The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus will draw its curtain for the last time this year. The company that owns the circus says it’s ending the show because of declining ticket sales. Animal rights advocates also objected to its use of elephants in its shows.
The circus was co-founded by Connecticut native P.T. Barnum in 1870. WSHU’s Davis Dunavin spoke with Kathy Maher, who runs Bridgeport’s Barnum Museum, about the man who created the Greatest Show on Earth. Below is a transcript of their conversation.
Most people don’t realize that Barnum was in his 60s when he started the circus. It was his retirement project. When Barnum’s greatest vision came to him, he was extremely young. He did not care for the rural lifestyle of his birthplace in Bethel, Connecticut. So he discovers New York City. And it is on New Years’ Day in 1842 that he opens an enormous establishment that he calls Barnum’s American Museum.
But the exhibits were – people always think that they were freak shows. Any type of living curiosities that were in Barnum’s museum were heralded as natural wonders or marvels of nature. It was the first aquarium. It was really the very first science center.
The museum had technology expos, flea circuses, and theatrical performances, plus General Tom Thumb and the original Siamese twins. But the museum burned down in 1865. Maher says it was a tough time for Barnum. He had to start over.
Barnum decided to go out west. And that was the huge push in America at that time – the underexplored glorious West.
Barnum was doing this about the same time as Mark Twain.
They were contemporaries. But whereas Twain spun it into his tales, Barnum actually saw an expanded world, a world where there is so much more to see and do and experience. And it’s then that Barnum is approached by a couple of midwestern circus promoters that really wanted him to share his name, to share his energy and his enterprise. That venture would revive his love of his museums.
Now I love the name they originally came up with.
Oh my goodness. It was the Great London Combined Shows Caravan, Menagerie, Circus and Museum.
I think ‘Hippodrome’ was in there somewhere…”
Hippodrome actually comes later, when the show started traveling by rails.
Let’s talk about that, because this was kind of what made it pioneering, right?
Yes. What Barnum actually saw was an opportunity to get out into the country to smaller remote regions that don’t otherwise have any form of entertainment. Really, not so much there. You had to travel to it. You would load up your family in your carriages and probably take hours-long journey to get to where the tented show would be.
What the trains allowed them to do is get even further into the country. It was a wondrous thing. The communities would shut down because the circus was coming to town. It shaped America.
Now, what would you have seen when you walk into that tent?
Well, it wasn’t one tent. It was many tents. Some of these tents would seat ten thousand people. They were enormous. There was always a fine arts tent, there was a museum tent with curiosities for people to see. There would also be menagerie tents where you could see smaller exhibits of animals, more zoo like.
How would that have been different from the circus that most of us are used to seeing and thinking about?
The big anchor to the shows early on were equestrians, and that really is the root, the ancient root, of the circus, too. But there are so many similarities – the dancers, the music. I think one of the greatest wonders that Ringling maintained was the fact that we’re listening to live music. That you were really listening to an orchestra, that you were really listening to the ringmaster and his commanding voice. That just fills your spirit no matter who you are.
A huge difference is the tented shows were literally tented shows. Which phased out a while ago with Ringling. So everything went under tents, and you were really walking in fields.
Barnum kept a close connection to his home. He was a state representative for Fairfield and Bridgeport, and served a term as Bridgeport’s mayor. His development projects shaped the city as it became an industrial center.
You see his name everywhere in Bridgeport, today, too, from Barnum Avenue to the statue of P.T. Barnum in Seaside Park. Bridgeport remembers him well.
Yeah, Bridgeport remembers him very well. He was so ahead of his time. He recognized that as a city emerges an industrial place, the community is going to have specific needs. These were skilled, committed, dedicated people moving in from various cultures. People needed their churches. People needed their parks and their utilities and their schools. Creating the parks over on the east side. Ensuring the hospital was going to be there for everyone. Certainly at the end of the day, Seaside Park. Barnum donated the most land. In his will, he writes his final gift to the city was to be the Barnum Museum.
There’s a wonderful legacy he’s left throughout the city. I think today – how he had to have boundless energy. He’s been dead for over a hundred years, and he’s the only man who exhausts me. It’s just always something else, and constantly. Dog shows. The idea of the dog shows. And beautiful baby contests. He surrounded himself with people who were thinkers and imaginers and created an entertainment industry we are so enjoying today.
We’re losing the circus, we’re losing the Greatest Show on Earth. Barnum’s legacy continues.
Barnum’s legacy will always continue. And I don’t want to believe we’re gonna lose. I think for generations to come it will remain in our memories. When I was growing up very close to Uniondale in New York, my parents took us to my first Ringling Bros Barnum and Bailey show at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. I can remember the grandeur of the spectacular. Gosh, I remember the colors and the pageantry and the excitement. I was curious, maybe even a little perplexed, what am I watching? They’re so much happening! And that stayed with me. So the final show is gonna be at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
Will you be going?
I’m calling, my parents are still there, and I’m gonna say, you know something, isn’t it a profound irony that where all my dreams started, I get to go back?
That last show will be in May. Kathy Maher is the executive director of Bridgeport’s Barnum Museum, which isn’t going anywhere.
