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Author: Alfred Ringling
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
From the humblest of beginnings the Ringling Brothers built and became equal owners of the greatest amusement enterprise in the world's history. The Ringling brothers were seven American siblings of small-town Wisconsin who transformed their small touring company of performers into one of America's largest circuses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1900 Alfred "Alf" Theodore Ringling (1861-1919) published the book "Life Story of the Ringling Brothers". There is no more striking example of a well-defined ambition reaching out toward a distinctive goal, and attaining it regardless of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and difficulties, than in the story of the Ringling brothers. To be sure, the idea of five boys saying to each other, "We want a circus," wasn't much to create more than a laugh among their playfellows; but for them to determine to have a circus, and the biggest and finest in the world, and then to start getting it, and finish by having it, makes an altogether different story of the five little boys' dreams. There wasn't much in the "wanting to have," but there was a great deal in the "getting." Of course, all this didn't happen- in an hour. There is a great lapse of years between the time when the Ringling boys said, "We want a circus," and the day when the Ringling men could say, "We have a circus," and it is this intervening time between the desire and the realization with which this story deals. It is a wonderful story to write-an adventure in real life, a page in the history of America's great men that teems with lessons of patience, perseverance, and honest effort. It is Caesarian, Napoleonic, Bismarckian in effort, and in accomplishment more than can be said of Alexander. The latter conquered the world, but the Ringling brothers pleased it. Alexander, with all his conquests, could not do this. History records no greater trials than marked the beginning of the career of these great circus men, nor does history record a greater triumph than has rewarded them for their labor.
Author: Alfred Ringling
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
From the humblest of beginnings the Ringling Brothers built and became equal owners of the greatest amusement enterprise in the world's history. The Ringling brothers were seven American siblings of small-town Wisconsin who transformed their small touring company of performers into one of America's largest circuses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1900 Alfred "Alf" Theodore Ringling (1861-1919) published the book "Life Story of the Ringling Brothers". There is no more striking example of a well-defined ambition reaching out toward a distinctive goal, and attaining it regardless of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and difficulties, than in the story of the Ringling brothers. To be sure, the idea of five boys saying to each other, "We want a circus," wasn't much to create more than a laugh among their playfellows; but for them to determine to have a circus, and the biggest and finest in the world, and then to start getting it, and finish by having it, makes an altogether different story of the five little boys' dreams. There wasn't much in the "wanting to have," but there was a great deal in the "getting." Of course, all this didn't happen- in an hour. There is a great lapse of years between the time when the Ringling boys said, "We want a circus," and the day when the Ringling men could say, "We have a circus," and it is this intervening time between the desire and the realization with which this story deals. It is a wonderful story to write-an adventure in real life, a page in the history of America's great men that teems with lessons of patience, perseverance, and honest effort. It is Caesarian, Napoleonic, Bismarckian in effort, and in accomplishment more than can be said of Alexander. The latter conquered the world, but the Ringling brothers pleased it. Alexander, with all his conquests, could not do this. History records no greater trials than marked the beginning of the career of these great circus men, nor does history record a greater triumph than has rewarded them for their labor.
Author: Michael Lancaster
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615655925
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
"Riveting...a visceral approach...resonates with a golden glow that reminds readers of great American novels from the past..." David W. Menefee - BookPleasures.com On a snowy spring night in New York, in 1936, John Ringling, the Great Circus King, exited Madison Square Garden through a dark back alley. He walked out to 49th Street and met an old friend he hadn't seen in decades. Ringling, almost seventy, was disheveled and alone. The two of them sat at a bar near Union Square, where John Ringling recounted the story of the five Ringling brothers, their circus, and John's story as the last one on the lot. Seemingly in ruin then, John Ringling has had the Last Laugh, not only on those who forsook him but on the amusement world and the art world. Michael Lancaster is the great grandson of Charles Ringling, one of the five Ringling brothers. He is a sculptor and a fourth generation artist. He has spent over thirty years listening to the stories of the famed Boys From Baraboo. This is his first novel. It is not just a circus story, although there is a circus story in it; this is an American story.
Author: Beth Macy
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316337560
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496
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Book Description
The true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back. The year was 1899 and the place a sweltering tobacco farm in the Jim Crow South town of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie Muse were two little boys born to a sharecropper family. One day a white man offered them a piece of candy, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever. Captured into the circus, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. But the very root of their success was in the color of their skin and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume: supposed cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even "Ambassadors from Mars." Back home, their mother never accepted that they were "gone" and spent 28 years trying to get them back. Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Beth Macy expertly explores a central and difficult question: Where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars or in poverty at home? Truevine is a compelling narrative rich in historical detail and rife with implications to race relations today.
Author: David C. Weeks
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813059399
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 477
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Book Description
John Nicholas Ringling's years in Sarasota spanned the final quarter-century of his life. On Florida's west coast, as the Ringling's Circus became "the greatest show on earth," he collected Baroque paintings, European decorative art, and Italian statuary, built the ostentatious mansion Ca'd'Zan, developed and marketed most of the barrier islands around Sarasota Bay, and became the focus of a confusing pastiche of acclaim, misconception, and suspicion. Sarasota's Ringling Museum is his priceless cultural legacy to the people of Florida and the world of art--an inheritance at risk for the ten years that Ringling's estate was in probate. The author of this first intensive look at Ringling's presence in Sarasota sets the man against the backdrop of Florida from World War I through the land boom and the turbulent twenties into the depression years and Ringling's lapse into obscurity. Illustrated with nearly fifty black-and-white photographs, many never before published, this is the chronicle of a man, as the foreword claims, "who was not afraid to think or live on a grand scale, who knew what he wanted from life, and from art."
Author: Alden Hatch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The Circus Kings, first published in 1960 and authored by a nephew of the original Ringling Brothers, is a fascinating insider's account of circus life and lore. From humble beginnings in Baraboo, Wisconsin, the Ringling family would go on to create "The Greatest Show on Earth," delighting audiences across America. Along the way, however, were the behind-the-scenes financial struggles, tragedies such as fires and labor strikes, legal battles, and changing entertainment tastes. Henry Ringling North ran Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1936 to 1967, along with his older brother, John. Included are 18 pages of photographs.
Author: Les Standiford
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541762266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
“Les Standiford takes us under the big top and behind the curtain in this richly researched and thoroughly engaging narrative that captures all of the entrepreneurial intrigue and spirit of the American circus.” —Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Devil in the Grove Millions have sat under the “big top,” watching as trapeze artists glide and clowns entertain, but few know the captivating stories behind the men whose creativity, ingenuity, and determination created one of our country’s most beloved pastimes. In Battle for the Big Top, New York Times–bestselling author Les Standiford brings to life a remarkable era when three circus kings—James Bailey, P. T. Barnum, and John Ringling—all vied for control of the vastly profitable and influential American Circus. Ultimately, the rivalry of these three men resulted in the creation of an institution that would surpass all intentions and, for 147 years, hold a nation spellbound. Filled with details of their ever-evolving showmanship, business acumen, and personal magnetism, this Ragtime-like narrative will delight and enchant circus-lovers and anyone fascinated by the American experience.
Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781542768092
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 66
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Book Description
*Includes pictures. *Highlights Barnum's entertainment career and transition into the circus. *Includes a bibliography for further reading. "We bring you the circus - that Pied Piper whose magic tunes lead children of all ages into a tinseled and spun-candied world of reckless beauty and mounting laughter; whirling thrills; of rhythm, excitement and grace; of daring, enflaring and dance; of high-stepping horses and high-flying stars. But behind all this, the circus is a massive machine whose very life depends on discipline, motion and speed - a mechanized army on wheels that rolls over any obstacle in its path - that meets calamity again and again, but always comes up smiling - a place where disaster and tragedy stalk the Big Top, haunts the back yard, and rides the circus train - where Death is constantly watching for one frayed rope, one weak link, or one trace of fear. A fierce, primitive fighting force that smashes relentlessly forward against impossible odds: That is the circus - and this is the story of the biggest of the Big Tops - and of the men and women who fight to make it." - Opening remarks from the film The Greatest Show On Earth!, a drama set in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Americans have loved traveling circuses for generations, and none represent the country's love for entertainment quite like the most famous of them all, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The five brothers who started a circus in Wisconsin, as well as P.T. Barnum, have had their names become synonymous with the circus, so it's only fitting that the manner in which these men entered the business and the merging of their traveling circuses together also make for great stories. Circus promoters have long been viewed as somewhat shady hucksters, but none could top P.T. Barnum, who used a blend of traditional circus entertainment, freak show exhibits, and outright hoaxes to create "The Greatest Show on Earth". Barnum introduced America to Jumbo the Elephant, one of the most legendary acts in the history of the circus, as well as "exhibits" like Joice Heth, an elderly African American woman Barnum advertised as a 161 year old who nursed George Washington. He also notoriously perpetrated hoaxes with General Tom Thumb and claimed to have a live mermaid, so it's no surprise that Barnum is often apocryphally quoted as saying, "There's a sucker born every minute." While he didn't actually say that, he said something similar: "Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public." Around the same time that Barnum was operating the Barnum & Bailey's circus, the Ringling Brothers were engaging in more traditional circus activities in Wisconsin. As their traveling circus became better known in the late 1880s, it was advertised as the "Ringling Brothers United Monster Shows, Great Double Circus, Royal European Menagerie, Museum, Caravan, and Congress of Trained Animals". The Ringling Brothers were eventually successful enough that they were able to buy Barnum's circus after Barnum had already died, and they merged the traveling circuses together in 1919. The Greatest Show on Earth: The History of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus examines the origins of the famous circuses, the background of the important individuals involved, and their merger into the most famous circus of all. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about "The Greatest Show on Earth" like never before, in no time at all.
Author: Robert Wilson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501118714
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
“Robert Wilson’s Barnum, the first full-dress biography in twenty years, eschews clichés for a more nuanced story…It is a life for our times, and the biography Barnum deserves.” —The Wall Street Journal P.T. Barnum is the greatest showman the world has ever seen. As a creator of the Barnum & Baily Circus and a champion of wonder, joy, trickery, and “humbug,” he was the founding father of American entertainment—and as Robert Wilson argues, one of the most important figures in American history. Nearly 125 years after his death, the name P.T. Barnum still inspires wonder. Robert Wilson’s vivid new biography captures the full genius, infamy, and allure of the ebullient showman, who, from birth to death, repeatedly reinvented himself. He learned as a young man how to wow crowds, and built a fortune that placed him among the first millionaires in the United States. He also suffered tragedy, bankruptcy, and fires that destroyed his life’s work, yet willed himself to recover and succeed again. As an entertainer, Barnum courted controversy throughout his life—yet he was also a man of strong convictions, guided in his work not by a desire to deceive, but an eagerness to thrill and bring joy to his audiences. He almost certainly never uttered the infamous line, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” instead taking pride in giving crowds their money’s worth and more. Robert Wilson, editor of The American Scholar, tells a gripping story in Barnum, one that’s imbued with the same buoyant spirit as the man himself. In this “engaging, insightful, and richly researched new biography” (New York Journal of Books), Wilson adeptly makes the case for P.T. Barnum’s place among the icons of American history, as a figure who represented, and indeed created, a distinctly American sense of optimism, industriousness, humor, and relentless energy.
Author: Linda Simon
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780233981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Beautifully illustrated and filled with rich historical detail and colorful anecdotes, this is a vibrant history for all those who have ever dreamed of running away to the circus, now in paperback. “Step right up!” and buy a ticket to the Greatest Show on Earth—the Big Top, containing death-defying stunts, dancing bears, roaring tigers, and trumpeting elephants. The circus has always been home to the dazzling and the exotic, the improbable and the impossible—a place of myth and romance, of reinvention, rebirth, second acts, and new identities. Asking why we long to soar on flying trapezes, ride bareback on spangled horses, and parade through the streets in costumes of glitter and gold, this captivating book illuminates the history of the circus and the claim it has on the imaginations of artists, writers, and people around the world. Traveling back to the circus’s early days, Linda Simon takes us to eighteenth-century hippodromes in Great Britain and intimate one-ring circuses in nineteenth-century Paris, where Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso became enchanted with aerialists and clowns. She introduces us to P. T. Barnum, James Bailey, and the enterprising Ringling Brothers and reveals how they created the golden age of American circuses. Moving forward to the whimsical Circus Oz in Australia and to New York City’s Big Apple Circus and the grand spectacle of Cirque du Soleil, she shows how the circus has transformed in recent years. At the center of the story are the people—trick riders and tightrope walkers, sword swallowers and animal trainers, contortionists and clowns—that created the sensational, raucous, and sometimes titillating world of the circus.
Author: Dean N. Jensen
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307986586
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
A true life Water for Elephants, Queen of the Air brings the circus world to life through the gorgeously written, true story of renowned trapeze artist and circus performer Leitzel, Queen of the Air, the most famous woman in the world at the turn of the 20th century, and her star-crossed love affair with Alfredo Codona, of the famous Flying Codona Brothers. Like today's Beyonce, Madonna, and Cher, she was known to her vast public by just one name, Leitzel. There may have been some regions on earth where her name was not a household expression, but if so, they were likely on polar ice caps or in the darkest, deepest jungles. Leitzel was born into Dickensian circumstances, and became a princess and then a queen. She was not much bigger than a good size fairy, just four-foot-ten and less than 100 pounds. In the first part of the 20th century, she presided over a sawdust fiefdom of never-ending magic. She was the biggest star ever of the biggest circus ever, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Greatest Show on Earth. In her life, Leitzel had many suitors (and three husbands), but only one man ever fully captured her heart. He was the handsome Alfredo Codona, the greatest trapeze flyer that had ever lived, the only one in his time who, night after night, executed the deadliest of all big-top feats, The Triple--three somersaults in midair while traveling at 60 m.p.h. The Triple, the salto mortale, as the Italians called it, took the lives of more daredevils than any other circus stunt.
