  of  stock  in  it,  since  his 
purchase  of  7  per  cent  came  later.  Putting  him  in  charge  was 
a  splendid  gamble  on  the  part  of  our  relatives  and  the 
Manufacturers  Trust  Company,  It  was  a  tremendous  chal- 
lenge to  him.  His  task  was  to  pull  a  disintegrating,  has-been 
institution  out  of  its  doldrums  and  make  it  once  again  The 
Greatest  Show  on  Earth.  Johnny  never  doubted  for  a  moment 
that  he  could  do  it. 


CHAPTER   XX 


THE  NEW  CIRCUS 


In  taking  command  of  the  circus  my  brother  and  I  did  not 
rush  blindly  into  a  situation  and  improvise  a  solution.  In  the 
middle  of  all  the  legal  sound  and  fuiy  we  had  been  doing 
some  very  hard  thinking.  In  the  course  of  it  we  had  developed 
a  philosophy  of  circus  showmansliip  to  fit  the  new  age  in 


THE   NEW   CIRCUS  257 

which  we  were  Hving.  We  were  very  harshly  criticized  for 
modernizing  the  show.  The  hard-shells  and  nostalgics  said 
that  we  had  ruined  it.  We  were  even  criticized  for  making  it 
less  odoriferous.  Well,  people  may  think  they  want  bad 
smells,  but  I  am  willing  to  bet  odds  on  that,  if  we  were  to  put 
those  awful  stinks  back  just  as  they  used  to  be,  these  same 
people  would  yell  the  house  down  through  closely  held 
noses. 

As  we  saw  it,  the  mood  of  the  American  people  was  vastly 
different  in  the  thirties  from  what  it  was  in  the  rip-roaring 
twenties.  Then  they  had  felt  themselves  hurtling  forward  into 
a  future  of  irresistible  progress.  So  they  looked  fondly  over 
their  shoulders  at  a  seemingly  serene  past.  Progress  had  been 
stopped  dead  by  the  depression;  and  the  zest  had  gone  out 
of  hving.  The  mood  now  was  one  of  Weltschmerz,  world-woe. 
The  past  was  thoroughly  discredited  by  the  hardships  of  the 
present.  In  their  stagnation,  people  looked,  not  too  hopefully, 
to  the  future.  They  sought  a  "new  deal,"  a  Brave  New  World. 

Another  thing.  The  generation  that  had  been  raised  on 
the  tinsel  glitter  of  the  old-fashioned  circus,  and  had  taken 
their  children  to  see  it  in  an  effort  to  recapture  the  past,  had 
moved  on.  The  young  parents  who  now  brought  their  cliildien 
to  the  circus  had  been  raised  on  more  sophisticated  entertain- 
ment, and  their  children  were  more  sophisticated  than  they. 
Automobiles  and  movies,  to  which  color  and  sound  had  just 
been  added,  had  done  that.  People  expected  more  entertain- 
ment, more  value,  for  their  money.  You  just  could  not  oflPer 
them  the  tired  old  stuff  and  expect  to  get  away  with  it. 

What  John  and  I  tried  to  do  was  to  cater  to  this  new 
sophistication  wliile  keeping  the  best  of  the  old  circus.  We 
wanted  to  give  our  audiences  beauty  and  style;  well-designed, 
harmonious  costumes;  artistic  lighting;  the  big,  handsome 
production  numbers  they  had  become  accustomed  to;  and  a 
miity  of  theme  instead  of  a  hodgepodge  of  mn^elated  acts. 


258  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

At  the  same  time  we  had  no  intention  of  losing  the  magnifi- 
cently exciting  atmosphere  of  wild  animals,  elephants,  aeri- 
alists,  equestrians,  and  clowns  that  made  the  circus  a  unique 
form  of  entertainment.  Above  all,  we  thought  it  needed  an 
infusion  of  Barnumesque  showmanship  tuned  to  the  age  of 
radio. 

Our  aim,  then,  was  something  added  but  nothing  lost. 
Inevitably  we  fell  short  of  perfection.  Something  was  lost;  but 
a  great  deal  was  gained.  I  am  sure  that  we  were  right,  and 
that  had  we  not  done  as  we  did,  Ringhng  Brothers-Barnum  & 
Bailey  Combined  Shows  would  have  ended,  not  with  a  bang, 
but,  in  the  pessimistic  words  of  the  poet,  "with  a  whimper." 

The  first  year  we  ran  tlie  show,  1938,  we  had  so  short  a 
time  that  we  could  not  make  too  many  changes.  What  we 
could  do  was  to  give  it  unity  and  glamour.  To  design  it  we 
engaged  Charles  Le  Maire,  who  had  mounted  The  Ziegfeld 
Follies  and  George  White's  Scandals.  He  was  rightfully 
billed  in  the  program  as  "the  noted  master  of  color  tone  and 
exquisite  fabrics." 

Until  that  time  the  performers  in  the  different  acts  had 
brought  their  own  costumes.  John  changed  that  by  supplying 
them  with  costumes  especially  designed  for  harmonious 
effects  in  all  the  tliree  rings  and  four  stages.  He  also  intro- 
duced what,  I  beheve,  was  an  original  contribution  to  circus 
entertainment.  The  aerial  ballet,  a  production  number  with 
sixty  beautifully  costumed  girls  performing  acrobatics  high 
above  the  arena  on  the  webs.* 

And  we  did  add  showmanship.  In  this  connection  John 
pulled  off  two  coups  tliat  were  worthy  of  the  old  master  him- 
self. The  first  was  to  hire  Frank  Buck  at  a  salary  of  $1000  a 
week,  along  with  a  private  car— how  the  stockholders  howled 
over  that.  But  Buck  was  worth  the  money.  He  was  at  die 

"  Canvas-covered  ropes  suspended  from  swivels. 


i 


THE   NEW  CIRCUS  259 

height  of  his  reputation  as  the  apotheosis  of  the  white  hunter 
and  about  the  last  of  the  truly  glamourous  adventurer  types, 
in  the  tradition  of  Livingstone,  Stanley,  and  Paul  du  Chaillu, 
to  come  out  of  darkest  Africa. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  day  he  reported  at  Winter  Quarters 
in  Sarasota.  So  great  was  his  prestige  that  the  performers  were 
in  a  dither  and  even  the  blase  waiters  in  the  cookhouse  were 
excited.  The  head  chef  sent  all  the  way  to  Tampa  for  a  steak 
fit  to  serve  so  robust  a  character. 

When  Frank  came  into  the  cookhouse  with  us,  everybody 
was  standing  up  or  jumping  on  benches  to  get  a  better  look. 
The  chef  bustled  out  in  his  tall  white  hat  and  asked  very  def- 
erentially, "How  would  you  like  your  steak,  Mr.  Buck?  Very 
rare,  I  suppose." 

Frank  looked  up  at  him  and  said  apologetically,  "My 
stomach's  a  httle  upset  today.  May  I  have  some  milk  toast?" 

I  almost  wept  for  our  chef;  all  the  childlike  tragedy  of  disil- 
lusionment was  written  on  his  face. 

We  built  the  show  that  year  around  Frank  Buck.  John 
dreamed  up  and  Charles  Le  Maire  designed  an  opening  spec 
called  "Nepal."  To  quote  the  florid  circusese  of  the  program, 
"It  portrays  in  fantasy,  splendor,  and  exotic  opulence  the 
royal  welcome  to  'Bring  'Em  Back  Alive'  Frank  Buck  by  the 
Maharajah  of  Nepal  and  his  native  court." 

Frank,  in  his  famous  pith  helmet,  was  to  arrive  riding  on 
a  hunting  elephant  in  a  basket  howdah,  accompanied  by  a 
wildly  picturesque  train  of  native  hunters  and  beaters,  danc- 
ing girls  garlanded  with  hibiscus  and  wild  orchids,  and  an 
odd  assortment  of  jimgle  animals,  including  Lotus,  the  hip- 
popotamus and  Edith  the  giraffe.  The  Maharajah  was  no 
slouch  when  it  came  to  oriental  splendor.  He  awaited  Frank 
on  his  magnificently  caparisoned  state  elephant,  surrounded 
by  maharanis,  ghttering  native  princesses,  guards,  and  a 
troop  of  dancing  girls  in  diaphanous  saris.  Supposedly  he  had 


260  JOHN  RINGLING   NORTH 

managed,  too,  to  borrow  a  troop  of  Bengal  Lancers  from  the 
British  Government. 

The  Indian-jmigle  theme  was  carried  throughout  most  of 
the  show.  Even  Merle  Evans'  band  wore  Bengal  Lancer  uni- 
forms. A  special  feature  was  Terrell  Jacobs  in  the  center  arena 
witli  twelve  particularly  vicious  black  panthers— supplied  by 
Frank  Buck,  of  course.  No  one  had  ever  dared  to  handle  so 
large  a  group  of  those  beasts  before.  Terrell  was  a  rough-and- 
ready  character  who  had  lost  one  eye  to  a  Hon.  His  was  the 
old-fashioned,  brutal,  wliip-and-pistol  technique  that  I  hate; 
but  he  was  very,  very  brave. 

The  only  big  non-oriental  feature  was  the  second  produc- 
tion number,  a  beautiful  pageant  based  on  Disney's  Snow 
White  and  the  Seven  Dwarfs.  The  latter,  of  course,  were 
played  by  our  famous  group  of  httle  people. 

When  the  time  came  to  start  North  in  1938,  we  felt  we  had 
a  show  that  justified  its  resounding  title.  In  order  to  build  up 
the  traditional  aspects  of  it,  John  had  engaged  the  two  great- 
est equestrian  acts  in  the  world,  the  Christianis  and  the 
Loyal-Repenski  troupe.  He  was  warned  that  these  two  eques- 
trian families  had  feuded  for  generations  like  the  Hatfields 
and  tlie  McCoys,  but  this  did  not  deter  him. 

I  was  very  fond  of  the  Christianis,  who  now  have  a  circus 
of  their  own.  They  were  a  great  big  family— it  took  half  a  rail- 
road car  to  transport  them.  There  were  Poppa  and  Mamma 
Christiani,  six  sons,  and  five  daughters,  all  in  the  act.  Cosetta, 
the  second  sister,  was  a  wonderful  girl  and  a  great  acrobat. 
Just  to  give  you  an  idea  of  how  nice  a  circus  girl  could  be  to 
have  around,  I  will  tell  you  about  one  night  when  I  took 
Cosetta  out  to  dinner  at  Max's  in  New  York  after  the  show. 
A  drunk  came  into  the  crowded  room  and  stumbled  over  my 
long  legs.  Instead  of  apologizing,  he  belligerently  offered  to 
knock  my  block  off. 


THE   NEW   CIRCUS  26l 

I  thought  I'd  have  to  do  something  about  it,  but  before  I 
could  make  a  move,  Cosetta  was  up  hke  a  flash.  She  grabbed 
the  drunk  by  the  collar,  lined  him  up,  and  let  him  have  a 
right  to  the  jaw  that  knocked  him  over  two  tables.  "Nothing 
to  worry  about.  Buddy,"  she  said  as  she  sat  down. 

The  Christianis  did  some  tremendously  spectacular  bare- 
back riding.  The  climax  of  their  act  came  when  five  of  the 
brothers  ran  at  a  galloping  horse,  leaped  in  unison,  and 
landed  standing  on  the  animal's  back.  A  variation  of  this  was 
all  five  boys  making  the  same  amazing  jump  and  landing 
astride  the  rosin-back. 

In  addition  to  the  equestrian  acts,  we  had  the  Flying 
Concellos,  who,  as  I  have  said,  were  the  only  man-and-wife 
aeriahst  team  who  could  both  do  the  triple  somersault  from 
the  swinging  bar  to  the  hands  of  the  catcher.  Antoinette 
ConceUo  was  a  lovely  person,  pretty  and  graceful.  Her 
husband,  ArthiK,  though  below  medium  height,  was  an  enor- 
mously strong,  wiry,  tough-talking  fellow  with  a  brilliant 
mind  and  surprising  executive  abihty.  He  owned  a  school  for 
aeriahsts  in  Bloomington,  Illinois,  where  he  trained  young- 
sters and  put  other  aerial  acts  together.  When  he  stopped 
flying  in  1942,  John  made  him  general  manager  of  the  circus. 
He  is  still  general  manager  of  the  Combined  Shows. 

The  Wallendas  were  with  us  still,  and  we  had  added 
WiUiam  Heyer,  the  master  of  manege,  who  also  had  a  won- 
derful troupe  of  hberty  horses,  and  Ralph  Clark,  who  jumped 
two  horses  Roman  standing  style  over  a  flaming  automobile. 

Begging  and  borrowing  the  money  to  do  the  job,  we  com- 
pletely refurbished  the  physical  aspects  of  the  show.  Every- 
thing was  repainted  and  regilded  until  it  blazed  with  glorious 
ghtter.  Like  everything  else,  the  old  Jomar  had  been  allowed 
to  go  to  seed.  John  had  it  redecorated  for  us. 

Whenever  the  papers  want  to  make  a  story  out  of  John's 
Medicean  splendors  they  play  up  his  magnificent  private  car. 


262  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

Actually,  as  a  place  to  live  eight  months  of  the  year,  com- 
biaed  with  an  oflRce  from  which  to  run  a  multimillion-dollar 
business,  it  was  barely  adequate.  There  was  a  sitting  room  at 
the  rear  with  a  couple  of  easy  chairs,  two  settees,  a  glass- 
topped  coflFee  table,  and  a  small  icebox-bar.  Then  came  a  sin- 
gle room  followed  by  Uncle  John's  double  stateroom  con- 
necting by  a  bath  with  Aunt  Mable's  single.  Beyond  that  was 
a  small  dining  room  with  a  wall  table  that  seated  five  people 
comfortably  or  seven  jammed  together.  A  small  serving 
pantry,  kitchen,  and  the  chef's  and  valet's  quarters  com- 
pleted the  picture. 

All  the  crimson  draperies,  glass  beads,  lace  curtains,  and 
fretwork,  which  had  delighted  Uncle  John,  were  ripped  out 
when  the  ceilings  were  lowered  for  air  conditioning.  We  put 
in  severely  fmictional  furniture  and  plain  pine  cabinets  and 
lockers.  The  color  scheme  was  pale  green  and  cream.  Such 
was  the  austere  scene  of  those  alleged  Lucullan  revels.  We 
jazzed  it  up  later  by  hanging  over  the  dining  room  a  charming 
fantasy  of  a  bobbed-haired  Lady  Godiva  dismounting  after 
her  ride  assisted  by  two  flamboyant  Negro  mammies  and  a 
blindfolded  stableboy,  which  Charles  Baskerville  painted  for 
John  in  honor  of  a  dehghtfully  disgraceful  incident  at  tire 
World's  Fair  of  1939. 

As  in  Baraboo  long  ago,  the  departure  of  the  circus  train 
was  a  great  event  in  Sarasota.  For  the  first  two  stands,  in  Mad- 
ison Square  Garden  and  the  Boston  Garden,  we  used  only 
two  sections— the  other  two,  carrying  the  Big  Top  and  forty- 
one  other  tents,  the  tent  crews,  transport  wagons,  and  three 
hundred  work  horses,  would  join  us  when  we  went  under  can- 
vas in  Brooklyn.  The  first  train  had  the  flats  with  the  tableau 
wagons,  floats,  props,  and  the  roaring,  howling,  grunting, 
braying,  hissing,  screeching  menagerie.  Fifty  elephants  were 
jammed  side  by  side  in  tliree  large  cars.  The  precious  ring 


THE   NEW   CIRCUS  263 

stock  rode  in  luxurious  box  stalls.  The  giraffes  were  snugged 
down  in  odd-shaped  well-padded  boxes  that  were  underslung 
in  the  rear  to  give  them  enough  room.  Seals  and  hippopota- 
muses traveled  in  their  comfortable  tanks. 

The  second  train  carried  the  extra-long  sleeping  cars  for 
the  performers  and  staff  and,  of  course,  the  Jomar. 

It  seemed  that  all  the  people  of  Sarasota  and  the  hinterland 
were  there  to  say  good-by.  They  lined  the  tracks  from  Winter 
Quarters  to  far  out  on  the  main  line.  Mother  came  down  to 
see  her  two  sons  off.  With  the  wind  whipping  his  priestly 
robes,  Father  Elslander,  assisted  by  two  acolytes  swinging 
censers,  blessed  tiie  trains  in  sonorous  Latin  and  sprinkled 
them  with  holy  water. 

The  first  section  moved  off  in  a  tremendous  hubbub  of 
shouting  people  and  yowling  animals.  Then  our  big  engine 
huffed  and  puffed  and  the  long  line  of  cars  painted  in  glisten- 
ing silver  and  "Ringling  red"  began  to  move.  John  and  I 
swung  ourselves  aboard  the  Jomar  and  Mother  called,  "Be 
careful  in  the  yards!" 

We  slid  along  between  the  cheering  crowds,  with  every  per- 
former leaning  out  of  windows  or  crowded  on  platforms  ex- 
changing good-bys  and  wisecracks  with  their  friends.  John 
and  I,  on  the  rear  platform,  were  more  excited  than  any  of 
them. 

When  we  had  left  the  station  behind  and  were  rat- 
tling through  the  pinewoods,  we  retired  to  the  bar  for  a  much 
needed  drink.  As  we  toasted  each  other  and  The  Greatest 
Show  on  Earth,  we  were  wildly  elated,  without  a  thought  that 
we  were  heading  for  trouble  at  forty-five  miles  an  hour. 

One  of  the  things  that  saved  us  was  Gargantua,  "The  Most 
TeiTifying  Creature  the  World  Has  Ever  Seen." 


CHAPTER   XXI 

"THE  MOST  TERRIFYING 

CREATURE  THE  WORLD 

HAS  EVER  SEEN" 


Probably  the  most  publicized  animal  ever  shown  was  Jumbo, 
the  huge  African  elephant  that  put  Bamum  in  business  and 


<<^ 


V-_ 


9^ 


-# 


above:  Arthur  Concello  (left)— a 
great  aerialist.  right:  Arthur 
Concello  today  as  executive  director. 


-^ 


\ 


if 


li^M^^ 


i 


Brother  John  and  I  "never  trust  the  cats."  (Acme  Newspictures  Inc.) 


Gargantua,  "the  most  terrifying  creature  the  world  has  ever  seen,"  John  and 
I  found  in  a  quiet  httle  lady's  back-yard  shed  in  Brooklyn. 


John's  ex-wife,  Germaine  Aussey,  was  a  French  movie  star,  and  a  fine  horse- 
woman. 


__     Avi 


The  great  days  in  the  Big  Top  (opening  spec).  (Knickerbocker  Pictures) 
The  six-pole  Big  Tops  and  satellite  tents.  (Chester  Photo  Service) 


.. 


Si 


r 


4f<i. 


«.  f 


*_ 


#  *W"f, 


alli^ 


^^^i^^'" 


I, 


-_       ^       ^ 


Loading  the  menagerie  at  Winter  Quarters.  (Steinmetz) 


Alfred  Court,  greatest  of  all  wild- 
animal  trainers,  trusted  the  cats. 


Pinita  del  Oro,  at  home 
on  the  trapeze. 


The  great  Christianis  practicing 
at  Winter  Quarters. 


The  Hartford  fire.  "The  horrors  of  war  paled  by  comparison."  (United  Press 
International  Photo) 


Coffee  cups— the  most  famous  slack- 
wire  act. 


Emmett  Kelly  contemplates  the 
S        glory  that  was  Ringling.  (Steinmetz) 


"That  year . 
(Steinmetz) 


we  traveled  17,117  miles  and  showed  in  twenty-seven  states.' 


"the   world's   most  terrifying   CaElEATURE"  265 

a  new  word  in  the  English  language.  In  the  annals  of  show- 
manship, Gargantua  rims  Jumbo  a  close  second.  His  han- 
dling of  the  great  gorilla  showed  that  Brother  John  had  the 
magic  touch  and  the  calculated  recklessness  tliat  a  successful 
circus  man  must  have. 

Back  in  November  1937,  when  we  were  still  at  the  Ritz  Ho- 
tel in  New  York  anxiously  awaiting  the  issue  of  the  intricate 
negotiations  over  the  future  of  Ringling  Brothers,  the  tele- 
phone rang  one  evening.  A  lady  on  the  other  end  mtroduced 
herself  as  Mrs.  Lintz.  She  said  she  had  a  full-grown  gorilla. 
Would  John  be  interested  in  buying  it  for  the  circus?  John 
said,  "I  certainly  would.  When  can  I  see  it?" 

At  this  point  the  lady  became  somewhat  evasive,  but  finally 
invited  us  to  come  to  tea  at  her  home  m  Brooklyn. 

John,  who  did  not  yet  have  control  of  the  circus  and  only 
a  hazardous  prospect  of  getting  it,  said  excitedly,  "Buddy, 
we've  got  to  have  that  gorilla!" 

In  a  taxicab— John's  chauffeur-driven  Cadillac  was  still  in 
the  equivocal  future— we  drove  to  Brooklyn,  winding  through 
dismal  streets  of  rubber-plant-decorated  houses,  down  into  a 
tenement  district,  and  up  agaia  to  a  once  elegant,  water-front 
street.  We  mounted  the  brownstone  stoop  of  a  mansion  of 
faded  grandeur  straight  out  of  Charles  Addams'  macabre 
cartoons.  A  small  middle-aged  lady  let  us  in,  and  we  sat  down 
on  rosewood  and  horsehair  chairs  to  drink  tea  with  her.  We 
drank  gallons  of  tea  and  chatted  inconsequentially  and 
looked  at  the  magnificent  view  of  the  lighted  towers  of 
Manhattan  until  we  botli  began  to  suspect  that  we  were  the 
victims  of  an  old  lady's  fantasy. 

Finally,  John  said  abruptly,  "Now  we  would  like  to  see  the 
gorilla." 

Mrs.  Lintz  fluttered  nervously.  "Oh,  yes,  yes.  You  must  see 
the  gorilla.  We'll  go  out  now." 

She  led  the  way  through  her  big  old  house,  down  worn 


266  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

stairs  to  the  basement  kitchen  and  across  a  yard  to  a  shed 
that  had  once  stabled  the  owner's  horses.  Inside,  one  naked 
electric  bulb  hung  from  the  rafters  lighting  dust  and  cobwebs, 
and  a  man  was  sitting  on  a  wooden  chair.  He  was  introduced 
as  the  gorilla's  keeper,  Richard  Kroner. 

"Dear  little  Buddy  lives  in  there,"  said  Mrs.  Lintz. 

Tliis  was  shock  number  one  to  me;  dear  little  Buddy 
indeed!  So  my  namesake  lived  in  there.  I  saw  a  big  rectangu- 
lar wooden  box  standing  on  end.  It  looked  something  like  an 
oversized  coffin.  The  peculiar  thing  about  it  was  that  it  was 
braced  on  three  sides  by  heavy  timbers  set  against  the  walls 
and  one  coming  down  from  the  ceiling.  We  learned  later  tliat 
it  was  lined  with  steel. 

"Before  you  see  Buddy,  I  want  to  tell  you  his  story,"  Mrs. 
Lintz  said. 

She  told  the  tale  which  all  the  world  now  knows,  about  a 
baby  gorilla  being  brought  from  Africa  on  a  ship  and  some 
disgruntled  member  of  the  crew  throwing  acid  in  the  poor 
httle  thing's  face,  burning  it  horribly.  "I  bought  him  from  the 
captain,"  Mrs.  Lintz  said.  "He  thought  the  gorilla's  value  was 
ruined  and  sold  him  cheap."  (Ruined?  Heavenly  day!  That 
acid  was  worth  a  million  to  us. ) 

It  seemed  that  Mrs.  Lintz's  late  husband  was  a  plastic  sur- 
geon. He  had  tried  to  do  some  repair  work  on  Buddy  without 
too  much  success.  "But  he  was  the  sweetest  little  thing,"  Mrs. 
Lintz  continued.  "We  all  loved  him.  He  used  to  come  into 
the  parlor  and  have  tea  with  me  every  afternoon," 

"Well,  let's  see  him,"  said  Jolm. 

The  front  of  the  box  had  a  slatted  sliding  door.  Kroner 
raised  it,  revealing  iron  bars,  and  behind  the  bars  glowered 
the  most  fearful  face  I  have  ever  looked  upon.  A  tremendous 
hairy  head,  great  dripping  fangs,  and  the  horrible  sinister  leer 
of  the  acid-twisted  mouth.  In  that  dim  light,  cribbed  in  liis 
box,  he  looked  even  bigger  than  life.  Gigantic! 


"the  world's  most  terrifying  creature"  267 

While  we  looked  in  horror,  Mrs.  Lintz  kept  talking  about 
how  dear  and  lovable  Buddy  was,  and  moving  closer  to  the 
box.  Suddenly  the  whole  building  shook  as  the  creature 
hurled  himself  against  the  bars  in  a  slavering,  raging  effort  to 
get  at  her.  With  a  shriek  in  the  excruciating  key  of  terror,  our 
hostess  ran  for  her  life.  We  saw  her  no  more  that  day. 

John  was  absolutely  determined  to  have  that  gorilla.  He 
was  eight  years  old,  and  very  few  goJllas  had  then  survived 
that  long  in  captivity.  Uncle  John  had  imported  two  which 
lived  only  about  six  months.  John  figured  that  if  Buddy  had 
lasted  eight  years  he  was  well  acclimated. 

Mrs.  Lintz  was  equally  determined  to  sell  him.  According 
to  Kroner,  there  had  been  some  carelessness  a  while  back,  be- 
fore tliey  had  built  up  the  cage  so  strongly,  and  the  gorilla 
had  gotten  out.  Mrs.  Lintz  woke  up  in  the  middle  of  the  night 
to  find  lovable  little  Buddy  in  her  bedroom.  It  was  enough. 

So  John  and  I  bought  him  for  $10,000.  We  signed  tlie  con- 
tract with  Mrs.  Lintz  even  before  we  got  control  of  the  circus, 
but  John  said,  "We  just  can't  afford  to  miss  having  tlie  most 
terrifying  creature  the  world  has  ever  seen." 

"All  right,"  I  agreed,  "but  one  thing  I  insist:  we're  not  going 
to  have  a  vice-president  of  tlie  cucus  and  a  gorilla  both 
named  Buddy." 

"It  isn't  a  good  name  for  a  gorilla  anyhow,"  Jolm  re- 
marked. "What  do  you  suggest?" 

Still  full  of  my  classical  education  from  Yale,  I  had  perhaps 
my  brightest  flash  of  inspiration.  "Let's  call  him  Gargantua," 
I  said. 

Then  came  the  question  of  getting  Gargantua  the  Great  to 
Florida.  We  did  not  want  any  premature  publicitv  that  fall. 
Rather  let  him  burst  on  the  world  in  his  full  ferocitv  when 
tlie  circus  went  out  in  the  spring.  So  John  called  up  our 


268  JOHN   RINGLING  NORTH 

uncle's  old  friend  Bill  Eagan,  stationmaster  for  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad.  I  heard  only  his  end  of  the  conversation: 
"Look,  Bill,  I  want  to  arrange  to  take  a  gorilla  down  to  Sara- 
sota with  me  on  the  Orange  Blossom  Special  on  December 
second." 

There  was  a  long  harangue  and  voluble  explanations  from 
Eagan.  Then  I  heard  John  say,  "Gorilla,  Bill?  Who's  talking 
about  gorillas?  You  must  be  hearing  things.  This  is  a  delicate 
little  monkey.  The  reason  I  want  him  to  go  with  us  is  that 
he'll  die  of  loneliness  in  a  freight  car." 

They  talked  a  lot  more  and  Eagan  evidently  agreed.  When 
John  hung  up  he  said,  "Eagan  savs  that  ever  since  one  of  Dr. 
Ditmars'  boa  constrictors  got  loose  in  a  Pullman  they've 
made  a  rule  against  carrying  dangerous  animals  in  the  bag- 
gage cars  of  passenger  trains.  We've  got  to  work  this  carefully, 
Buddy." 

We  all  got  down  to  the  station  early.  The  only  newspaper- 
man there  was  our  friend  Gladwyn  Hill,  then  of  the  Associ- 
ated Press  and  now  Los  Angeles  bureau  chief,  who  had 
promised  to  hold  the  story  until  we  were  ready.  Presently 
Gargantua's  huge  box  arrived,  accompanied  by  Kroner.  It 
was  carefully  placed  upright  in  the  baggage  car.  At  this  point 
Frank  Eagan  arrived  to  see  how  we  were  doing.  He  eyed  the 
box  balefully.  "A  small  monkey?"  he  asked. 

"He  needs  room  to  exercise,"  John  said. 

Gargantua  exercised,  and  the  box  shivered  and  rocked. 

"I  think  he's  feeling  chilly,"  Kroner  said.  A  small  diamond- 
shaped  hole  had  been  cut  in  the  front  of  the  box.  Kroner 
stiiflFed  a  corner  of  a  full-sized  blanket  in  it.  It  was  whipped 
through  like  a  handkerchief. 

"Small  monkey?"  said  Eagan. 

I  was  looking  hypnotically  at  the  top  of  the  box,  where  great 
big  nails  had  been  driven  in  and  bent  over  to  hold  the  shutter 
down.  Those  nails  were  slowly,  incredibly,  straightening  out. 


"the  world's  most  terrifying  creature  269 

Then  I  looked  down  and  saw  eight  black  fingers  as  big  as 
cigars  under  the  shutter.  Wham!  It  flew  up  in  the  air,  crashing 
against  the  roof  of  the  car.  Gargantua  and  Bill  Eagan  were 
eye  to  eye. 

At  that  blessed  moment  whistles  blew,  the  engine  bell 
clanged,  and  the  Orange  Blossom  Special  began  to  move.  Bill 
Eagan  jumped  for  the  platform  and  stood  there  shaking  liis 
fist  at  Johnny's  impudent  Irish  grin. 

When  we  got  Gargantua  to  Sarasota  we  had  a  wonderful 
time  with  him.  There  have  been  many  discussions  among  an- 
thropologists as  to  which  is  the  smarter  animal,  the  gorilla 
or  tlie  chimpanzee.  I  vote  for  the  gorilla.  Gargantua  was  with- 
out doubt  a  thinking  character.  His  mind  was  about  equal 
to  that  of  a  maliciously  capricious  moron,  and,  like  a  child, 
he  loved  to  play  games.  Catch  was  one  of  his  favorites.  We 
always  used  a  softball.  We  would  throw  it  into  his  cage  and 
he  would  catch  it  and  toss  it  back  underhand.  Then  all  of  a 
sudden  he  would  change  from  toss  to  throw  and  wham  it  at 
your  head  like  a  big-league  pitcher.  You  would  not  want  to 
play  tliat  game  witli  croquet  balls. 

Another  game  he  liked  was  tug  of  war.  You  threw  the  end 
of  a  rope  into  his  cage.  He  took  it  and  you  both  pulled.  Some- 
times he  politely  let  you  win,  but  he  could  always  win  if  he 
wanted  to.  Four  or  five  men  might  get  on  the  other  end,  and 
Gargantua  would  take  the  rope  in  his  hand  and  wind  it 
back  under  his  arm  for  leverage  and  jerk  them  all  right  off 
their  feet.  Then  he  would  throw  the  end  of  the  rope  out  to 
you  because  he  wanted  to  play  some  more.  But  each  time  he 
threw  it,  he  would  give  you  a  shorter  length,  trying  to  lure 
you  nearer.  Then  that  son  of  a  gun  would  try  to  jerk  you  close 
enough  so  he  could  grab  you  and  bite  you.  He  was  a  wonder- 
ful animal. 

The  moment  we  released  tlie  news  about  him,  Gargantua 


270  JOHN   RINGLING   NORTH 

became  an  international  celebrity.  Arthur  Brisbane  wrote  a 
syndicated  column  about  whether  he  could  beat  heavyweight 
champion  Gene  Tunney.  Gene,  who  was  a  friend  of  ours,  went 
along  with  the  gag  and  gave  an  interview  saying  that  he 
could  take  Gargantua  in  nothing  flat.  But  he  did  not  try  it. 

A  number  of  scientific  people  came  to  Sarasota  just  to  see 
the  gorilla,  Dr.  Yerkes  the  great  anthropologist  from  Yale 
among  them.  Another  visitor  was  Bernard  Baruch's  brother, 
Dr.  Sailong  Baruch.  Dr.  Baruch  was  a  distinguished-looking 
man  who  wore  a  handsome  beard.  When  we  took  him  to  see 
Gargantua  it  was  a  tossup  as  to  whether  the  doctor  or  the 
gorilla  was  more  interested  by  the  other.  Gargantua,  who 
had  never  seen  a  bearded  man  before,  was  absolutely  fasci- 
nated. He  walked  all  over  his  cage  studying  this  phenomenon 
from  different  angles.  Suddenly  he  made  up  his  mind  that  he 
didn't  like  it,  and  picked  up  all  the  loose  things  in  his  cage 
and  hurled  them  at  the  doctor. 

One  of  the  great  stories  about  Gargantua— he  made  the 
cover  of  Life,  with  a  double  spread  inside— came  when  he  bit 
my  brother.  John  was  playing  with  him  and  got  a  little  too 
close.  Gargantua  grabbed  him  in  his  tremendous  grip  and  be- 
gan biting  his  arm.  John  bellowed  for  help  and  Dick  Kroner 
hurried  up  and  beat  the  gorilla  over  tlie  head  with  a  pole 
until  he  let  go. 

Did  John  rush  to  a  hopital  with  his  mangled  arm?  Yes,  but 
not  until  he  had  stopped  at  the  advertising  car  to  give  the 
news  to  a  palpitating  world.  Our  famous  old  press  agent, 
Roland  Butler,  released  a  dispatch  stating  that  John  had  re- 
ceived "the  most  massive  antitetanus  shot  ever  given  to  a  hu- 
man being." 

John  was  not  too  badly  bitten,  but  Roland's  round-the- 
world  headlines  were  so  bloodcurdling  that  my  brother's  cur- 
rent fiancee,  a  lovely  German  girl  named  Carlotta  Gertz, 
called  liim  in  the  middle  of  the  night  from  Berlin.  When  the 


"the  world's  most  terkefying  creature"  271 

connection  was  made  she  sobbed,  "Are  you  dead,  Johnny?" 
He  answered,  "I'm  not  dead.  I'm  talking  to  you." 
But  she  kept  on  repeating,  "Are  you  dead,  Johnny?  Are  you 

dead?" 

Gargantua  thrived  in  Florida,  but  as  the  time  came  to  take 
him  on  the  road  John  became  more  and  more  worried.  Living 
normally  in  germfree  jungles,  gorillas  are  terribly  susceptible 
to  human  respiratory  diseases.  We  were  afraid  that 
Gargantua  would  literally  catch  his  death  of  cold  from  the 
circus  crowds.  As  to  so  many  of  us,  inspiration  came  to  John 
in  the  still  hours;  unlike  most  of  us,  he  did  not  wait  until 
morning  to  act.  Reaching  out  of  bed  for  the  telephone,  he 
called  his  friend  Lemuel  Bulware  of  the  Carrier  Corporation 
in  Syracuse,  New  York.  "My  God,  what  are  you  calling  me 
for  at  thi5  hour?"  Lem  asked  angrily. 

"Cool  off,"  John  said.  "You'll  be  delighted  when  you  hear 
this.  I  want  you  to  build  an  aii'-conditioned  cage 
for  Gargantua.  Good  tie-up,  great  publicity  for  us  both." 

That  was  a  time  when  air  conditioning  was  just  get- 
ting started.  Bulware  saw  the  possibilities  right  away.  "It's 
four  A.M.,  John,"  he  said,  "but  I'll  start  working  on  it  right 
now." 

Bill  Yeske,  who  had  built  our  wagons  for  forty  years,  built 
the  magnificent  cage  wagon  in  which  Gargantua  was  exhib- 
ited. Carrier  did  not  just  air-condition  it;  they  made  tests  of 
climatic  conditions  in  the  Congo  and  fitted  up  the  cage  with 
thermostatic  controls  and  humidifiers  that  reproduced  them 
exactly.  The  phrase  "jungle-conditioned  cage"  won  them  the 
advertisers'  award  for  1938. 

Gargantua  lived  as  happily  as  his  nature  permitted  in  that 
cage  for  twelve  years.  Once  he  got  pneumonia  in  New  York, 
when  the  air  conditioner  could  not  cope  with  the  concentra- 
tion of  germs  in  Madison  Square  Garden.  Jolm  called  in  the 


1J1  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

greatest  diagnostician  and  the  best  man  for  pneumonia  in 
America.  There  they  were,  in  the  basement  of  the  Garden  at 
five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  fighting  for  a  gorilla's  life.  They 
had  a  battery  of  oxygen  flasks  connected  to  the  air  ducts  of 
the  air  conditioner,  feeding  him  pure  oxygen. 

Gargantua  was  a  good  patient.  The  poor  fellow  was  almost 
gone,  and  he  was  like  a  sick  child.  The  doctors  had  no  fear 
of  his  great  strength.  He  seemed  to  know  he  was  sick  and  that 
they  were  trying  to  help  him.  We  were  all  happy  when  his 
old  ferocity  returned. 

After  that,  Gargantua  remained  in  good  health  until  the 
close  of  his  life.  In  his  prime  he  weighed  five  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds  and  was  five  feet  seven  and  one  half  inches  tall. 
His  enormously  powerful  arms  had  a  total  span  of  over  nine 
feet.  He  ate  everything  we  did  except  meat,  but  he  did  get 
boiled  liver  and  cod-liver  oil  for  vitamins. 

In  1941  John  heard  of  a  lady  gorilla  in  Cuba  who  was  for 
sale.  Her  name  was  M'Toto,  which  means  "Little  One" 
in  Swahili.  John  went  to  Havana  to  call  on  M'Toto,  who  was 
hving  in  a  pretty  little  house  of  her  own  on  the  grounds  of 
her  opulent  owner,  Mrs.  Stephen  Hoyt.  The  reason  Toto  was 
for  sale  was  that  one  day,  when  she  was  having  tea  in  the 
garden  with  Mrs.  Hoyt,  she  playfully  broke  both  the  lady's 
wrists.  It  was  an  accident,  for  Toto  had  a  sweet  disposition. 

John  bought  Toto.  This  was  the  beginning  of  the  wonderful 
idea  of  the  marriage  of  Gargantua  and  Toto.  We  planned  a 
lovely  wedding  on  Washington's  Birthday  1941,  with  a  cake 
flown  down  from  Schrafi^t's  in  New  York.  Mrs.  Hoyt,  in  flow- 
ing chiffon  and  a  pictuie  hat,  was  matron  of  honor,  and  lots 
of  reporters  were  invited.  The  ceremony  took  place  in  a  bower 
of  flowers  under  a  canvas  canopy  at  Winter  Quarters. 

The  strains  of  Lohengrin's  Processional  hailed  the  ap- 
proach of  Toto's  chaste  v^'hite  cage,  bearincr  a  placard,  "Mrs. 
Ga'gantua  the  Great."  Toto's  trainer,  Jose  Thomas,  was  rid- 


THE   WORLDS    MOST   TERRIFYING   CREATURE  273 

ing  in  the  cage  with  her.  A  snorting  tractor  backed  it  into 
position  end  to  end  with  Gargantua's  monster  cage.  The  great 
ape  was  pacing  the  floor  in  an  amiable  humor.  When  the  back- 
board of  Toto's  cage  was  removed,  Gargantua  stopped  dead 
in  his  tracks.  An  expression  of  dawning  amazement  grew  on 
his  terrible  countenance.  As  he  moved  forward  to  grasp  the 
bars  he  was  plainly  thunderstruck. 

Toto  had  her  back  to  him.  She  must  have  felt  that  someone 
was  following  her,  for  she  glanced  over  her  shoulder.  One 
look  and  she  lurched  forward  and  flung  her  arms  around  the 
trainer's  neck.  This  evidently  made  her  feel  secure,  for  she 
turned  and  bellowed  at  her  husband. 

At  that,  they  both  went  into  tantrums.  From  a  docile, 
pampered  pet,  Toto  became  a  raging  jungle  beast.  Gargantua 
exceeded  his  previous  high  of  ferocity.  Roaring  and  yelling, 
he  pelted  his  wife  with  half-eaten  vegetables  and  shook  the 
cage  in  his  raging  efforts  to  tear  out  the  bars.  The  congrega- 
tion was  hysterical  between  laughter  and  terror. 

I  regret  to  say  that  tlie  marriage  was  never  consummated. 
When  the  bridal  couple  got  a  httle  used  to  each  other  we 
connected  their  cages,  with  only  bars  between,  in  the  hope 
that  propinquity  would  foster  love.  Toto  showed  signs  of  in- 
terest. She  made  coy  advances,  like  throwing  an  overripe 
melon  at  her  husband.  But  Gargantua  spurned  her.  George 
Jean  Nathan  always  claimed  he  was  a  fairy. 

Each  cage  had  two  compartments  so  that  you  could  shut 
the  gorilla  in  one  end  and  clean  out  the  other.  When  we  got 
to  the  Garden  that  year,  Mrs.  Hoyt  came  to  call  on  Toto.  To 
get  into  the  unoccupied  end  of  her  cage,  she  had  to  pass 
Gargantua's.  Incautiously  she  turned  her  back  on  him.  He 
grabbed  for  her  and  just  got  her  dress.  A  loud  rip  and  there 
was  Mrs.  Hoyt  in  nothing  but  her  bra  and  panties  screaming 
bloody  murder. 


274  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

Anthropologists  say  that  a  gorilla's  normal  life  span  is  the 
same  as  that  of  primitive  man— forty-five  or  fifty  years.  How- 
ever, Gargantua  began  to  age  visibly  when  he  was  twenty- 
one.  His  coat  turned  the  color  of  a  silver  fox  and  he  became 
progressively  more  feeble  throughout  1949.  Our  last  stand  of 
the  season  was  Miami  and  that  night  Gargantua  died.  Even 
his  passing  was  publicity-timed,  for  our  press  agents  wrote 
that  he  had  waited  until  the  last  night  of  the  season  to  die 
like  the  good  trouper  that  he  was. 

I  had  promised  Dr.  Yerkes  to  send  Gargantua's  body  to 
Johns  Hopkins  for  autopsy.  We  sadly  packed  him  in  a  piano 
case  full  of  dry  ice  and  flew  him  to  Baltimore.  After  they 
were  through  with  him,  his  skeleton  went  to  New  Haven, 
where  it  now  stands  in  company  with  some  of  our  most  fa- 
mous animals.  Harvard  wanted  him,  but  Gargantua  was 
a  Yale  man. 


CHAPTER   XXII 


LABOR  PAINS 


We  brought  the  circus  into  New  York  in  March  1938,  allowing 
one  week  for  rehearsals.  This  seems  like  a  short  time  to  put 
an  entire  show  together,  but  James  A.  Bailey  used  to  allow 
only  three  days.  It  can  be  done  if  everybody  knows  his  busi- 
ness. The  performers  are  all  old  pros.  They  don't  have  to  think 


276  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

about  the  entire  circus,  just  the  five,  seven,  or  twelve  minutes 
they  are  allotted  out  of  the  total  running  time. 

Fitting  them  together  and  planning  a  balanced  per- 
formance was  up  to  John  and  Fred  Bradna,  our  great  eques- 
trian director,  and  their  assistants.  You  have  your  specs  and 
production  numbers,  your  wild-animal  acts,  acrobatic  num- 
bers, clowns,  aeriahsts,  equestrians,  trained  elephants,  and  so 
forth,  and  you  always  plan  so  that  either  the  clowns  or  a 
httle  aerial  act  is  going  on  while  the  crew  is  tearing  down 
after  an  act  that  requires  heavy  props,  such  as  the  arenas  for 
the  trained  cats. 

Normally,  planning  for  next  year's  show  begins  the  day 
after  you  open  in  the  Garden;  but,  of  course,  in  1938  we  did 
not  have  that  much  time.  However,  Bradna  and  Valdo  had 
been  programing  the  shows  for  so  long  that  they  did  not  find 
it  too  difficult.  The  big  production  numbers  had  been  rou- 
tined, rehearsed,  and  timed  in  Sarasota.  Acts  had  been  arriv- 
ing from  Europe  for  a  month,  but  some  of  them  did  not  reach 
New  York  until  a  few  days  before  we  opened.  Then  it  was  just 
a  matter  of  dropping  them  into  the  slots  that  had  been  held 
open  for  them.  Merle  Evans,  our  veteran  bandmaster,  had  to 
learn  over  two  hundred  music  cues. 

The  night  of  the  dress  rehearsal  ran  the  unholy  time  of  four 
hours,  but  this  was  largely  due  to  Terrell  Jacobs'  trouble  with 
his  panthers.  You  cannot  cut  an  animal  act  short.  They  must 
be  forced  to  go  through  their  entire  routme  every  time;  other- 
wise, they  will  quit  at  that  spot  and  have  to  be  withdrawn 
for  a  week  or  so  of  retraining.  So  one  balky  cat  can  hold  up 
the  whole  ciicus.  That  night  Jacobs'  act  lasted  an  hour  in- 
stead of  its  allotted  twelve  minutes.  Otherwise,  things  ran 
very  smoothly.  Superstitious  show  people  said  tliis  was  a  bad 
omen.  They  were  right. 

To  go  back  briefly.  In  May  1937  Sam  Gumpertz  had 
signed  a  five-year  contract  with  the  American  Federation  of 


LABOR   PAINS  27/ 

Actors,  an  A,  F.  of  L.-ajBBliated  union  that  represented  the 
working  crews  and  handlers,  doubhng  their  minimum  wage. 
A  shghtly  smaller  scale  prevailed  while  in  Winter  Quarters, 
and  traditionally  this  continued  during  the  New  York  and 
Boston  engagements  until  we  actually  went  under  canvas. 

A  few  hours  before  opening  night  a  union  delegation 
headed  by  Ralph  Whitehead  came  to  John  and  demanded 
full  scale  immediately.  John  knew  they  were  pointing  a  pistol 
at  his  head.  The  famous  Ringling  rage  boiled  up.  He  told 
them  to  go  to  hell.  Shortly  before  the  performance  every  man 
jack  walked  out,  except  the  staflF,  the  performers,  and  the 
freaks. 

It  looked  like  total  disaster.  The  Garden  was  our  biggest 
stand.  Everything  hinged  on  it,  from  the  publicity  which 
spread  throughout  the  country  to  the  profits  which  carried 
us  over  many  a  rough  spot  on  the  road.  We  had  stretched  our 
credit  to  the  breaking  point  to  refurbish  the  show.  If  we  dis- 
appointed the  large  opening-night  audience,  it  would  deal  us 
a  blow  from  which  we  might  never  recover. 

We  all  knew  that  if  we  lost  the  circus  again  it  was  gone  for 
good.  In  the  back  yard,  down  in  the  cavernous  basements  of 
the  Garden,  the  performers  were  milling  around,  a  leaderless, 
panicky  mob,  asking,  "What  happens  now?  What  shall  we 
do?" 

Pat  Valdo,  our  personnel  director,  shouted  the  answer:  "Mr. 
Johnny  says  we  showl" 

That  was  a  frantic  night.  The  house,  though  not  packed, 
was  well  dressed.  To  dress  a  house  is  to  distribute  the  tickets 
so  that  most  sections  are  peopled  and  there  are  no  glaring 
expanses  of  empty  seats.  Rumors  were  running  through  the 
crowd  that  made  them  irritable  and  uneasv.  Then  the  lights 
went  down.  Merle  Evans  gave  us  a  blare  and  ruffle  of  drums. 
Under  a  single  spot  John  stood  at  tlie  microphone.  He  told 
the  crowd  what  had  happened  and  announced  that  we  would 


2/8  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

try  to  go  on  anyhow.  He  ended  with  the  sentence  that  has 
become  a  tradition  of  all  the  opening  nights  we  have  played 
since:  "I  welcome  you  to  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth." 

The  audience  answered  with  a  full-throated  roar  vastly  dif- 
ferent in  power  and  emotion  from  the  usual  polite  applause. 
Then  the  floodhghts  came  on,  the  band  played  furiously,  and 
the  show  began. 

The  spec  was  terribly  different  from  the  way  we  had 
pictured  it.  There  were  no  grooms  for  the  horses,  no  bull  men 
to  bring  up  the  elephants,  not  even  a  small  donkey.  Led  by 
an  unelephanted  Maharajah  of  Nepal,  the  royal  court— 
maharanis,  princesses,  and  all— trudged  into  the  arena  fairly 
staggering  under  their  heavy  gold-encrusted  costumes.  Sixty 
Bengal  Lancers  shuffled  along  in  cavalry  boots  and  spurs.  The 
final  irony  was  the  appearance  of  the  Great  White  Hunter, 
Frank  Buck,  in  riding  breeches,  sport  shirt,  and  sola  topee, 
limping  along  carrying  his  pet  cheetah  in  his  arms.  But  at 
sight  of  him  our  loyal  audience  shouted  the  roof  down. 

Loyalty  was,  in  fact,  the  leitmotiv  of  that  night.  Not 
loyalty  to  us,  for  we  had  not  been  with  the  show  long  enough 
to  deserve  it,  but  loyalty  of  the  audience  to  the  sporting  spirit 
of  the  performers,  and,  in  turn,  their  loyalty  to  their  art.  Be- 
yond that,  the  loyalty  of  aU  concerned  to  the  circus  itself. 

We  gave  a  pretty  ragged  performance— a  hodgepodge  to 
end  all  the  hodgepodges,  which  John  had  planned  so  care- 
fully to  avoid.  The  first  problem  was  getting  TerreU  Jacobs' 
big  iron  cage  up.  John,  Artie  Concello,  Pat  Valdo,  Clyde 
Ingalls,  myself,  and  a  lot  more  good  people  I  don't  remember, 
and  a  midget  named  Harry  Earle,  pulled  and  hauled  ineptly. 
When  we  finally  got  it  set,  the  audience  applauded  wildly. 

When  it  came  time  to  strike  the  cage,  our  artist  friend 
Charlie  Baskerville  vaulted  over  the  arena  railing  and  ran  to 
help.  He  was  followed  by  hundreds  of  other  men  in  ringside 
seats.  At  times  the  arena  was  so  full  of  society  razorbacks. 


LABOR    PAINS  279 

and  reporters  taking  their  pictures,  that  we  had  to  beg  them 
to  return  to  their  seats. 

Amateur  bull  men  helped  lead  the  performing  elephants  on; 
very  dangerous  it  was,  too.  The  feuding  Loyal-Repenskis 
acted  as  hostlers  for  the  Christianis,  and  the  Christianis,  in 
turn,  performed  this  menial  service  for  their  arch  enemies.  It 
usually  took  a  six-horse  team  to  haul  Gargantua's  huge  cage. 
A  great  crowd  of  performers  and  civilians  pushed  it  around 
the  arena.  It  was  pretty  hard  to  see  Gargantua,  but  the 
audience  went  wild. 

How  long  the  show  ran  that  night  I  don't  exactly  know, 
because  nobody  checked.  But  it  was  dawn  by  the  time  John 
and  I,  with  our  faces  blackened  and  our  evening  clothes  in 
tatters,  got  back  to  the  Ritz.  We  never  wanted  another  night 
like  that.  But  the  strikers  had  really  done  us  a  favor.  The 
publicity  was  magnificent. 

After  two  more  makeshift  performances  to  packed  houses, 
the  union  settled  for  a  small  compromise.  After  tliat,  there 
was  only  one  more  untoward  incident  of  the  run.  This  was 
caused  by  a  tigress  named  Lady,  a  magnificent  animal  who 
had  been  raised  on  the  bottle.  She  was  as  gentle  as  a  kitten 
and  had  never  been  known  to  unsheath  her  claws.  When  she 
first  came  to  Sarasota,  John  and  I  used  to  walk  her  around 
Winter  Quarters  on  a  leash. 

So  in  the  great  Nepal  spec  we  had  her  keeper  parade  her 
around  the  hippodrome.  He  had  the  leash  and  a  little  cane 
to  push  her  away  if  she  got  too  playful.  She  seemed  to  enjoy 
walking  along  among  the  other  animals,  a  group  which 
included  old  Edith  tlie  girafte,  Lotus  the  hippo,  and  a  troupe 
of  tiny  Sicilian  donkeys. 

Then  one  night,  as  she  waited  among  the  crowd  of  people 
and  animals  to  go  on,  the  strange  jungle  madness  seized  her. 
Without  tlie  slightest  warning  she  sprang  at  a  poor  little  don- 


280  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

key  and  bit  his  whole  rear  end  oflF  with  one  massive  crunch. 
Then  in  long,  sinuous  bounds  she  started  up  the  tunnel  pas- 
sage headed  for  the  crowded  foyer  of  the  Garden.  People 
were  paralyzed  around  the  bloody  corpse  of  the  donkey. 
Mayhem  and  the  dreadful  self-slaughter  of  a  panic-stricken 
mob  loomed  if  she  reached  the  foyer. 

In  the  corridor  was  a  brave  little  midget  named  Paul 
Runkel,  dressed  for  the  role  of  Dopey  in  the  "Seven  Dwarfs." 
As  the  great  beast  loped  toward  him  he  stepped  out  and  hit 
her  squarely  on  the  nose  with  his  Uttle  rubber  hammer.  The 
sudden  shock  startled  her  back  into  her  own  sweet  self.  Her 
keeper  snapped  the  leash  on  and  led  her  docilely  back  to  her 
cage. 

We  thought  we  had  troubles  in  the  Garden;  but  it  was  not 
until  we  went  on  the  road  that  things  really  got  tough.  The 
first  blow  fell  on  a  cold,  rainy  night  as  we  began  to  load  the 
show  after  the  final  performance  in  Brooklyn.  With  the  Big 
Top  about  half  down  and  everything  sodden  and  flapping  in 
the  wet  wind,  work  suddenly  ceased.  Ralph  Whitehead  and 
Judge  Padway  of  Milwaukee,  who  was  the  A.  F.  of  L.  counsel, 
were  both  out  there  in  the  rain.  John  and  I  met  them  and  we 
adjourned  to  a  saloon  near  the  lot  to  talk  things  over.  They 
said  that  we  owed  the  union  some  money  that  had  not  been 
paid.  It  amounted  to  $3500,  so  these  two  said,  and  the  circus 
would  not  move  until  it  was  paid. 

We  were  to  open  in  Washington  the  next  day.  To  miss  even 
two  performances  there  would  cost  us  at  least  $25,000,  and 
our  operating  expenses  that  year  were  about  $17,000  a  day. 
John  threw  up  his  hands,  and  I  went  back  through  the  rain 
to  the  red  wagon  and  got  $3500.  I  offered  the  cash  to  Judge 
Padway,  who  refused  to  touch  it.  But  another  member  of  the 
union  took  it,  and  everybody  went  back  to  work.  We  got  off 
the  lot  at  7:30  A.M.  and  opened  in  Washington  that  night. 


LABOR    PAINS  28 1 

Oddly  enough,  the  union  found  that  there  had  been  a 
similar  error  in  our  accounts  with  the  union  the  night  we 
pulled  out  of  Washington.  These  tactics  were  typical  of  the 
union  in  those  days.  They  did  it  to  let  you  know  that  the  ax 
was  over  your  head. 

Right  here  I  want  to  state  that  both  John  and  I  are  not  anti- 
union. Our  own  father  was  a  member  of  the  Brotherhood  of 
Locomotive  Engineers  and  we  were  brought  up  in  sympathy 
with  organized  labor  and  an  understanding  of  what  it  had 
done,  not  only  for  working  men  but  for  everyone  in  the 
United  States.  Our  feelings  in  this  respect  is  shown  by  our 
friendship  with  many  labor  leaders,  especially  that  grand  old 
gentleman  Matthew  Woll,  and  by  the  fact  that  in  the  year  of 
our  2;reatest  battles  with  the  union  we  had  the  circus  take 
part  in  the  Labor  Day  parade  in  Wichita,  Kansas,  where  we 
were  playing. 

However,  when  labor  got  tough  with  the  circus  we  got 
tougher.  It  was  the  only  way  to  save  it.  For  tlie  circus  is  ter- 
ribly vulnerable  to  mischance.  Bad  weather  can  come  at  any 
time;  wrecks  and  disasters  are  an  ever  present  possibility;  if, 
in  addition,  there  is  tlie  constant  threat  of  a  strike,  you  are  in 
an  impossible  position. 

A  railroad  show  like  ours  must  keep  its  schedule  or  perish. 
Even  a  few  hours'  delay  can  upset  the  carefullv  planned 
timetable  of  the  railroad;  a  day's  delay  is  extremely  costly; 
and  an  idle  week  could  spell  financial  disaster.  Not  only  that, 
but  there  is  the  public  to  be  considered.  If  we  failed  to  show, 
it  seriously  damaged  our  carefully  nurtm-ed  popularitv— tliou- 
sands  of  people,  who  had  planned  to  make  a  fete  of  circus 
day,  disappointed  and  disgruntled. 

We  considered  it  extremely  reprehensible  of  unscrupulous 
la]-»or  leaders  to  take  advantage  of  this  Nulnerabi'itv.  So  v,e 
fought  them  as  viciously  as  they  fought  us;  just  as  we  fouglit 
eveiy  other  threat  to  our  circus. 


282  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

The  next  blow  came  when  all  our  teamsters  struck  in 
Toledo,  suddenly  refusmg  to  drive  the  wagons  from  the  lot 
to  the  runs.  We  were  expecting  trouble  and  had  prepared  an 
unpleasant  surprise  for  them.  John  had  a  battery  of  tractors 
ready  to  take  over.  Again  the  strikers  had  done  us  a  favor  by 
forcing  mechanization  upon  us.  The  circus  was  operating  ex- 
actly as  it  had  fifty  years  before,  just  as  though  the  internal- 
combustion  engine  had  never  been  invented.  The  wagons 
were  still  unloaded  from  the  flats  by  hand  and  hauled  to  the 
lot  by  horses;  and  the  Big  Top  was  still  raised  by  elephant 
power.  Eighteen  tractors  replaced  tliree  hundred  horses  with 
all  the  problems  of  transportation,  feeding,  and  handling  that 
they  involved. 

Naturally  this  raised  a  howl.  "People  love  the  horses,"  our 
conservative  managers  said.  "They'll  miss  them." 

"We  still  have  lots  of  horses  for  the  equestrian  acts,"  John 
pointed  out.  "If  people  want  to  see  horses  we'll  pitch  the 
horse  top  near  the  Big  Top  and  open  it  to  the  public." 

It  became  a  very  popular  attraction. 

We  sent  all  the  horses  to  our  farm  in  Peru,  Indiana,  to  be 
sold.  When  John  and  I  reached  the  lot  next  evening,  Jim 
Pepper,  a  wonderful  old  character  who  drove  tlie  gilly 
wagon,  was  waiting  for  us.  He  was  hterally  in  tears. 

"What's  the  matter,  Jim?"  I  asked. 

"Mr.  Johnny  sold  Bill." 

"What's  this?  Who's  Bill?"  John  asked. 

"You  know  Bill,"  Jim  ahnost  sobbed.  "He's  pulled  my  gilly 
wagon  for  ten  years.  He's  not  a  horse,  he's  a  friend." 

We  could  not  break  the  old  boy's  heart,  so  we  had  Bill  sent 
back  from  Indiana.  As  long  as  Jim  lived,  he  hitched  Bill  to 
the  gilly  wagon  eveiy  night  and  drove  it  around  the  lot  pick- 
ing up  the  tent  stakes.  When  Jim  died  we  retired  Bill 
to  Winter  Quarters.  That  was  the  last  horse-drawn  gilly 
wagon. 


LABOR    PAINS  283 

The  final  showdown  with  the  union  came  in  Scranton, 
Pennsylvania.  From  the  time  we  had  gone  on  the  road  we 
had  been  losing  money  and  our  reserves  were  getting  thin. 
In  Syracuse,  Jolin  announced  that  if  the  show  was  to  go  on, 
everybody,  including  the  president,  must  take  a  25  per  cent 
cut  in  salary.  My  pay  as  vice-president  was  reduced  from 
$100  to  $75  a  week.  All  the  performers  cheerfully  agreed,  but 
the  workers  stood  on  their  contract.  John  offered  to  show 
them  our  books,  but  they  just  laughed  at  him  and  said,  "We've 
got  a  contract  covering  a  minimum  wage,  and  you'll  pay  it  or 
else!" 

Boarding  each  man  cost  about  $45  a  month,  which  brought 
their  pay  to  a  point  much  higher  than  the  prevailing  average 
wage  for  unskilled  labor.  In  fact,  even  after  a  25  per  cent  cut 
it  was  still  above  average. 

In  a  ground  swell  of  grumbling  we  moved  from  Syracuse 
to  Scranton.  We  set  up  and  gave  the  matinee.  Then  the  work- 
ing crew  struck.  We  could  go  on  in  the  Garden  without  them; 
under  canvas  we  could  not  do  it  safely.  Ringling  Brothers- 
Barnum  &  Bailey  Combined  Shows  ended  its  season  that  day, 
June  26,  1938. 

John  and  I  and  my  roommate  from  Yale,  Charlie  Bedcaux, 
whose  father  was  the  famous  efficiency  expert,  were  virtually 
barricaded  in  the  Casey  Hotel  in  Scranton,  We  were  in  con- 
siderable danger.  That  was  an  era  of  labor  violence;  of  sit- 
down  strikes  and  pitched  battles  between  specially  trained 
labor  goons  and  professional  strikebreakers  hired  by  em- 
ployers. Feeling  was  often  bitter.  It  was  very  bitter  in 
Scranton. 

For  five  days  we  were  besieged  in  the  Casey  Hotel,  \\'ith 
the  circus  stalled  on  the  lot.  We  could  not  move  it  out,  and 
the  left-wing  mayor  of  Scranton  was  disinclined  to  help  us  or 
offer  much  protection.  The  union  leaders  thought  that  if  they 
held  us  there  we  would  have  to  go  on  under  the  contract 


284  JOHN   RINGLING  NORTH 

Gumpertz  had  signed  with  them.  We  knew  that  to  do  so  was 
financial  suicide. 

I  remember  one  conference  with  Ralph  Whitehead,  who 
was  an  old  Shakespearean  actor  given  to  dramatic  speeches. 
John  told  him  that  all  we  wanted  to  do  was  to  close  up  and 
move  back  to  Winter  Quarters  in  Sarasota. 

"You  can't  mean  that  you  would  close  the  circus  in  mid- 
season  I"  Whitehead  said  incredulously. 

"We  have  no  choice,"  John  answered. 

Whitehead  struck  his  chest  and,  voice  at  full  diapason, 
said,  "John,  would  tliat  the  ground  would  open  up  and  swal- 
low me  before  this  dreadful  thing  should  come  to  pass!" 

Very  quietly  John  said,  "You  know,  Ralph,  I  wish  to  God 
it  would,  too." 

After  five  days  we  managed  to  round  up  enough  men  to 
move  us  out.  Even  then  the  union  would  not  allow  us  to  go. 
They  said  we  had  to  pay  strike  costs  of  about  $12,000  or  face 
a  full-scale  fight.  It  was  an  obvious  injustice,  but  we  had  to 
yield.  However,  we  made  the  most  of  it.  I  alerted  the  press 
and  photographers.  When  Mr.  Whitehead  came  for  the  pay- 
off they  were  all  there.  John  ostentatiously  took  the  money  in 
cash  out  of  his  pocket  and  ceremoniously  handed  it  to  him 
while  flash  bulbs  started  popping.  The  pictures  were  run  in 
papers  all  over  the  country  under  captions  such  as  "White- 
head Getting  His  Pound  of  Flesh." 

We  still  had  an  ace  in  the  hole.  When  Ringling  Brothers 
was  incorporated  in  1932,  the  American  Circus  Company  was 
incorporated  as  a  separate  subsidiary  company  under  the 
name  of  Circus  Cities  Zoological  Gardens  Corporation.  While 
we  were  playing  the  East  we  had  that  corporation  running 
the  Sells-Floto-Al  G.  Barnes  Combined  Shows  out  West.  This 
circus  had  no  union  contract.  John  went  to  all  our  best  acts 
and  asked  the  perfoi*mers  if  they  would  sign  at  reduced 


LABOR    PAINS  285 

salaries  with  Sells-Floto.  They  did.  Frank  Buck  took  a  cut 
from  $1000  to  $250  a  week. 

Then  I  took  The  Big  One  back  to  Winter  Quarters.  We  got 
in  on  a  Friday.  The  following  Monday  afternoon  I  left 
Sarasota  with  twenty-five  railroad  cars  loaded  with  motorized 
equipment,  the  Big  Top,  and  most  of  the  feature  acts— 
Gargantua,  of  course,  Frank  Buck,  the  Christianis,  Heyer's 
dressage  display  and  Hberty  horses,  Terrell  Jacobs'  animals, 
the  Flying  Concellos,  and  Ralph  Clark's  Jump  over  the 
Flaming  Automobile.  We  joined  Sells-Floto  at  Redfield, 
South  Dakota.  We  had  closed  in  Scranton  on  June  26;  we 
opened  at  Redfield  on  July  7.  It  was  fast  work.  While  I  was 
readying  the  show  and  effecting  the  transfer  and  amalgama- 
tion, John  had  not  been  idle.  He  had  devised  entirely  new 
billing  and  publicity,  which  proved  a  miracle  of  improvisa- 
tion—the newspaper  ads  and  bills  stated  in  small  print:  "The 
A]  G.  Barnes-Sells-Floto  Circus  PRESENTS  [in  larger  type] 
RINGLING  BROTHERS  AND  BARNUM  AND  BAILEY'S 
STUPENDOUS  NEW  FEATURES  [the  biggest  type  J. 

The  new  combination  was  quite  a  show— in  fact.  The 
Greatest  left  on  Earth.  Sells-Floto  already  had  some  splen- 
did displays,  including  Mabel  Stark,  billed  as  "The  Queen  of 
the  Jungle  presenting  a  Notable  Congress  of  the  Earth's  Most 
Ferocious  Performing  Lions  and  Tigers."  Another  feature  was 
a  charming  girl  named  Dolly  Jacobs  with  a  lion  that  rode  on 
horseback.  Since  the  show  was  designed  for  a  more  provincial 
audience  than  The  Big  One,  it  had  the  traditional  "Thrilling 
Roman  Chariot  Races." 

We  began  to  make  money  again. 

Of  course,  the  A.F.A.  still  dogged  us.  Thev  picketed  every 
performance;  and  their  pickets  even  rode  our  trains  and 
sneaked  meals  in  the  cookhouse.  But  it  was  a  losin<j  struercfle. 
People  in  general  were  tired  of  labor  strife;  even  the  pic":;ets 
seemed  lackadaisical. 


286  JOHN   RINGLING  NORTH 

In  Omaha,  John  and  I  came  on  the  lot  about  noon  to  see 
how  tilings  were  going.  One  bedraggled  union  picket  was 
stalking  up  and  down  in  front  of  the  midway.  John  stopped 
to  chat  with  him.  "How  are  you  enjoying  your  work?"  he 
asked. 

With  a  sour  grin  the  man  said,  "Not  very  much." 

"How  would  you  like  to  stop  doing  this  and  work  for  the 
circus?"  John  asked. 

The  picket  threw  down  his  sign  and  said,  "I  sure  wouldl" 

We  gave  him  a  note  and  sent  him  over  to  the  boss  canvas- 
man.  I  suppose  that  could  be  called  tampering  with  a  miion 
employee. 

John  had  dehberately  dated  the  show  into  Houston,  Texas, 
to  coincide  with  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  conven- 
tion there.  We  did  good  business  with  the  delegates.  Mattliew 
WoU  asked  John  for  some  seats,  and  we  gave  him  the  best  we 
had.  Then  our  friend  Tom  Hogg,  son  of  a  former  governor  of 
Texas  and  one  of  those  Texan  conservatives  who  are  so  far 
right  they  make  the  Morgan  partners  look  like  Commies,  came 
to  town.  When  he  asked  for  seats  we  warned  him  that  Woll 
would  be  in  the  audience.  He  let  loose  a  blast  of  profanity- 
it  seemed  that  there  had  been  trouble  out  on  his  oil  rigs  and  a 
striker  had  taken  a  pot  shot  at  him,  wliich  put  him  in  the 
hospital  for  a  wliile.  However,  he  said  he'd  be  "thus  and  so" 
if  he'd  let  any  "this  and  that"  labor  leader  keep  him  away  from 
the  circus. 

We  had  to  give  him  seats  near  Woll's  party.  Tom  was 
snorting  fire  when  he  saw  them.  In  the  middle  of  tlie  show  he 
said  loudly  to  his  chauffeur,  "Go  back  to  the  hotel  and  get  my 
six-guns.  I  don't  feel  easy  witliout  'em  in  such  low  company." 

The  chauffeur  brought  the  guns.  Hogg  checked  them  care- 
fully and  stuffed  them  in  his  belt.  He  sat  there  for  a  few  mo- 
ments more  glaring  at  Woll,  and  tlien  stalked  out,  saying,  "I 
can't  stand  the  smell  of  skunks." 

Luckily  Woll  was  amused. 


LABOR    PAINS  287 

Much  to  our  surprise,  we  snatched  a  nice  profit  from  ap- 
parent disaster.  The  show  made  back  all  our  losses  and 
closed  the  season  of  1938  with  more  than  enough  to  see  us 
through  the  winter.  It  was  the  final  appearance  of  the  Sells- 
Floto-Al  G.  Barnes  Circus. 

In  1939  nobody  knew  whether  The  Greatest  Show  would 
disappear  from  earth  forever  or  not.  We  had  learned  that  it 
was  impossible  to  operate  it  under  the  Gumpertz  contract. 
John  invited  the  union  leaders  to  confer  with  us.  The  meeting 
was  set  up  in  the  New  York  offices  of  our  friend  Matthew 
Woll,  who,  we  hoped,  would  exercise  a  moderating  influence 
on  his  colleagues. 

The  conference  began  very  pleasantly.  We  were  all  glad  to 
see  each  other  again.  It  was  "HowVe  you  been,  John?"  And 
"Great,  thanks,  Ralph,"  with  Matt  Woll  beaming  benevo- 
lently. We  talked  informally  all  afternoon,  and,  we  thought, 
constructively.  A  late  dinner  was  sent  in— paid  for  by  the  cir- 
cus, naturally— and  we  were  the  happiest  people  you  ever 
saw.  After  dinner  we  sat  down  at  Woll's  long  walnut  confer- 
ence table  to  hammer  out  an  agreement. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  Whitehead  said  they  would  accept 
the  same  contract  tliey'd  had  before.  John  looked  as  thunder- 
struck as  poor  old  Gargantua  when  he  fhst  saw  Toto.  "What 
have  we  been  talking  about  all  day?"  he  gasped.  "You  know 
I'm  not  going  to  stick  my  neck  in  the  same  noose  that 
strangled  us  last  year.  I  thought  we  were  trying  to  work  out 
something  that  would  give  us  a  break  and  still  be  fair  to  you." 

The  union  people  grinned  at  such  naivete.  "You  have  a  con- 
tract with  us,"  Whitehead  pointed  out.  "It's  got  three  vea  rs 
more  to  run  and  we've  never  recognized  that  it  can  be 
changed.  You  have  to  go  on  with  it." 

We  tossed  it  back  and  forth  for  a  few  minutes  without  the 
slightest  change.  There  was  no  more  give  to  them  tlian  to 
casehardened    steel.    Then    my   brother   made    one    of    the 


288  JOHN   BINGLING   NORTH 

shortest  addresses  in  the  history  of  labor  relations.  He  stood 
up,  short  and  stocky  and  electric,  facing  the  union  bigwigs 
across  the  table.  "Well,  gentlemen,"  he  began,  "I  have 
lis  ened  to  everything.  Now  I  have  only  two  words  to  add  to 
it."  They  don't  need  repeating.  Then:  "Come  on,  Buddy,  let's 
go! 

Matt  Woll  and  Judge  Padway  caught  us  at  the  elevators. 
Each  took  one  of  us  soothingly  by  the  arm.  "Come  back, 
Johnny  .  ,  .  Buddy.  We  can  still  work  something  out." 

We  went  back.  An  hour  later  we  had  a  contract  we  could 
live  with. 


CHAPTER   XXIII 


LADY  GODIVA  GOES  TO  THE 
WORLD'S  FAIR 


Even  before  we  knew  that  the  circus  would  show  in  1939, 
John  was  going  full  speed  ahead  with  his  plans  for  moderniz- 
ing it.  Perhaps  liis  greatest  innovation  was  the  design  for  a 
new  Big  Top.  The  old  six-pole  tent  had  not  been  designed;  it 
"just  growed."  In  the  beginning  there  was  a  round  top.  Long 
ago,  when  the  five  brothers  needed  more  space,  they  put  in  a 


290  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

center  section  with  the  half-round  tops  at  each  end.  As  the 
show  grew  and  the  crowds  increased,  more  center  sections 
were  added  and  the  tent  stretched  out  and  out,  becoming 
impractically  long  and  narrow— 510  feet  long  by  210  feet 
wide.  It  was  almost  impossible  for  people  at  the  ends  of  the 
arena  to  see  what  was  going  on  in  the  center  ring.  But  so 
unchangeable  are  circus  traditions  that  this  inefficient  mon- 
ster remained  in  use  for  fifty  years. 

Remember  that  the  Big  Top  was  not  just  an  inanimate 
mobile  structure  in  which  to  seat  an  audience,  but  a  hving 
thing  of  vital  canvas,  rope  and  wood  that  was  brought  to  life 
each  day  by  our  wonderful  old  boss  canvasman.  Captain  BiU 
Curtis,  and  his  men.  The  fact  that  it  had  this  kind  of  life  of 
its  own  was  an  essential  ingredient  of  the  circus;  we  had  to 
change  it  without  destroying  its  vital  essence. 

John's  new  Big  Top  was  shaped  like  an  oval  stadium,  with 
four  center  poles  instead  of  six.  It  was  his  idea,  but  the  detail 
and  construction  was  by  our  boss  saihnaker,  Leif  Osmondson. 
The  new  design  enabled  us  to  increase  the  diameter  of  the 
center  ring  to  fifty  feet,  the  biggest  we  had  ever  used.  These 
improvements  naturally  brought  criticism  upon  us,  but  what 
reaUy  roiled  the  traditionahsts  was  the  question  of  color. 

The  harmonious  Hghting  effects  which  Le  Maire  had 
worked  out  were  beautiful  in  the  Garden  and  at  night  per- 
formances under  canvas.  But  they  were  obhterated  at  mati- 
nees by  sun  blazing  through  the  white  canvas.  John  said, 
"Let's  make  the  canvas  blue." 

The  Big  Top  was,  to  quote  the  Circus  Magazine  for  1939, 
"reborn  in  shades  of  blue— dark  blue  at  the  peaks,  paling, 
down  its  slopes,  to  tints  of  hghter  blue.  The  center  poles  were 
gold  and  the  scores  of  quarter  poles  were  silver.  The  vast  oval 
of  boxes  and  grandstand  were  painted  a  new  shade  of  'Ring- 
hng  red,'  and  the  draperies  at  the  ends  of  the  grandstand 
and  the  rail  draperies  along  the  entire  circumference  of  the 


LADY  GODIVA  GOES   TO   THE   WORLd's   FAIR  2Q1 

hippodrome  track  were  deep  blue  with  giant  gold  tassels.  .  .  , 
Golden  stars  glittered  in  the  center  of  the  ring  carpets,  on 
drapes  and  on  the  poles.  .  .  ."  It  was  a  child's-eye  view  of 
heaven. 

Another  problem  of  the  matinees  on  the  road  was  heat. 
Once  people  had  been  willing  to  swelter  in  the  hundred- 
degree  temperatures  built  up  by  a  Kansas  sun  beating  on  a 
couple  of  acres  of  canvas;  not  so  the  modem  American.  On 
hot  days  we  played  to  half-empty  houses,  and  this  affected 
the  evening  show  as  well,  for  there  were  fewer  people  circu- 
lating through  town  talking  of  the  wonders  of  The  Greatest 
Show.  Air  conditioning  was  the  answer,  but  everyone  said, 
"You  can't  air-condition  a  tent." 

Well,  that  is  the  truth;  for  a  tent  leaks  hot  air  through  many 
orifices.  But  if  you  cannot  attain  perfection,  you  can  improve 
conditions.  We  bought  eight  motor-driven  units  operating  on 
the  blower  system  from  the  Buffalo  Forge  Corporation.  It  took 
tluee  extra  flatcars  to  transport  them  and  an  additional  crew 
of  fifty  men  to  run  them;  but  they  performed  a  near  miracle. 
Matinee  crowds  increased  and  our  ushers  reported  people 
saying  that  they  came  to  get  out  of  the  heat  as  much  as  to  see 
the  show. 

Many  less  obvious  but  quite  as  important  operating 
improvements  were  made.  Diesel  generators  supplanted  our 
outmoded  gasoline  plants,  increasing  our  electrical  output  at 
decreased  costs.  Huge-wheeled  tractors  replaced  the  pull-up 
teams  at  the  runs.  Caterpillar-mounted  booms  loaded  and  un- 
loaded the  canvas  and  the  Big  Top  rigging.  Somewhere 
around  this  time  John  had  an  idea  for  a  mechanical  stake 
puller,  which  our  boss  wagon  builder,  Bill  Yeske,  realized  for 
him  along  with  improvements  on  the  mechanical  stake 
drivers  already  in  use.  Later  still  came  a  machine  for  guying 
out  the  tent  ropes,  an  operation  which  had  been  performed 
by  large  gangs  of  men.  As  soon  as  we  saw  it  demonstrated 


292  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

John  and  I  decided  to  use  it;  but  as  we  walked  away,  despite 
our  enthusiasm  for  modernization,  we  both  were  sad  that 
never  again  would  we  hear  the  resonant  chant  of  "Heebie  1 
Heebie  I  Hobie!  Hold  I  GolongI"  which  was  the  euphoni- 
ous rendition  of  "Heave  it!  Heave  iti  Heavyl  Holdl  Go  onl" 

Meanwhile  we  were  not  neglecting  the  show  itself.  Just  as 
he  had  given  the  performance  a  theme  and  over-all  unity, 
John  now  took  the  music  in  hand.  Heretofore  the  band  had 
played  totally  unrelated  bits  and  snatches  of  music.  There 
was  lots  of  noise  and  lots  of  brass,  but  the  tunes  did  not  tie 
up  with  anything  except  the  individual  acts  with  their 
required  drum  rolls,  gallops,  and  so  forth.  John  decided  to 
program  each  year's  circus  music  as  an  entity,  and  he  hired 
one  of  Broadway's  best  arrangers  to  give  unity  to  the  arrange- 
ments. 

My  brother  was  well  equipped  to  organize  the  musical  pro- 
grams. He  had  a  considerable  share  of  the  Ringling's  musical 
talent.  He  had  loved  and  studied  music  for  years— classical, 
modem,  and  jazz.  In  addition  to  playing  a  hot  saxophone, 
he  had  studied  composition.  For  years  now  he  has  composed 
the  music  for  the  production  numbers  of  the  circus  himself, 
working  in  collaboration  with  such  top  lyric  writers  as  Irving 
Caesar,  Ray  Goetz,  and  in  recent  times  with  Tony  Valona. 
Though  John  is  not  a  great  musician,  he  has  produced  some 
lovely  melodies  for  the  circus;  among  them  "Lovely  Launana 
Lady,"  a  hit  time  of  the  De  Mille's  movie  TJie  Greatest  SJww 
on  Earth. 

However,  John  did  not  rely  on  his  own  talents  to  provide 
original  music  for  the  circus.  When  he  dreamed  up  the  idea 
of  an  elephant  ballet  for  the  1942  show,  he  had  the  effrontery 
to  ask  Igor  Stravinsky  to  write  the  music  for  it.  To  the  surprise 
of  everybody  but  John,  Stravmsky  accepted,  and  produced 
a    classic    composition.    Thus    encouraged,    John    engaged 


LADY  GODIVA  GOES   TO   THE   WORLDS   FAIR  203 

George  Balanchine  as  choreographer,  and  his  lovely  wife  of 
that  time,  Vera  Zorina,  danced  in  the  center  ring  on  opening 
night.  That  was  the  year  the  show  was  staged  by  Norman 
Bel  Geddes,  directed  by  John  Murray  Anderson,  and  cos- 
tumed by  Miles  White. 

I  suppose  everybody  loves  circus  music,  gay  and  noisy  and 
brassy  tliough  it  be.  John  helped  to  make  it  good  as  well  as 
noisy.  Writing  of  the  music  in  one  of  our  shows,  Lauritz  Mel- 
chior  said,  "I  could  not  leave  Madison  Square  Garden  while 
the  circus  band  was  playing  'Thunder  and  Blazes,'  not  even 
for  Tannhduser.  Of  course,  I  had  a  little  something  to  worry 
about.  I  was  supposed  to  be  singing  Tannhduser." 

In  1939  we  decided  not  to  send  out  the  Sells-Floto-Al  G. 
Barnes  Circus,  and  its  best  acts,  including  Mabel  Stark  and 
the  riding  lion,  were  incorporated  into  The  Big  One.  As  a 
variation,  we  also  had  a  Bengal  tiger  riding  on  the  back  of 
his  deadly  enemy,  an  elephant. 

Gargantua  was  a  greater  star  than  ever.  In  the  autumn  of 
1939  John  took  him  to  London.  He  was  booked  to  sail  on  the 
new  Queen  Mary,  but  when  it  came  time  to  load  him,  the 
hatches  proved  too  small  to  pass  his  cage.  So  he  went  igno- 
miniously  by  freighter.  He  was  the  star  attraction  of  the 
Bertram  Mills  Circus  at  the  Olympia  several  weeks. 

A  new  revival  of  elegance  was  in  sight  that  last  spring 
before  World  War  XL  People  were  getting  tired  of  the  "Age 
of  the  Common  Man"— especially  the  common  man  himself, 
who  began  making  money  and,  as  was  right  and  proper, 
aspiring  to  the  niceties  of  life.  Like  our  uncles  before  us,  we 
anticipated  this  trend.  One  of  the  productions  for  1939  was 
called  "Blue  Grass  Beauties."  It  reproduced  the  atmosphere 
of  Louisville,  Kentucky,  on  Derby  Day. 

It  was,  in  fact,  a  glorified  manege  number.  Where  foiTnerly 
such  an  act  had  one  man  or  woman  riding  a  dressage  horse 


294  JOHN  RINGLING   NORTH 

in  each  ring,  John  turned  it  into  a  big  production,  for  which 
he  used  special  Hlting  music.  We  hired  several  of  the  best 
gaited-horse  riders  in  America.  We  brought  thoroughbreds 
and  saddle  horses  up  from  Kentucky.  Some  of  the  former  were 
trained  as  Hberty  horses,  I  also  acquired  coaches  which  had 
belonged  to  August  Belmont  and  Mrs.  Vanderbilt,  Sr.  We 
filled  them  with  our  prettiest  girls  dressed  in  the  flowing- 
skirted,  picture-hatted  fashion  of  the  nineties.  As  they  drove 
around  the  hippodrome  behind  the  high-steppers,  whose 
silver-mounted  harness  jingled  softly,  they  were  a  lovely 
sight.  Old  August  Ringling  would  have  approved. 

The  opening  spec  that  year,  which  set  the  theme  of  the 
show,  was  "The  World  Comes  to  the  World's  Fair."  To  quote 
the  program  again:  "Europe,  South  America,  South  Africa, 
Canada  and  the  United  States  march  in  almost  indescribable 
splendor,  followed  by  glittering  sections  from  the  Orient  in 
the  traditional  glory  of  chromatic  costumes  and  jewelled  tm"- 
bans,  all  supposedly  bringing  precious  gifts  to  the  World's 
Fair.  They  come  mounted  on  gold  and  silver  draped  ele- 
phants, ahorse  or  on  camels,  in  palanquins  or  afoot.  .  .  ." 

It  was,  in  truth,  almost  that  good. 

The  World's  Fair  management  was  so  delighted  by  the 
idea  that  they  put  me  on  the  art  committee  and  asked  Jolm 
to  stage  a  wild  West  show.  He  said  bluntly,  "The  wild  West 
idea  couldn't  be  worse;  but  I'll  do  an  international  horse  show 
that  will  knock  your  eyes  out." 

Grover  Whalen  agreed  that  it  was  a  splendid  idea  and 
signed  John  to  stage  it.  Immediately  Jolm's  imagination  be- 
gan to  flourish  and  exfoliate.  Through  Karl  Bickel,  former 
president  of  United  Press,  he  contacted  an  Arab  sheik  for  a 
contingent  of  desert  horsemen  on  Arabian  steeds.  From  all 
over  the  world  he  brought  almost  every  kind  of  horse  used 
by  man.  Everything  had  to  be  as  real  as  the  Arabians.  There 
were  a  band  of  Cherokee  Indians,  Mexican  cowboys,  real 


LADY  GODIVA  GOES   TO   THE  WORLDS   FAIR  295 

bullfighters— to  cape,  but  not  kill,  bulls— and  Argentine 
Gauchos,  who  were  experts  in  bringing  steers  to  their  knees 
with  the  bolas.  We  induced  our  friends  Jack  and  Charlie  of 
New  York's  21  Club  to  set  up  a  frontier  bar— a  real  one, 
from  the  film  Dodge  City.  As  the  final  fantastic  Ringling 
touch,  John  envisaged  a  Lady  Godiva  chorus  riding  white 
horses  clad  in  notliing  but  long  golden  wigs.  It  was  a  magnifi- 
cent conception— evidently  too  magnificent  for  the  limited 
imaginations  of  oflBcialdom.  Suddenly  everything  went 
wrong. 

Let  the  lamentable  tale  be  told  in  John's  own  terse  words: 
"They  had  promised  me  $12,000  a  week  for  expenses.  In  a 
wave  of  economy  they  cut  me  down  to  $4000.  The  Fair 
management  demanded  that  Jack  and  Charlie  give  the  Fair 
25  per  cent  of  their  gross.  Since  they  had  planned  to  invest 
$250,000  of  tlieir  own  money,  they  naturally  refused  and 
pulled  out.  The  S.P.C.A.  said  that  even  though  the  bulls 
would  not  be  touched  it  was  cruel  to  cape  them.  They  said 
the  Gauchos  could  not  use  the  bolas.  So  the  bullfighters  and 
Gauchos  were  out. 

"On  opening  night  everything  was  lousy.  We  had  abso- 
lutely nothing.  Not  even  a  publicity  agent.  I  let  a  Brahma 
bull  loose  in  the  Fair  the  day  before.  We  got  some  publicity 
all  rightl 

"The  final  blow  came  a  few  hours  before  we  went  on.  The 
ukase  came  down  from  on  high,  no  nudity.'  There  went  my 
Lady  Godivas.  I  thought  of  Charlie  Baskerville  and  all  my 
other  friends  waiting  expectantly  in  the  grandstand.  To  see  a 
shambles! 

"We  finally  lined  up  for  the  Coventry  pageant.  The  Indians 
were  all  drunk.  The  cowboys  were  sober,  but  very  cross. 
Mayor  La  Guardia  and  Grover  Whalen  were  out  in  front  in 
cowboy  getups  mounted  on  ancient  cow  ponies.  The  little 


296  JOHN  EINGLING  NORTH 

mayor  was  almost  lost  under  his  Stetson  hat.  Whalen  was 
even  fmmier.  Whoever  saw  a  cowboy  with  a  toothbrush 
mustache?  John  Kjrimsky  wore  the  pink  coat  and  topper  of 
an  M.F.H. 

"Immediately  behind  Mayor  La  Guardia  and  Whalen  rode 
Anne  Wilson,  a  perfectly  beautiful  Model  in  a  blond  wig. 
When  the  order  'no  nudity'  came  she  had  been  draped  in  an 
Indian  blanket.  I  took  a  handkerchief  and  tied  it  around  her 
head.  Then  I  plucked  a  feather  out  of  an  Indian's  headdi^ess 
and  stuck  it  in  the  handkerchief.  'What  are  you  wearing 
under  that  blanket,  Anne?'  I  asked. 

"  'Just  a  bra,'  she  answered. 

"  'Give  it  to  me.' 

"She  was  a  nice  obedient  girl  who  did  exactly  as  she  was 
told. 

"  'Now  listen  carefully,  Anne,'  I  said.  'Not  right  away,  but 
when  you  get  out  there,  well  out,  throw  away  the  blanket. 
Then  tlirow  away  the  feather.  Then  the  handkerchief.  Get 
it?' 

"Anne  laughingly  said,  'Yes.' 

"The  band  played.  Mayor  La  Guardia  rode  out  ahead,  with 
Whalen  a  Httle  behind.  Polite  applause.  As  they  got  to  the 
center  of  the  arena  there  was  a  wild  burst  of  cheering.  The 
two  of  them  waved  tlieir  cowboy  hats  and  grinned  with  de- 
light. Came  a  second  frenzy  of  cheers  and  yells  like  to  burst 
your  ears.  Then  a  third,  almost  hysterical  salvo  of  shouts  as 
Anne  threw  the  handkerchief  away.  Even  those  two  applause- 
conscious  pohticians  could  not  beheve  it  was  all  for  them. 
They  looked  over  their  shoulders  and  saw  Anne  riding  in 
glorious  nudity.  .  .  ." 

Grover  Wlialen  called  John  on  the  carpet  the  next  morning. 
"Are  you  famihar  with  clause  five  of  your  contract?"  he  asked. 
( Clause  five  said  that  if  John's  management  should  prove  un- 


LADY   GODIVA   GOES   TO   THE   WORLd's   FAIB  297 

satisfactory  he  could  be  dismissed  at  the  discretion  of  the  of- 
ficials. ) 

"Yes,"  John  said.  "May  I  ask  if  you  have  examined  clause 
six?" 

"No,"  said  the  Fair's  president,  "but  I  intend  to  fire  you 
anyway." 

"Yes,  sir,"  John  said.  "About  clause  six.  It  says  that  if  I  am 
dismissed  you  have  to  pay  me  $1500  a  week  for  fifteen  weeks." 

John  rode  the  train  with  me  in  1939,  nursing  the  show 
through  most  of  the  summer.  When  he  was  with  us,  I  devoted 
myself  mainly  to  personnel  problems  and  publicity.  This  was 
appropriate,  since  I  had  begun  getting  publicity  for  the  cir- 
cus at  the  age  of  two,  when  I  fell  out  of  a  second-story  win- 
dow in  Baraboo.  It  did  not  hurt  me,  but  papers  all  over  the 
country  gave  it  a  big  play  with  a  circus  tie-in. 

That  year  we  took  the  circus  all  around  the  perimeter  of 
the  United  States.  After  looping  through  Pennsylvania,  New 
York,  and  the  New  England  states,  we  went  west  along  the 
northern  border  with  a  foray  into  Canada.  Then  down  the 
West  Coast  to  the  Mexican  border  and  along  that  to  El  Paso 
and  the  great  Texas  cities,  looping  back  to  Corpus  Christi  and 
Alabama.  Then  up  to  Atlanta,  down  the  Florida  east  coast  to 
Miami,  and  across  the  state  for  our  final  stand  in  Tampa.  We 
traveled  17,117  miles  and  showed  in  twenty-seven  states. 

This,  our  first  full  season,  was  a  splendid  tour.  The  crowds 
who  came  to  see  the  show  proved  to  us  that  the  public  would 
support  a  modern  circus.  Money  flowed  into  tlie  red  wagon. 

Incidentally,  of  tlie  hundreds  of  red  wagons  with  tlie  cir- 
cus, only  one  was  the  red  wagon.  To  tliis  fiery  caravan  came 
tradesmen  with  their  bills,  staff  performers  and  workingmen 
alike  for  tlie  money  due  them,  press  agents  with  expense  ac- 
counts, and  politicians  with  outstretched  hands.  Within  its  ar- 
mored walls  reposed  each  night  the  day's  take. 


298  JOHN   RINGLING   NORTH 

Like  everything  else  with  the  circus,  the  red  wagon  was 
personahzed,  taking  its  being  from  its  current  incumbent.  In 
my  early  days  this  was  dear,  crusty  old  Mr.  Hutch.  Fred  de 
Wolfe  was  its  custodian  in  1939,  and  the  ink  was  black.  De- 
spite our  unusually  large  expenditures  for  the  new  Big  Top, 
air  conditioning,  and  mechanization,  we  closed  the  sea- 
son with  a  net  profit  of  over  $400,000  on  a  total  gross  income 
of  $2,635,000. 

As  we  gaily  traversed  the  wide  plowlands,  plains,  and  for- 
ests of  the  western  states,  playing  the  pleasant,  appreciative 
little  towns  and  the  thriving  big  cities,  we  could  almost  kid 
ourselves  that,  except  for  superficial  things  like  automobiles, 
this  was  the  same  secure,  happy,  prosperous  world  our  uncles 
had  known  before  the  Age  of  Terror  dawned.  But  there  was  a 
ring  around  the  moon. 

Over  in  Europe  the  towering  thunderheads  of  war  were 
piling  up  black-purple  warnings.  Then  they  burst,  sending  the 
hghtning  of  diving  Stukas  spewing  death  on  the  hot  Polish 
plains,  which  are  so  like  our  own  Midwest.  The  world  was  at 
war  again. 

The  moment  he  realized  war  was  imminent,  John  decided 
to  go  to  Europe  to  get  what  new  acts  he  could  before  the 
supply  was  cut  oflF  as  it  had  been  in  Uncle  John's  time.  The 
danger  of  submarines  did  not  deter  him,  but  it  caused  the 
cancellation  of  every  ship  he  booked  on.  Flying  plays  havoc 
with  his  stomach,  but  there  was  nothing  else  for  it.  Anning 
himself  with  Pepto-Bismol  he  took  off  in  one  of  the  new  Pan 
American  Clippers. 

In  spite  of  the  difficulties  and  dangers  of  wartime  condi- 
tions, John's  trip  was  very  fruitful.  He  signed  up  a  number  of 
excellent  acts.  He  also  discovered  Max  Weldy  and  brought 
him  to  America  as  our  costume  designer.  He  has  been  in 
charge  of  The  Big  One's  wardrobe  department  ever  since. 


LADY   GODIVA   GOES   TO   THE   WORLDS   FAIR  299 

The  most  important  feature  which  John  brought  back  was 
Alfred  Court  and  his  assistant,  Damoo  Dhotre  of  India,  with 
a  genuinely  terrific  wild-animal  act.  It  consisted  of  three  rings 
of  mixed  wild  animals:  lions,  tigers,  mountain  lions,  and  black 
leopards;  a  Kodiak  bear,  Himalayan  bears,  polar  bears,  great 
Danes,  and  a  wonderful  white  snow  leopard— all  mixed  up  to- 
gether. 

To  my  mind  Alfred  Court  is  the  greatest  wild-animal 
trainer  the  world  has  ever  seen.  I  realize  that  statement 
sounds  like  circus-style  talk,  but  it  is  tlie  truth.  He  is  none  of 
your  whip-and-pistol  bully  boys,  pretending  to  stand  in 
deadly  danger  while  cowing  the  cats  by  sheer  brutality  and 
the  alleged  power  of  the  human  eye.  Instead,  he  makes  it  all 
seem  as  easy  and  polite  as  an  Arthur  Murray  class  in  ball- 
room dancing. 

Court,  a  slender,  gentle  man  with  a  fine  aquiline  face, 
trained  all  these  animals  himself,  though,  of  course,  he  had 
assistants.  It  is  not  usually  a  pretty  sight  to  see  the  big  cats 
trained.  If  they  are  full-grown  they  are  quite  capable  of  kill- 
ing their  trainer,  so  he  takes  precautions.  When  he  starts  oflF 
they  are  all  chained  to  their  pedestals,  and  ropes  are  put 
around  their  necks  to  choke  them  down  and  make  them  obey. 
All  sorts  of  other  brutalities  are  used  to  force  them  to  respect 
the  trainer  and  learn  their  tricks.  They  work  from  fear. 

But  Alfred  did  not  use  such  methods.  He  did  start  off  with 
the  animals  collared  and  chained  to  their  pedestals,  but  he 
began  by  making  friends  with  them.  He  went  into  the  train- 
ing ring  with  a  leather  pouch  full  of  beef  cut  into  small  mor- 
sels. He  would  put  a  piece  of  beef  on  the  end  of  a  sharp  stick 
and  offer  it  to  the  animal,  whatever  it  was.  Then  he  would 
talk  to  it,  coming  closer  mitil  he  was  alongside.  The  next  tiling 
you  knew  he  was  stroking  it.  Of  course,  it  took  several  days 
to  gain  an  animal's  confidence. 


300  JOHN  MNGLING  NORTH 

Then  he  took  it  off  its  leash  and  taught  it  its  first  lesson, 
which  was  to  know  its  own  pedestal,  to  which  it  must  always 
return  after  its  act. 

As  I  have  repeatedly  said,  a  wild  animal  is  always  poten- 
tially savage.  Association  with  man  is  contrary  to  his  nature, 
so  danger  is  ever  present.  But  Court,  through  his  patience  and 
system  of  reward  for  effort,  got  his  animals  to  respect  him 
without  fear.  Of  course,  when  it  came  to  teaching  them  the 
more  involved  tricks  he  had  to  use  a  whip. 

In  fact,  he  had  tlie  greatest  whip  hand  I  have  ever  seen— 
very  strong  with  absolute  accuracy.  If  an  animal  got  out  of 
line,  he  would  flick  that  animal  in  the  most  sensitive  place 
you  can  hit  either  a  male  or  female.  He  hit,  but  only  because 
the  animal  had  made  a  mistake,  and  had  to  know,  at  that 
very  second,  that  it  had  done  wrong.  However,  any  animal 
which  performed  properly  got  his  reward  immediately. 

Because  of  his  methods,  Court's  animals  always  looked 
wonderful.  They  were  glossy  and  full  of  spirit  and  seemed  to 
treat  him  with  real  affection,  especially  the  leopards.  He  in- 
troduced the  trick  of  letting  a  full-grown  Bengal  tiger  leap 
over  him  while  he  stood  holding  a  small  baton  in  his  upraised 
hands  for  the  animal  to  gauge  his  spring  by. 

I  am  not  going  to  bore  you  with  a  catalogue  of  all  the  won- 
derful people  my  brother  brought  home  on  that  last  trip 
to  Europe.  They  were  sufficient  to  keep  the  show  going 
throughout  the  sad  years  when  the  ring  of  Nazi  steel  closed 
around  Europe.  Of  course,  he  had  great  difficulty  getting  them 
all  out  and  onto  ships.  With  nearly  every  noncombatant  who 
had  the  price  of  an  ocean  passage  trying  to  get  out  of  there, 
it  presented  quite  a  problem— for  example,  Alfred  Court  and 
his  animals  came  on  four  different  ships.  The  way  John  solved 
it  was  by  ingenuity,  charm,  arrogance,  bullying,  and  pour- 
boires. 


LADY  GODIVA  GOES   TO   THE   WORLDS   FAIR  30I 

However,  I  will  speak  of  the  most  exotic,  brilliant,  and  dif- 
ficult of  all  the  people  he  brought  back.  She  did  not  come  for 
the  circus  or  for  money,  but  for  love.  Her  name  was  Germaine 

Aussey. 


CHAPTER   XXIV 


BIRD  KEY 


When  John  and  I  took  over  the  circus  we  began  to  spend 
our  winters  with  Mother  in  Sarasota.  Back  in  1932  Uncle 
John  had  suggested  tliat  she  move  from  tlie  small  bungalow 
she  was  occupying  to  the  big  Worcester  house  in  Bird  Key.  It 
was  a  wonderful  place  to  live. 


BIRD   KEY  303 

Bird  Key  was  an  island  in  the  middle  of  Sarasota  Bay  only 
five  minutes  from  the  center  of  town  via  Uncle  John's  cause- 
way. In  a  place  where  even  millionaires  Uved  in  one  another's 
back  yards,  the  big  white  house  stood  alone,  except  for  a  gar- 
dener's cottage,  in  a  grove  of  coconut  palms  on  its  twenty- 
two-acre  island.  We  were  careful  not  to  spoil  its  natural 
beauty  with  manicured  lawns  and  artificial  planting.  Except 
for  the  formal  gardens  near  the  house  everything  was  left  so 
wild  and  shaggy  that  the  island  lived  up  to  its  name.  Birds  of 
all  sorts  nested  there.  As  you  drove  up  the  long  drive  between 
two  rows  of  Australian  pines  a  white  heron  might  take  off  on 
laboring  wings  before  the  car,  or  a  crane  zoom  over  you  trail- 
ing his  long  legs.  Along  its  banks  were  flocks  of  wild  ducks, 
and  pelicans  surveyed  the  harbor  from  the  dock.  The  only 
nonindigenous  characters  were  John's  peacocks  strolling  on 
the  terrace. 

The  house  was  ideal  for  our  way  of  life.  It  had  big  high- 
ceilinged  rooms  that  were  fine  for  entertaining  and  equally 
good  for  the  lively  games  we  liked  to  play  when  we  were  alone. 
I  had  a  fine  billiard  table  in  one  of  them  to  practice  my  favor- 
ite indoor  sport. 

Upstairs  there  was  plenty  of  room  for  us  and  our  guests. 
Ada  Mae  and  I  had  a  bedroom,  study,  and  bath.  Our  small 
son,  John  Ringling  North  II,  slept  nearby  with  his  nurse. 
Brother  John  added  a  spacious  bedroom-study-dressing-room 
suite  over  the  kitchen.  Its  walls  were  paneled  in  pecky  cypress, 
and  a  terrifying  picture  of  Gargantua  hung  over  the  fireplace, 
on  which  he  could  look  fondly  when  he  woke  every  afternoon. 
Mother  slept  in  a  downstairs  bedroom,  and  the  rest  of  the 
house  was  available  for  guests,  of  whom  there  were  almost  as 
many  as  birds. 

It  was  to  this  house  that  John  brought  his  bride  in  1940. 

Her  name  was  Germaine  Aussey.  She  was  very  beautiful 
in  an  exotic  European  way,  aquiline  features,  large  greenish- 


304  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

blue  eyes,  and  masses  of  auburn  hair.  Her  figure  was  quite  as 
enticing  as  Marilyn  Monroe's  and  far  more  graceful  She  was 
a  French  movie  star. 

John  met  her  in  a  Paris  black-out  on  Christmas  Eve  1939. 
For  the  second,  and  probably  the  last  time,  in  his  life  he  fell 
truly  in  love.  My  brother  has  had  many  beautiful  fiancees 
whom  he  always  managed  to  elude  just  before  the  nuptial 
knot  was  tied.  But  his  engagement  to  Germaine  was  for  real. 

In  fact,  John  was  so  much  in  love  that  he  even  betrayed 
his  instinct  for  showmanship.  When  Germaine  arrived  in 
America  with  him  the  circus  publicity  people  were  entranced. 
They  dreamed  up  a  wonderful  fantasy  for  the  marriage  of  tlie 
president  of  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth  and  the  "gorgeous, 
glamourous,  glittering  French  movie  star." 

They  pictured  the  wedding  as  taking  place  in  the  center 
ring  under  a  battery  of  spothghts  while  Merle  Evans'  brasses 
gave  everything  they  had,  and  the  wedding  party  entered  on 
white  horses  between  two  rows  of  elephants  holding  American 
flags  in  dieir  upraised  trunks. 

John  vetoed  the  whole  idea  as  undignified  and  unworthy  of 
true  love.  He  and  Germame  were  married  very  quietly  in 
Philadelphia  on  May  ii,  1940.  Soon  thereafter  he  sent  Mother 
a  telegram  that  he  was  bringing  his  bride  to  Bird  Key.  The 
poor  girl  did  not  know  what  she  was  getting  into. 

Since  I  was  off  with  the  circus,  I  cannot  give  an  eyewitness 
account  of  Germaine's  entrance  into  the  family,  although  I 
understand  it  was  quite  dramatic,  like  all  her  entrances.  How- 
ever, I  did  participate  in  her  first  winter  there.  It  was  the  mad- 
dest we  ever  had. 

John  had  the  house  aU  done  over,  for  Germaine,  the  col- 
umned porches  gleaming  with  fresh  white  paint,  everything 
shining  and  polished.  The  household  consisted  of  Mother, 
myself,  Ada  Mae,  young  John,  and  his  nurse;  Duck  and  Sally 
Wadsworth,  Sally,  Jr.,  Ducky,  Jr.,  and  tlieir  nurse;  Charles, 


BIRD  KEY  305 

the  French  chef  from  the  Jomar;  Rene,  the  Itahan  butler; 
two  helpers  for  Charles;  and  Brother  John,  Germaine,  and  her 
personal  maid.  It  was  as  explosive  a  mixture  as  anything 
Nobel  ever  cooked  up  in  his  dynamite  days. 

Add  to  it  our  guests  and  the  brilliant  temperamental  peo- 
ple who  were  working  on  next  year's  show  and  who  often 
dropped  in  at  dinnertime  to  talk  things  over.  I  am  not  sure  if 
they  were  ever  all  there  at  once,  but  at  one  time  or  another 
in  1940  and  1941  we  had  Jolm  Murray  Anderson,  putting  on 
the  production  numbers;  Peter  Amo,  designing  the  circus  pro- 
gram and  magazine;  Max  Weldy  on  wardrobe;  Balanchine 
for  ballet;  Stravinsky,  writing  music  for  the  elephant  ballet; 
Norman  Bel  Geddes  for  engineering;  Miles  White  for  cos- 
tumes; Jimmy  Strook  of  Brooks  Costume  Company;  and 
Charlie  Baskerville,  Heywood  Broun,  and  Monte  Woolley, 
just  for  fun.  We  seldom  sat  down  less  tlian  eighteen  or  twenty 
for  dinner. 

Mother  loved  the  exciting  theatrical  whirl,  which  brought 
back  memories  of  the  days  in  Baraboo  with  her  tremendous 
brothers  arguing  over  next  year's  show.  She  went  to  a  great 
deal  of  trouble  to  provide  marvelous  meals  for  us.  Trouble  is 
not  the  right  word;  it  was  a  pleasure  to  her,  for  she  was  a 
cordon  bleu  in  everything  but  name.  She  would  hang  around 
the  kitchen  giving  directions,  finally  ordering  everyone  out 
and  cooking  the  meal  herself.  One  night  Charles  could  take  it 
no  longer  and  chased  her  out  of  the  kitchen  with  a  carving 
knife. 

Meanwhile,  Rene  conceived  an  irresistible  passion  for  my 
sister's  children's  governess,  who  reciprocated,  addmg  to  the 
confusion  belowstairs. 

Confusion  above  was  even  further  compounded.  While 
Mother  gaily  cooked  and  played  bridge  all  day  and  poker  all 
night,  poor  Germaine  could  not  stand  tlie  pace.  As  she  once 
confided  to  a  columnist,  "I  didn't  marry  one  man,  I  married 
a  whole  family." 


306  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

Indeed,  her  European  upbringing  and  the  acclaim  she  had 
known  in  France  completely  unfitted  her  for  a  life  where  she 
was  just  one  member  of  a  big  family  of  robust  extroverts  and 
their  friends.  We  would  sit  around  in  the  great  hall  of  Bird 
Key  in  casual  clothes  having  cocktails  before  our  nine  o'clock 
dinner.  Down  the  staircase  would  sweep  Germaine  in  a  Paris 
couturier's  dream  of  high  fashion  with  egrets  in  her  hair.  This 
endeared  her  not  at  all  to  my  forthright  wife  and  sister. 

Another  difficulty  was  that  it  literally  made  Germaine  sick 
to  stay  up  late.  She  had  been  a  hard-working  actress,  used  to 
getting  on  the  set  at  8  a.m.  and  going  to  bed  at  a  reasonable 
hour.  We  hardly  ever  went  to  bed  until  four  or  five  in  the 
morning.  Germaine,  hating  cards  and  parlor  games,  would  go 
upstairs  around  midnight  to  be  kept  awake  all  night  by  roars 
of  merriment  from  below,  while  she  burned  with  jealousy  that 
Johnny  should  be  enjoying  himself  without  her. 

Not  that  Germaine  was  a  bad  sport.  She  rode  the  circus 
train  for  three  seasons  with  John,  posing  prettily  for  publicity 
pictures  with  lions  and  elephants  and  on  our  beautiful  dres- 
sage horses— she  rode  very  well— and  helping  to  entertain  his 
swarm  of  friends  all  over  the  country.  But  circus  life  was 
wrong  for  her.  As  she  said,  "Traveling  seven  months  of  the 
year,  even  though  it  was  in  John's  private  car,  did  not  fit  well 
with  our  private  lives.  It  was  fun  in  the  big  towns,  but  in  the 
small  provinces  I  had  nothing  to  do  except  sit  alone  in  the 
Jomar." 

Even  when  they  stayed  together  at  the  Ritz  in  New  York,  it 
was  hardly  any  better.  They  were  out  every  night  at  El 
Morocco  or  the  Stork,  with  breakfast  at  Reuben's.  When  she 
remonstrated  with  her  husband,  he  said,  "Why  can't  I  stay 
out  late?  Uncle  John  always  did." 

To  expect  a  private  life  married  to  the  head  of  a  circus  is 
wishful  thinking. 


BIRD   KEY  307 

Inevitably  the  marriage  did  not  last.  With  the  sad 
httle  comment  that  "it  is  not  always  fmi  to  be  married  to  a 
genius,"  Germaine  announced  their  separation  in  1943,  the 
year  our  dear  relatives  got  the  circus  away  from  us. 

However,  she  was  loyal  to  John  in  the  face  of  scandal- 
mongers who  said  that  she  was  leaving  him  because  he  was 
a  playboy  who  had  let  the  circus  slip  through  his  fingers.  In 
answer  to  this  nonsense  she  wrote  a  dignified  letter  to  the 
press,  in  which  she  said: 

Dear  Sirs: 

Your  article  of  November  16  [1943]  ...  is  thor- 
oughly false  to  say  the  least.  ...  I  want  to  point  out 
that  I  knew  exactly  when  Mr.  John  Ringling  North 
asked  me  to  marry  him  .  .  .  what  his  standing  was  with 
the  "wealthy"  circus  as  well  as  with  the  "fabulous 
estate"  of  his  uncle.  May  I  say  at  this  point  that  the 
circus  was  not  wealthy  to  everybody's  knowledge.  On 
the  contrary,  Mr.  North  is  the  one  who  took  it  over 
when  it  was  bankrupt  and  put  it  back  on  its  own  feet 
out  of  the  ditch.  .  .  .  But  you  see,  sirs,  I  have  married 
Mr.  North  for  love  and  not  for  the  glamor  of  the  cir- 
cus. ...  I  like  this  country,  and  the  prospect  of  living 
in  it  with  the  man  I  loved  appealed  to  me. 

I  have  always  admired  my  husband's  business  ability 
and  your  calHng  him  a  playboy  will  not  change  them, 
nor  will  it  lessen  the  strength  and  quality  of  the  friend- 
ship of  countless  important  people  who  are  our  friends 
throughout  the  United  States.  The  Ringling  personnel 
have  always  been  extremely  nice  to  me  during  the 
three  seasons  I  Hved  with  the  circus  on  the  road.  ...  I 
know  that  the  great  majority  of  them  regretted  John 
Ringling  North's  withdrawal  from  the  management 
post.  .  .  . 

I  beg  to  remain 

Yours  very  truly, 

Germaine  A.  North 

(Mrs.    John    Ringling    North) 


3o8  JOHN  BINGLrNG  NORTH 

Though  John's  nocturnal  habits  and  her  incompatibility 
with  our  admittedly  difficult  family  contributed  to  the 
breakup  of  his  marriage  with  Germaine,  it  was  primarily  the 
fault  of  the  circus.  Had  it  not  forced  an  abnormal  way  of  life 
upon  tliem,  they  would  have  had  a  home  of  their  own  where 
they  might  well  have  lived  happily  ever  after. 

I  am  delighted  to  say  that  Germaine  is  happily  remarried, 
and  Hving  the  much  less  exotic  life  of  a  Long  Island  matron. 
Every  spring,  when  the  circus  comes  to  New  York,  John  sends 
his  Cadillac  to  bring  her  and  her  children  to  the  Garden, 
where  they  sit  in  his  center  box  to  enjoy  the  show  Germaine 
still  loves. 


CHAPTER   XXV 


HELL  ON  WHEELS 


In  those  last  prewar  years,  the  circus  did  extremely  well 
financially.  With  the  shadow  of  war  hanging  over  them  the 
American  people  once  again  turned  to  dieir  old-time  favorite 
form  of  entertainment.  Whatever  some  critics  might  say 
about  John's  "razzle-dazzle"  innovations,  the  public  loved 


310  JOHN   RINGLING  NORTH 

them;  and  he  spared  no  expense  or  eflFort  to  hold  their  favor. 
The  specs  and  the  production  numbers  became  increasingly 
lavish  and  beautiful.  One  of  the  most  successful  was  the 
Mother  Goose  theme  of  the  1941  season,  produced  by  Nor- 
man Bel  Geddes  with  a  ballet  directed  by  Albertina  Rasch. 
Incidentally,  Norman  was  a  wonderfully  inventive  man  who 
also  designed  a  tent  for  us  with  no  interior  poles  to  interfere 
with  the  audience's  vision.  The  whole  thing  was  ingeniously 
supported  by  cables  slung  between  outside  poles.  We  tried  it 
out  with  smaller  tents,  but  never  were  able  to  use  it  for  the 
Big  Top. 

In  addition  to  the  splendid  spectacles,  the  talent  was  the 
best  we  could  get  at  any  price.  The  ink  on  the  red  wagon's 
ledgers  got  blacker  and  blacker.  The  debt  to  the  Manufac- 
turers Trust  Company  was  rapidly  whittled  away.  In  the  end 
this  latter  circumstance  was  our  undoing. 

Naturally,  it  was  not  all  smooth  sailing— such  a  state  of 
affairs  in  a  circus  on  the  road  is  more  improbable  than  the 
arrival  of  the  millennium  and  our  lions  lying  down  with  the 
llamas.  • 

There  were  stOl  occasional  flash  strikes.  James  C.  Petrillo 
and  his  musicians'  union  pulled  one  on  us  in  1940.  When  the 
strike  was  announced,  John  sent  for  Merle  Evans,  who  had 
been  with  the  circus  all  these  years  in  a  position  of  trust,  and 
asked  if  out  of  loyalty  he  would  not  come  out  alone  and  play 
his  famous  cornet.  Merle  expressed  his  sympathy  but  said, 
"What  can  I  do?"  When  the  fateful  hour  came  there  was  no 
band  and  no  Merle  either. 

But  we  had  not  been  asleep  at  the  switch.  We  had  made 
arrangements  for  recording  all  our  music.  We  played  the  rest 
of  the  season  to  canned  music.  It  saved  tlie  circus  about 
$50,000. 

The  next  year  we  made  an  agreement  with  Petrillo,  and 
the  band  came  back  with  Merle  as  musical  director.  But  John 


HELL  ON  WHEELS  3II 

never  forgave  Merle  for  what  the  bandmaster  felt  was  loyalty 
to  his  colleagues  but  what  my  brother  considered  treason  to 
the  circus. 

On  the  whole,  our  labor  relations  were  excellent.  What 
troubled  us  most  was  the  manpower  shortage  as  America  be- 
came ever  more  deeply  engaged  in  building  her  defenses 
against  the  slow,  irresistible  approach  of  war.  After  the  draft 
started  and  we  were  more  and  more  shorthanded,  I  did  a 
great  deal  of  physical  work  myself,  more  to  set  an  example  to 
the  men  than  because  one  man's  eflForts  at  stake  setting,  for 
instance,  would  make  much  difference. 

This  stood  me  in  good  stead  in  1942,  when  between  the 
matinee  and  the  evening  show  the  bull  men  threatened  to 
strike.  John  was  in  New  York  planning  next  year's  show  and 
I  had  the  train.  So  I  thought  I  should  do  what  I  could  to 
reverse  the  situation.  I  asked  the  bosses  to  have  all  the  work- 
ingmen  called  together  in  the  menagerie  top.  They  had  seen 
their  vice-president  working  side  by  side  with  them,  so  it  was 
not  like  someone  shooting  off  his  mouth  who  did  not  know 
anything  about  their  problems.  Five  or  six  hundred  men 
gathered  inside  the  tent.  I  climbed  on  one  of  the  big  piles  of 
baled  hay  stacked  up  for  the  stock.  I  have  never  been  good  at 
pubhc  addresses,  but  this  was  an  emergency. 

As  I  started  to  speak  the  professional  agitators  who  were 
stirring  the  men  up  began  to  heckle  me.  I  was  feeling  lost  and 
rattled  when  an  unexpected  ally  turned  up.  He  was  the  huge 
Negro  boss  of  tlie  horse  tops,  who  had  been  with  us  for  many 
years.  His  name  was  Blue,  because  he  was  so  black  that  he 
looked  blue. 

Seeing  my  distress.  Blue  stood  up.  He  loomed  gigantic 
among  the  smaller  men  and  he  had  a  great  iron  stake  in  his 
hand.  He  waved  it  gently  and  spoke  in  a  soft  voice.  "You  all 
had  better  shut  up  and  listen  to  Mr.  Buddy!"  he  said. 

They  shut  up.  I  made  no  promises  except  tliat  if  tliey  would 


312  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

move  the  show  that  night  and  set  it  up  at  the  next  town,  I 
would  meet  with  their  representatives  in  the  morning  and 
try  to  work  out  their  grievances.  I  think  they  knew  I  wished 
them  well  and  that  I  appreciated  the  loyalty  they  had  shown 
under  increasingly  difficult  conditions.  They  roared  accept- 
ance of  my  oflFer.  The  next  day  I  sat  down  with  them  and 
negotiated  a  moderate  wage  increase.  That  was  the  last  labor 
trouble  we  had  that  year. 

Being  shorthanded,  we  tried  harder  than  ever  to  maintain 
safety  practices.  But  in  anything  like  the  circus,  with  its  con- 
stant movement,  the  trains,  and  the  ordered  confusion  on  the 
lot— trucks  moving  in  and  out,  tractors  towing  wagons  and 
cages  around  in  daylight  and  darkness— accidents  were  almost 
inevitable.  Because  it  was  well  ordered  and  well  organized 
they  were  kept  to  a  minimum,  but  they  did  occur. 

For  example,  there  were  forty  quarter  poles,  each  weighing 
over  six  hundred  pounds,  to  be  set  up  and  taken  down  every 
day.  One  night  a  lowering  rope  broke  and  a  big  quarter  pole 
fell  on  poor  old  Cigarette  Bill,  a  character  who  had  been  with 
the  circus  for  many  years,  whom  we  all  liked  and  respected. 
Les  Thomas,  our  seat  boss,  was  also  once  nearly  killed  by  a 
falling  quarter  pole. 

Whenever  it  was  possible  to  save  a  life  we  spared  no  ex- 
pense. In  Oklahoma  one  of  our  young  fellows,  named  Pat 
Graham,  was  an  innocent  bystander  in  a  barroom  shooting. 
He  was  hit  by  a  bullet  that  went  right  through  his  chest.  He 
was  taken  to  a  local  hospital  and  I  was  notified.  I  grabbed 
a  circus  car  and  rushed  there  only  to  be  told  by  the  doctor 
in  residence  that  it  was  only  a  question  of  time.  There  was 
nothing  to  be  done  because  Pat  had  an  internal  hemorrhage. 

"Have  you  given  him  blood  transfusions?"  I  asked. 

"No,  we  haven't,"  the  doctor  said. 

"Why  the  hell  not?" 


HEIX  ON  WHEELS  313 

"It  would  be  a  waste  of  blood,"  he  answered.  '^We  can't 
stop  the  internal  bleeding." 

I  had  just  read  an  article  in  Time  magazine  about  a  new 
drug  that  caused  quick  coagiJation  of  blood.  I  asked  if  they 
had  any,  and  the  doctor  said  yes  but  he  did  not  think  it  would 
work  in  this  case. 

"You  must  try  everything,"  I  said. 

"Well,  who's  going  to  pay  for  it?"  the  doctor  asked. 

I  realized  then  that  I  was  up  against  the  old  prejudice  and 
distrust  of  circus  people.  Evidently  even  yet  they  were  re- 
garded as  not  quite  human.  In  a  rage  I  pledged  the  credit  of 
Ringling  Brothers,  and  my  chauffeur  and  I  volunteered  our 
blood  for  the  transfusion.  Graham's  life  was  saved. 

Sudden  windstorms  were  always  a  menace  to  our  acres  of 
canvas.  Once  at  Chattanooga  we  were  tearing  down  in  near- 
tornado  winds.  We  dropped  the  Big  Top,  and  the  men  rushed 
from  the  sides  along  the  lines  of  lacing  undoing  them  so  the 
canvas  would  be  rolled  up.  This  night  two  canvas  hands  were 
on  the  center  section,  which  was  two  himdred  feet  long  and 
sixty  feet  wide.  As  they  started  imlacing  it  the  wind  tore 
underneeth,  ballooning  the  great  tent  and  hurhng  the  men 
high  in  the  air.  Down  they  came,  and  up  again  as  though 
tossed  in  a  gigantic  blanket  while  canvas  thundered  and 
cracked  with  loud  reports  and  the  gale  howled  through  the 
rigging  like  an  old  square-rigger  taken  aback. 

The  Big  Top  gang  just  stood  there  laughing  hilariously  at 
those  doll-like  figures  flying  into  the  air  to  be  caught  on  tlie 
billowing  canvas  and  tossed  up  again.  But  I  knew  it  was  not 
funny.  If  the  wind  suddenly  dropped,  the  poor  boys  might  fall 
sixty  or  seventy  feet  to  the  ground.  Shouting  for  the  men  to 
join  me,  I  laid  hold  of  a  side  rope.  With  dozens  of  hands 
hauling  on  the  ropes,  we  brought  the  section  down  and 
landed  our  men  unhurt. 

That  same  night  a  cloudburst  hit  us,  and  the  lot  was 


314  JOHN   RINGLING  NORTH 

flooded.  The  wagons  were  mired  to  their  axles,  but  we  had  to 
get  moving.  If  one  tractor  failed  to  budge  them  we  teamed  up 
two  or  three  or  four.  In  the  old  days  I  have  seen  sixty  horses 
hitched  to  one  wagon  and  the  teamsters  cracking  their  bull 
whips  to  get  them  heaving  in  unison.  Ordinary  vehicles  would 
pull  apart  under  such  a  strain,  but  Bill  Yeske  built  our  wagons 
to  take  it. 

I  was  never  in  a  serious  train  wreck,  though  I  well  know 
how  terrible  that  could  be.  Sometimes,  however,  when  the 
train  made  an  emergency  stop  the  wagons  on  the  flats  would 
break  loose  from  their  chocks  and  roll  off.  Our  men— and  the 
"trailers"  sneaking  rides  on  the  train— might  be  sleeping  under 
them  in  spite  of  our  warnings.  Three  of  them  were  killed  in 
one  such  stop  in  South  Carolina. 

Nor  could  we  always  prevent  accidents  among  the  per- 
formers. The  thriU  of  watching  men  and  women  defy  death 
is  a  traditional  titillation  for  a  circus  audience,  and  there  are 
plenty  of  performers  willing  to  gratify  this  appetite.  In  fact, 
these  professional  daredevils  resent  safety  precautions.  Re- 
cently, when  New  York  State  law  forced  us  to  put  a  safety  net 
under  Harold  Alzana  while  he  performed  his  perilous  feats 
on  a  wire  stretched  sixty  feet  high  in  the  roof  of  the  Garden, 
he  was  furious.  "You're  spoiling  my  act,"  he  complained 
bitterly. 

The  menagerie  was  always  hable  to  accidents.  Sometimes 
it  was  sudden  jungle  madness,  as  when,  in  1940,  one  of  AMred 
Court's  "friendly"  cats  attacked  him,  and  in  the  roaring,  spit- 
ting rhubarb  that  ensued  in  the  big  cage,  his  beautiful  snow 
leopard  was  accidently  killed.  That  same  year  eleven  seals  got 
loaded  by  mistake  in  a  different  section  from  their  trainer. 
Without  anyone  to  keep  them  wetted  down,  they  all  died  of 
dehydration.  A  little  later  four  polar  bears  suffocated  because 
the  attendant  forgot  to  open  the  ventilators  of  their  car  in 
very  hot  weather. 


HF.TJ.   ON  WHEELS  315 

These  were  minor  disasters.  But  because  of  their  helpless- 
ness, a  painful  accident  to  one  of  our  animals  affected  me 
more  profoundly,  perhaps,  than  the  injury  of  a  human  being 
who  knew  and  willingly  accepted  the  risks  of  our  business.  In 
this  connection,  the  most  sickening  sight  I  ever  beheld  ia 
peacetime  occurred  on  August  4,  1942. 

We  almost  decided  not  to  send  the  show  out  that  year. 
Pearl  Harbor  and  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war 
made  the  circus  seem  pretty  frivolous.  In  addition,  we  did 
not  see  how  we  could  recruit  the  necessary  workers  and  we 
were  well  aware  that  an  undermanned  show  was  dangerous. 

In  this  situation  we  sounded  out  opinion  in  Washington  as 
to  the  wisdom  of  continuing.  It  was  almost  unanimously  in 
favor  of  it  as  a  morale  builder  in  a  time  of  sorrow  and  pubhc 
uncertainty.  As  a  result  of  these  discussions  we  issued  a  state- 
ment: 

"The  Management  of  Ringling  Brotliers-Bamum  &  Bailey 
Circus  thinks  it  timely  and  fitting  to  state  its  pohcy  and  hopes 
for  the  future  at  this  critical  period  in  our  national  history. 
Through  letters  from  many  individuals,  wdde  editorial  com- 
merft  .  .  .  and  direct  expressions  from  the  country's  Army, 
Navy,  and  pohtical  leaders,  it  has  been  made  clear  that  the 
pubhc  wants  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth  to  carry  on  dining 
wartime.  .  .  .  President  Roosevelt  personally  has  expressed 
his  appreciation  of  the  fact  that  the  Show  is  Going  On.  .  .  ." 

We  then  described  the  co-operation  of  draft  boards  and 
the  Selective  Service  System  in  Washington  in  deferring  key 
personnel;  and  the  War  Production  Board's  grants  of  priori- 
ties for  necessary  materials.  We  ended  by  expressing  "our  hope 
that  our  circus  will  continue  just  as  our  American  Way  of  Life 
certainly  wllll— John  and  Henry  Ringling  North." 

As  key  personnel,  I  was,  of  course,  deferred;  but  I  did  not 
feel  that  I  was  quite  that  essential,  so  I  enhsted  in  the  Navy 


3l6  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

in  the  spring  of  1942.  However,  the  authorities  did  not  see  fit 
to  call  me  for  active  duty  luitil  January  1943. 

We  put  on  one  of  our  greatest  shows  that  year.  It  was  staged 
by  John  Murray  Anderson  and  designed  by  Norman  Bel 
Geddes,  We  had  the  elephant  ballet  with  Stravinsky  music 
and  Balanchine  choreography.  Even  the  programs  were 
special,  enhvened  by  Peter  Arno's  witty  cartoons. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  attendance  it  was  a  banner  year. 
Just  as  had  been  foreseen,  the  public  flocked  to  the  circus  to 
find  brief  forgetfulness  from  grinding  work  and  the  terrible 
anxiety  for  their  menfolk  going  overseas.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  operating  a  railroad  show  it  was  hell  on  wheels. 

There  was  never  enough  of  anything.  Every  question  of 
supply  was  a  crisis;  every  move  we  made,  which,  of  course, 
happened  almost  every  day,  was  bedeviled  by  lack  of  man- 
power and  shortage  of  equipment  on  die  hard-pressed  rail- 
roads. And  every  performance  was  a  critical  risk. 

My  troubles  began  early.  The  first  of  them  was  over  George 
Smith,  our  general  manager.  George  was  an  old  circus  hand 
and  a  dear  friend  who  knew  all  tlie  intricate  technicalities  of 
moving  the  circus  army.  But  infirmities  gradually  overcame 
him,  and  he  kept  getting  worse.  Finally  it  reached  a  point 
where  he  could  no  longer  handle  the  show. 

We  were  on  our  way  from  Sarasota  to  New  York  with  the 
great,  long  trains  and  had  just  reached  the  Jersey  terminal, 
where  we  had  to  transfer  the  coaches  and  equipment  to  rail- 
road ferries  to  get  across  the  Hudson.  It  became  evident  to 
me  that  George  was  in  no  condition  to  handle  that  complicated 
operation  and  get  the  show  set  up  in  the  Garden.  So  I  sent  for 
Ardiur  Concello  and  asked  him  if  he  thought  he  could  take 


over. 


Arthur,  who  is  a  confident  fellow,  said,  "I  am  sure  I  can." 

"All  right,"  I  said,  "youVe  got  tlie  job." 

That  is  how  the  great  aerialist  became  general  manager  of 


HELL   ON  WHEELS  317 

Ringling  Brothers— Bamum  &  Bailey  Combined  Shows.  To- 
day he  is  executive  director  and  a  member  of  the  board.  It 
may  seem  strange  to  give  a  flier  a  position  of  such  great 
executive  responsibihty,  but  Arthur  is  an  extraordinary  man. 
Even  when  he  was  still  very  young,  he  was  ambitious  to  be- 
come part  of  the  management  of  the  circus.  He  was  interested 
in  everything  about  it.  He  stayed  on  the  lot  late  and  got  there 
early  in  the  morning,  studying  all  the  various  operations.  He 
reahzed  even  then  that  the  life  of  a  flier  cannot  last  long;  for 
even  if  he  escapes  serious  injury  there  is  no  escaping  the 
slowdown  of  age. 

From  1938  on,  John  and  I  had  watched  the  progress  of  this 
dynamic  ConceUo,  and  when  the  moment  came  I  gave  him 
the  post  for  which  he  had  been  fitting  himself  all  those  years. 
He  performed  wonderfully  well  in  it.  Later  he  threw  his  con- 
siderable fortune  into  the  pot  to  help  refinance  the  circus  in 
one  of  our  periodical  fiscal  crises. 

One  of  the  things  we  feared  most  in  1942  was  fire.  Although 
fireproof  canvas  had  been  invented,  the  government  needed 
an  absolute  priority  of  it.  The  Big  Top  was  a  compromise 
flame-resistant  canvas  that  leaked.  The  other  tents  were  the 
old-fashioned  kind,  waterproofed  v^th  a  solution  of  paraffin 
and  benzene.  Baked  in  the  blazing  prairie  sun  they  were 
terribly  inflammable.  We  countered  the  danger  by  choosing 
lots  with  an  ample  water  supply  and  surrounding  the  Big  Top 
with  our  own  fire-fighting  equipment,  fully  manned  with 
engines  running.  Nevertheless,  our  fears  were  tragically 
justified. 

On  the  soft  and  sunny  morning  of  August  4,  1942,  our  tents 
were  pitched  on  a  lakeside  lot  in  Cleveland,  Ohio,  for  a  five- 
day  stand.  At  eleven-thirty  that  morning  the  menagerie  top 
suddenly  flashed  into  fire.  We  never  knew  how  it  happened. 
One  moment  it  was  standing  there  normally  in  the  sunshine, 
and  the  next  it  was  a  roaring  inferno  of  flames  hundreds  of 


3l8  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

feet  high.  Three  minutes  later  there  was  nothing  left  but 
charred,  tottering  poles,  smoking  bits  of  canvas,  still-burning 
cages,  and  a  wild  confusion  of  frantic,  tortured  animals. 

Men  rushed  into  the  ruins  through  the  smoke  and  the 
horrible  stench  of  burning  flesh  to  get  the  animals  out.  Walter 
McClain,  boss  of  the  bull  men,  shouted  an  order  to  his  ele- 
phants. They  pulled  up  their  stakes  and  paraded  out  trunk  to 
tail.  But  what  a  fearful  sight  they  were!  In  some  cases  their 
flesh  was  peeling  off  in  long  sheets  and  their  tliin,  floppy  ears 
were  seared  completely  off. 

The  camels  would  not  move  at  all,  but  lay  there  looking 
calmly  at  us  as  they  died.  We  snaked  some  of  them  out  with 
tractors  and  saved  their  hves.  Badly  burned  zebras  were 
running  wild  all  over  the  place.  Giraffes  galloped  about 
frantic  with  fear.  Dear  old  Edith  jumped  the  fence  and  ran 
away  down  the  avenue.  We  found  her  four  hours  later  quite 
unhurt. 

Many  of  the  caged  animals  were  cooked  by  the  burning 
straw  of  their  bedding.  Om-  wonderful  veterinary,  Dr.  J.  Y. 
Henderson,  borrowed  a  pistol  from  a  policeman  and  ran 
through  the  ruins  shooting  those  suffering  creatures  whose 
cases  were  hopeless.  The  most  terrible  thing  was  that  they 
suffered  and  died  in  utter  silence  with  their  eyes  full  of  pain 
and  wonder. 

To  treat  the  animals  who  had  a  chance  for  life.  Doc 
Henderson  filled  spray  guns  with  a  healing  preparation  called 
Foille  and  set  men  to  spraying  every  creature  in  sight.  He  put 
ladders  against  the  sides  of  the  elephants  and  had  tlie  bull 
men  with  big  paint  brushes  slathering  Foille  all  over  them. 
In  that  way  many  were  saved. 

The  matinee  was  canceled  that  day  because  everybody  was 
taking  care  of  the  animals.  But  we  gave  the  evening  perform- 
ance to  a  packed  house.  It  may  appear  heartless,  but  it  was  in 
the  cherished  tradition  of  the  circus. 


HELL   ON  WHEELS  319 

When  we  came  to  count  our  losses  the  toll  was  terrible. 
Sixty-five  animals  died  of  burns— 4  elephants,  12  zebras,  2 
giraffes,  13  camels,  an  ostrich,  4  lions,  3  tigers,  4  Pinzgavens, 
3  pumas,  16  monkeys,  2  black  bucks,  and  a  sacred  cow  from 
India. 

Not  one  human  being  was  injured.  All  John  and  I  could 
tliink  of  was  "Thank  God  it  wasn't  the  Big  Topi" 


c< 


CHAPTER   XXVI 


THE  HARTFORD  FIRE 


In  spite  of  our  difficulties  the  1942  season  was  the  best  we 
have  ever  had.  The  circus  netted  over  $900,000  before  taxes. 
This  was  a  good  thing  and  a  bad  thing;  good,  because  it  re- 
estabhshed  the  circus  as  a  going  institution  and  vindicated 
John's  management;  bad,  because  our  dear  relatives  felt  they 
no  longer  needed  John. 


THE   HABTFORD  FIRE  321 

At  the  end  of  the  season  John  and  I  decided  that  no  matter 
how  profitable  it  might  be  we  were  not  going  to  take  the 
show  out  again  in  wartime— I  would  be  in  the  Navy  in  any 
event.  We  had  nm  it  with  as  few  as  350  workers  and  we 
needed  800  to  do  it  right.  This  resulted  in  inefficiency,  the 
stress  and  strain  of  overwork,  and,  most  important  of  aU, 
danger  to  the  public.  The  fire  in  the  menagerie  top  was  a 
terrible  portent.  In  all  its  fifty-nine  seasons  our  circus  had 
never  killed  a  single  customer.  We  would  not  risk  breaking 
that  wonderful  record. 

We  knew  we  would  have  a  difficult  time  convincing  Edith 
and  Aubrey  Ringhng,  who  still  held  63  per  cent  of  the  stock 
between  them,  that  it  was  necessary  to  close  the  circus  for 
the  duration  of  the  war.  You  may  recall  that  under  the  agree- 
ment of  1937  John  was  to  have  control  of  the  show  for  five 
years  or  until  the  note  to  the  Manufacturers  Trust  Company 
was  paid  off.  The  five  years  was  almost  up,  and  the  note  had 
been  hquidated,  partly  witli  $450,000  in  bonds  which  the 
federal  government  had  released  to  the  John  Ringhng  Estate 
and  partly  from  the  earnings  of  the  circus.  For  the  first  time 
in  many  years,  Ringling  Brothers  paid  dividends  in  1941  and 
1942. 

Late  in  1941,  anticipating  the  end  of  the  trust  agreement, 
Aunt  Edith  and  Cousin  Aubrey  had  gotten  together  and 
signed  a  mutal  contract  to  vote  their  majority  stock  together. 
In  the  event  that  they  could  not  agree  on  how  to  vote  it,  their 
lawyer,  Karl  D.  Loos,  was  to  decide  between  them.  This  was 
knovioi  as  The  Ladies'  Agreement.  Its  purpose  was  to  kick 
John  and  me  out  of  the  management  of  Ringling  Brothers. 

We  were  perfectly  aware  of  this  mobihzation  of  strength 
against  us.  John  made  the  first  move  in  the  summer  of  1942. 
He  wrote  to  Aunt  Edith  and  Cousin  Aubrey  asking  if  they 
would  sell  him  enough  of  their  circus  stock  to  give  liim  51  per 
cent.  They  refused,  as  he  expected. 


322  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

The  showdown  meeting  of  the  board  of  directors  was 
called  for  January  1943.  At  that  time  it  consisted  of,  on  our 
side: 

John  Ringling  North,  president,  Henry  Ringling  North, 
vice-president,  and  George  Woods. 

On  the  ladies'  side  were  Robert  Ringling,  Sr.,  vice- 
president,  Edith  C.  Ringling,  vice-president,  and  Aubrey  B. 
Ringling,  vice-president. 

Holding  the  balance  of  power  was  William  P.  Dunn,  Jr., 
secretary  and  treasurer. 

John  had  prepared  for  the  meeting  very  carefully.  In  his 
speech  to  the  board  he  described  the  difficulties  and  dangers 
of  the  past  year's  operation,  dwelling  heavily  on  tlie  fire 
hazard.  He  then  offered  two  carefully  thought-out  alterna- 
tives. The  first  was  to  offer  to  run  the  circus  for  the  United 
States  Government  for  the  duration  of  the  war  as  a  nonprofit 
national  institution,  playing  wherever  it  was  sent,  especially 
for  the  benefit  of  servicemen.  He  had  reason  to  befieve  that 
President  Roosevelt  would  accept  the  offer.  If  the  circus  came 
under  government  sponsorship  it  would  receive  much  higher 
priorities,  enabfing  it  to  get  fireproof  canvas  and  operate 
safely. 

John's  second  alternative  was  to  keep  the  circus  in  Winter 
Quarters  on  a  caretaker  basis  for  the  duration.  He  pointed  out 
that  the  new  excess-profits  tax  made  it  impossible  for  the 
circus  to  make  any  real  money.  Moreover,  as  the  result  of  the 
carry-back  and  carry-over  provisions  of  the  tax  law,  Ringling 
Brothers  could  keep  a  much  larger  percentage  of  recent  earn- 
ings and  possible  future  earnings.  The  circus  could  tlierefore 
remain  in  Winter  Quarters  for  two  and  a  half  years  without 
suffering  any  serious  loss.  The  $1,000,000  which  it  had  in  the 
bank  would  be  ample  to  see  it  tlirough.  At  this  point  he  rested 
his  case. 

There  ensued  a  sneering  silence.  Then  the  ladies  voiced 


TEIE  HAETFORD   FIRE  323 

disgust  with  John's  ideas  and  his  management.  Robert  natu- 
rally went  along  with  his  mother. 

Aunt  Edith  was  especially  implacable.  Stout,  grim-faced, 
with  her  hat  riding  high  on  her  white  hair,  she  was  a  com- 
manding personality.  In  many  ways  she  was  a  very  lovable 
lady;  but  in  other  ways  not  so  lovable.  I  believe  she  disliked 
John  because  his  character  resembled  Uncle  Jolm's,  whom 
she  could  not  abide.  She  resented  my  brother's  unspoken 
attitude  that  "I've  saved  the  circus  and  it's  mine."  Finally, 
she  had  a  burning  ambition  to  make  her  son  Robert  president 
of  the  circus. 

There  was  always  a  lot  of  jealousy  in  the  distaflf  side  of  the 
Ringling  family.  If  the  brothers  had  not  had  their  strong 
German  love  of  family  to  bind  them  together,  and  if  they  had 
ever  listened  to  their  various  wives,  I  am  sure  they  would 
never  have  stayed  together  in  harmony  all  those  years.  This 
is  one  of  the  reasons  why  I  believe  that  it  was  no  wish  of 
Robert's  that  got  him  into  the  circus  business,  but  his  mother's 
ambition. 

Aubrey  Ringling,  thin-faced  and  tense,  peering  rather 
nervously  at  the  other  directors  through  her  rimless  spectacles, 
was  in  a  difiFerent  position.  In  addition,  Aubrey  was  in  love 
with  that  same  James  A.  Haley  whom  John  had  engaged  to 
audit  the  estate.  It  seems  probable  that  she,  too,  was  ambitious 
—for  her  future  husband.  She  married  Jim  Haley  in  1943,  and 
he  became  first  vice-president  and  assistant  to  the  president 
of  Ringling  Brothers. 

After  the  noisy  argument  the  voting  went  as  expected— up 
to  a  point.  My  brother  and  I  and  George  Woods  voted  to 
accept  John's  proposal;  Robert  and  the  two  ladies  voted 
against  it.  Then,  to  our  shocked  surprise,  Bill  Dunn  voted  to 
continue  operating  the  circus.  Until  then  he  had  always 
thrown  his  deciding  vote  to  us.  Why  he  suddenly  shifted 


324  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

puzzled  and  saddened  us  at  the  time,  though  I  can  now  under- 
stand his  reasons. 

Having  no  actual  experience  in  running  a  circus,  Dunn 
could  not  envision  the  difficulties  and  dangers  of  operating 
it  shorthanded.  He  probably  thought  John  was  overstating 
them.  He  was  basically  a  financial  man,  being  a  vice- 
president  of  tlie  Manufacturers  Trust,  and  as  such,  could  see 
no  sense  in  closing  up  a  profitable  operation.  Especially  since 
he  knew  that  by  the  time  the  board  met  again  in  April  the 
voting  trust  would  have  ended  and  the  ladies  would  be  able 
to  elect  anybody  they  chose. 

As  soon  as  the  vote  was  recorded  John  resigned,  his  black 
eyes  snapping  with  anger.  Robert  Ringling  was  elected 
president  of  Ringling  Brothers-Barnum  &  Bailey  Combined 
Shows. 

As  everybody  had  foreseen,  at  the  stockholders'  meeting  in 
April  the  ladies  elected  five  of  the  seven  directors.  My  brother 
John  and  George  Woods  continued  as  minority  directors  with 
no  power  to  control  policy.  I  was  oflF  to  the  wars.  The  officers 
of  the  company  were  Robert  Ringling,  president,  and  James 
A.  Haley,  first  vice-president  and  assistant  to  the  president 
( my  old  spot ) .  Bill  Dunn  continued  as  treasurer. 

Thus  the  management  of  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth  was 
entrusted  to  Robert,  who  had  made  his  career  in  opera;  a 
certified  public  accomitant  who  had  never  ridden  a  circus 
train;  a  banker;  and  to  two  matriarchs  who  actually  owned 
control  of  it. 

( Now,  for  three  years,  everything  I  write  is  hearsay— backed 
by  documents— for  I  was  overseas.  My  war  memories  have  no 
place  in  this  book.  I  will  only  say  that,  not  caring  for  the  desk 
job  tlie  Navy  had  in  store  for  me,  I  wangled  my  way  into  the 
OSS  and  was  engaged  in  some  exciting  cloak-and-dagger 


THE   HARTFORD   FIRE  32$ 

work,  which  included  participation  in  the  African,  Itahan, 
and  Normandy  campaigns  and  a  brief  appearance  at  the 
Battle  of  the  Bulge.  On  the  whole  I  found  it  more  agreeable 
to  be  shot  at  by  the  Nazis  than  sniped  at  by  my  relatives.) 

Naturally  Robert  Ringling's  first  acts  as  president  of  the 
circus  were  to  get  rid  of  two  of  our  top  men.  Leonard  Bisco 
was  replaced  by  Karl  Loos  as  legal  counsel,  and  George  Smith 
returned  as  general  manager,  replacing  Concello,  who,  how- 
ever, continued  to  stage  the  aerial  acts. 

George  Smith  had  pulled  himself  together.  In  the  summer 
of  1943  he  was  loaned  to  the  Army.  Because  of  his  vast 
experience  with  the  circus,  he  successfully  directed  the  train 
movements  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  troops  across  the 
United  States  to  ports  of  embarkation.  In  1944  he  returned 
to  the  circus,  to  his  lasting  regret. 

Robert  Ringling's  first  season  as  president  was  a  qualified 
success.  The  Big  One  made  big  money.  However,  he  set  up  a 
smaller,  European-type  circus  called  "Spangles"  to  play  in 
tlie  Garden,  which  was  a  dismal  flop.  In  spite  of  this  there 
was  a  considerable  over-all  profit. 

A  great  deal  was  made  in  the  circus  publicity  of  the  return 
of  a  "real"  Ringling  to  head  the  show.  The  circus  program 
featured  a  photograph  of  Robert  beneath  tlie  famous  picture 
of  the  five  mustachioed  brothers.  The  caption  was: 

RINGLINGS   ALL 

A  Ringling  son  has  taken  his  rightful  place  in  the  cir- 
cus sun. 

The  mantle  of  the  Ringling  Brothers,  the  famous 
founders  of  the  Ringling  Circus,  has  been  draped  on 
the  broad  shoulders  of  Robert  Ringling,  son  of  the 
late  Charles  Ringling,  one  of  the  most  brilliant  show- 
men that  ever  lived. 

Raised  with  the  circus  under  the  tutelage  of  his  illus- 
trious  father,    Robert   knows    the   Big    Show   inside 


326  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

out.  .  .  .  His  father  and  uncles  (see  picture),  .  .  .  the 
most  powerful  and  successful  group  of  amusement  pur- 
veyors in  the  world,  have  a  worthy  scion. 

In  Robert  Ringling  the  circus  dynasty  Hves  on  as  they 
would  have  it. 

Even  in  a  book  as  outspoken  as  this  one,  Brother  John's 
comments  on  this  flimflammery  are  unprintable. 

The  season  of  1944  started  well  for  the  circus.  As  usual,  it 
made  a  nice  profit  in  the  Garden.  On  the  road  it  was  playing 
to  near-capacity  audiences.  However,  the  manpower  problem 
had  become  even  more  acute.  This  was  the  very  peak  of  the 
war  effort— D  Day  and  our  armies  pouring  into  Normandy, 
and  the  great  steppingstone  advance  through  the  Pacific 
islands  toward  Japan.  There  was  virtually  no  such  thing  as 
unemployment.  What  men  could  be  recruited  as  razorbacks 
and  roustabouts  were  almost  imemployable  except  for  a  few 
faithful  old-timers. 

Nevertheless,  Robert  Ringling  was  satisfied  with  the  results, 
and  sure  that  the  decision  to  carry  on  the  show  had  been  a 
wise  one.  However,  he  was  not  in  good  health,  and  after  a 
bit,  he  went  to  his  home  in  Illinois,  leaving  Jim  Haley  in  com- 
mand of  the  train. 

On  July  6, 1944,  the  circus  was  playing  Hartford,  Connecti- 
cut. The  forty-one  tents  stood  on  a  lot  close  to  town.  It  was 
admirably  situated  for  accessibility;  but  there  were  only  two 
fire  hydrants  on  it.  Since  our  fire-resistant  Big  Top  had  proved 
to  be  unsatisfactorily  waterproofed,  the  new  management  had 
abandoned  it  in  favor  of  the  old  paraffin-benzene-treated 
canvas,  which  was  admittedly  more  watertight.  On  that  day 
boss  canvasman  Leonard  Aylesworth  was  in  Evanston  confer- 
ring with  Robert  Ringling. 

Tlie  standing  rule  was  that  during  the  performance  tractors 
vidth  the  circus'  fire-fighting  equipment  were  to  be  marshaled 


THE   HARTFOBD   FIBE  327 

outside  the  tent  with  engines  turning.  For  some  reason  tractor 
boss  David  Blanchfield  had  not  ordered  them  into  position. 
Fire  extinguishers  were  normally  placed  under  the  seats.  Be- 
cause the  show  was  so  shortlianded,  they  had  not  been  un- 
loaded from  the  train  at  Hartford. 

It  was  a  typical  July  day,  hot  and  muggy  with  thunder 
over  the  horizon.  Because  of  the  threatening  storm  George 
Smith  and  Fred  Bradna  wisely  decided  to  shortchange  the 
customers.  Three  of  the  opening  displays  were  canceled. 

Despite  the  unpleasant  weather  the  people  of  Hartford 
were  in  a  holiday  mood.  Many  of  them  had  taken  a  long 
Fom'th-of-July  weekend.  It  was  a  wonderful  opportunity  to 
take  the  children  to  the  circus.  There  were  eight  thousand 
people  in  the  tent  when  the  opening  spec  began  its  trium- 
phant procession  around  the  arena. 

After  the  spec  the  clowns  kept  the  kids  roaring  with  laugh- 
ter while  the  cage  was  rigged  for  Alfred  Court's  wild-animal 
act,  which  had  been  moved  back  from  first  to  sixth  place  that 
year.  A  runway  of  steel  mesh  through  which  tlie  cats  entered 
and  left  the  cage  led  across  the  back  hippodrome  track,  wliich 
was  partially  blocked  while  it  was  in  place. 

In  the  condensed  schedule  decided  upon,  tlie  Wallendas 
followed  the  clowns  with  their  tremendously  dangerous  high- 
wire  act.  The  show  had  now  been  rumiing  for  about  twenty 
minutes. 

Photographer  Dick  Miller  was  standing  near  the  end  of 
Clown  Alley  looking  up  at  the  Wallendas.  He  saw  a  tiny  spurt 
of  flame  running  up  a  guy  rope  and  yelled.  A  policeman  on 
duty  outside  noticed  a  circle  of  flame  "like  the  glowing  end 
of  a  cigarette"  burning  the  roof  of  the  Big  Top.  It  seemed  to 
widen  slowly.  "Then  it  suddenly  burst  through  in  a  big 
common  flame  and  went  roaring  all  around  the  place."  It  was, 
in  fact,  like  the  terrible  flash  of  billowing  fire  when  a  gasoline 
tank  bursts. 


328  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

Inside  the  tent  Fred  Bradna  saw  smoke  at  the  main  en- 
trance. His  shrill  whistle  stopped  the  Wallendas  in  mid-air. 
They  came  sliding  down  the  guy  wires.  Fred  yelled  to  Merle 
Evans.  Somebody  made  an  announcement  over  the  public- 
address  system  asking  the  audience  to  leave  quickly,  and  the 
band  burst  into  "The  Stars  and  Stripes  Forever,"  the  tradi- 
tional circus  signal  of  disaster.  That  was  the  last  moment  of 
order.  Complete  chaos  ensued. 

With  sun-baked  canvas  roaring  in  hundred-foot  flames 
above  them,  the  crowd  went  crazy.  They  stonned  toward  the 
main  entrance  toward  the  fire,  and  piled  up  against  that  fatal 
animal  chute.  Thousands  more  pushed  behind,  tramphng 
every  small  thing  in  their  way,  building  up  tremendous  pres- 
sures that  crushed  and  ground  the  life  out  of  those  in  front. 
Others  saved  themselves  by  crawling  out  under  the  sides  of 
the  tent.  Many  tried  to  crawl  back  again  to  save  beloved 
children  lost  in  that  first  blind  panic. 

Inside  the  tent  performers  and  roustabouts  were  heroically 
saving  lives.  Fred  Bradna,  with  his  hair  aflame,  dragged  eleven 
children  out  of  "the  monstrous  pile  in  front  of  the  animal 
chute"  and  shoved  tliem  to  safety.  Dick  Miller,  who  gave  the 
first  warning,  rescued  many  more.  Countless  others  performed 
acts  of  heroism. 

But  thousands  of  people  stood  trapped  and  helpless  like 
cattle  packed  in  a  slaughterhouse  pen  while  the  holocaust 
above  their  heads  made  the  interior  of  the  tent  a  furnace.  To 
the  helpless  onlookers,  watching  the  soaring,  roaring  flames 
and  black  billowing  clouds  of  smoke,  it  seemed  impossible 
that  anyone  could  still  be  ahve  in  that  inferno.  After  eight  or 
ten  minutes  the  great  main  poles  began  to  waver.  Moaning  ia 
anguish,  people  watched  them  totter  and  crash  down  like  tall 
pines  in  a  forest  fire;  down  in  fountains  of  sparks  bringmg  the 
remnants  of  burning  canvas  upon  the  heads  of  those  within. 

Five  minutes  later  it  was  all  over.  Where  the  Big  Top  had 


THE   HAETFORD   FIKE  329 

stood  was  a  devastated  oblong  of  blackened  earth,  with 
Court's  great  cage  rising  crazily  above  it,  and  against  tliat 
fatal  chute,  a  ghastly  heap  of  humanity  piled  four  and  five 
deep.  The  living  were  writhing  under  tlie  dead.  And  beneath 
them  again  were  the  small  crushed  bodies  of  the  kids  who 
had  come  to  see  the  circus. 

I  read  about  the  fire  in  the  Stars  and  Stripes  at  an  OSS 
advance  base  in  Normandy.  I  have  no  words  to  describe  my 
sickened  reaction— the  "horrors  of  war"  paled  by  comparison. 
One  hundred  and  sixty-eight  persons  were  killed— more  than 
half  of  them  children.  Four  hundred  and  eighty-seven  were 
badly  injured. 

John  got  the  news  in  New  York  and  immediately  telephoned 
Robert  oflFering  to  help  in  any  possible  way.  He  was  curtly 
refused.  Robert  was  in  a  state  of  shock,  from  which  he  never 
completely  recovered.  Poor  Jim  Haley  bore  the  brunt  of  the 
storm.  That  night  he,  George  Smith,  David  Blanchfield,  seat 
boss  James  Caley,  and  lighting  boss  Edward  R.  Versteeg  were 
arrested  and  charged  with  involuntary  manslaughter.  A 
warrant  was  served  on  Leonard  Aylesworth  when  he  reached 
Hartford. 

Before  the  scorched  ground  was  cool  the  damage  suits  be- 
gan. Attachments  were  slapped  on  all  that  was  left  of  the 
circus.  It  was  evident  that  the  claims  would  run  into  millions. 
The  liability  insurance  carried  by  the  chcus  was  only  $500,- 
000.  In  this  situation  the  sensible  thing  was  to  let  Ringling 
Brothers  go  into  bankruptcy  and  then  buy  it  back  at  auction. 

I  am  proud  to  say  we  did  no  such  thing.  For  once  our  entire 
family  was  in  agreement  that,  cost  what  it  might,  our  circus 
would  pay  its  just  debts.  Our  lawyer  spoke  for  all  of  us  when 
he  said,  "The  Ringling  family  is  not  interested  in  escaping 
liability.  It  wants  to  help  and  it  wants  to  carry  on." 

In  the  crisis  Jim  Haley  acted  with  prompt  decisiveness.  The 


330  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

first  step  was  obviously  to  get  the  circus  on  the  road  again 
as  rapidly  as  possible  or  nobody  would  get  anything.  Bonds 
were  promptly  posted  to  secure  the  release  of  the  attachments 
—the  officers  were  out  on  bail.  The  circus  then  retired  to 
Winter  Quarters  and  reorganized.  It  went  out  again  in  August, 
playing  in  stadia  and  ball  parks  without  a  Big  Top,  and  ended 
the  season  with  a  small  operating  profit. 

Meanwhile  circus  lawyer  Karl  Loos  called  in  an  eminent 
colleague,  Daniel  Gordon  Judge  of  Engel,  Judge  and  Miller, 
to  attempt  to  work  out  a  plan  for  paying  the  claims.  In  con- 
sultation with  dozens  of  lawyers  representing  the  claimants 
and  the  Hartford  Bar  Association,  he  was  able  to  negotiate 
the  arrangement  known  as  The  Hartford  Arbitration  Agree- 
ment. Under  it  the  circus  accepted  full  responsibility  for 
damages  and  left  it  up  to  a  local  arbitration  board  to  decide 
what  was  to  be  paid.  The  circus  was  then  to  pay  a  "receiver," 
out  of  earnings,  the  amounts  necessary  to  pay  off  these  claims. 
The  circus  further  agreed  not  to  enter  into  any  unusual  ex- 
penses during  the  term  of  the  agreement  and  to  pay  every 
cent  of  net  profit  to  the  claimants. 

At  first  John  thought  this  was  a  bad  deal,  but  he  afterward 
changed  his  mind.  Eventually  the  circus  paid  out  nearly 
$5,000,000  in  damages. 

A  condition  of  the  circus'  assuming  these  vast  liabilities  was 
a  "gentleman's  agreement"  that  Haley,  Smith,  and  the  others 
would  not  be  sent  to  jail.  However,  the  Connecticut  officials 
were  not  that  gentlemanly.  I  suppose  pubHc  outcry  for 
vengeance  was  too  great  for  pohticians  to  ignore  it.  Haley, 
Smith,  Ayleswortli,  Caley,  Versteeg,  and  Blanchfield  were  all 
brought  to  trial  late  in  1944.  Robert  Ringling  was  not  in  Con- 
necticut at  the  time  of  the  fire  and  did  not  go  there. 

When  the  trial  began,  the  defendants  threw  themselves  on 
the  mercy  of  the  court.  Counsel  for  the  defense  claimed  that 
Haley  and  the  others  were  indispensable  for  keeping  tlie 


THE   HABTFORD   FIRE  33 1 

circus  running  so  that  it  could  earn  the  money  to  pay  the 
damage  claims.  Nevertlieless,  they  were  sentenced  to  jail 
terms  but  allowed  to  go  to  Sarasota  to  get  the  show  on  the 
road. 

In  April  1945  they  all  returned  to  Hartford  to  surrender  to 
Judge  Shea.  Their  counsel  had  entered  motions  for  suspension 
of  the  sentences,  again  on  the  grounds  of  indispensability. 
They  had  brought  Robert  Ringling  on  an  interstate  subpoena 
to  testify  on  their  behalf.  Robert  made  a  poor  witness.  He  did, 
indeed,  testify  that  circus  operation  would  be  "desperately 
jeopardized"  without  these  men.  All  he  said  about  Jim  Haley 
was  "He  is  a  great  help  to  me." 

My  brotlier  had  also  been  subpoenaed.  He  was  far  from 
unwilling.  He  gladly  testified  to  his  extremely  unfavorable 
opinion  of  the  management  of  the  circus— he  was  beginning 
suit  against  Robert  and  Jim  Haley  for  mismanagement.  When 
asked  if  he  considered  "that  the  accused  were  indispensable 
to  tlie  running  of  the  circus,"  he  said  tliat  none  of  them  was. 

Counsel  for  the  defense  attacked  John's  testimony  on  the 
grounds  that  he  was  anxious  to  regain  control  of  the  circus— 
which  he  was— and  impHed  that  he  thought  himself  the  indis- 
pensable man— which  he  did. 

However,  Judge  Shea  agreed  with  John.  Jim  Haley  got  a 
year  and  a  day.  The  others  were  given  more  or  less  severe 
sentences.  Only  Blanchfield  got  oflF.  He  had  testified  that  he 
was  not  indispensable  and  Judge  Shea  commended  him  as 
"tlie  only  one  who  told  the  truth." 


CHAPTER   XXVII 


HOW  JOHN  WON  THE  CIRCUS 


Never  for  one  moment  had  John  stopped  trying  to  regain 
control  of  the  circus— that  was  his  Everest,  his  Promised  Land. 
His  first  move  was  a  very  canny  one.  He  went  to  see  Jim 
Haley  in  jail  in  Comiecticut. 

At  first  Haley  absolutely  refused  to  see  him.  John  persisted 


HOW   JOHN  WON   THE    CIRCUS  333 

and  Haley  finally  agreed  to  talk  to  him  if  the  warden  were 
present. 

When  the  two  men  met  in  the  warden's  ofiice  of  the  jail, 
Haley  naturally  blew  his  top  about  John's  testimony.  My 
brother  allowed  him  to  let  oflF  steam  for  a  while.  Finally  he 
said,  "Now  Jim,  I  was  under  oath  to  tell  the  whole  truth. 
Everybody  knew  damn  well  I  didn't  think  you  were  indis- 
pensable. What  could  I  say?" 

Haley  glumly  admitted  that  John  could  not  vouch  for  him. 
Then  with  real  anger  he  started  to  talk  about  Robert  Ringling. 
Jim  thought  that  the  president  of  Ringling  Brothers  had  let 
him  down;  that  he  was  interested  only  in  saving  his  own  skin. 
He  believed  that  had  Robert's  testimony  been  more  forcefully 
in  his  favor  he  would  have  been  given  a  suspended  sentence. 

Until  then  John  had  thought  that  calling  on  Jim  Haley  was 
a  futile  gesture,  which  he  made  only  because  he  would  leave 
no  stone  unturned  to  regain  the  circus. 

I  came  home  from  the  wars  in  the  summer  of  1945,  expect- 
ing to  be  reassigned  to  the  Pacific.  Then  came  the  Bomb  and 
V-J  Day.  I  became  a  civilian  again.  The  first  thing  I  did  was 
to  try  to  get  some  sort  of  work  with  the  circus— the  only  thing 
I  was  fitted  to  do.  I  was  turned  down  cold.  But  from  here  on 
I  was  in  the  thick  of  tilings. 

Meanwliile  John  was  trying  to  see  Aubrey  Haley.  He  failed. 
It  appeared  that  Aubrey  had  an  understanding  with  Robert 
that  neither  would  talk  to  John  without  the  other  present. 
John  tliought  that  this  was  due  less  to  hostility  on  Aubrey's 
part  than  as  a  legal  precaution  because  of  his  suit  against  them 
all  for  mismanagement  of  the  cii'cus,  which  was  progressing 
favorably. 

On  Christmas  Eve  1945  Jim  Haley  was  released  from  jail. 
He  had  a  deep  sense  of  disgrace  and  dreaded  returning  to 
Sarasota.  His  fears  were  unjustified.  His  loyal  friends  there 


334  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

were  convinced  that  he  had  unjustly  taken  the  rap.  They 
canceled  a  banquet  for  General  Jonathan  Wainwright,  and 
instead,  gave  Jim  a  royal  welcome  home.  A  few  years  later  he 
was  elected  United  States  Congressman  from  that  district,  a 
position  he  stiU  holds. 

Two  extraordinary  things  happened  in  the  spring  of  1946. 
First  Aubrey  sent  for  me.  When  I  met  her  in  Washington, 
D.C.,  she  said,  "How  would  you  like  to  be  president  of  the 
circus?  I  think  I  could  get  the  others  to  agree  if  you  want  it." 

I  was  dumfounded.  Then  my  brain  began  to  work.  "I'm 
awfully  flattered  by  your  confidence,  Aubrey,"  I  said,  "but  I 
wouldn't  be  a  good  choice  for  you.  You  want  me  to  help  you 
get  rid  of  John.  The  first  thing  I'd  do  as  president  would  be 
to  turn  the  operation  over  to  John,  who  has  a  lot  more  abihty 
than  I  have." 

That  was  that. 

Then  John's  friend  Karl  Bickel  came  to  him  and  said  that 
Haley  was  still  very  bitter  against  Robert,  who  had  never  gone 
to  see  him  in  jail  or  even  written  to  him.  Bickel  indicated  that 
Haley  would  make  a  deal  that  would  put  John  back  running 
the  circus.  There  were,  however,  two  conditions.  The  first 
was  that  Haley  was  to  be  president  of  Ringling  Brothers.  The 
second  was  that  I  was  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  show. 
Haley  was  still  brooding  about  a  caustic  letter  I  had  written 
him  from  North  Africa.  This  was  a  weird  switch  from  my  talk 
with  Aubrey. 

Just  about  then  Haley  and  Robert  had  a  real  dingdong 
blazing  row.  Red-eyed  with  anger,  Haley  sent  for  John  and 
told  him  that  he  wanted  to  be  president  of  the  circus  for  only 
one  year,  as  a  sort  of  vindication;  that  he  wanted  to  pay  tlie 
Hartford  debt  and  then  go  fishing.  John  agreed  to  these 
conditions  provided  he  could  nm  the  show. 

In  1946  the  stockholders'  meeting  again  took  place  in 


HOW   JOHN   WON   THE    CIRCUS  335 

April.  This  time  it  was  Aunt  Edith  and  Robert  who  got  the 
unpleasant  surprise.  Aubrey,  who  was  ill— either  really  or 
diplomatically— was  not  present.  Jim  Haley,  holding  her 
proxy,  voted  her  stock  with  Brother  John.  What  an  unholy 
row  ensued!  Robert  and  Edith  in  outraged  voices  demanded 
that  the  stock  be  voted  in  accordance  with  The  Ladies'  Agree- 
ment.  The  arbitrator,  Karl  Loos,  ruled  that  this  must  be  done. 
Jim  Haley  told  Loos  where  to  go  and  voted  with  John.  A  new 
board  of  directors  was  elected,  which  named  Haley  president 
and  John  Ringling  North  executive  vice-president  of  Ringhng 
Brothers-Barnum  &  Bailey  Combined  Shows. 

John  and  Jim  Haley  went  over  to  Madison  Square  Garden, 
where  the  circus  was  playing,  and  took  over.  When  Robert 
and  Bill  Dunn  came  in  stating  that  the  election  was  illegal 
and  demanding  their  rights  as  president  and  treasurer,  they 
were  politely  but  firmly  ejected. 

So  John  once  more  came  into  control  of  his  beloved  circus. 
But  for  how  long?  He  was  in  the  saddle  by  courtesy  of  Jim 
and  Aubrey  Haley,  who  had  voted  against  him  before.  Their 
right  to  vote  their  stock  for  him  was  challenged  by  Edith  and 
Robert  suing  in  Delaware  under  The  Ladies'  Agreement. 
Three  hundred  shares  of  the  stock  John  had  voted  himself 
belonged  to  the  estate  of  John  Ringling.  His  own  holding  was 
still  only  seventy  shares,  a  measly  7  per  cent  of  the  total.  In 
plain  fact,  his  position  was  more  precarious  than  that  of  the 
Wallendas  balancing  a  human  pyramid  on  a  bicycle  travers- 
ing a  sixty-foot-high  wire  with  no  net. 

John's  authoritarian  ways  did  not  sit  well  with  Haley.  It 
soon  began  to  appear  that  he  was  not  content  to  be  president 
in  name  only.  Some  heated  arguments  developed  over  policy. 
In  spite  of  this  the  circus  had  a  very  good  season.  There  were 
no  profits  taxes  to  pay  because  there  were  no  profits— all  the 
net  earnings  went  to  the  victims  of  the  Hartford  fire.  At  the 


336  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

end  of  the  1946  season  we  paid  over  $1,000,000  to  the  receiver 
on  their  behalf. 

But  John  was  involved  in  more  lawsuits  than  a  hyena  has 
fleas.  Robert  was  suing  in  New  York  for  his  salary  as  president; 
Edith  in  Delaware  to  declare  the  April  election  void.  John,  in 
turn,  was  suing  them  and  the  Haleys  for  $5,000,000  damages 
for  mismanagement  of  the  circus  at  the  time  of  the  fire.  Also, 
the  John  Ringhng  Estate  was  not  yet  settled.  The  federal 
government,  the  state  of  Florida,  and  a  lot  of  private  indi- 
viduals were  suing  it  and  Jolm  as  executor. 

In  comparing  John  with  the  Wallendas  I  may  have  erred. 
He  was  more  like  a  juggler  trying  to  keep  a  sixty-four-piece 
dinner  service  in  the  air  while  standing  on  his  head.  How  he 
ever  kept  it  all  straight  in  his  mind  I  do  not  know. 

Ringling  Brothers  had  been  chartered  in  Delaware.  Aunt 
Edith's  suit  to  declare  the  April  election  void  came  to  trial 
there  in  the  fall  of  1946.  The  lower  court  held  in  her  favor. 
So  Haley  and  John  were  thrown  out  and  Robert  came  back  as 
president— for  three  weeks.  John  appealed  the  case  and  got 
an  injunction  temporarily  reinstating  Haley  and  himself. 

At  this  point  poor  Robert,  who  I  am  convinced  had  never 
really  wanted  any  part  of  this  family  squabble,  had  a  stroke. 

John  went  off  to  Europe  to  sign  new  acts  for  the  circus. 

Nineteen  forty-seven  was  the  year  of  decision.  It  began 
very  badly  with  a  flare-up  between  John  and  Haley.  The  latter 
wanted  him  to  fire  John  Murray  Anderson  as  producer  of  the 
show.  John  liked  Anderson  and  thought  that  he  made  a  great 
contribution  to  the  beauty  of  the  circus.  In  the  course  of  the 
argument  my  brother  said,  "Anderson  needn't  worry  you,  Jim. 
After  aU,  I'm  going  to  be  president  of  tlie  circus  this  year." 

"The  hell  you  are!"  said  Haley. 

There  went  John's  understanding  that  he  was  to  succeed 
Haley  at  tlie  end  of  a  year.  John  immediately  tried  to  induce 


HOW   JOHN   WON   THE    CIRCUS  337 

Aubrey  and  Jim  to  sell  him  140  shares  of  their  Ringling 
Brothers  stock,  which,  added  to  the  70  shares  he  owned  and 
the  300  shares  he  controlled  through  the  John  Ringling  Estate, 
would  give  him  control  of  the  circus  with  51  per  cent  of  the 
total  stock.  They  refused  to  do  so.  Instead,  Haley  told  Robert's 
son,  young  Jim  Ringling,  who  was  serving  his  apprenticeship 
with  the  circus,  to  write  to  his  father  tliat  he,  Haley,  was  ready 
to  bounce  John. 

Meanwhile,  Daniel  Judge  had  replaced  Loos  as  adviser  to 
Aunt  Edith  and  Robert.  Robert,  recovering  from  his  stroke, 
had  lost  all  desire  to  run  the  circus.  Therefore,  Judge  was 
faced  with  the  problem  of  choosing  between  Haley  and  John. 
This  was  a  splendid  opening  for  John's  "divide  and  rule" 
policy. 

John  decided  to  leave  the  circus  train  at  Dallas  and  fly  to 
New  York.  Evidently  Jim  Haley  had  an  unhappy  prevision  of 
a  triple  cross.  At  tlie  airport  he  said  to  John,  "Don't  make  a 
deal  with  your  Aunt  Edithl" 

Of  course,  that  is  exactly  what  John  did.  In  New  York  he 
called  on  Mr.  Judge,  with  whom  he  had  a  long  discussion. 
At  their  next  meeting  Leonard  Bisco  was  also  present.  In  these 
meetings  John  had  tremendous  leverage  because  his  mis- 
management suit  for  $5,000,000  had  won  in  the  lower  courts 
and  was  being  appealed.  He  had  no  desire  to  wreck  the  cii-cus 
or  impoverish  Aunt  Edith  and  Robert.  He  only  wanted  to  run 
the  show. 

In  these  circumstances  an  accord  was  soon  arrived  at.  All 
suits  were  dropped.  John  personally  agreed  to  pay  Robert 
$7500  as  partial  compensation  for  his  loss  of  salary  as  presi- 
dent, and  Robert  was  to  be  chairman  of  the  board  at  a  nice 
salary.  In  return,  he  and  Aunt  Edith  formally  agreed  to  vote 
with  John. 

When  they  heard  of  this  new  alliance,  the  Haleys  knew 
they  had  been  outmaneuvered.  Almost  immediately  they 


338  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

agreed  to  sell  their  stock  at  a  fair  price  to  John  and  Robert. 
Robert  agreed  to  buy  175  shares  for  $243,055.55,  giving  him 
and  Aunt  Edith  a  total  of  490  shares,  or  49  per  cent.  John 
agreed  to  pay  $194,444.45  for  140  shares,  which  with  the  370 
shares  he  already  voted  gave  him  510  shares,  or  51  per  cent. 
The  Haleys  thus  received  $437,500,  which  in  view  of  the 
tremendous  fire  claims  still  outstanding  against  the  circus  was 
more  than  fair. 

The  only  thing  wrong  with  this  deal  was  that  John  did  not 
have  $194,444.45.  He  had  to  raise  it  somewhere  in  a  hurry. 
Eventually  John  and  our  mother  put  up  $100,000.  He  raised 
the  rest  with  the  help  of  his  favorite  flier,  general  manager, 
and  true  friend,  Arthur  Concello. 

If  the  affairs  of  the  circus  seem  complicated,  they  were  like 
the  child's  game  of  musical  chairs  compared  to  the  intricacies 
of  the  settling  of  Uncle  John's  estate,  which  was  proceeding 
simultaneously.  Although  John  and  Mother  were  performing 
all  the  duties  of  executors  of  Uncle  John's  will,  tlieir  right  to 
do  so  was  not  finally  settled  until  July  22,  1947.  Meanwhile, 
throughout  the  years  most  of  the  claims  against  the  estate  had 
been  settled  very  advantageously  to  it.  As  I  have  said,  the 
federal  government's  tax  claim  for  $13,500,000  was  settled  in 
1946  for  $850,000. 

However,  as  some  suits  were  settled  new  ones  cropped  up. 
About  1945  the  state  of  Florida  suddenly  sued  the  executors 
and  trustees  on  the  ground  that  the  museimi  and  pictures 
were  not  being  properly  cared  for.  John  proposed  the  idea 
to  his  fellow  trustees,  Randolph  Wadsworth  and  myself,  that 
we  give  it  outright  to  the  state,  who  would  then  be  responsible 
for  it.  We  agreed  and  wrote  to  Governor  Caldwell  of  Florida 
making  tlie  offer.  He  referred  our  letter  to  former  Governor 
Frank  Carleton,  who  was  prosecuting  the  suit  against  us. 
Carleton  wrote  us,  "I  am  glad  you  have  reached  tliis  con- 


HOW   JOHN  WON   THE    CIRCUS  339 

elusion.  I  am  sure  it  is  to  the  best  interests  of  all."  He  suggested 
February  9,  1946,  would  be  a  good  day  for  the  transfer. 

The  proposal  was  an  obvious  solution  of  the  problems.  The 
state  officials  did  not  wake  up  to  the  disadvantages  until  the 
deed  was  done. 

John  was  taking  no  chances  on  their  changing  their  minds. 
He  set  the  presentation  up  in  a  blaze  of  publicity,  and  on 
the  appointed  day  he  and  Mother  and  I  formally  and  with 
lots  of  pictures  gave  Florida  tlie  museum,  Ca'  d'Zan,  and  the 
stock  of  the  Rembrandt  Corporation,  which  owned  the 
pictures. 

Thus  Florida  now  owned  the  whole  works,  but  as  yet  there 
was  no  trust  fund  to  maintain  it.  The  officials  suddenly 
realized  that  they  had  assumed  a  heavy  financial  responsi- 
bility. It  made  them  awfully  anxious  to  get  the  estate  settled. 

This  was  still  a  b'emendously  complex  holding,  consisting 
of  the  circus  stock,  oil  wells  ( about  depleted ) ,  Florida  real 
estate,  a  part  interest  in  Al  Ringling's  theater  in  Baraboo, 
Wisconsin,  and  a  great  many  odds  and  ends.  If  the  normal 
administrative  procedures  were  followed,  all  assets  would 
have  to  be  liquidated  piece  by  piece,  all  pending  litigation 
would  have  to  be  consummated,  and,  after  a  final  accounting 
and  payment  of  all  legacies,  the  residue— if  any— would  be 
turned  over  to  tlie  trustees  to  be  administered  for  the  state  of 
Florida. 

A  few  days  after  the  presentation  ceremony  John  was  called 
to  a  meeting  with  Governor  Caldwell  at  Tampa.  The  governor 
was  decidedly  unhappy.  John  describes  him  as  "impatient, 
gruflf,  and  annoyed."  He  realized  that  the  estate  still  owed  a 
great  deal  of  money,  including  some  $960,000  to  John  and 
our  mother  for  statutory  executors'  fees,  and  claims  of  New- 
man and  Bisco  for  legal  fees  of  $640,000. 

They  discussed  ways  of  winding  it  up  quickly.  The  more 
the  governor  heard  about  the  complicated  holdings,  the  less 


340  JOHN  SINGLING  NORTH 

hopeful  he  became  of  a  quick  settlement.  Finally  he  said, 
'%Vhy  don't  you  fellows  buy  out  the  state  of  Florida  and  wind 
it  up  yourselves?" 

John  kept  a  poker  face,  but  I  am  sure  there  were  sparks  in 
his  eyes.  This  was  his  chance  to  get  that  circus  stock. 

It  had  not  been  possible  for  the  estate  to  pay  legal  fees 
during  the  course  of  the  prolonged  htigation,  so  the  next  step 
was  a  meeting  between  Jolm  and  Leonard  Bisco  and  the 
latter's  partner,  Sydney  Newman.  As  a  result  of  this  discussion, 
it  was  agreed  that  if  the  residuary  estate  was  purchased  from 
the  state  of  Florida,  the  lawyers  would  share  in  the  purchase 
on  a  40-60  per  cent  basis. 

Then  began  the  long,  delicate  negotiations  with  tlie 
Florida  oflRcials.  The  museum  and  the  works  of  art— assessed 
at  $15,000,000— were  the  greater  part  of  the  estate.  What  re- 
mained after  the  settlements  so  far  made  was  valued  as  fol- 
lows: 


Sarasota  real  estate 

$2,000,000 

Oklahoma  oil  interests 

800,000 

300  shiires  of  circus  stock 

500,000 

Theaters  in  Wisconsin  and 

miscellaneous 

100,000 

total: 

$3,400,000 

Against  this  were  estate  liabilities  of  about  $2,000,000,  leaving 
a  dubious  net  worth  of  approximately  $1,400,000.  I  say 
"dubious"  because  at  that  time  it  was  doubtful  if  the  assessed 
valuation,  which  was  higher  than  the  depressed  values  of  the 
time,  could  be  realized  if  the  holdings  were  sold. 

John's  first  offer  to  Governor  Caldwell  was  to  give  the  state 
$500,000  clear  and  assume  all  obligations  of  the  estate. 
Robert  got  into  the  act  and  bid  $550,000.  Both  ofiFers  were 
turned  down  by  the  Florida  officials.  The  negotiations  con- 
tinued from  March  1946  to  October  1947.  The  state  jibbed 
and  jibed,  and  John's  syndicate,  which  consisted  of  Mother, 


HOW   JOHN  WON  THE    CIRCUS  34I 

John,  and  Newman  and  Bisco,  kept  up  a  steady  pressure. 
There  were  oJffers  and  counteroffers,  as  state  officials  whirled 
like  weathercocks  under  the  shifting  winds  of  public  opinion 
and  local  political  pressures.  Various  outside  interests  tried 
to  muscle  in. 

Finally,  on  August  19, 1947,  John  and  Bisco  went  to  Florida 
for  a  showdown  meeting  with  Governor  Caldwell  and  his 
cabinet.  The  weather  that  day  was  hot  and  humid,  but  in 
the  cabinet  room  the  atmosphere  was  icy.  Hostility  was 
written  on  all  but  a  few  faces.  Governor  Caldwell  looked  im- 
placable. He  immediately  suggested  that  the  session  be 
private. 

John,  thinking  fast,  said,  "I  believe  it  is  customary  for  the 
press  to  be  present  at  cabinet  meetings  in  Florida.  We  have 
nothing  to  hide.  We  are  going  to  make  a  fair  offer.  I  think 
the  press  should  stay." 

The  press  stayed. 

John  and  Leonard  Bisco  then  made  a  series  of  alternative 
proposals.  Each  one  was  buffeted  around  the  table  getting 
nowhere.  It  was  evident  that  the  officials  did  not  want  to 
make  any  agreement.  To  force  their  hands,  John  said  in  a 
very  stagy  whisper  to  Bisco,  "Find  out  how  much  they  will 
take."  He  said  it  four  times,  loud  enough  for  the  governor  to 
hear,  loud  enough  for  the  reporters  to  hear.  Thus  prodded, 
Caldwell  proposed  that  he  and  his  cabinet  withdraw  to  confer 
in  private  on  a  price. 

After  twenty  minutes  or  so  they  marched  back  into  the 
room  and  took  their  places  at  the  table.  Somewhat  trium- 
phantly, Governor  Caldwell  announced,  "Gentlemen,  we  have 
decided  on  a  figure.  We  will  accept  $1,250,000." 

Bisco  shot  to  his  feet  as  though  stung  by  a  bee.  "We  can't 
do  it!"  he  said. 

John  hauled  him  dov^ni.  "We've  got  to,"  he  whispered 
fiercely.  "It's  our  last  chance." 


342  JOHN   RINGLING  NORTH 

"There  isn't  that  much  cash,"  Bisco  said. 

"We'll  raise  it,"  John  countered.  "Tell  them  we  accept." 

Reluctantly  Bisco  stood  up.  "Governor  and  gentlemen,"  he 
said,  "Mr.  North  and  I  accept  your  proposition." 

From  then  on  things  moved  rapidly.  The  Florida  press  had 
given  our  offer  great  publicity.  The  tone  of  their  comment 
was  that  the  governor  had  made  a  fine  deal  for  his  state. 
Warmed  by  their  approval,  Caldwell  became  enthusiastic.  De- 
tails as  to  how  the  fund  was  to  be  set  up  and  when  the  install- 
ments were  to  be  paid  into  it  were  quickly  ironed  out.  The 
final  contract  provided  that  $500,000  would  be  paid  into  the 
state  fund  within  ninety  days  of  signing;  and  that  the  remain- 
ing $750,000  was  to  be  a  mortgage  against  the  assets  of  the 
estate  payable  over  a  period  of  five  years.  The  contract  was 
signed  on  October  8,  1947. 

Now  all  that  remained  to  be  done  was  to  find  the  money. 
By  this  time  some  of  the  assets  had  been  sold,  so  there  was 
$200,000  in  cash.  That  left  $300,000  to  be  raised,  of  which, 
according  to  the  60-40  deal  witli  Newman  and  Bisco,  John 
and  Mother  had  to  raise  60  per  cent,  or  $180,000. 

Remember  that  all  this  time  John  had  also  been  involved 
in  the  negotiations  with  Aunt  Edith,  Robert,  and  the  Haleys 
over  the  circus  stock.  That  deal  went  through  almost  simul- 
taneously,  and  he  had  to  get  the  money  to  finance  that 
purchase  as  well.  Nobody  but  a  rampant  optimist  would  have 
dreamed  of  trying.  No  one  but  a  supersalesman  could  possi- 
bly have  pulled  it  off. 

John's  next  move  was  to  talk  with  Newman  and  Bisco  about 
the  circus  stock.  While  tliey  were  willing  to  let  John  have  the 
voting  rights  without  any  payment,  he  wanted  to  own  the 
stock.  "I've  got  to  have  it  all,"  John  said. 

"If  you  want  it  tliat  much  you'll  have  to  buy  our  forty 


HOW   JOHN  WON   THE    CIRCUS  343 

per  cent  interest  in  it  or  assign  other  assets,"  Newman  said. 

"What  do  you  consider  it  worth?"  he  asked. 

Newman  answered  that  the  300  shares  were  worth  $500,- 
000,  which  was  the  release  value  in  the  Florida  agreement. 
John  said  it  was  worth  no  more  than  $450,000.  This  was  in 
accordance  with  the  facts.  After  arguing  for  a  while,  John 
said,  "All  right,  we'll  toss  a  coin  to  see  if  it's  $400,000  or 
$500,000." 

They  tossed  and  he  lost. 

This  was  the  one  serious  blunder  my  brother  made  in  all 
these  very  intricate  negotiations.  He  was  so  emotionally  in- 
volved in  securing  control  of  the  circus  that  his  customary 
shrewdness  completely  deserted  him.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  sucker 
for  the  circus.  Since  the  valuation  of  $500,000  forced  him  to 
pay  $200,000  instead  of  $160,000  for  Newman  and  Bisco's  40 
per  cent  share,  that  little  coin  flying  through  the  air  cost  him 
$40,000. 

An  agreement  was  then  made  between  the  lawyers  and 
John  giving  him  an  irrevocable  option  to  buy  their  share  of 
tlie  circus  stock  and  an  irrevocable  proxy  to  vote  it  meanwhile. 

Somehow  John  and  Mother  and  I  and  Arthur  Concello 
raised  the  money  to  complete  these  transactions.  How  it  was 
done  is  too  involved  a  story  to  tell  here,  and  is  beside  the 
point  in  a  book  about  our  circus.  It's  enough  to  say  that  we 
mortgaged  everything  we  had,  including  our  immortal  souls. 

However,  it  was  worth  it.  Due  to  an  era  of  gieat  prosperity, 
John's  good  judgment,  and  a  lot  of  luck,  the  properties 
acquired  from  Uncle  John's  estate  have  increased  enormously 
in  value.  Most  important  of  all,  John  at  last  owned  a  control- 
ling interest  in  the  circus.  And  peace  descended  upon  our 
embattled  family— for  a  while. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII 

"GEARED  FOR  GLORY  AND 
FOR  GOLD" 


As  soon  as  Jolin  was  definitely  assured  of  control  of  the  circus 
he  and  I  set  about  modernizing  it  further.  Though  its  gross 
earnings  were  climbing  due  to  increased  prices  for  seats,  ex- 
penses were  going  up  at  a  much  higher  rate.  We  would  not 
try  to  counteract  tliis  by  cheapening  the  show.  The  only 


GEARED  FOR  GLORY  AND  FOR  GOLD  345 

answer  was  greater  efficiency.  For  a  while  this  policy  was 
effective,  but  in  an  inflationary  era  it  was  like  building  sand 
forts  against  a  flood  tide. 

In  the  1948  Circus  Magazine  I  wrote,  "Ten  years  ago  we 
thought  we  had  done  quite  a  job  of  modernization.  When  I 
look  back  now  and  see  what  has  been  accomplished  it  appears 
to  have  been  only  a  beginning.  .  .  ." 

Of  course,  from  1946  on  all  our  canvas  was  flameproof. 
Then  Ai'tliur  Concello  brought  to  the  circus  a  portable  steel 
grandstand,  which  is  generally  considered  the  greatest  inno- 
vation in  circus  techniques  since  Barnum  put  the  show  on 
rails.  This  invention,  which  we  used  for  the  first  time  in  1948, 
consisted  of  big  dual-wheeled  trucks  which  looked  like  stain- 
less-steel van  trailers.  When  we  came  onto  a  lot  tlie  Big  Top 
went  up  first  with  its  sides  bare.  Jeeps  backed  the  trucks  into 
it  at  uniform  intervals  around  its  perimeter.  Theii"  machinery 
began  to  grind,  and  great  steel  wings  carrying  upholstered 
seats  and  bleachers  rose  up  and  spread  gently  out  until  they 
almost  touched  those  of  the  tiucks  on  either  side.  The  pitch  of 
the  grandstand  was  supported  by  the  main  frame  of  the  trucks 
and  sixteen  tubular-steel  wing  jacks.  These  were  adjusted 
to  inequalities  of  the  ground  and  the  decks  dovetailed  to  f  onn 
a  single  steel-floored  structure  broken  only  by  spaces  for  exits. 
Steel  safety  stairways  were  part  of  the  package. 

The  twenty-seven  units  for  a  grandstand  to  seat  ten  thou- 
sand people  cost  us  $250,000.  Never  was  money  better  spent. 
I  have  described  the  laborious  business  of  building  a  wooden 
grandstand  every  day.  That  took  over  four  hours  and  dozens 
of  hands.  The  new  grandstand  could  be  erected  in  fifty-five 
minutes  by  comparatively  few  workers.  As  a  fringe  benefit, 
the  enclosed  part  of  the  trucks  could  then  be  used  as  dressing 
rooms. 

Concello's  innovations  did  not  stop  with  the  new  grand- 
stand. He  designed  aluminum  side  poles  and  quarter  poles— 


346  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

the  latter  weighed  50  per  cent  less  than  the  675  pounds  of  the 
wooden  quarter  poles— and  he  persuaded  the  Aluminum 
Company  of  America  to  design  a  machine  that  would  extrude 
them.  The  only  reason  the  main  poles  were  not  made  of  the 
same  light  metal  was  that  the  Aluminum  Company  was  not 
able  to  devise  a  method  of  maldng  a  pole  sixty-seven  and  one 
half  feet  long, 

Another  change  in  which  Concello  had  a  hand  was  using 
steel  cables  and  a  winch  on  the  main  falls  for  hoisting  the 
bail  rings,  instead  of  the  inch-and-one-half  manila  rope  we 
had  always  used.  Before  this  it  took  fifteen  men  to  handle 
their  i5oo-pound  weight  dry.  When  wet,  they  were  almost 
twice  as  heavy. 

Other  improvements  of  this  period  were  a  light,  easily 
assembled  steel-mesh  cage  for  the  animal  acts,  and  the  new 
method  of  bringing  the  cats  into  the  arena  in  small  individual 
cages  which  were  then  hooked  together  to  form  a  chute  which 
did  not  obstruct  any  exit. 

We  increased  efiiciency  in  many  less  noticeable  ways.  In 
the  cookhouse,  which  still  served  over  four  thousand  meals  a 
day,  we  put  all  the  mechanization  of  a  big  hotel,  steam  kettles, 
dishwashers,  and  so  fortli.  We  devised  improvements  in  load- 
ing and  unloading  the  trains  and  dozens  of  other  smaller 
things,  which  for  a  time  enabled  technology  to  keep  pace 
with  inflation. 

In  fact,  1948  was  our  best  postwar  year.  Our  somewhat 
overenthusiastic  press  agent  Frank  Braden  wrote: 

"Spectacular  has  been  the  Big  Show's  1948  season- 
spectacular  in  its  triumphant  coast-to-coast  tour,  ...  its 
phenomenal  grosses,  and  in  its  never-to-be-forgotten  perform- 
ance. 

"The  Madison  Square  Garden  engagement  was  out  of  the 
cosmic  dream  books.  Enough  people  were  turned  away  during 
that  epochal  run  to  fill  the  Yale  Bowl  tlmce  over.  In  Boston, 


GEARED  FOR  GLORY  AND  FOR  GOLD  347 

.  .  .  Washington,  Baltimore,  turnaways  reigned.  The  Mid- 
west was  equally  profitable.  .  .  .  The  take-off  for  the  first  big 
railroad  zooms— Kansas  City  to  Denver  and  more  stampede 
business  .  .  .  Spokane,  Seattle  and  Portland.  .  .  . 

"Like  a  river  of  platinum,  the  four  long  railroad  trains, 
silver-enameled  and  stream-lined  in  Ringling  Red,  swept 
majestically  down  from  tlie  high  North  to  San  Francisco.  In 
the  Cow  Palace  we  had  an  all-time  record  intake  in  seven 
performances  there,  with  thousands  turned  away  each  night. 
.  .  .  [And  so  on  and  so  on  around  the  whole  big  country.] 

"'Twas  a  long,  hard  season,  a  glorious  season,  but  if  you 
don't  think  it  was  a  tough  one,  you  weren't  with  it. 

"But,  Brother,  will  it  stand  out  long  after  all  of  us  are  gone 
as  the  One  for  the  BIG  PLUSH  BOOK,  the  Master  Ledger. 

"Here  are  the  top  reasons  why: 

"John  Ringling  North  produced  for  1948,  the  greatest,  the 
finest  circus  perfoiinance  ever  seen  on  land  or  sea.  His  policies 
were  Big  Show,  Big  Business,  Geared  for  Glory  and  for  Gold. 

"Arthur  Concello's  expert  management  .  .  .  Henry  Ring- 
ling North  ...  a  tower  of  strength  while  his  brother  was  in 
Europe  engaging  attractions  .  .  .  Frank  McClosky  ever 
poised  to  meet  crises  and  go  to  town  like  a  bat  out  of  heU 
.  .  .  Pat  Valdo  .  .  .  wise  and  funny.  .  .  . 

"There  are  so  many  good  men  who  should  be  mentioned 
here.  Big  Executives  and  big  agents,  too,  and  the  guys  who 
moved  Big  Bertha,  put  her  up  and  down,  advertised  her,  rail- 
roaded her;  and  cherished  her  welfare  above  their  own." 

Thus  Frank  Braden,  a  man  we  paid  to  write  for  us  and  a 
good  friend;  so,  of  course,  traditionally  exaggerated  and 
overly  fulsome.  Nevertheless,  it  does  give  a  reasonably  accu- 
rate description  of  that  wonderful  year  in  which  John  intro- 
duced for  tlie  first  time  in  America  such  famous  stars  as  Unus, 
"Upside-down  gravity-defying,  equilibristic  Wonder  of  the 
World";  tlie  great  juggler  Francis  Brunn;  Cucciola,  the  midget 


348  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

equestrian  clown;  and  nine  other  new  imports  from  Europe 
and  the  Orient  in  addition  to  our  grand  old  stand-bys. 

The  charming  opening  spec  "'Twas  the  Night  Before 
Christmas"  featured  "Santa  Claus  and  His  Merry  Artisans" 
and  "The  Noel  Gnomes'  Night  Out,"  while  one  of  the  pro- 
duction numbers  was  the  "Monte  Carlo  Ballet"  with  sixty  girls 
whirling  on  spin  riggings,  "Roulette  Revolves  in  Rhythmic 
Flights";  and  the  finale,  "The  Circus  Ball,"  in  which  the  stag 
line  consisted  of  high-hatted  dancing  elephants  supported  by 
"enchanting  debutantes  and  Careening  Clowns." 

As  Braden  implied,  I  had  the  train  for  three  months  that 
summer;  and  I  thoroughly  enjoyed  it.  For  all  its  modernization 
and  Broadway  production  numbers  this  was  still  the  old 
circus  that  I  loved.  Many  friends  whom  I  had  known  since 
boyhood  were  still  with  it;  and  all  those  wonderful  new 
people  had  joined  us. 

Of  these,  Unus,  whom  my  brother  found  working  in  a  night 
club  in  Barcelona  in  1946,  was  perhaps  the  most  astounding. 
He  was  originally  a  Viennese  named  Franz  Furtner,  who  took 
the  name  Unus  from  the  Latin  for  the  number  "one."  I  think 
that  his  hand-balancing  act  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  its  kind 
the  world  will  ever  know.  He  always  wore  wliite  gloves  when 
working,  but  for  the  finale  of  his  act  he  would  take  them  oflF 
and  exhibit  his  bare  hands  to  the  audience  to  show  there  was 
no  gimmick.  Then  he  would  put  them  back  on,  and  getting 
on  top  of  a  huge  electric-light  bulb,  made  especially  for  liim 
by  General  Electric,  he  would  balance  himself  on  his  index 
finger  with  his  feet  straight  up  in  the  air. 

We  never  knew  whether  he  applied  some  sort  of  brace  by 
sleight  of  hand  when  he  put  the  gloves  back  on,  but  as  Aunt 
Edith,  who  adored  watching  Unus,  said,  "Even  if  he  has  got 
a  gimmick,  it's  a  whale  of  an  act." 

We  still  had  Bill  Heyer  and  his  horses  widi  the  show,  and 


"geared  for  glory  and  for  gold"  349 

John  brought  over  Roberto  de  Vasconeallos,  a  former 
Portuguese  bullfighter  who  was  also  a  superb  horseman.  Both 
these  men  tramed  their  own  horses,  not  only  for  dressage  but 
also  liberty  horses.  They  would  work  as  many  as  sixteen  liberty 
horses  at  one  time.  Another  great  horse  trainer,  who  is  still 
with  us,  was  Polish  Charlie  Moroski.  His  real  name  was  im- 
possible—Czeslan  Mroczkowski. 

Liberty  horses  are  very  difficult  animals  to  train;  in  some 
respects  more  difficult  than  elephants  or  cats.  It  takes  great 
patience,  skill,  and  an  intimate  knowledge  of  horses:  a  horse 
is  not  terribly  bright,  and  at  the  same  time  he  is  big,  so  much 
bigger  than  a  man  that  you  cannot  place  him  as  you  would 
a  dog.  You  cannot  use  fear,  as  with  the  larger  wild  animals, 
for  if  you  punish  a  horse  too  much  you'll  break  his  spirit  and 
thereby  ruin  a  good  performer.  So  you  have  to  do  it  just  right. 

First  you  must  make  him  ring-wise.  Then  you  train  him 
singly  to  do  simple  tricks.  After  that  you  make  your  horses 
perform  two  at  a  time,  then  three,  four,  and  five  together, 
building  it  up  to  as  many  as  sixteen,  all  performing  in  unison. 
The  patience  required  for  that  sort  of  training  is  unbelievable. 
I  love  horses  myself  and  I  have  often  watched  Heyer,  and 
Roberto,  and  Moroski  working  up  an  act.  It  is  a  wonder  to  me 
that  they  did  not  lose  their  minds  long  before  the  horses 
acquired  a  similitude  of  sense. 

Then  there  were  the  clowns.  I  have  always  loved  clowns. 
There  is  nothing  unique  about  that;  I  think  almost  everybody 
does.  I  suppose  the  most  famous  one  we  ever  had  was  sad- 
faced  Emmett  Kelly,  the  incarnation  of  the  tramp  in  all  of 
us,  who  succeeded  in  combining  the  techniques  of  the  great 
European  clowns  with  the  American  walk-around  style.  This 
was  very  difficult  to  do.  The  classic  clowns  of  Europe,  wear- 
ing their  traditional  costumes,  are  often  fine  musicians  and 
jugglers  as  well.  The  great  ones,  as  typified  by  the  Frataluii 


350  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

Brothers  and  the  late  Crock,  also  use  a  great  deal  of  dialogue 
and  work  to  the  whole  audience  for  as  much  as  fifteen  minutes 
or  even  half  an  hour. 

But  such  as  these  have  seldom  succeeded  in  America.  On 
several  occasions  John  has  imported  fine  European  clowns. 
They  were  wonderful  performers,  but  they  got  lost  in  the  vast 
spaces  of  our  three-ring  arenas  and  their  talents  were  wasted 
on  our  audiences,  who  were  not  used  to  having  their  attention 
commanded  for  so  long  a  time.  They  prefer  the  walk-around 
type  of  clowning  with  laughs  based  on  quick  sight  gags  and 
comic  properties  such  as  three-foot  cigars,  water-spouting 
hats,  and  wired-on  pursuing  skunks. 

That  Kelly  was  able  to  estabHsh  something  of  the  European 
clown's  rapport  with  his  audience  was  a  tribute  to  his  great- 
ness. Otto  Greibling,  who  works  for  us  now,  is  one  of  the  great 
European  clowns  who  succeeded  in  adapting  liimself  to 
American  techniques. 

Every  year  we  used  to  have  some  amateur  clowns  with  the 
show.  Since  the  run-of-the-mill,  walk-around  type  of  clown- 
ing requires  no  great  experience,  you  can  dress  a  person  up  in 
an  absurd  costume  and  other  clowns  can  show  him  how  to 
put  on  a  white  face.  We  have  had  many  friends  throughout 
the  years  who  lead  perfectly  normal  lives  most  of  the  time, 
but  have  an  overpowering  urge  to  join  the  circus.  These 
people  take  their  vacations  by  working  for  us  as  clowns.  To 
live  the  ordinary  life  of  a  clown  is  part  of  their  enjoyment. 

I  remember  a  man  called  Harper  Joy,  a  vice-president  of 
one  of  the  big  banks  in  Spokane,  who  joined  the  circus  every 
fall  for  the  ten  days  or  two  weeks  of  his  vacation.  Joe  Ward, 
a  rich  building  contractor  from  Texas  spent  his  vacations 
clowning  for  many  years. 

The  best  and  most  serious  of  our  temporary  clowns  was 
Bill  Ballantine.  I  met  him  in  Clown  Alley  and  learned  that  he 
was  an  artist  who  had  decided  that  he  loved  the  circus.  He 


GEARED  FOR  GLORY  AND  FOR  GOLD  351 

joined  it  for  his  own  amusement  and  in  the  expectation  of 
getting  background  material  for  his  art.  He  was  with  us  for 
several  seasons,  at  the  same  time  doing  his  art  work  success- 
fully on  the  side.  In  later  years  he  also  worked  at  his  regular 
profession  for  the  cii^cus.  He  did  some  very  good  display  work 
for  the  menagerie  and  redesigned  the  side  shows  for  us  one 
year. 

Bill  Ballantine  went  even  further  in  his  affair  with  the 
circus.  He  fell  in  love  with  one  of  our  circus  girls.  He  married 
her  and  so  far  they  have  produced  five  httle  circus  faus.  I 
have  hardly  spoken  of  one  great  traditional  adjunct  of 
the  circus— the  side  shows.  They  appeal  to  the  barbaric  side 
of  human  nature,  which  enjoys  looking  at  the  distortions  of 
the  human  form.  A  few  of  those  we  had  with  the  show  at  one 
time  or  another  included: 

Fredia  Bushnick,  The  Armless  Wonder 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Fischer,  Giants 

Miss  Musette,  The  Legless  Marvel 

Lorina,  Sword  Swallower 

Major  Mite  and  Family  of  Midgets 

Ima  Sight,  Fat  Girl 

Cliko,  Wild  Man  from  Borneo 

Iko  and  Eko,  Ambassadors  from  Mars 

When  you  knew  them  as  well  as  I  did,  these  freaks,  or 
"strange  people,"  as  Bamum  billed  them  in  England  in 
deference  to  British  susceptibilities,  were  neither  freakish  nor 
strange,  but  nice  ordinary  people  with  extraordinary  phy- 
siques. Many  of  them  became  close  friends  of  mine.  I  have 
spoken  of  my  long  friendship  with  Cliko.  Iko  and  Eko  were 
weird-looking  albino  Negroes  from  Richmond,  Virginia.  Their 
skins  were  a  glistening  white,  much  whiter  than  white  folks, 
and  their  hair  looked  like  lamb's  wool. 

I  always  felt  sorry  for  the  giants,  who  were  apt  to  be  un- 
happy and  unhealthy— they  seldom  lived  very  long.  Robert 


352  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

Wadlow  was  the  tallest  man  on  record— nearly  nine  feet— but 
the  poor  fellow  could  hardly  walk.  My  fayorite  giant  was  Jack 
Earl,  who  stood'  eight  feet  tliree  in  his  cowboy  boots.  Jack, 
whose  real  name  was  Jacob  Erlich,  was  a  nice  Jewish  boy 
from  El  Paso,  Texas.  He  happened  to  walk  onto  the  lot  there 
one  day  and  Clyde  Ingalls  said,  "Come  oyer  here,  boy.  I  want 
to  talk  to  you." 

"Yes,  suh,"  said  Jack. 

"Now  stand  up  against  that  side  wall." 

Clyde  got  a  tape  measure  and  checked  what  he  thought 
he  saw.  Then  he  said,  "Boy,  how'd  you  like  to  be  a  giant?" 

"I  reckon  I  am  one  already." 

"Yes,  but  how  would  you  like  to  work  at  being  one  for  us? 
There's  good  money  in  it." 

That  is  how  we  got  our  second-tallest  giant.  Jack  worked 
for  us  for  many  years.  He  was  quite  a  clever  sculptor  and 
used  to  take  lessons  at  the  art  school  Uncle  John  had  founded 
in  Sarasota.  Like  so  many  of  his  kind,  he  died  in  his  early 
forties. 

Midgets,  or  the  "little  people,"  as  they  prefer  to  be  called, 
are  usually  healthy  and  gay.  They  must  not  be  confused  witli 
dwarfs,  who  are  misshapen  in  some  way.  The  little  people  are 
perfectly  formed,  often  highly  intelligent  human  beings  who 
just  stopped  growing.  The  smallest  one  we  eyer  had  was 
Major  Mite,  who  we  claimed  measured  only  thirty-one  inches 
in  height— though  tliat  may  haye  been  slirinking  things  a  bit. 
Unlike  most  of  his  colleagues,  Major  Mite  had  a  wretched 
disposition.  Great  big  men  were  frightened  by  his  towering 
temper. 

Quite  different  was  my  close  friend  Harry  Earle.  Most 
midgets  have  perfectly  normal  brothers  and  sisters,  but  the 
Earles,  who  were  known  professionally  as  the  Doll  Family, 
were  an  exception.  They  were  four  delightful  little  people- 
though  they  had  several  regular-sized  brotliers  and  sisters. 


"geabed  for  glory  and  for  gold  353 

In  addition  to  Harry,  there  was  Gracie  and  Tiny  ( the  smallest ) 
and  Daisy,  who  was  very  pretty.  Daisy  grew  quite  a  bit  in 
her  twenties,  after  most  people  stop,  so  she  became  quite  a 
big  midget. 

Harry  was  the  most  talented  member  of  the  family.  He  was 
an  excellent  actor  and  in  wintertime  made  a  number  of 
pictures  in  Hollywood,  including  a  part  with  Lon  Chaney  in 
The  Hunchback  of  Notre  Dame. 

I  think  the  greatest  side-show  attraction  we  ever  had  was 
back  in  the  days  when  Uncle  John  was  running  the  show  and 
I  was  serving  my  apprenticeship.  It  was  the  Ubangis,  or  Big 
Lips.  Uncle  John  rented  these  ladies,  who  wore  wooden  disks 
as  big  as  dinner  plates  in  their  lips,  from  their  tribal  chief 
and  brought  them  to  America  in  1931.  They  came  out  of 
the  Congo  to  civilization  with  absolutely  no  preparation.  They 
were  miserably  lonely  and  unhappy  and  did  not  even  get  paid 
—the  chief  took  all.  The  poor  things  were  always  cold.  One 
time  they  built  a  fire  to  keep  themselves  warm  in  their  rail- 
way car  and  set  it  afire.  In  fact,  they  behaved  like  naughty 
children. 

When  they  ate  they  took  the  disks  out  of  their  lips,  so  they 
hung  down  like  great  fleshy  awnings  over  their  mouths.  They 
lifted  the  awning  with  one  hand  and  poked  food  in  with  the 
other. 

But  we  had  some  gay  experiences  with  these  ladies.  When 
anything  annoyed  tliem  they  shed  the  few  clothes  they  wore. 
One  time  in  Boston  they  were  up  on  their  platform  in  the 
menagerie  when  something  made  them  mad.  They  took  off 
all  their  clothes  and  ran  through  the  crowds  stark  naked  with 
some  of  us  dashing  after  them  with  blankets  in  an  endeavor 
to  salvage  Boston's  well-known  propriety. 

The  youngest  and  prettiest  was  Princess  Camala.  Perhaps 
she  was  not  the  prettiest  by  Ubangi  standards,  for  her  lips 


354  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

were  not  as  large  as  those  of  the  others.  She  took  a  liking  to 
me  because  I  talked  a  little  primitive  French  with  her.  I  used 
to  bring  her  insignificant  little  presents  from  the  ten-cent  store 
—glass  beads  and  lengths  of  copper  wire,  which  she  liked  to 
wind  around  her  arm.  My  most  successful  present  was  a 
child's  straw  hat  with  a  rubber  band  to  hold  it  on,  a  toy 
umbrella,  and  dark  glasses  with  wliite  rims.  She  insisted  on 
wearing  the  whole  works  in  the  spec  that  evening  so  that 
everyone  could  see  her  finery. 

Naturally  this  did  not  please  Uncle  John  and  I  caught 
hell.  But  the  Princess  was  so  enchanted  that  she  tried  to  se- 
duce me.  Much  as  I  hated  to  hm-t  her  feelings,  I  had  not  the 
stomach  for  it.  But  we  were  friends. 

If  I  have  neglected  many  of  my  good  friends  among  the 
workers,  it  is  not  for  lack  of  affection  on  my  part  or  lack  of 
picturesque  qualities  on  theirs.  I  could  write  another  whole 
book  about  them— Waxy  Panzer,  our  wonderful  old  harness 
maker,  who  went  blind  and  still  made  the  best  harness  ever; 
Mike  Kerry,  who  painted  the  wagons  and  was  a  specialist  on 
sunburst  wheels;  Captain  Curtis,  our  great  boss  canvasman; 
dozens  and  dozens  more  whom  I  hold  close  in  my  memory. 

The  reason  I  knew  all  our  people  so  well  and  had  such  a 
warm  feeling  for  them  was  that  I  was  their  foster  father.  The 
circus  was  a  paternalistic  institution— it  had  to  be.  For  most  of 
the  performers  and  workers  were,  by  the  necessities  of  their 
way  of  life,  homeless,  rootless  people.  In  joy  or  trouble  they 
had  no  one  to  confide  in  or  turn  to  for  help  except  the  circus 
management.  Keeping  them  happy  was  one  of  my  jobs.  I 
helped  them  with  quantities  of  good  advice,  small  loans  from 
tlie  red  wagon,  and  big  hospital  bills.  Sometimes  I  lectured 
a  perfoiTner's  rambunctious  child;  or  congratulated  one  who 
had  gotten  into  college;  or  arranged  a  quick  marriage  for  a 


GEARED  FOR  GLORY  AND  FOR  GOLD  355 

girl  who  had  gotten  into  trouble.  The  fact  that  they  trusted 
me  and  confided  in  me  made  me  love  them.  It  was,  as  I  said, 
just  one  of  my  many  jobs  with  the  ciicus.  But  it  was  the  most 
important  and  the  most  rewarding. 

Of  all  the  strange  and  wonderful  people  whom  I  knew  in 
the  circus  at  one  time  or  another,  one  of  the  most  extraordinary 
did  not  belong  there  at  all.  He  was  Cecil  B.  De  Mille,  who 
produced  the  film  called  The  Greatest  Show  on  Eaiih. 

For  a  long  time  John  had  been  talking  with  David  Selznick 
about  a  circus  picture,  and  contracts  were  actually  signed 
for  it.  However,  Selznick  had  difficulty  financing  it,  and  in 
1948  he  told  John  that  it  was  only  fair  to  release  him  from 
the  contract  though  he  still  hoped  to  do  it  some  day. 

Word  of  this  got  around  Hollywood,  and  while  we  were 
in  the  Garden  that  spring  De  Mille  approached  us.  Contract 
negotiations  took  a  long  time,  but  they  were  finally  signed. 
De  Mille  joined  the  show  on  the  road  in  the  summer  of  1949. 
He  had  quite  an  entourage  with  him,  including  his  woman 
Friday,  Miss  Gladys  Rosson,  who  was  secretary-treasurer  of 
Cecil  B.  De  Mille  Productions;  Fred  Frank,  a  top  screen 
writer;  and  C.B.'s  freckle-faced,  wide-eyed  granddaughter, 
Cecilia  De  Mille  Calvin,  aged  thirteen.  What  fun  we  had 
showing  her  our  wonderful  world  and  reliving  our  own  youth- 
ful rides  on  the  circus  trainl 

C.B.,  short  and  stocky,  big  nose,  white  hair,  red  face,  always 
dressed  in  a  white  open-collar  shirt,  gray  riding  breeches,  and 
field  boots,  which  were  the  uniform  of  his  profession  back  in 
the  silent  days.  But  that  was  the  only  thing  uniform  about 
him.  He  was  indefatigable  and  unpredictable.  At  every  show, 
every  afternoon  and  every  night,  he  mingled  with  the  cii'cus 
crowds  as  they  poured  in,  listening  and  making  notes.  While 
the  show  was  on  he  was  running  around  the  Big  Top,  followed 
breathlessly  by   Miss   Rosson   and   Fred   Frank,    squinting 


356  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

through  his  finder  to  study  camera  angles,  giving  suggestions 
to  Frank,  dictating  to  Miss  Rosson,  and  scribbUng  notes  for 
his  own  use. 

At  Madison,  Wisconsin,  on  August  12,  his  sixty-eighth 
birtliday,  he  had  himself  hoisted  in  a  bosun's  chair  to  the  very 
peak  of  the  Big  Top,  where  he  remained  for  more  than  an 
hour,  swaying  gently  as  he  peered  down  on  the  aerial  and 
high-wire  acts.  He  was  like  a  kid  seeing  the  circus  for  the  first 
time  in  his  delight. 

And  what  a  companion  he  was  at  our  little  dinners  in  the 
Jomar!  Every  place  we  stopped  reminded  him  of  stories  of 
the  time  at  the  turn  of  tlie  century  when  he  had  trouped  over 
this  same  ground  in  a  Shakespearean  road  company.  When  we 
played  Bemidji,  Minnesota,  he  addressed  the  chamber  of  com- 
merce and  they  made  us  all  honorary  members  of  the  Paul 
Bunyan  Association. 

He  could  stay  with  us  for  only  two  weeks,  but  we  welcomed 
him  back  when  we  got  to  California  and  he  was  just  as  ener- 
getic. His  genius,  in  part  at  least,  really  was  "tlie  capacity  for 
taking  infinite  pains." 

Meanwhile  his  writers  had  been  busy  on  the  screenplay. 
C.B.  wanted  a  thrilling,  Hollywood-type  plot  set  against  the 
bizarre,  exciting  background  of  the  circus  world.  And  that,  of 
course,  is  what  he  got.  We  can  hardly  quarrel  with  his  judg- 
ment as  far  as  the  popularity  of  the  picture  is  concerned. 

After  the  writing  came  the  shooting,  much  of  it  in  Sarasota. 
We  had  a  fine  time  with  it  that  winter  of  1949-50.  Mother, 
who  was  nearing  eighty,  enjoyed  it  as  much  as  any  of  us. 
They  came  to  Sarasota  with  a  tremendous  crew,  including,  of 
course,  the  stars  Betty  Hutton  and  Cornel  Wilde,  who  were 
fliers  in  the  picture.  We  devoted  all  of  our  facihties  to  De 
Mille,  putting  up  the  Big  Top  and  staging  the  show  day  after 
day,  while  the  city  of  Sarasota  co-operated  entliusiastically, 


GEARED  FOR  GLORY  AND  FOR  GOLD  357 

permitting  us  to  put  on  the  great  circus  parade  in  the  grand 
old  manner. 

De  Mille  could  be  very  different  on  the  set  from  the  gre- 
garious, socially  lovable  man  we  knew.  He  stalked  about  fol- 
lowed by  his  special  chair  boy,  who  carried  a  high-cushioned 
stool,  wliich  could  also  be  turned  on  its  side  to  make  a  low, 
comfortable  seat.  C.B.  used  it  for  leaning  or  sitting  and  since, 
like  Queen  Victoria,  he  never  looked  back  when  he  sat,  the 
poor  boy  had  to  be  nimble  and  quick  to  decide  whether  he 
wanted  the  high  stool,  low  stool,  or  leaning  stool.  He  never 
missed.  But  I  shudder  to  think  of  his  fate  had  he  guessed 
wrong  and  allowed  that  Very  Important  Bottom  to  crash  to 
earth. 

I  remember  watching  De  Mille's  technique  in  getting  the 
best  out  of  his  actors.  As  a  director  he  was  as  deliberately 
schizophrenic  as  JekyU  and  Hyde,  changing  in  a  flash  from  a 
soft-spoken  gentleman  to  an  absolute  demon.  I  first  saw  his 
Hyde  with  an  actor  who  was  playing  one  of  the  daring  fliers. 
In  the  first  scene,  where  the  actor  had  to  get  up  on  the  tra- 
peze, he  did  so  with  all  the  agility  of  one  of  Pallenberg's  bears 
and  sat  looking  utterly  miserable  although  tlie  net  was  rigged 
only  a  few  feet  below  him.  De  Mille  yelled  at  him,  "Act!  Act! 
Don't  just  sit  up  there  looking  scared  to  death." 

In  a  resigned  way,  the  actor  said,  "But  Mr.  De  Mille,  I  am 
an  actor,  not  a  circus  performer." 

To  which  De  Mille  shouted  back,  "That's  a  matter  of  opin- 
ion. 

I  am  convinced  that  the  great  director  was  deliberately 
needling  him  as  a  good  horseman  uses  spurs  to  bring  out  his 
stud's  mettle.  He  wanted  to  enrage  the  man  to  the  frenzy  of 
determination  to  show  De  Mille  that  he  was  an  actor,  a  circus 
performer,  and  as  daring  as  any  young  man  who  ever  rode 
a  flying  trapeze.  As  a  result,  the  actor  eventually  turned  in  a 
truly  fine  performance. 


358  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

Betty  Hutton  was  another  matter.  It  was  not  a  question  of 
spurring  her  on,  but  of  holding  her  back,  keeping  her  from 
taking  unnecessary  risks.  Tony  Concello  taught  her  the  ropes, 
literally  speaking.  Betty  insisted  on  learning  really  to  fly.  Tony 
put  a  "mechanic"— a  safety  belt  like  a  child's  harness— on  her 
and  taught  her  some  of  the  simpler  tricks.  Betty  got  so  she 
could  perform  tlie  crossover,  flying  from  the  swinging  bar  to 
the  hands  of  the  catcher,  and  back  to  the  pedestal,  and  did  it 
in  the  picture  with  no  mechanic.  De  Mille  was  consistently 
gentle  with  her  and  she,  too,  turned  in  a  great  performance. 

Of  course,  the  stars  of  the  show  had  doubles  for  the  more 
difiicult  feats.  Fay  Alexander  flew  for  Cornel  Wilde  and  per- 
formed one  really  hair-raising  stunt.  This  was  in  the  scene 
where  the  Great  Sebastian  falls  to  the  ground  performing 
without  a  net.  Concello  set  the  stage  by  having  a  bulldozer 
dig  a  tremendously  deep  pit  in  the  center  ring.  The  net  was 
slung  in  it  and  a  light  surface  covering  was  spread  with  saw- 
dust to  seem  part  of  the  floor.  Fay  performed  his  tremendous 
flying  feats.  Then  came  the  final  fatal  miss  and  he  plunged 
headlong  to  apparently  solid  earth.  Even  tliough  the  net  was 
there,  it  had  to  be  beautifully  timed  and  executed. 

Other  mechanical  tricks  were  used  to  give  the  public  thrills 
without  risking  the  stars'  precious  necks.  In  one  scene  an 
elephant  was  supposed  to  almost  step  on  Gloria  Graliame's 
head,  a  thing  no  elephant  would  knowingly  do.  To  avoid  risk- 
ing a  valuable  property,  De  Mille  had  liis  people  build  a  me- 
chanical replica  of  an  elephant's  foot,  and  in  tlie  close-up  you 
saw  Gloria's  pretty  nose  a  scant  millimeter  from  destruction. 

C.B.  also  demanded  an  exciting  scene  of  a  circus  train 
wreck.  This  was  accomplished  by  tiick  photography  witli 
model  trains.  But  to  add  verisimilitude  to  the  scene  of  car- 
nage, he  bought  some  old  coaches  from  the  Southern  Pacific 
Railroad  and  painted  them  like  ciicus  cars.  Then  a  huge  crane 


GEARED  FOR  GLORY  AND  FOR  GOLD  359 

lifted  them  high  in  the  air  and  dropped  them  on  the  tracks 
with  a  most  gratifying  crash. 

The  last  location  shooting  was  done  under  the  real  Big  Top 
while  the  circus  was  making  its  scheduled  dates  in  Philadel- 
phia and  Washington  in  1950.  The  big  crew  of  technicians 
and  the  uncertainties  of  filming  an  actual  performance  made 
it  a  very  expensive  process.  But  there  is  no  substitute  for 
reality.  The  live  audiences,  tire  sense  of  excitement,  and  the 
solidity  of  the  background  gave  the  picture  the  final  touch 
of  authenticity. 

The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth  was  a  tremendously  successful 
picture.  It  grossed  over  $20,000,000,  and  the  end  is  not  yet  in 
sight.  For  a  while  this  figure  made  it  the  second-greatest 
money-making  picture  of  all  time,  surpassed  only  by  Gone 
with  the  Wind.  Then  The  Robe  and  Around  the  World  passed 
it,  but  it  is  still  in  fourth  place.  The  circus  received  over 
$1,300,000  in  royalties.  The  money  came  just  when  we  needed 
it  most.  You  might  almost  say  tliat  The  Greatest  Show  on 
Earth  saved  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth. 


CHAPTER   XXIX 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL 
OF  THE  BIG  TOP 


The  end  was  written  plain  in  our  ledgers  for  years  before  it 
came.  But  we  were  deliberately  blind.  Nineteen  forty-eight 
was  the  last  of  the  really  good  times.  Then  the  tide  began  to 
ebb;  slowly  at  first,  then  flowing  out  fast.  The  highest-attend- 
ance year  had  been  1942,  though  our  gross  in  1948  was  higher 


THE  DECLINE  AND   FAIX  OF  THE  BIG  TOP  361 

due  to  increased  prices  for  admission.  But  inflation  was  flood- 
ing in  and  we  were  gradually  drowning  in  a  sea  of  increased 
costs. 

In  the  Garden  we  could  take  in  $80,000  in  two  sellout  per- 
formances; and  on  the  road  we  could  take  in  $50,000  in  the 
later  days,  when  our  prices  had  gone  up.  But  we  could  have 
$4000  days,  too,  when  it  rained  or  you  had  a  bad  lot  someplace 
which  people  could  not  get  to  conveniently.  And  big  day  or 
small,  our  expenses  were  the  same.  They  rose  to  over  $25,000 
a  day. 

The  cost  of  every  phase  of  our  operation  was  going  up. 
Naturally  labor  costs  increased  with  social  security  and  with- 
holding taxes  to  pay.  But  this  was  not  all.  The  cost  of  food  for 
our  4000  meals  a  day— 2000  pounds  of  meat,  1500  loaves  of 
bread,  2800  eggs,  5000  pancakes,  1000  quarts  of  milk— had 
doubled.  The  price  we  paid  the  railroads  for  hauling  our  four 
long  trains  had  tripled,  from  about  $180,000  in  1941  to 
$580,000  in  1955. 

But  it  was  not  only  a  question  of  money.  We  could  no 
longer  get  the  right  kind  of  men  to  head  our  departments.  The 
secret  of  the  smooth  functioning  of  the  intricate  circus  opera- 
tion was  that  it  was  completely  departmentalized— trains  and 
loading,  canvas,  cookhouse,  tractors,  seats,  menagerie,  side 
shows,  red  wagon,  and  so  forth.  The  boss  of  each  department 
was  absolute  in  his  sphere;  all  he  had  to  think  about  was  get- 
ting his  section  on  the  lot  and  running  on  time. 

Our  old-time  bosses  could  be  trusted  to  do  it,  because  they 
were  as  dedicated  to  their  jobs  as  we  were.  Even  when  they 
were  drunk  they  managed  to  do  it.  As  Braden  said,  tliey  put 
the  welfare  of  the  circus  above  their  own. 

One  of  my  boyhood  heroes  was  Happy  Jack  Snellen,  who 
had  been  boss  canvasman  with  Barnum  &  Bailey  way  back  in 
the  nineties,  and  then  for  us.  He  was  promoted  to  lot  superin- 
tendent witli  the  job  of  getting  the  circus  on  difficult  lots. 


362.  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

Sometimes  he  had  to  do  fantastic  pieces  of  engineering,  such 
as  building  a  bridge  over  busy  streets  because  the  menagerie 
was  on  one  side  and  the  Big  Top  on  the  other.  Happy  had  no 
formal  education— he  had  been  with  the  circus  since  he  was 
a  boy— but  he  was  certainly  a  genius.  The  only  thing  he 
needed  to  figure  out  complicated  problems  of  engineering 
were  some  numbers,  secret  formulae,  that  he  kept  written  in 
the  sweatband  of  his  hat— he  had  the  same  hat  for  years.  It 
was  his  equivalent  of  the  modern  slide  rule. 

Happy  had  some  delightful  whimsicalities.  I  can  see  him 
now,  sitting  at  the  staff  table  in  the  cookhouse  putting  away 
a  platter  of  boiled  cabbage.  He  always  said  the  same  thing, 
"I  love  cabbage— but  it  repeats." 

He  died  of  cancer  of  the  throat,  and  we  certainly  missed 
him. 

Jimmy  Whalen— the  Whale— succeeded  Snellen  as  boss 
canvasman.  He  was  short  and  stocky  with  a  white  wahus  mus- 
tache, and  he  had  a  voice  you  could  hear  from  one  end  of 
the  Big  Top  to  the  other.  How  he  drove  those  gangs  with  iti 
Jimmy  was  completely  responsible  and  will  go  down  in  circus 
history  as  one  of  the  great  boss  canvasmen  of  all  time.  Captain 
Curtis,  who  succeeded  him,  was  also  a  fine  boss. 

These,  and  men  like  them,  were  the  irreplaceable  char- 
acters around  the  circus.  It  is  often  said  that  no  one  is 
indispensable  for  anything  in  this  world,  but  I  am  afraid  those 
old-time  bosses  were  indispensable  to  the  operation  of  the 
railroad  show.  For  as  they  died  off  in  the  later  years  of  the 
road  operation,  there  were  no  young  men  coming  along  to 
take  their  places. 

We  had  personal  losses  in  our  family,  too,  in  that  time  I 
think  of  as  the  twilight  years.  Robert  was  the  first  to  go,  and 
though  we  had  had  our  differences,  Bob  had  many  lovable 
qualities.  So  we  sincerely  missed  him  and  sorrowed  at  his  pass- 
ing. 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  BIG  TOP         363 

In  November  of  1950  our  mother  suffered  a  massive  stroke 
from  which  she  never  recovered.  Until  that  moment  she  had 
been  as  keen  and  gay  as  ever,  ready  to  play  bridge  all  day 
and  poker  all  night.  The  circus  was  her  first  love,  and  there 
was  nothing  she  enjoyed  more  than  the  exciting  conferences 
at  Bird  Key  as  Anderson  and  White  and  Max  Weldy  and 
John  and  I  planned  the  new  show,  with  the  whole  floor  of  the 
big  hall  covered  with  designs  for  production  numbers  and 
costumes. 

Aunt  Edith  was  the  last  of  the  older  generation  to  go. 
Though  I  have  spoken  harshly  of  my  aunt  Edith  at  times,  it 
was  only  for  the  factual  aspects  of  tliis  record.  In  my  heart  I 
loved  her  dearly.  She  had  a  ti^emendous  strength  of  character. 
What  she  did  not  choose  to  believe  she  would  not,  in  the  face 
of  whatever  proof.  An  example:  When  Mother  had  her  stroke, 
my  sister  Salome  called  on  Aunt  Edith  in  her  pink  marl^le 
palace.  In  the  course  of  their  talk  Sally  asked  her  about  cer- 
tain of  our  mother's  symptoms.  Aunt  Edith,  whose  husband 
had  had  two  strokes  and  died  of  them  and  whose  son  had 
had  two  strokes  and  died  of  tliem,  replied,  "I  would  not  know 
about  that.  You  see,  we  never  had  anytliing  like  tliat  in  our 
branch  of  the  family." 

An  indomitable  lady  indeedl 

In  those  years  of  diminishing  returns,  the  only  thing  that 
did  not  diminish  was  the  show  itself.  We  kept  it  going  in 
its  full  glory,  cost  what  it  might;  for  we  knew  that  any  let- 
down of  quality,  or  even  quantity,  would  be  the  end. 

In  every  other  way  we  tried  to  combat  our  failing  finances. 
In  1949  John  gambled  on  taking  a  one-ring  European-style 
version  of  the  circus  to  Havana.  It  was  a  considerable  success, 
which  we  repeated  for  several  years.  This  helped  to  defray 
the  cost  of  maintaining  Winter  Quarters  when  little  money 
was  coming  in. 


364  JOHN   RINGLING  NORTH 

To  save  expense  Max  Weldy  set  up  his  own  costume  factory 
in  Sarasota.  Much  of  the  work  was  done  in  people's  own 
homes.  Sewing  on  sequins  for  the  circus  became  a  very  fash- 
ionable occupation,  which  many  of  the  grandes  dames  of 
Sarasota  practiced  to  earn  pin  money  or  gifts  for  their  favorite 
charities.  We  also  began  to  build  our  own  floats  for  the  spec. 
In  this  way  we  saved  several  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year. 

We  also  engaged  engineers  to  survey  the  show  for  complete 
mechanization.  They  came  up  with  a  plan  which  would  have 
required  a  capital  investment  of  $2,000,000.  Where  could  we 
get  that  kind  of  money?  Though  the  last  of  the  Hartford-fire 
claims  had  been  paid  off,  that  $4,000,000  plus  had  drained 
our  treasury.  We  had  no  reserves.  In  any  event,  the  engineers' 
plan  would  have  saved  $500,000  a  year,  and  by  1955  we 
were  losing  $1,000,000.  We  grossed  $5,000,000  and  it  cost 
$6,000,000  to  run  the  show.  In  the  great  days  our  uncles  had 
made  a  net  profit  of  $1,000,000  on  a  gross  of  about  $2,700,000. 

The  losses  were  made  up  in  part  by  the  royalties  from  De 
Mille's  pictm^e.  We  plowed  $1,300,000  of  them  back  into  the 
show. 

At  the  close  of  the  1953  season  Arthur  Concello  and  John 
came  to  what  fortunately  proved  to  be  only  a  temporary  part- 
ing of  their  ways.  On  John's  return  from  his  annual  European 
talent  hunt  Artie  faced  him  with  at  least  a  quasi  ultimatum- 
he  insisted  on  drastically  cutting  the  1954  presentation  of  the 
circus  to  a  fifty-car  operation.  John  agreed  with  him  that  some 
reduction  in  overhead  was  timely  and  in  order,  but  he  felt 
that  to  reduce  the  size  and  splendor  of  The  Greatest  Show  on 
Earth  to  such  an  extent  would  not  be  commensurate  with  its 
title;  nor  would  it  be  keeping  faith  with  oiu"  public.  He  talked 
with  Arthur  as  he  had  previously  about  the  day  when  there 
would  be  enough  adequate  buildings  in  the  country  for  con- 
tinuous operations  of  the  Big  Show,  but  until  such  a  time  he 
was  determined  to  carry  on  with  our  time-honored  annual 


TEIE   DECLINE   AND   FALL   OF   THE   BIG   TOP  365 

boast  of  "bigger  and  better  than  ever."  They  didn't  agree  and 
Artie  left. 

We  put  Concello's  assistant,  Frank  McClosky,  in  as  general 
manager.  He  was  an  able  man  for  the  physical  movement  of 
the  show,  getting  it  up  and  taking  it  down.  But  he  lacked 
Concello's  spark  and  his  firm  discipline.  Things  ran  raggedly 
in  1954.  We  lost  money,  of  course. 

In  the  winter  of  1955-56  I  went  before  the  eastern  rail- 
roads and  told  them  our  sad  tale  of  diminishing  returns  and 
increasing  expenses.  They  listened  very  patiently  to  me;  they 
were  certainly  sympathetic,  because  they  were  more  or  less  in 
the  same  fix  tliemselves.  After  several  weeks  of  discussions 
they  agreed  to  a  reduction  of  almost  25  per  cent  in  our  rates, 
but  they  made  it  clear  to  me  that  they  were  doing  it  not  on  a 
basis  of  good  business,  but  from  their  emotional  involvement 
with  the  circus,  with  whom  they  had  done  business  for  so 
many  years.  The  southern  raihoads  followed  suit. 

In  return  they  demanded  and  got  some  things  they  wanted, 
too.  One  of  them  was  a  promise  from  the  circus  that  widiin 
two  years  we  would  move  the  show  in  two  sections  instead  of 
three.  In  deference  to  the  railroads'  problems  we  had  aheady 
cut  the  trains  from  four  to  three,  making  each  one  heavier. 
That  did  not  give  us  the  time  needed  for  tlie  staggered  opera- 
tion of  setting  up  the  show.  I  did  not  see  how  it  was  possible 
to  handle  the  peculiar  logistics  of  our  movements  in  two  sec- 
tions—not and  keep  the  circus  as  big  as  it  had  always  been. 
And  if  you  started  reducing  it  from  what  the  people  ex- 
pected, you  would  be  cheating  them,  because  it  would  no 
longer  be  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth. 

The  western  railroads  refused  even  to  give  us  a  personal 
audience.  Because  of  their  own  problems  of  increased  com- 
petition and  costs,  the  railroads  were  unable  to  move  us  right. 
All  our  efficiencv  and  streamlining  enabled  us  to  get  the  circus 
off  the  lot,  down  to  tlie  yards,  and  loaded  onto  the  trains 


366  JOHN   BINGLING   NORTH 

much  earlier  than  in  the  old  days.  But  sometimes  it  would  sit 
in  the  yards  for  hours  and  hours,  sometimes  all  night  long, 
ready  and  waiting  to  be  moved;  and  we  would  get  to  the  next 
town  late.  The  circus  could  not  meet  its  overhead  on  one  per- 
formance a  day,  so  we  would  give  tlie  matinee  anyhow.  But 
more  and  more  often  in  the  last  two  years,  instead  of  starting 
at  two-fifteen,  the  matinee  would  begin  at  four-thnty.  Tliis 
meant  inconvenience  and  exliaustion  for  tlie  performers  with 
no  time  to  rest  or  eat  between  shows;  and  annoyance  to  our 
public. 

They  had  been  faitliful  to  us  for  a  long  time.  The  circus  had 
survived  wars  and  depressions  because  people  needed  enter- 
tainment even  m  those  trying  times,  especially  in  trying  times. 
It  had  survived  the  movies  and  the  talkies  and  the  radio.  But 
television— which  hit  all  the  amusement  industries,  and  all 
professional  sports  except  horse  racing— had  an  effect  on  us, 
too. 

In  spite  of  everything,  we  started  the  season  of  1955  with  a 
bang.  On  the  opening  night  in  tlie  Garden,  Marilyn  Monroe 
led  off  in  tlie  spec  riding  a  pink  elephant.  The  publicity  was 
tremendous  and  we  played  in  New  York  to  a  turnaway  busi- 
ness. That  pulled  us  through  the  season. 

My  friend  Michael  Burke  joined  us  as  general  manager  in 
1955.  He  was  a  thin,  dark,  vibrant  blade  of  an  Irishman  who 
had  been  my  buddy  in  the  cloak-and-dagger  days  witli  the 
OSS.  He  was  a  wonderful  man  to  have  beside  you  in  a  tight 
spot,  and  a  good  pubhc  relations  man;  but  I  am  afraid  he  was 
not  circus-wise  enough  for  the  job. 

So  we  came  to  1956,  and  our  moment  of  truth. 

We  had  as  fine  a  show  as  ever  that  vear.  Unus  was  with  us, 
and  that  magnificent  horseman  Captain  Alexander  Konyot 
had  returned;  the  Nocks  Trio  from  Switzerland  did  terrific 
acrobatics  and  chilUng  crossovers  on  sixty-foot-long  masts 


THE  DECLINE   AND    FALL   OF  THE  BIG   TOP  367 

that  swayed  like  palm  trees  in  a  hurricane.  John  brought  in 
fourteen  new  acts  from  Europe,  and  we  had  many  old  favor- 
ites, the  Loyal-Repenski  equestrians,  the  Flying  Palacios,  and 
Pinito  del  Oro  reading  a  newspaper  while  standing  on  her 
head  on  a  free-flying  trapeze  with  no  net  imder  her.  We  also 
had  two  hundred  tons  of  "Ponderous,  Performing  Pachy- 
derms." 

In  Madison  Square  Garden  we  made  a  substantial  profit 
after  all  expenses.  By  July  15,  midway  in  the  season,  we  had 
lost  it  all  and  close  to  a  miUion  dollars  besides. 

On  that  day,  while  I  was  in  Europe,  I  received  a  cable  from 
John  telling  me  he  had  decided  to  close  the  show.  Though 
long  expected,  it  was  a  grievous  piece  of  news.  I  thought  and 
thought,  as  I  often  had  before,  about  what  had  gone  wrong 
and  if  it  was  we  who  had  failed.  There  were  the  obvious 
things,  such  as  the  cost  of  labor  and  its  inefficiency,  the  cost  of 
transportation  and  everything  else.  Even  so,  we  could  have 
kept  going  a  while  longer  if  we  could  have  filled  the  Big  Top 
every  day. 

The  cii'cus,  as  a  railroad  show,  was  a  vestige  of  the  past 
which  we  had  been  fighting  to  keep  ahve.  Gone  were  the  days 
when  the  Shuberts  owned  a  hundred  theaters  all  around 
America  and  filled  them  every  night;  when  the  Keith- 
Orpheum  Circuit  operated  in  half  a  thousand  cities.  You 
could  see  all  those  things  on  television  now. 

Certain  as  I  was  that  the  American  people  still  loved  the 
circus,  they  never  endowed  it  like  that  other  grand  relic  of 
the  past,  the  Metropolitan  Opera.  Nor  would  they  any  longer 
fill  our  tents.  Yet  when  we  played  in  coliseums,  the  Garden, 
Boston,  St.  Louis,  and  San  Francisco's  Cow  Palace,  we  turned 
them  away.  Yes,  they  still  loved  the  circus. 

Then  I  realized  the  final  basic  reason  why  the  road  show 
had  to  go;  why  the  people  no  longer  came  to  see  it.  They 
simply  could  not  get  there.  It  took  a  fifteen-acre  lot  to  hold 


368  JOHN   RINGLING  NORTH 

the  forty-one  tents  in  which  the  circus  lived  and  showed.  And 
you  needed  another  big  lot  to  park  three  thousand  cars.  With 
suburbs  ringing  every  city  in  America  from  three  to  thirty 
miles  in  depth,  where  on  earth  could  you  still  find  a  fifteen- 
acre  lot  that  could  be  reached  by  public  transportation  or 
even  conveniently  by  automobile?  The  answer  was:  virtually 
nowhere.  Thus  we  had  been  gradually  pushed  farther  and 
farther  from  the  urban  centers  until  we  were  practically  pitch- 
ing our  tents  in  the  sticks.  It  was  not  the  American  people 
who  were  forsaking  us.  We  had  forsaken  them.  Tlie  tliought 
gave  me  passing  comfort. 

The  truth  of  this  proposition  had  been  dramatically  dem- 
onstrated to  me  one  time  when  our  manager  went  to  Pitts- 
burgh the  day  the  show  closed.  He  told  a  taxi  driver  to  take 
him  to  the  circus.  He  did  not  know  where  it  was.  It  took  him 
nearly  an  hour  to  find  it.  If  our  own  manager  could  not  find 
tlie  circus,  how  could  the  pubHc? 

In  Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania,  on  the  night  of  July  16,  1956, 
the  show  went  on  as  scheduled  at  8: 15  p.m.  In  their  radiantly 
beautiful  costumes  the  whole  company,  about  seven  hmidred 
strong  with  fifty  elephants  and  all  our  beautiful  horses, 
paraded  around  the  arena  in  the  opening  spec  while  the  band 
gave  out  furiously  with  John's  gay,  brassy  tunes.  Then  came 
the  clowns  and  children's  high-pitched  screams  of  laughter 
and  their  fathers'  deep  guffaws.  Everybody  gave  a  little  extra 
that  night— fliers  flying  more  daringly  than  ever  the  daring 
young  man;  equestrians  performing  with  tlie  exquisite  grace 
of  smiling  desperation;  tlie  laughing  girls  in  tlie  aerial  ballet; 
elephants  doing  their  stuS^,  old  Modoc  in  her  ponderous 
waltz;  jugglers  insanely  versatile;  Pinito  del  Ora  serenely 
standing  on  her  head  flying  in  great  arcs  over  the  audience; 
and  the  crashing,  tliumping  magnificent  brassy  band  min- 
gling with  the  yells  of  defight  and  awe  and  fear  of  ten  thou- 


THE  DECLINE   AND   FALL   OF   THE  BIG  TOP  369 

sand  children  of  all  ages.  It  was  almost  just  as  it  had  always 
been  since  ever  so  long  ago.  Al  and  Alf  T.,  Otto  and  Charles 
and  John  would  have  recognized  it  and  felt  at  home. 

All  just  as  it  had  always  been,  except  at  the  end,  the  grand 
finale  with  almost  the  entire  company  in  the  arena.  The  band 
played  "Auld  Lang  Syne."  Daring  young  aerialists  and  the 
funny  old  clowns  began  to  cry.  Pretty  girls  streaked  their 
mascara.  The  Loyolas  buried  their  faces  in  theii'  horses'  necks 
and  roustabouts  and  razorbacks  crowded  around  the  exits  and 
barricades  were  embarrassedly  wiping  at  their  faces. 

But  John,  standing  alone  in  his  box,  was  thinking  not  of  the 
past  but  of  the  future.  He  had  done  all  he  could,  and  more. 
He  had  made  his  decision  and  bravely  put  it  behind  liim. 
While  emotions  ran  rampant  in  the  arena  his  mind  was  al- 
ready busy  planning  the  circus  of  tomorrow. 

At  11: 15  P.M.,  July  16,  1956,  we  struck  the  Big  Top  for  the 
last  time. 


CHAPTER   XXX 


THE  NEW  AND  FUTURE  CIRCUS 


John  brought  the  show  back  to  Winter  Quarters  to  be  dis- 
banded. Despite  his  courage  in  making  the  decision  to  aban- 
don the  Big  Top  and  his  confident  announcement  that  "the 
circus  will  be  in  Madison  Square  Garden  next  year,"  he  was 
badly  shattered. 


THE    NEW  AND  FUTURE   CIRCUS  37I 

The  last  night  of  the  Big  Top  his  feeling  had  been  almost 
one  of  relief  that  the  long,  hopeless  fight  was  done.  But  now 
that  the  excitement  was  over,  he  was  left  with  a  great  empti- 
ness. The  mainspring  of  his  life  seemed  broken.  For  the  next 
few  weeks,  while  he  listlessly  attended  to  the  melancholy  de- 
tails of  the  great  dispersion  of  performers  and  workers,  he  was 
almost  in  a  state  of  shock.  He  retracted  himself  into  his  shell, 
the  Jomar,  and  saw  hardly  anyone. 

Gradually  his  enormous  vitality  surged  up.  He  began  to 
make  tentative  plans,  and  as  he  did  so  his  natural  optimism 
and  imagination  took  fire. 

The  first  clear  sign  of  his  recovery  appeared  one  night  when 
he  entered  the  Plaza  Restaurant— the  21  Club  of  Sarasota. 
Arthur  Concello,  who  was  sitting  at  a  table,  said  to  him, 
"I'm  sorry  the  circus  had  to  be  closed,  John." 

"Sit  with  me,  Artie,"  John  repHed.  "Let's  talk  about  it." 

When  they  were  seated  at  a  corner  table  John  said,  "You 
were  right,  Artie.  We  couldn't  swing  it.  We'll  have  to  do  a 
modern  setup.  Play  the  cohseums.  We  can  keep  the  old  girl 
ahve  if  we  do  it.  I  want  you  with  me,  Artie." 

Concello  thought  it  over.  He  was  amusing  himself  by  dab- 
bling in  real  estate  in  Sarasota  with  no  financial  worries.  Why 
take  up  the  exhausting  grind  again?  "I  don't  know,  John  .  .  ." 
he  said. 

Enthusiasm  was  crackling  out  of  John  as  though  he'd  never 
known  defeat.  "It's  a  challenge,"  he  said.  "If  it's  a  challenge, 
it  will  be  fun.  Let's  do  iti" 

Concello  was  still  dubious.  They  talked  until  2  p.m.  the 
following  afternoon,  with  John  doing  most  of  the  talking,  out- 
lining ideas,  making  glittering,  optimistic  plans.  He  saw 
Arthur  beginning  to  catch  fire  and  shpped  liim  the  cHncher.  "I 
want  to  do  it  with  you.  Art,"  he  said.  "If  you  won't  come  along 
I'U  seU  out." 


3/2  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

Perhaps  he  really  would  have,  though  I  doubt  it.  But  he 
convinced  Concello.  "All  right,"  Arthur  said,  "111  go  along. 
But  what  about  the  capital  well  need?" 

"I'll  arrange  the  financing,"  John  said  confidently. 

They  were  both  crazy  by  any  standards  but  their  own  up- 
side-down, sentimental  logic.  As  I  have  said,  Concello  was 
very  comfortably  fixed— whether  he  was  happy  doing  nothing 
in  particular  is  another  matter.  John  was  a  comparatively  rich 
man.  All  the  assets  he  had  bought  from  Uncle  John's  estate 
were  beginning  really  to  pay  ofi^.  The  oil  wells  were  spouting 
again;  and  the  fantastic  rise  in  Florida  real  estate  had  made 
the  islands  in  the  bay  worth  millions.  He  had  nothing  to  gain 
financially,  and  a  great  deal  to  lose,  by  keeping  the  circus 
going. 

For  the  past  two  years  the  credit  of  the  circus  had  been 
zero.  Nobody  would  lend  the  corporation  a  dime.  But  they 
would  still  lend  money  to  John  Ringling  North  on  his  personal 
notes.  He  had  signed  them  in  the  amount  of  several  hundred 
thousand  dollars  to  keep  the  show  from  going  under.  In  addi- 
tion, the  Forty-niners,  as  the  minority  stockholders  were 
called,  because  they  owned  49  per  cent  of  the  stock,  were 
getting  restless  and  threatening  a  mismanagement  suit.  In  the 
face  of  all  that,  he  went  out  and  borrowed  $286,000  more  to 
put  the  new  show  together.  Later  he  put  up  $400,000  more  of 
his  own  money.  Like  Uncle  Jolm,  he  was  a  splendid  gambler. 

Meanwhile  ConceUo  was  planning  tlie  physical  side  of  the 
show  and  reorganizing  it  to  fit  the  new  conditions,  working 
like  a  small  demon.  He  designed  an  entirely  new  type  of  aerial 
rigging,  which  did  not  depend  on  tent  masts  or  girders  to 
hold  it  up.  It  was  to  be  used  in  ball  parks  and  outdoor  stadia 
and  could  be  assembled  and  interlocked  on  the  ground  and 
hoisted  aloft  by  a  single-cable  action.  Portions  of  it  were  also 


THE    NEW   AND   FUTUKE   CIRCUS  373 

used  in  coliseums,  where  it  could  be  raised  to  the  ceiling  in 
one  operation,  saving  many  man-hours. 

When  it  was  first  set  up  at  Winter  Quarters,  Fay  Alexander, 
a  fine  young  flier,  started  up  the  ladder  to  test  the  safety  net. 
"No,  you  don't,"  said  Artie. 

He  ran  up  tlie  ropes  like  a  monkey  in  a  business  suit,  swung 
high  and  far  on  the  flying  bar,  and  sailed  oflF  it  into  tlie  net. 
He  bounced  beautifully  with  nickels,  dimes,  quarters,  ciga- 
rette lighter,  and  oddities  showering  out  of  his  pockets.  The 
net  was  safe. 

We  were  all  busy  planning  the  logistics  of  the  new  opera- 
tion. Here  is  the  way  it  worked.  We  figured  we  were  in  five 
different  businesses:  the  railroad  business,  moving  67,000  tons 
of  equipment,  animals,  and  people  20,000  miles  a  year;  the 
restaurant  business,  sei^ving  at  least  900,000  meals  a  year;  the 
hotel  business,  providing  sleeping  accommodations  for  1300 
people  for  eight  months;  the  construction  business,  building 
an  amphitheater  and  a  tented  town  every  day  or  so;  and  show 
business.  The  only  one  tliat  brought  in  any  money  was  show 
business.  The  rest  had  to  go. 

Our  first  premise  was  that  the  show  must  still  be  the  great- 
est on  earth.  The  only  tilings  we  cut  out  were  the  side  shows 
and  the  menagerie,  but  not  the  performing  animals.  The 
menagerie  had  been  anachronistic  for  a  long  time.  Gone  were 
the  days  when  people  gaped  in  wonder  at  a  polar  bear— tliere 
were  so  many  animals  in  zoos  and  moving  pictures  and  TV 
shows  that  people  were  sated  by  the  sight  of  them.  We 
loaned  the  menagerie  to  the  Providence  ( Rliode  Island )  Zoo 
and  borrowed  it  back  once  a  year  for  Madison  Square  Garden. 

As  we  planned  our  moves,  and  as  they  are  done  today: 
instead  of  the  great  eighty-car  train,  we  use  tliree-system 
baggage  cars,  in  which  the  elephants  and  some  other  trained 
animals  ride.  The  circus  does  not  even  own  the  cars  any  more, 
but  leases  them  from  tlie  railroads.  The  physical  equipment 


374  JOHN  EINGLING  NORTH 

of  the  show— rigging,  properties,  and  costumes— moves  in  ten 
big  trailer  trucks.  The  performers  get  travel  allowances  and 
they  go  places  under  their  own  steam.  They  live  and  eat  in 
restaurants  and  hotels  of  their  choice.  Some  use  planes,  trains, 
or  buses,  but  a  great  many  have  their  own  cars  and  trailers. 
The  smaller  trained  animals,  including  the  cats,  travel  much 
more  comfortably  in  motor  vans  than  they  ever  did  by  rail. 
Thus  we  chiseled  our  overhead  dovvoi  from  $25,000  a  day 
to  less  than  $10,000,  and  om:  labor  force  from  800  to  100  men, 
while  still  holding  to  John's  edict:  "No  expense  will  be 
spared  to  give  a  performance  as  lavish  and  spectacular  as 
imagination  and  money  can  make  it." 

Now  we  were  in  a  position  to  earn  profits  if  we  could  hold 
our  public,  but  this  was  fogged  by  doubt.  For  one  thing,  there 
had  been  a  tremendous  outpouring  of  lamentations  in  the 
press  when  we  closed  the  tent  show.  It  almost  amounted  to  a 
period  of  public  moiuning  for  the  passing  of  a  beloved  na- 
tional institution,  a  httle  like  that  for  a  President  who  dies  in 
office.  We  were  up  against  the  task  of  convincing  people  that 
the  circus  was  still  very  much  ahve  and  undiminished  in 
splendor  and  excitement. 

This  was  very  difficult  to  do,  and  we  were  not  entirely  suc- 
cessful. Even  three  years  later  people  were  still  talking  as 
though  the  circus  were  dead  and  my  brother  and  I  had  mur- 
dered it,  though  by  then  it  was  the  liveliest  corpse  in  history. 
Even  those  who  realized  that  the  show  was  going  on  felt  un- 
easily that  it  could  never  be  the  same  indoors.  In  a  nostalgic 
sense  they  were  right.  On  the  other  hand,  we  had  not  started 
a  new  or  unprecedented  operation,  but  had,  in  fact,  gone  back 
to  an  earlier  time.  The  Aztecs  had  watched  a  sort  of  circus 
inside  the  Halls  of  Montezuma.  The  first  real  American  circus 
was  put  on  by  John  Bill  Ricketts  in  a  specially  constructed 
amphitheater  in  Philadelphia  in  1793.  He  made  so  much 


THE    NEW   AND   FUTUHE   CIRCUS  375 

money  that  he  built  another  amphitheater  for  his  show  in 
New  York.  Many  of  the  famous  European  circuses  have  al- 
ways played  indoors. 

The  wagon  shows  and,  later,  the  great  raihoad  shows  were 
an  interim  thing  to  meet  the  special  circumstances  of  a  pio- 
neering era.  Changing  conditions  made  the  Big  Top  as  in- 
capable of  survival  as  the  dinosaur,  which,  indeed,  it  resem- 
bled in  its  ponderous  giantism.  We  had  simply  gone  back  to 
the  good  older  days  of  circus  tradition.  But  it  was  hard  to 
convince  people  of  that. 

For  another  thing,  we  had  great  difficulty  routing  the  circus 
the  first  two  years  indoors  ( 1957-58 ) .  The  cities  had  been 
building  their  own  Big  Tops,  so  to  speak.  Nearly  one  hundred 
and  fifty  urban  centers  in  the  United  States  and  Canada  had 
amphitheaters  large  enough  to  house  the  show,  but  some  of 
them  were  booked  a  year  or  two  in  advance  for  the  dates  we 
needed.  This  resulted  in  our  making  uneconomic  jumps  back 
and  forth  across  the  country,  and  playing  fill-in  dates  in  ball 
parks,  which  were  always  in  danger  of  being  rained  out.  Tliis 
was  a  situation  which  would  clear  up  as  soon  as  we  could 
start  making  bookings  two  or  three  years  ahead,  but  it  made 
tliose  first  years  indoors  very  difficult. 

The  final  trouble  was  caused  by  the  Forty-niners.  In  1957, 
led  by  Charles  Ringling's  daughter,  Hester  Sanford,  and  her 
son  by  a  previous  marriage,  Stuart  Lancaster,  some  of  them 
sued  John,  Concello,  and  me  for  $20,000,000  for  mismanage- 
ment of  the  circus.  A  curious  example  of  Cousin  Hester's 
mental  processes  occurred  just  after  they  started  suit.  At  a 
party  in  Sarasota  she  rushed  up  to  my  sister  Salome  and,  after 
greeting  her  aftectionately,  asked,  "And  how  is  dear  Johnny?" 

"What  do  you  mean  'dear  Jolmny'?"  Sally  asked.  "You're 
suino;  him  for  twentv  million  dollars." 

"That's  only  business,"  Hester  said  gaily.  "I  still  love  him 
dearly." 


3/6  JOHN  MNGLENG  NORTH 

As  I  pointed  out  in  the  statement  I  wrote  for  our  lawyers: 

"John  Ringhng  North's  determined  courage  in  the  face  of 
adversity  has  enabled  him  to  pilot  his  beloved  circus  through 
many  harried  years.  .  .  .  When  he  took  over  the  active  presi- 
dency in  1937,  .  .  .  the  circus  was  run  down  physically  and 
depleted  financially.  Five  years  later  .  .  .  the  Ringling  stock- 
holders, otlier  than  himself,  had  received  approximately 
$250,000  in  salaries,  expenses  and  dividends.  The  corporation 
had  paid  all  its  debts  and  established  a  cash  reserve  of 
$1,400,000.  It  was  tlien  [1943]  that  he  was  voted  out  of  man- 
agement control. 

"When  he  regained  control  in  1947  he  was  faced  by  the 
enormous  debt  incurred  during  the  Hartford  Fiie,  ...  a 
debt  that  was  finally  liquidated  under  his  management.  .  .  ." 

I  then  described  the  manner  in  which  John  had  stream- 
hned  tlie  show  and  combated  die  innumerable  difficulties  of 
which  I  have  told,  adding,  "When  the  financial  situation  be- 
came serious  in  August,  1955,  John  made  the  personal  sacrifice 
of  cancelling  his  annual  salary.  .  .  . 

"Practically  all  my  brother's  waking  hours,  all  of  his 
strenuous  business  life  and  great  creative  effort  have  been  de- 
voted to  the  service  of  the  cii^cus.  It  is  under  his  management 
now,  not  because  he  sued  for  it,  but  because  he  won  tlie  cir- 
cus; and  not  in  the  comts  or  at  Las  Vegas,  but  by  gambling 
his  courage,  his  energies,  liis  experience  of  forty  years,  his  love 
of  our  great  enterprise  and  his  personal  fortune  to  achieve 
the  success  which  has  made  his  name  a  proud  one,  synony- 
mous with  the  Circus  on  two  continents." 

In  my  own  defense  I  stated  that  I  had  served  the  circus 
off  and  on  for  over  tliirty  years,  at  salaries  ranging  from  $17.50 
a  week  to  $20,000  a  year— for  one  year,  1942.  Speaking  of  that 
strenuous  year,  I  said:  "Though  as  vice-president  and  assist- 
ant to  the  president  I  was  responsible  for  many  executive 
duties,  including  the  Press  Department  and  almost  all  of  the 


THE    NEW   AND   FUTUEE   CIRCUS  377 

executive  correspondence,  I  worked  daily  at  roustabouts' 
tasks.  I  was  on  the  lot  helping  set  up  in  the  mornings  and  I 
followed  the  pole  wagon  [last  wagon]  off  the  lot  at  night.  I 
helped  guy  out  and  tear  down;  folded  chairs  and  loaded 
them;  carried  bibles,  planks,  stringers,  and  jacks;  helped  to 
set  up  poles  and  quarter  poles;  rolled  canvas,  shook,  pushed 
and  folded  canvas  in  rain  storms,  snow  storms,  sand  storms 
and  tornados.  .  .  . 

"I  knew  the  name  of  every  performer  and  hundreds  of 
working  men,  and  I  lent  them  thousands  of  dollars  over  the 
years  and  was  seldom  repaid  except  in  the  most  precious  way, 
by  their  loyalty  and  respect— a  loyalty  that  enabled  me  to 
stave  off  numerous  strikes.  .  .  ." 

I  added  that,  since  my  return  to  the  circus  after  the  war  in 
1947,  I  had  never  been  paid  more  than  $6200  a  year,  which 
did  not  seem  a  great  amount. 

Though  the  mismanagement  suit  seemed  hopeless— and 
became  more  so  when  the  new  indoor  circus  planned 
by  John  eventually  began  to  make  profits— the  threat  of  it  and 
then  the  actual  suit,  in  which  they  asked  for  a  receiver, 
caused  us  great  inconvenience.  The  Forty-niners  not  only 
made  refinancing  the  circus  difficult  but  they  stopped  us  from 
selling  all  our  railway  cars,  tractors,  and  other  machinery  at 
Winter  Quarters  which  were  no  longer  needed  for  the  show. 
We  wanted  to  sell  tliem  to  raise  additional  capital.  For  tliree 
years  they  stood  on  the  sidmgs,  rusting  and  melancholy, 
doing  no  one  any  good. 

When  we  came  into  Madison  Square  Garden  in  the  spring 
of  1957,  the  circus  was  $1,300,000  in  debt.  But  no  one  in  our 
audiences  could  have  sensed  any  diminution  of  its  greatness. 
There  were  such  stanch  old  favorites  as  the  Loyal  equestrians, 
our  famous  clowns,  the  Flying  Alexanders,  and  Harold  Al- 
zana,  whom  I  regard  as  the  most  daiing  high-whe  artist  of 


3/8  JOHN  RINGLING  NORTH 

them  all;  and  many  of  our  famous  animal  acrobatic  and 
juggling  acts. 

Our  new  producers,  Richard  and  Edith  Barstow,  had  pro- 
vided, and  Max  Weldy  had  costumed,  a  lavish  and  beautiful 
spec  and  production  numbers  that  included  "Carnival  in 
Venice,"  "The  Coronation  of  Mother  Goose,"  and  the  "En- 
chanting Ethereal  Extravaganza  Cherry  Blossom  Time,"  an 
aerial  ballet  featuring  Galla  Dawn  standing  on  her  head  on  a 
high  trapeze  wliile  spinning  hoops  on  both  arms  and  both  legs. 
Somehow  John  had  found  time  to  write  the  charming  music 
which  accompanied  them,  including  the  hit  tune  "Those 
Maracas  from  Caracas." 

In  addition,  he  introduced  from  Europe  Hugo's  unique 
combination  of  a  trained  elephant,  zebra,  and  llama;  "Miss 
Elabeth"  in  "A  Desperate  Dive  from  the  Top  of  the  Arena"; 
Sciplini's  chimps,  who  were  very  funny  natural  comedians; 
and  a  number  of  other  performers  never  seen  in  America  be- 
fore. In  short,  a  show  that  justified  our  cherished  superlative. 

In  New  York  the  public  gave  us  a  thundering  vote  of  con- 
fidence, expressed  not  in  written  ballots,  but  in  those  beauti- 
ful green  engravings  exquisitely  etched  in  the  United  States 
Mint.  The  gross  in  the  Garden  was  the  second-largest  up  to 
that  time. 

Armed  with  these  figures,  John  went  confidently  to  the  di- 
rectors' meeting  in  June  1957.  It  turned  out  to  be  another  of 
those  unliappy  family  fracases  where,  after  hearing  the  good 
news  that  the  "Old  Girl"  had  survived  her  drastic  operation 
and  was,  so  to  speak,  doing  a  financial  mambo,  our  cousins 
grimly  announced  that  they  were  going  ahead  with  the  mis- 
management suit.  In  other  words,  tlie  patient  had  recovered 
but,  according  to  them,  the  operation  was  a  failure. 

Tlie  1957  season  was  encouraging,  but  it  was  not  all  smootli 
sailing.  Those  dates  we  had  been  forced  to  make  in  open 


THE    NEW    AND    FUTUBE    CIRCUS  379 

stadia  were  quite  frequently  rained  out.  What  happened 
when  they  were  is  shown  by  the  figures  for  our  engagement 
in  Syracuse,  New  York: 

Income  $   1,618.00 

E.xpenses  $20,868.00 

The  bruit  about  the  mismanagement  suit  was  no  help, 
either.  It  caused  our  creditors  to  press  us  heavily  and  made 
the  establishment  of  new  credit  extremely  difficult.  As  Arthur 
Concello  puts  it,  "We  twist,  we  turn,  we  keep  the  creditors 
happy,  paying  a  little  to  this  one,  a  little  to  that.  I  manage 
to  keep  peace  with  the  unions.  We  get  through  the  season." 

We  did,  indeed,  get  tlirough  the  season  with  a  small  oper- 
ating profit,  which  was  extraordinary,  considering  the  short 
time  we  had  to  make  bookings,  due  to  which  the  show  was 
idle  some  40  days  out  of  a  i34-day  season,  and  rained  out  on 
many  others. 

In  1958  tlie  tour  included  an  invasion  of  Mexico  Citv, 
where  our  charming  Latin-American  neighbors  received  it 
with  acclamation.  Let  Arthur  also  state,  in  his  concise,  cocky 
way,  the  good  news  of  that  year: 

"We  operate  in  '58  and  it  works  out  considerably  better. 
AU  trade  bills  paid.  So  we  open  on  March  4,  1959,  at  Char- 
lotte, North  Carolina,  and  we  don't  owe  anybody  except  om- 
lawyers  and  the  family  so  much  as  one  little  piece  of  copper 
with  Lincohi's  head  on  it." 

The  $20,000,000  suit  of  the  Forty-niners  was  dropped.  The 
year  looked  bright  ahead  and  bright  it  was, 

John  opened  the  new  show  in  Charlotte,  as  Arthur  said. 
Until  1958  we  had  always  opened  in  the  Garden  to  our  biggest 
and  most  critical  audience.  It  was  like  opening  a  plav  cold  on 
Broadway,  which,  as  everyone  knows,  is  a  verv  dangerous 
thing  to  do.  But  with  four  months  in  Winter  Quarters  to  pre- 
pare and  two  or  three  weeks  of  rehearsals  in  New  York,  it  was 
not  too  difficult.  At  tliat  tlie  show  often  ran  four  hours  on 


380  JOHN   BINGLING  NORTB 

opening  night,  which,  however  much  one  may  love  it,  is  too 
damned  much  circus.  We  would  cut  and  prune  and  condense 
as  we  went  along  until  the  running  time  came  down  to  rea- 
sonable limits. 

However,  the  new  indoor  season— weather  no  object— of 
eleven  months  left  little  time  for  rehearsing  the  new  show  and 
it  seemed  wise  to  shake  it  down,  hke  most  plays,  on  the  road. 

So  John  brought  it  into  the  Garden  with  a  polished  per- 
formance. Among  the  production  numbers  was  a  new  aerial 
ballet.  Max  Weldy  dreamed  it  up  and  suggested  it  to  John. 
Speaking  in  his  heavy  European  accent,  he  said,  "This  year 
we  should  have  parrots  performing  on  the  web." 

"Parrots  1"  said  John  blankly. 

"Parrots,"  Max  enthusiastically  repeated.  "With  very  sexy 
short  little  pants." 

Finally  it  penetrated  John's  bewilderment.  Max  meant 
pirates,  of  course. 

The  "parrot"  ballet  was  a  great  success,  as  was  the  entire 
new  show  directed  by  Concello  and  staged  by  Margaret 
Smith.  With  the  elbow  room  granted  by  increasing  profits, 
John  was  able  to  introduce  splendid  new  features,  including 
the  Stevenson  Troupe  from  Ireland,  who  were  not  only  fine 
equestrians  but  had  a  whole  pack  of  enchantingly  gay  little 
dogs  who  so  clearly  enjoyed  performing  their  clever  tricks 
that  the  audience  seemed  to  be  laughing  not  at  tliem  but 
with  them. 

Alzana's  dangerous  acrobatics  on  the  high  wire  were  par- 
ticularly dramatic  that  opening  night.  Only  a  few  days  be- 
fore, he  had  been  struck  by  a  car  on  the  New  Jersey  Turnpike 
and  had  been  seriously  injured.  In  spite  of  this  he  insisted  on 
performing  his  act.  With  the  lights  dimmed  and  a  single  spot 
focused  upon  him,  he  limped  painfully  to  tlie  slanting  wire 
leading  upward  at  an  angle  of  forty-five  degrees  to  tlie  upper 
heights  of  the  arena,  the  same  wii'e  from  wliich  he  had  fallen 


THE    NEW   AND   FUTURE   CIKCUS  381 

two  years  ago.  Slowly,  breathlessly,  he  walked  up  it  with  no 
pole  or  aid  to  balance.  Once  on  the  heights,  he  performed  with 
his  customary  brilliance  and  apparent  ease,  and  tiien  made 
the  perilous  descent  on  the  other  side.  When  he  touched 
ground  there  was  a  great  whoosh  as  ten  thousand  people  let 
out  their  breath  at  once.  Then  they  burst  into  tremendous 
applause.  It  was  a  display  of  courage  and  loyalty  seldom  if 
ever  equaled  in  the  whole  history  of  Ringling  Brotliers. 

In  addition  to  the  new  acts  I  have  mentioned  and  our  old 
favorites,  John  introduced  seventeen  acts  never  seen  in 
America  before.  The  show  ended  with  a  bang— the  crash  of 
Zacchini's  cannon  as  it  hm'led  his  two  beautiful  daughters  in 
a  great  parabola  across  the  entiie  arena  into  the  safety  net. 

The  box  office  was  a  bang,  too.  At  Madison  Square  Garden 
the  show  made  the  record  gross  of  approximately  $2,000,000. 
Now  we  ended  the  season  with  a  near-record  gross  at  a 
handsome  profit. 

It  seemed  that  the  American  people  still  loved  the  "Old 
Girl,"  after  all. 

I  enjoyed  tliis  triumphant  season  only  vicariously.  In  May 
1958  I  had  resigned  as  vice-president  of  Ringling  Brothers- 
Bamum  &  Bailey  Combined  Shows.  You  may  wonder  how, 
loving  it  so  much,  I  could  bring  myself  to  leave  our  circus. 
In  a  very  real  sense  it  had  left  me. 

Though  I  believe  I  had  performed  the  executive  functions 
of  my  job  adequately,  tliey  were  something  tliat  any  good 
man  could  do.  My  unique  value  to  the  circus  had  been  my 
standing  in  loco  parentis  to  our  performers  and  workers.  To 
have  a  member  of  the  Ringling  family  there  to  whom  they 
could  turn  in  trouble,  anger,  or  joy  meant  a  great  deal  to 
them,  and  their  confidence  and  friendship  meant  as  much  to 
me. 

I  have  told  how  I  interceded  for  the  workingmen  with  the 


382  JOHN  BINGLING  NORTH 

bosses  and  how  I  arranged  loans  for  all  our  people  in  financial 
difficulties  from  the  red  wagon,  and  lent  them  my  own  money 
as  well.  Of  course,  you  did  not  charge  any  interest,  and  all 
this  made  our  people  feel  that  the  circus  was  not  just  a  big, 
cold,  impersonal  organization,  but  a  family  affair  which  had 
their  interests  at  heart.  That  feeling  is  what  kept  the  circus 
going  through  all  the  years  and  vicissitudes. 

But  in  the  last  days  of  the  Big  Top  and  in  the  new  setup, 
these  paternalistic  activities  were  not  possible  any  more.  The 
Hartford-fire  claims,  excess-profits  taxes,  workmen's  compen- 
sation and  social  security,  and  God  knows  what  besides,  left 
us  too  tliin  a  margin.  Our  people  still  thought  the  circus  could 
do  everything,  but  there  just  was  not  enough  money. 

In  the  final  years  of  the  Big  Top  I  tried  to  help  them  as  I 
always  had,  partly  because  I  wanted  to  so  much  and  partly 
because  I  believed  that  it  was  what  kept  the  circus  going.  My 
brother's  managers  would  say,  "Christ,  that  Buddy's  trying 
to  do  things  like  it  was  in  the  good  old  days!" 

That  was  the  only  way  I  knew  how  to  do  things.  I  listened 
to  all  the  sad  stories  and  tried  to  dispense  justice  and  charity. 
I  did  the  best  I  could,  but  the  combination  of  changing  cir- 
cumstances was  too  much  for  me.  When  I  finally  realized  that 
it  had  become  impossible  I  lost  a  lot  of  my  enthusiasm  for 
devoting  my  life  to  the  circus. 

That  was  more  or  less  the  reason  I  resigned,  that  and  the 
fact  that  in  the  new  setup,  with  people  scattered  in  hotels  all 
over  town,  my  particular  function  had  become  obsolete. 

As  I  have  shown,  the  circus  is  a  terribly  demanding  mis- 
tress, whose  service  precludes  her  people's  living  a  normal 
life.  Nowadays  it  continues  for  eleven  months  a  year,  and  the 
twelfth  month  of  putting  the  new  show  together  is  the  most 
frantic  of  all.  So  after  thirtv  vears  in  her  service  I  felt  tliat  I 
should  have  an  opportunity  to  live  as  other  people  do,  for  a 
while  at  least. 


THE    NEW  AND   FUTUKE   CIRCUS  383 

But  my  resignation  does  not  mean  that  I  have  forsaken  my 
love  or  lost  my  faith  in  her.  I  still  scout  new  acts  fx)r  my 
brother  and  help  him  in  every  way  I  can.  Nor  does  it  mean 
that  I  will  not  go  back  to  her  if  she  needs  me. 

As  to  her  future,  it  appears  brighter  than  ever  before  in  my 
time.  With  the  operation  on  a  sensible  budget,  and  bigger  and 
better  amphitheaters  being  built  all  over  the  Americas— and 
in  Europe,  too— the  circus  seems  assured  of  solvency  for  the 
foreseeable  future.  Perhaps  the  economics  of  inflation  will 
catch  up  with  her  again,  but  not  for  a  long  while. 

And  working  in  her  favor  is  what  the  statisticians  call  the 
population  explosion.  All  those  babies  of  the  future,  whose 
millions  only  Univac  can  reckon,  hurrying  on  to  the  scene  to 
become  Httle  circus  fans  who  in  the  years  ahead  will  tlirill  to 
laugh  at  and  love  The  Greatest  Show  on  Earth. 

Our  circus  has  traveled  a  long  road  from  gaslit  Baraboo  to 
the  atomic  glare  of  today.  It  was  a  difficult  and  dangerous 
road,  as  you  have  seen,  filled  with  joy  and  great  achievements, 
too.  Indeed,  it  was  as  varied  and  full  of  interest  and  wonder 
as  life  itself.  I  am  proud  and  grateful  to  have  been  aboard  the 
train  for  part  of  the  way. 


COLLFCE  LIBRARV 


7  ^  /  •  -^ 
t  '4 


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!*** 


kw^xxsx  Rungeling  (Ringting)  m.  Marie  Salome  JuUar 


-1898 


Born  in  Ostheim.near 
Colmar,  Alsace-Lorraine 

-1907 


:^. 


I 1 \  \ \ 

Albert  (Al)      August     Otto      Alfred  (Alft)    Charles 

1652-1916        ]S5^'\901     1857-1^1/      1863-1919         1864'1926 

married       married 
Delia  Andrews  Edith  Conwail 

1869' 

I 


Richard 

married 

P  Aubrey  Black 

I 
Arable 


married 
jamesA.Haky 


-  Robert 

1897-1950 

married 


Hester  - 

1893- 

married 


Virginia  Sullivan     louis  Lancaster 


^^mcs       Charles        p 


"I 


Stuart   Charles 


married 

Irene  Bauernfein 


married 
Charles  E,  5anford 


i 


3    1262   04101    6683 


Nicholas  3uUar  married  Helena  Etling 


Helena 


f  ^"**^will^^ 


"n 

John 

d66-1936 

larried 
iblc  Burton 

>75'I929 


I 


rr 


arried 
diity  Haag 
Buck 


1 

Henry        Ida 

1865-1918      187V1950 

married 
Henry  W  North 


r 


ohn  Ringling  North  Henry  Ringling  North -■ 


3^ 


ic 


1903- 

married 
me  Donelly 

married 
'waine  Au55ey 


1909- 

married 
Ada  Thornburgh 


3ohn  Ringling  North  II 


married 
Elizaberh  Palmer  Barnuml 


Salome  — 

1907- 

married 
Roy  Stratton 

Salome"^ 

married 
R,L.Wad5W(>rth 

Randolph