American Experience (1988–…): Season 31, Episode 1 - The Circus: Part 1 - full transcript

♪♪

♪♪

America was an agrarian society.

And it was a hard life
that you had.

You woke up early,
and you worked through the day.

And then, all of a sudden,
if you were so lucky,

for one magical day,

you were transported
from your workaday world

into the spangles,
into the spectacle

that crisscrossed the country:

the circus.



You don't want to miss it,
folks!

The circus is coming
to your town!

You saw extraordinary animals

that you sometimes
had never seen.

Whether you were a child
or an adult,

seeing a giraffe was totally
unheard of,

and seeing wild cats,
and zebras,

African animals, Asian animals.

It looked like an invasion
because there would elephants,

there would be cages
of wild animals,

there would be teams of horses,
there would be a band,

and there would be hundreds
of people lining the streets.

For generations,
the story was familiar.

The circus crashed in
on everyday life,



loud and brash,

then vanished like an illusion,

leaving some child dreaming
of a different life.

I was four years old.

And my mother said,
"Look back there, Roger.

That's Clyde Beatty."

He came running toward us

and began to crack the whip

and in came these animals
that I had never seen.

And the excitement was something
that got into me.

I knew I would do
that work someday.

It was my epiphany.

I first remember the circus

when my father would take me
to bed,

and he would hum
the elephant entry song

from Hagenbeck-Wallace in 1932,

and it went.

And I've never forgotten that.

My father inspired me
to the circus.

He loved it himself,
and I took it from him.

The circus had arrived
in America

in the nation's earliest days,

small and insignificant.

But as the country grew,
the circus would evolve with it

into a gargantuan,
industrialized entertainment,

appealing to both the humble
and the illustrious.

It would stitch into one nation

a patchwork
of disconnected communities

and dazzle not just Americans
but the entire world.

♪♪

A 19th-century writer
called the circus,

"Our season
of imaginative play."

What the circus offered is
this ability, in a way,

to dissolve oneself,

to have an out-of-body
experience.

The act of dancing
on a horse's back,

the act of performing
on a trapeze, on a rope,

or doing a strength act,

all of these forms
of circus arts,

they push the boundaries
of human strength,

of the limited nature
of our humanness

in ways that allow us
to transcend it.

For me, that is the essence
of circus.

♪♪

A swell of humanity flocked
to Brooklyn

on April 10, 1871,

to see the most elaborate
entertainment

ever mounted
in the United States...

A dizzying array of human
oddities and acrobats,

museum exhibits, wildlife...

jugglers, trapeze artists,
and strongmen.

Its largest tent, or big top,
featuring 60 performers,

could seat 5,000 people.

The museum tent boasted
a slew of sideshow attractions,

including a so-called midget
known as Admiral Dot.

A third pavilion housed a zoo,

or what was called a menagerie.

It displayed 30 cages
of animals,

including 12 camels, four lions,
two elephants, and a rhinoceros.

Some 35 other circuses toured
the country that summer.

None was as spectacular.

It's this incredible combination
of entertainment.

It's a circus, it's a menagerie,
it's a museum.

It was a truly massive show.

This is a village,

a village of entertainment,

a place that Peter Pan goes,
the land of the Lost Boys.

This looks like a place

that a bad boy running away
from home

would love to go to,

because everywhere you turned

there was a smell or a sight
or a sound that was delectable.

Though the attractions
were without rival,

many came hoping simply
to catch a glimpse of the owner.

Over the past three decades,

Phineas Taylor Barnum had become
one of the most famous men

in America.

Barnum was
the most widely visible

and widely known American
of the 19th century.

It's not an American president.

It's not a great scientist

or someone who actually had
achieved, you know,

a breakthrough
to improve humankind.

It was a showman.

♪♪

Like many circus impresarios,

P.T. Barnum came
from humble beginnings.

His father, a Connecticut
innkeeper and tailor,

died when Barnum was 15,
leaving the family destitute.

Young Phineas tried
just about everything

to avoid a life of manual labor.

He was a shop clerk,
he sold lottery tickets,

and he hawked bibles.

In the spring of 1835
Barnum bought the rights

to exhibit a frail
enslaved African-American woman

named Joice Heth.

He plastered New York

with posters advertising
the old woman

as George Washington's
161-year-old nursemaid.

Though Heth had little choice
in the matter,

she played the part,
and the ruse worked.

Barnum hoodwinked the press
and thousands of others

who paid 25 cents see her.

Then he took Heth on tour
through New England.

In Boston,

when his hoax finally stopped
attracting paying customers,

Barnum came up with another one.

He does something remarkable.

He decides to accuse himself
of fraud

by taking out anonymous notices
and advertisements in the paper,

saying that in fact Joice Heth

is not a 161-year-old
African-American woman

who raised George Washington.

In fact, she is an automaton,

made of India rubber
and mechanical springs.

She's a robot.

This is a trademark
Barnum strategy,

to draw attention to the
possibility of criminal fraud

and to invite viewers
to make up their own minds.

With Heth,

Barnum had made himself famous
for humbuggery.

In 1841 Barnum took over
a fading collection

of natural history exhibits
in lower Manhattan,

reopening
as Barnum's American Museum.

If I had a time machine,

one of the first things
I would do

would be to set it
for about 1842 or '43,

and I would go back
to lower Manhattan,

and I'd go visit
the Barnum's American Museum.

This sounds like
the coolest place.

He had a theater,
he would do melodramas.

He invents the matinee.

They played them during the day.

And it was also,
in essence, a zoo.

Right there, he had animals
in the museum.

One point, he got whales
in a big aquarium.

This is all
in this one spectacular museum.

♪♪

In time, his roster would
include gymnasts and magicians,

fortune-tellers
and snake charmers.

But perhaps more famously,

he introduced a revolving cast
of so-called "human freaks."

♪♪

There were fat boys and dwarfs,

bearded women

and a family of albinos.

Barnum is really
the central figure

in making freakery
a dominant theme

in 19th-century
mass entertainment.

What Barnum really does is
institutionalizes it,

commercializes it.

What he cares about
is what the public cares about,

and he cares about
giving it to them

in a package which is exciting
and profitable

and will generate buzz.

Between 1842 and 1868,

some 42 million people swarmed
through the doors of his museum.

Shortly after midnight
on March 3, 1868,

while Barnum was asleep,

a fire broke out
in the museum building.

It took firefighters
more than an hour to arrive.

When they did,

it was so cold, the water
from their hoses froze.

The next day,
passersby came to stare

at the ruined building
encased in ice.

Devastated, Barnum retired
from the museum business.

But he soon found
retirement dull.

"I have lived so long

on excitement, pepper,
and mustard,"

he admitted to a friend,

"that plain bread don't agree
with me."

Barnum would not have to wait
long for a new opportunity.

In the fall of 1870
two up-and-coming showmen...

Dan Castello
and William Cameron Coup...

Wrote to Barnum, asking if
he would invest in their circus.

Coup and Castello had a show

that they took
around the Great Lakes

and made a lot of money in 1870.

And they were both

ambitious, young show guys,
particularly Coup,

and they realized the value
of the Barnum name.

And so they approached him,
and they wrote him

and said, "Would you be
interested in doing, you know,

getting together with us?"

Here are two energetic,
young circus impresarios

who will help him get out
of the business

of brick-and-mortar exhibition.

He doesn't want to build
another American museum

that will go up in flames.

So this is a very attractive
proposition.

Tickled at the prospect
of one more adventure,

Barnum signed on.

"If you want to use my name,"
he wrote Coup,

"it may be used by allowing me
a small percentage."

After an extraordinarily
successful run in Brooklyn,

the circus set off

on a six-month tour
of the Northeast.

It took 245 horses
pulling 100 wagons

to move the show.

To make sure audiences came,

Coup had contracted
with railroad lines

to offer excursion tickets:

cheap fares that included
admission to the show.

Barnum plastered the area
surrounding each stop

with advance publicity.

In his typical fashion,

the show was a blitz
of publicity,

posters,
news in the Harper's Weekly.

Barnum preps this for six months

as he gets more and more excited
about the whole operation.

This is an enormous production
on a scale unprecedented

in the history
of Western show business.

And so, you can't survive

if you don't bring
5,000, 10,000, 12,000 people

under the tent
for each performance,

and that requires
enormous skill.

In addition to circus posters,

Barnum circulated a courier...

A self-published newspaper

given away
by the hundreds of thousands

that exaggerated
the many virtues of the show.

He wrote a lot
of the copy himself.

The advertising worked.

The show was mobbed
everywhere it went.

Crowds inside the tent
were often larger

than the population
of the local town.

In the village
of Waterville, Maine,

people came from 75 miles away,

some in wagons, others on foot.

For the show in Albany,

folks in nearby Coxsackie
chartered a steamboat.

By the time the circus played
its final stop,

it had made an unheard-of
half a million dollars

in profit.

The success of the tour had
shaken up the established wisdom

in the show trade.

By advertising
many miles further

from the circus lot than usual,

Barnum had been able to draw
audiences from greater distances

than any showman
ever had before.

♪♪

Even though
it's a 100-wagon show,

unprecedented size,

which one might think would lead
to unprecedented losses,

but the opposite is true.

The show makes enormous amounts
of money.

So much so that Barnum
and his partners realize

that big can mean
extremely profitable.

♪♪

It was clear to all

that P.T. Barnum had taken
the circus

a long way
from its modest beginnings.

♪♪

The elements of the circus
have been there forever.

There's a need
for the human beings

to try things
for no reason whatsoever,

just try to do something
that nobody else does.

And there is a need
for human beings to watch that.

♪♪

It's something
which is in human nature.

You need to go
beyond your own possibilities.

♪♪

Though the urge to astound
is ancient,

the origin
of the uniquely American circus

dates back to the founding
of the nation.

The first American circus
was launched in Philadelphia

in 1793,

during President
George Washington's first term

in office.

The show took place
in a circular wooden arena

constructed
by a British trick rider

named John Bill Ricketts.

Ricketts was by all accounts,

even while he was still
in England,

quite an extraordinary
equestrian.

One of the things
that was most remarked upon

was a flying mercury act.

This is when Ricketts
would go around the ring

holding a child with his hands
on top of his head.

And so, it's an act
that took real skill.

His show included a ropewalker,
clowns, acrobats,

as well as Helena Spinacuta,

an equestrian who galloped
on two horses at once.

Those essential elements

of using the horse as kind of
the centerpiece of the show,

then clowning as part
of the show too,

and rope walking,

those are defining elements
of the circus.

And that foundation
is what Ricketts sets up.

The circus proved
an incredible hit.

Washington celebrated
his birthday at the show.

Enslaved people were sometimes
in the audience,

and those
who couldn't afford admission

peeked through the knotholes.

Probably one of the biggest
indicators of Ricketts' success

is this wonderful painting
by Gilbert Stuart.

Although it's unfinished,
it's very dignified.

You get the sense that Ricketts
is someone important.

It's a real indication
of how he was valued

by the elite, as it were,
in the early United States.

Despite his many successes,

Ricketts had trouble
turning a profit.

In 1800, a fire gutted
his amphitheater,

and he left America for good.

New arrivals
and homegrown talent

did their best to keep
the circus tradition alive,

but the nation was vast
and sparsely populated.

With just a handful
of large cities

and very few exhibition halls,

showmen struggled
to attract audiences.

Then, in 1825, a circus owner
decided to commission

the construction
of a canvas tent.

With his new "Pavilion" circus,

he could travel from one small
town to the next,

stopping for just one night,

if the local population
was too tiny

to justify a second one.

What the tent show does is,

more than anything else,

it establishes the rituals
of itinerancy,

the one-night stand,

the ability to go into country

that is essentially bereft
of infrastructure.

What the tent establishes

is this way of circusing

that becomes distinctly
American.

Showmen left their home base,
called winter quarters,

in early spring,
returning in late fall.

They traveled every day,

as far as a horse could pull
a wagon,

from one small town to the next.

A lot of these guys tried
to sleep in these bumpy wagons,

roads not being
what they are now.

When they got to town
the next morning,

they'd maybe set up,
take a few hours of sleep,

and then there was the parade

and then there was
an afternoon performance,

and then there was
an evening performance,

and then you did it all again.

For nine months out of the year,
moving almost every day,

it was a hard life, for sure.

♪♪

Almost everywhere
the circus went,

it met with disapproval.

In the early 19th century,

the country was experiencing
a religious revival.

Church leaders claimed
that hard work was virtuous

and entertainment
of all kinds sinful.

The preachers would wail
against that waste of time.

And to the bible thumpers
of those days,

wasting one's time was sinful.

And some places in New England
actually banned circuses;

they couldn't exhibit at all.

Because this was the day
when the church ruled the roost.

Local communities had
other legitimate concerns.

Circus ticket sellers
were often unpaid.

They earned a living by
short-changing their customers.

The crowded circus lot
was a perfect breeding ground

for pickpockets.

And performers
in their skimpy costumes

violated every notion
of decency.

You're spending your money

to see people in tights,
shorts, and tight costumes,

was considered immoral.

There was an attraction
of the circus

which was really sexual.

It was the place
where women can show their legs.

So that was a big attraction
of the circus,

and people came to see that too.

It's very hard
to think of the circus

as not being for children now,

but through
the mid-19th century,

it was really not aimed
at children.

It was an adult form
of entertainment.

♪♪

The addition
of a small animal menagerie

by a New York showman in 1828

helped to squash
some of the objections.

The menagerie,

it brought the blood-sweating
behemoth,

the hippopotamus, for example,
and that was out of the bible.

And you see the lions,

and they are mentioned
in the bible.

That was considered educational.

Noting how a collection
of animals

elevated their businesses in
the eyes of local authorities,

most circuses added menageries.

The early travelling tented
shows were modest outfits.

A typical circus might feature
one advertising wagon,

a 60-foot tent,
and a dozen performers.

For decades,

the performances all began
pretty much the same way.

Everyone that was a performer
in the show

would put on a costume,
get on a horse,

ride in
to this thundering music,

some kind of march,
and just parade around the ring.

It was a way to show off
how many performers there were,

and sort of set the stage
for what was going to come.

There would be men balancing
on horseback.

There would be trainers
presenting the wonderful feats

that horses could do.

These would be broken up
with tumblers and clowns.

The clowns at the time spoke
and sung very often.

And they had topical songs,

which were
about political events,

about something that everybody
was speaking of.

Clowns were quite important
in the show for that,

because they had this
human contact with the audience.

♪♪

As tents got bigger,

performances became
more perilous.

By the early 1860s,
shows began presenting an act

that would become emblematic
of the circus.

It was invented
by Frenchman Jules Leotard.

Leotard was a gymnast.

His father has a gymnasium
in France, in Toulouse.

And to experiment,

he jumped from one trapeze
to a pair of rings

and to another trapeze.

His father thought
that could be a pretty good act

and started developing
an apparatus

where his son could jump
from one trapeze to another.

Circuses claimed their shows
provided young American males

examples of true manliness.

Many observers agreed.

"It can do no harm to boys,"

the poet Walt Whitman wrote
after visiting the circus,

"to see a set of limbs display
all their agility...

"A circus performer is the other
half of a college professor.

"The perfect man has more
than the professor's brain

and a good deal
of the performer's legs."

♪♪

♪♪

Friday I tasted life.

It was a vast morsel.

A circus passed the house...

Still I feel the red in my mind

though the drums are out.

Emily Dickinson.

The circus was
a topsy-turvy world.

It was about possibility.

The emotional physics
of the world

did not apply under the big top.

It was a flip-flop.

It was transgressional.

And it was loud,

and it was colorful,
and it was beautiful.

It was a kind
of pure version of reality,

something that's stripped down
to its most elemental parts.

There's nothing like circus.

There's nothing in the world
like it.

You cannot come to a circus

and still believe
as you previously did.

Ladies and gentlemen...

Circus is a peek
into what we could be,

how great we could be,

how beautiful
our world could be.

♪♪

It's about making
your own miracles,

conjuring your own miracles.

We're coming
for the transcendent.

♪♪

It was the most remarked-upon
train journey of the decade.

At almost every stop
along the route

from Boston to San Francisco,

local dignitaries
and jubilant crowds turned out

to greet the first passengers

to take a train trip
across the country.

When the luxury Pullman cars
finally arrived on June 1, 1870,

the travelers gloated
that the journey

had taken just eight days.

The completion of the first
transcontinental railroad

had capped a frenetic era
of railroad construction.

Over the course of the 1860s,

the nation's network
of railroads had almost doubled

to more than 50,000 miles.

In 1872,
when P.T. Barnum and W.C. Coup

began planning
their second season,

it dawned on them
that this expanding web of track

could unlock larger profits

if they put their circus
on rails.

Coup realized that,

"We could really make
a lot more money

if we could skip the small towns
and just play the big ones."

By train,
you could go up to, you know,

125, 150 miles a night.

To show guys,
it was like nirvana

to not have to play
these little crossroad towns.

What they begin to imagine
in the early 1870s

is something that hadn't
really existed before,

which is a traveling show
with truly national reach.

♪♪

Coup spent the winter haggling
with railroad companies,

insisting they clear
their tracks at night

to guarantee his circus
would arrive at its destination

by 6:00 a.m. every day.

"I urged and argued and argued
and urged," Coup remembered,

"until they said
I was the most persistent man

they had ever seen."

On April 18,
in New Brunswick, New Jersey,

Coup supervised the loading
of the train

for the very first time.

It took the inexperienced men
12 hours

to accomplish their task.

In the process, a camel slipped
and broke its back.

Coup realized what he required

was an entire train
of some 60 cars

designed specifically
for his needs.

In Ohio he found an outfit
that built him, on short notice,

flat cars on which to load

the wagons, cages,
and carriages.

Then he bought secondhand
sleeping cars for his staff,

boxcars for the equipment,
and stock cars for the animals.

All the railroad companies
provided

were the locomotives,
cabooses, crews, and track.

It transforms the circus

into a modern industrial
corporation,

complete with manager systems,

with bosses
of different departments,

contracting agents.

They hire attorneys,

they have to make contracts

in the towns
in which they're performing,

scattered across the country,

and they have an advance team
that, over time,

travels on four separate trains.

The first railroad circus

is really the best example
of the first really big

entertainment-industrial
complex.

The circus has become
big business.

You know, today, we talk
about Big Oil and Big Pharma.

1872, we could talk
about Big Circus.

♪♪

In 1871 Barnum and Coup's show
had been confined

to the Northeast.

In 1872 the railroad circus
left New York

traveling
through the mid-Atlantic states,

before heading west
and north to Minneapolis.

After five months on the road,
it turned back east,

finishing the season in Detroit
at the end of October.

It was a marathon run
of 146 stops

and nearly 7,000 miles.

Traveling by rail
had been so successful,

the show grossed
a million dollars,

the first time a circus
had ever made that much money.

♪♪

That winter,
Barnum housed his circus

on 14th Street in New York City.

♪♪

At around 4:00 a.m.
on Christmas Eve,

a fire broke out
in the building,

destroying the performers'
costumes, instruments,

and almost the entire menagerie.

Only two elephants
and a camel survived.

Coup was distraught.

He saw no option

other than sitting out
the following season.

But Barnum was not ready
to give up.

Barnum is relentlessly
optimistic.

He has remarkable energy.

He fashions himself
a go-ahead Yankee

who's relentlessly
entrepreneurial,

full of energy
and self-made individualism.

The tents, wagons, and
draft horses had been spared.

All that was needed
to move forward, he insisted,

was energy, pluck, courage,
and a liberal outlay of money.

"Just put a little electricity
in your blood,"

Barnum urged Coup,
"and we will beat the world."

♪♪

The docks of Manhattan
were thick with fog

when P.T. Barnum's first
shipment of animals arrived

on January 16, 1873,

less than a month
after the fire.

There was a double-horned
black rhinoceros from Abyssinia,

four large African lions,

six Bengal tigers,
a pair of leopards,

and, according
to The New York Times,

a "wilderness of monkeys."

Like many American
circus owners,

Barnum got most of his animals
from the German dealer,

Carl Hagenbeck.

His original market was
in the city of Hamburg,

but then, very quickly,
he became known by circuses

as somebody
who could supply animals.

He was incredibly reliable,

and he delivered animals
with cash on delivery,

not cash up front.

If you bought an animal
from Hagenbeck,

and it died soon after arrival,
as they tended to do,

he would replace it.

Typically, Hagenbeck contracted
with European agents

to capture his animals.

They would set up camp
in the bush,

sending local men on the hunt.

After a stay of many months,
the assembled menagerie,

accompanied by a vast staff
of handlers,

marched to the coast.

From there, they traveled
by steamship to Suez,

by rail to Alexandria,

by ship
across the Mediterranean,

and then by train to Hamburg.

Full-grown animals

were too difficult to handle
on the journey,

so the hunters
only captured the young.

When your whole method

is to try to acquire
the young animals,

it's going to be
a pretty brutal process.

There's a story of four rhinos
that were captured in India,

and there's a letter
from Hagenbeck

where he says
that 40 adults were killed

in the process of capturing
these four young rhinos.

Their mortality rate
is pretty high

as they transition to captivity.

You have to get them
to the coast.

Then you have to ship them
to Europe.

In the end,
it's a very small percentage,

you know,
maybe under 20% of the animals

that you actually begin with
are the ones you're left with.

I don't think the public
really understood

what was involved
in acquiring these animals.

I don't think people really
thought about the backstory.

The cost of creating
an impressive menagerie

was exorbitant.

Circus owners could spend
several thousand dollars

on a single elephant.

Yet Barnum knew not to stint.

You've got to remember there
were no zoos to speak of then.

People, to see the animals,
they went to see the circus,

because that's where they were,

and advertising for circuses
in those days,

the posters and so forth,

they featured exotic animals as
much as they did the performers.

♪♪

The opportunity was there
to pet the animals.

The skin of some
of these animals

isn't like anything else
you will touch.

If you can touch a hippopotamus,

it doesn't feel
like anything else

that you can touch in the world.

Or if you can touch an elephant,

it doesn't feel like anything
else you can find in Iowa.

There is no other thing
that feels like that.

And I think that's one
of the moments of these places

that's magical.

♪♪

While Barnum replenished
the menagerie,

the work of pulling the show
together fell to W.C. Coup.

He oversaw the repair
and redecoration

of 150 wagons and carriages.

And he ordered
a dozen new tents,

including a big top

that Barnum claimed
could seat 13,000 people.

The tent had grown so large...

No longer round, but oval...

That people left their seats
to get better views,

creating pandemonium.

To restore order, Castello
proposed a revolutionary idea:

two rings of simultaneous
entertainment.

Barnum exploited the innovation
in his advertising.

His cast was so huge,
he claimed,

a second ring
was all but essential.

Promoting their circus as
"The Greatest Show on Earth,"

Barnum and Coup hired

a 22-person advertising
department.

♪♪

For the first time
in circus history,

Coup commissioned three-sheet
color lithographic posters,

which were
about seven feet tall.

♪♪

When you get
to a three-sheet poster,

at that scale,
you're approaching life size.

And so, when you walk up
to that poster,

you get the sense that
that performer is real,

is right there in front of you,

and you get an idea of
what you really are going to see

when you enter
into that circus tent.

When the show hit the road
in April 1873,

after a two-week run
in Manhattan,

everyone was astounded to see
how much bigger it had become.

♪♪

A typical visit
to the circus lasted hours.

It started with a trip
to the sideshow tent...

followed by a visit
to the menagerie.

Finally, spectators streamed
into the big top

for one of three
daily performances.

The acts there unfolded
much as they had

for the last several decades.

Featured among the 50
top performers that season

were acrobats,

equestrians,

strong men,

aerialists...

and Monsieur D'Atalie,
the man with the iron jaw.

D'Atalie lifted
a 40-gallon barrel

as well as a man carrying
200-pound weights,

with his teeth alone.

Though audiences found the
big top performances thrilling,

it was the sideshow tent

that most distinguished
Barnum's circus.

His interest
in human curiosities

turned the sideshow performances

into an essential feature
of the circus.

What we think of
as sideshow performers

had existed
in the circus before.

They were part of it,

but it's really
Barnum's specialty.

So part of what he brings
is a new focus

to that particular part
of the show.

It becomes the defining feature
of the Barnum Circus,

and then other circuses
have to follow,

because they can't offer less.

There's no question

that there's a large dimension
of exploitation.

There's a large dimension of
racialization running through.

There's a kind of exoticism.

In some cases, Chinese are
presented as human oddities.

All of that said, however,
these are not pure victims.

These are people
who make choices

and think strategically

about what forms
of upward mobility

are available to them

in a world without support
for those with disability.

Ann Leak was a armless woman

and her "act"
was basically to sew

and do different domestic tasks

on this elevated stage
in the sideshow tent.

She used her toe
to write out cards

for individual people
and date them.

For her, it was a way
to make money.

♪♪

By the time the show reached
Rutland, Vermont,

in the middle of June,

the promotion
had so saturated the area

that visitors came
by the thousands

from villages
in neighboring New York state.

Some arrived a day early.

Whereas in years past,

many New Englanders
had seen circuses as immoral,

there was nothing in Barnum's
show, the local paper said,

"to offend
the most refined modesty."

Barnum banned drinking
on the circus lot

and hired detectives
from the Pinkerton Agency

to keep everyone's wallets safe.

He knew that the circus had
a morally suspect reputation

on many different levels,

and what he does,
really in a remarkable way,

is create a kind
of marketing campaign

with testimonials from clergy,

from famous writers
and other celebrity figures,

who attest to the wholesomeness
of his circuses.

Barnum knew that in the end,

if you really wanted
to make it big,

you had to appeal
to a huge audience,

and that included women
and children.

Barnum, more than any,

began to see that the circus
is something for kids.

The show returned to New York
in the middle of October,

having traveled as far west
as St. Louis.

With audiences averaging around
10,000 people every performance,

by season's end, the circus
had grossed $1.5 million.

But the partners had far more
than their extraordinary profits

to be proud of.

♪♪

In just three years,

they had completely transformed
the circus business.

What Barnum's entry into
the circus business touches off

is a new era of rivalry
and competition...

The biggest and the best show,
the most incredible advertising.

Everyone else has to follow.

So in short order,

every large American circus is
traveling on the railroads.

That's how you make
bigger money.

Every American circus
is having herds of elephants.

So it becomes a function
of your show.

You can't just have
two elephants anymore.

You have to have six.

And then if one show has six,

one show has ten.

There's this unbelievable drive
for new attractions,

new forms of advertising,

new forms of entertainment

that can be incorporated
into the circus.

♪♪

♪♪

At the very thought of circus,

a swarm of long-imprisoned
desires breaks jail.

Armed with beauty
and demanding justice

and everywhere threatening us
with curiosity

and spring and childhood.

E.E. Cummings.

The American spirit,

a lot of it
would be about reinvention,

the idea of something
giving you promise.

The spirit
that brought people over

from the Old World to the New,

the spirit that rejected the
established culture of Europe,

was the same spirit that got
people to leave a small town

and join the circus.

♪♪

We often like to think about
running away with the circus

as a kind of stereotype
or a cliché.

But it's true.

People ran away with the circus.

And they did so
because it offered opportunities

for people who were perhaps
outsiders

in their own community.

A lot of people would watch this
wonderful show roll into town,

a magical world filled of people
doing extraordinary things,

and see that as a chance
to jump out of their everyday

and follow that.

♪♪

Many of those people
had run away,

they run away to,
to look for their dreams,

make their dreams come true.

It's a very different life
from any kind of other life.

♪♪

People have called it
a big top fever

that you never got over.

♪♪

To join the circus,

to crisscross the country,

to showcase the wonders
of the world,

what a lure to that.

♪♪

Part of the circus industry was
that you had to make promises

that your show
maybe couldn't keep,

that you had
a herd of 20 elephants,

that you had
this unbelievable attraction.

You kind of overpromise,
but as long as people show up,

it doesn't really matter.

You had to advertise
something new,

something exciting to get people
to come to the show.

As the 1874 circus season
got underway,

the hyperbole heated up.

Every showman wanted
to outdo Barnum.

No one was more eager
than Adam Forepaugh.

Like Barnum,
Forepaugh had grown up poor,

starting out
as a butcher's apprentice

at the age of 16.

By the time
the Civil War broke out,

he had turned to horse trading,

making a fortune
supplying the Union Army

with cavalry mounts.

In 1863, Forepaugh sold horses
to a shady circus manager,

who proved unable
to pay his bill.

In place of his fee,

Forepaugh took part ownership
of the circus.

And it turned out he had
a great knack for it,

and eventually
over the next 30 years,

ended up being one of
the finest showman in America.

He was the first circus
to have two tents.

He had a tent for the menagerie

and then one
for the performance.

In the 1860s and 1870s,

there were still
some moral opposition

from church groups
that saw the circus

as kind of an unworthy
waste of time.

So what he would do is
he would charge them a quarter

if they wanted to just go
through the menagerie

and see the animals,
which a lot of people did,

because there's an unquestioned
educational value to that.

Nobody ever accused Forepaugh of
not being able to make a buck.

He was extremely good at that.

The two-tent circus was

"How I caught
the church people,"

Forepaugh explained.

Within a few short years,

every other circus
had followed suit.

In 1874, he copied Barnum
by introducing a second ring

and vastly exaggerating
his lineup of performers.

Like Barnum,
he received gushing reviews.

"No triumph decreed to Roman
generals," wrote one reporter,

"could have equaled
the procession

"of Forepaugh's
Aggregation of Animals.

"Even Alexander the Great
would have made a poor show

in comparison."

While Forepaugh
could rival Barnum for size,

the Great International Circus
could not.

Owners James Cooper
and James Bailey

had their ambitions,
nonetheless.

♪♪

Bailey in particular
was a striver.

Born James Anthony McGinnis
in Detroit,

he had lost both his parents
by the age of eight.

He's raised as a ward
by his eldest sister.

By his own account,

she is a cruel
and often brutal person.

She beats him relentlessly.

She has him working
before he goes to school,

and he arrives at school late,

and then he's beaten at school
for being late.

And then he gets home,
and he's beaten again

for doing badly in school.

After Bailey decided
he needed to leave home,

to escape the clutches
of his sister,

he decided the way to do it
was to go swimming

with a bunch of his buddies
down in the river.

And what they did,
they went skinny-dipping,

they took their clothes off,

laid them on the side
of the bank,

went in the river,

and that was the last they saw
of James A. Bailey.

And because his clothes
were still there,

everybody thought,
"He's drowned."

James drifted
from place to place,

picking up work as a farmhand
and stable boy.

In 1860, he was working
as a bellboy

at a hotel in Pontiac, Michigan,

when Fred Bailey,
an advertising man

for the Robinson and Lake
Circus, came to stay.

12-year-old James was intrigued
by Bailey's roving line of work.

He begged Fred
to let him tag along

as an apprentice.

He becomes the advance man
and the billposter.

He had this little buggy
that he'd go around

and put up the posters
in the towns

ahead of the route
of the Robinson and Lake Circus

to announce that it was coming.

He got intimately involved

in understanding
all the local conditions

that are so important
in a circus being successful,

that another circus man
years later said,

"Any fool can start a circus.

It's the smart showman
that knows where to put it."

Since James felt greater
affection for the circus

than he ever had for his family,

he took Fred Bailey's last name.

He becomes in some ways
the archetypal story

of someone who runs away
to the circus,

and that the circus provides
a place to reinvent yourself.

♪♪

He very quickly rose
in the ranks

of the American circus.

At 13 years old,
he is an advance agent.

At 30, he is running a circus.

In between he does
a little bit of everything.

It's really a remarkable,
remarkable story.

Bailey had started out
with James Cooper in 1870,

running a concert
after the main show.

Within three years,
they were partners.

♪♪

In 1876,

the nation marked its centennial

with an elaborate exposition
in Philadelphia,

which would draw almost
ten million visitors

eager to see
the engineering marvels

of the day.

Wanting to avoid
the competition,

Bailey and Cooper headed west
to California.

♪♪

When they got to San Francisco,

James Bailey decided
to keep on going.

He took six elephants,
five camels, two tigers,

two lions, 40 horses,
and some 30 performers

across the Pacific to Australia.

The 7,500-mile journey
via Honolulu and Fiji

took six weeks.

The flash of insight
that Bailey has is,

"What if I went
to the Southern Hemisphere,

"where it's summer
during our winter,

and the show can keep going
for a consecutive year?"

Bailey spent 1877 touring
his show around Australia.

Everywhere he went,

audiences showered his circus
with accolades.

"It is large,"
wrote one reporter,

"excellent in character,
and eminently calculated

to impress
the sight-seeing mind.

Nothing equal to it has ever
appeared in the colony."

♪♪

The big thing that wowed
Australian audiences

was the size of the show.

There was no tent that big
in Australia.

And what's more is
he had five tents

housing five separate
attractions.

So there was a sideshow tent,

there was a museum,

there was a menagerie,

and then there was the main tent

where the performance
took place.

From Australia,

the circus toured the island
of Java,

where it picked up
local musicians

to play in the band.

When the strongwoman came on,

the Javanese were so astounded,

they stopped playing completely.

After touring New Zealand,

Bailey charted a sailing vessel

to take the circus
back across the Pacific

for a tour of South America.

The ship didn't see land
for more than 50 days.

♪♪

In December, the show packed up
and headed home.

From the moment they had
set sail across the Pacific,

Bailey and his troupe
had ricocheted

from one harrowing moment
to the next.

Four circus workers died in Java
of tropical diseases.

Turbulent seas
almost sunk their ship

on the way to New Zealand.

And at one point,

a tiger escaped its cage
in the hold.

But Bailey survived it all.

After more than two years
of almost constant travel,

his circus had covered
more than 76,000 miles.

When the intrepid showman
arrived back in New York,

he was worldly, daring,

and ready to take on
the toughest competition.

♪♪

Bailey returned to a country

in the grip
of momentous changes.

More than a quarter of Americans
now lived in cities.

Some 90,000 miles
of railroad tracks

carved their way
across the nation.

That ever-expanding network
was fueling an unrivaled period

of industrialization
and innovation.

Alexander Graham Bell
had just invented the telephone;

Thomas Edison, the phonograph.

And the month Bailey's ship
docked in New York's harbor,

a Cleveland-based inventor

demonstrated his system
of electric lighting

in a Philadelphia
department store.

Bailey was so impressed,

he became the first circus owner
in the country

to buy an electric lighting
system.

His circus was lit up
by electricity

before any city in America

had a system
of electric street lighting.

It was the focal point
of his advertising.

He even sold tickets
for a tour of the generator.

A huge number of Americans

saw electricity
for the first time on a circus.

You can just imagine the,
you know,

to go to some little town
in Arkansas or some place

and to be able to see that.

Part of what makes the circus
such a powerful cultural form

is its ability
to absorb various influences

and essentially
program them anew

for American audiences.

Anything that's happening

in American culture
and American entertainment

soon get sucked into the circus.

Really any innovation
you can think of

gets repackaged and branded
into the American circus.

Whether it was the lighting
or the herd of ten elephants

or the nighttime parades,

Cooper and Bailey
turned away crowds

at stop after stop.

Bailey began
the following season

with an aggressive
advertising campaign.

He ordered the design
and production

of 82 different lithographs

and then sent
his publicity team out

on three advance cars

to plaster the route
with posters.

Circuses could spend
many thousands of dollars

on advertising, whether
it was newspapers, posters.

Circuses put money
into advertising

in a way
that no other business did.

The average circus poster

was so much bigger
than any rival ad,

that it was meant
to grab your attention.

Barnum's posters that season

focused
on his most dangerous act yet:

Zazel, the fearless
human cannonball.

She got her start at
the Royal Aquarium in Britain,

and it was the concept
of a showman named Farini.

He came up with the idea
of shooting a person,

most specifically a woman,

because that added
to the excitement of it.

Zazel's inclusion
in the circus program

is a reflection
of a growing emphasis

on death-defying spectacle

over the intricacies
of individual artistry.

And the act of claiming
hundreds of yards of space

vertically, horizontally,

in defiance of death,

really becomes the signature

of this enormous new form
of circus.

♪♪

It was dumb luck, however,

that gave the greatest
promotional coup of the season

to Barnum's main rival.

James Bailey's elephant, Hebe,

unexpectedly gave birth
to a 213-pound baby.

She was, Bailey claimed,

the first elephant
born in the West

since the Roman Empire.

They name it Columbia.

He names it that,

because this is
the first elephant born

in the United States,

and it's a publicity coup.

I mean, people love elephants

and then people really love
baby elephants.

It creates media publicity
all over the country.

Barnum stoked the media frenzy.

He wired Bailey
and offered him $100,000

for his elephant calf.

Bailey used the telegram
against Barnum,

publishing it widely
with the caption,

"What Barnum Thinks
of our Baby Elephant."

Barnum encouraged the press
to believe he was distraught

by Columbia's birth

and saw no path forward

other than to merge his show
with Bailey's.

It turns out,
that's completely untrue.

Barnum and Bailey signed
a contract on May 26, 1880.

You don't see
any of this business

about Barnum wanting
to buy the elephant

until after the contract
had been signed,

and it was a publicity stunt,

and I think Barnum
probably cooked it up.

That fall,
both Barnum and Bailey

severed their relationships
with their partners.

Then the two veteran showmen
announced

that they were joining forces.

Barnum had watched Bailey
closely enough

to know he had just signed
a deal

with the most ingenious
impresario

in show business.

One of the things

that would make the Barnum and
Bailey partnership work so well

was that they had very different
personalities.

Barnum was very much the man
that wanted the spotlight.

He lived his entire life
in public.

Bailey, on the other hand,
is very private, very reserved.

He just had a real
organizational acumen

with logistics,
with performance.

Bailey would set himself up
a little table

near the front entrance
of the circus,

and he was constantly
receiving telegrams

from his advance people,

telling him what they were doing
and him sending an advice out.

He micromanaged the show

and particularly
the advance of it.

He was a tremendous risk taker

and a very creative,
innovative guy.

Some observers predicted

that the Barnum and Bailey
amalgamation

would be too unwieldy
to put on the road.

Bailey disagreed.

"Our show for 1881," he said,

"will be known in the amusement
records of America

as the greatest artistic success
of the time."

♪♪

The circus is a tiny, closed-off
arena of forgetfulness.

For a space, it enables us
to lose ourselves,

to dissolve in wonder and bliss,

to be transported by mystery.

We come out of it in a daze,

saddened and horrified

by the everyday face
of the world.

Henry Miller.

♪♪

Circus Day
with a capital C, capital D,

was a big deal,
and it was very special.

It was something
that happened once a year,

like the fireworks
of the Fourth of July.

You take your children to see,

because it's only once a year,

and you're only a child once,
for heaven's sake.

For almost a century,

Americans across the country
looked forward eagerly

to the cherished rituals
of Circus Day.

They began before dawn,

as curious observers
began turning out

to watch the circus arrive
on the outskirts of town.

All of a sudden

you could hear
that whistle way off,

and everybody would say,
"It's coming."

And it would pull in.

Oh, my Lord, people would
just flock to the track

to watch it come in.

It was just a magical thing.

There was action all around.

Get those horses through,
let's go.

People would speculate.

You'd hear people talking,
"What do you suppose that is?

What's in that wagon?"

And then the elephants,
12 in number,

came out of that stock car.

And we just kept counting them
as they came out.

It was just
a magical experience.

You come in early

and you watch,

they're pulling out
different things,

canvas, poles.

"Okay, what's going
to happen now?"

They open up those canvases,
starting to unroll them,

and then somebody get in there

and start lacing
the pieces together.

It's amazing to see that.

♪♪

There'd be the boss canvas man,
and he'd say,

"You boys want to see
the circus?"

"Oh, yes, sir, sure we do."

Well, they say, "If you help put
up these side poles here,

and pull out this canvas,
you'll get a free ticket."

And that's how that worked.

You get half the town,
all kids mostly,

wanted to help.

As you see the top come up,
that is a sight.

That really is
the most beautiful thing.

♪♪

In mid-morning,

as throngs pressed together
along Main Street,

the circus paraded through,
showing off its finery.

Up to three miles long

of animals,

of beautiful ladies
on incredibly beautiful horses,

wagons of all sizes, bands,

all would parade
through your town,

creating gridlock.

There would be people
in buildings

on the second and third stories,

looking down
at this extravaganza.

The showmen knew this,

because they had
beautiful scenes

gilded and painted
on the tops of the wagons,

so that people
could see that too.

My father had an aunt

who worked in a downtown
Atlanta department store,

and she had a space
on the second floor,

so that when
the circus parade came,

he was right there to watch
the whole procession.

Certain people,
if you grew up on a farm,

had never been
to certainly a tent

with 10,000
or 12,000 people in it.

And if you include the number of
people milling about the grounds

and the circus folk as well,

it's probably the largest
collection of people

that they had ever witnessed.

As the evening show
was about to begin,

the cheery strains
of the circus band

drew the audience
under the canvas.

Welcome to the Greatest Show...

FRED DAHLINGER, JR.:
Even while the big-top show
is taking place,

working men are already starting
to take down the cook tents,

the sideshow, the menagerie,

because by the time
the big-top show ends,

the working men
are waiting there

to start tearing down the seats,

take down the big top,
and load it up.

It changes everything,
the circus coming to town.

It transformed a town in a way

that I don't think
any entertainment form

has done since.

The circus "is a kingdom
on wheels," one witness noted,

"a city that folds itself up
like an umbrella.

"Quietly and swiftly every night

"it picks up
in its magician's arms

"theatre, hotel,
schoolroom, barracks, home,

"whisking them all miles away

and setting them down
before sunrise in a new place."

♪♪

In preparation
for their first season together,

P.T. Barnum and James Bailey

constructed permanent
winter quarters

on five acres of land
in Barnum's hometown

of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

The facility was enormous.

The shed
for the train cars alone

was 350 feet long.

The following spring,

the showmen opened
their combined circus

in Madison Square Garden,

starting a tradition
that would endure

into the middle
of the next century.

♪♪

Audiences were dismayed
to discover

the acts were now spread
across three rings, not two.

"Even a cross-eyed man can't
look at three rings at once,"

wrote one irritated spectator.

But larger tents
meant greater profits,

so the three rings
became a permanent fixture.

The circus becomes
a kind of celebration

of American profit-making,

American ingenuity
and entrepreneurship.

And so, in many ways,
it is the most visible form

of corporate capitalism
during the Gilded Age.

Barnum is right up there

with people like Andrew Carnegie
in steel,

John Rockefeller in oil,
J.P. Morgan in banking.

But his products
and his business models

are visible and spectacular
and talked about

in ways that the others are not.

♪♪

Like other 19th century
entrepreneurs,

circus impresarios
made enormous profits,

in part because their workers
were paid poorly

and their businesses
were unregulated.

Every season, men were injured
or killed.

An ever-changing roster
of workers

did the most dangerous work.

James Bailey would say
it was easier and cheaper

to add new men at every stop

than to pay higher wages
and keep them for the season.

Though he could have hired
African Americans for even less,

he never did.

The discrimination that was
present in America at that time

against African-Americans
was embraced by the circus.

You could not get
white working men

to work alongside
black working men.

And it meant that
you had to have a crew

that was either all white
or all black.

African Americans did
the most difficult work,

the dirtiest work,
the toughest work.

Barnum and Bailey's
biggest concern in 1881

was not their workforce,

but the redoubtable
Adam Forepaugh.

The two rival shows
played 38 cities in common

over the summer.

In their competition,
Barnum and Forepaugh

were both trying
to elevate their own shows

but also trying
to demean their competitor.

It became very personal.

And so, you have Adam Forepaugh,

who is a giant
among the pygmies,

and portrays himself
in lithographs

as this giant man
with small versions

of P. T. Barnum
and James Bailey running away

in fear at his amazing stature.

♪♪

Both sides took jabs
at each other

in so-called "rat sheets."

Barnum claimed Forepaugh
had bought

his old, dilapidated equipment.

Forepaugh accused Barnum
of lying.

In St. Louis,
Forepaugh hung 22,000 posters.

Barnum and Bailey put up 23,000.

♪♪

Forepaugh's biggest coup
was his creation

of the first truly giant
opening pageant

called a spectacle,
or spec for short.

Really what it's about is
showing all of the wonders

of the Forepaugh show.

So, it starts
with a street parade

and amazing floats and barges

and the elephants
that are draped

in beautiful, rich blankets,

and all of the other animals
paraded through the street.

And then, it also serves
as a grand entrée

into the performance itself.

And it proves
very, very popular,

both in terms of the advertising

and people that go to the show
seemed to be fascinated

by these things,

and pretty soon,
other shows get on board

and start staging
their own specs.

♪♪

Though it would be years

before Barnum and Bailey mounted
a spectacle themselves,

they finished the 1881 season
triumphant.

When the accounts were tallied

for the 11,000-mile tour
through 19 states,

they showed the circus had made
more than $1.1 million.

Barnum took home
$200,000 himself.

This competition
with Barnum and Forepaugh

is something that defines
the 1880s

in the circus industry.

This is the two titans.

It was a brawling situation,
bruising situation,

with competition
between these rival shows.

The inventiveness born
of such intense rivalry...

The expanding menageries,
the perilous new acts,

the monstrous size of it all...

Had launched the American circus
into its golden age.

If the circus is about big,
and about unusual,

and about something extreme,
that's an elephant.

They're sort of the perfect
embodiment of the circus

in the late 19th century.

I think a lot of people
are so surprised

when they see elephants move,

how graceful they are and how
quiet their step is.

The trunk of an elephant
has the dexterity

of a couple of fingers

and yet the power
of many people.

And an elephant can take
the penny from your hand.

That's an extraordinary
experience.

It's kind of unimaginable that
there's this animal

several tons in weight

that can take a penny
out of your hand.

♪♪

In the winter of 1882

P.T. Barnum made
the most rewarding purchase

of his career.

For $10,000, he bought Jumbo,
England's treasured elephant,

from
the London Zoological Society.

Jumbo was a very,
very big elephant.

Most of the elephants that were
showing up in this country

are female Asian elephants.

He was a male African elephant;

the males are much,
much, much bigger.

The sale caused an uproar.

He was a beloved creature
in London,

and schoolchildren are weeping
over the departure of Jumbo,

newspaper editors are writing
about the horror of the idea

of Jumbo leaving behind his buns
and his good diet

from
the London Zoological Society

and eating waffles and popcorn
at an American circus.

A lot is made of Jumbo

being essentially taken
from the British,

and that this, in a way, is a
metaphor for America's rise.

And so Barnum captures
that moment

where America can take
the prize gem of England.

♪♪

When all the protests failed,

Jumbo was shipped in a crate
aboard a British vessel,

and greeted by crowds

at New York's
Castle Garden pier.

Jumbo delivers, by all accounts.

I mean, the animal was big,

but it's Barnum's publicity
made him seem even bigger.

And if you see the posters,

you see an unbelievably
large elephant.

The man knew
how to get people talking.

The whole country got caught up
in Jumbomania.

The elephant's name became
a way to say enormous.

His likeness appeared
on ads for cigars,

dry goods,

and spools of thread.

Jumbo made a fortune
for Barnum and Bailey.

Their profit
for the year was $602,000.

That just had to have been just
an absolutely slam bang season

for them to do that,

and it was because of Jumbo.

♪♪

Forepaugh didn't take
the Jumbo craze lying down.

He countered with his own
enormous pachyderm, Bolivar,

claiming he was the most
gigantic beast on earth.

Forepaugh also boasted
having 25 performing elephants

trained largely by Eph Thompson,

one of the few African Americans
ever to appear

under a 19th-century big top.

Thompson saw
the Forepaugh Circus

when he was a teenager.

He was one of these people
that got circus fever,

and he left with the circus.

Then his first job was to clean
up after elephants.

He falls in love with elephants,

and he learns how to train them.

He's trained these elephants
in this really amazing way.

The way that he performed,
not by his own choosing,

was in a boxing
elephant routine.

As they sparred,

the elephant would always have
the upper hand.

The elephant would literally
box Thompson into the ring bank,

often times flipping him over.

It was extraordinarily
frustrating,

because the act was clownish.

It did not allow him

to display his talents
in working with big animals

in a way that created dignity
and power.

As the herds got bigger,

and trainers tried
to outdo each other

with more sophisticated tricks,

the strain on circus elephants
increased.

No, no!

Not all trainers were gentle.

"Talk about training an elephant
with kind words,"

Thompson told a reporter.

"Why, that's all bosh.

"The kindest treatment
I believe in

is a steel-lashed whip."

Different trainers,
working with different animals,

with their own different skills
and experiences,

trained each animal differently.

There were undoubtedly trainers

who were clearly able to use

more of the positive techniques
that we would call

sort of positive reinforcement
now.

But the animal has to understand
that the trainer is powerful

in ways that the animal is not.

In some cases,
that has undoubtedly been done

through just brute violence.

The vast majority of elephant
trainers and handlers

deeply loved their elephants.

The relationships that
they forged with these animals

were often incredibly tender

and attentive,

but one thing that happens

throughout the history
of the American circus

is that elephants "go ugly"
or go bad.

And while these incidents
were relatively rare,

they do reflect the conditions
of their confinement

and their frustration
for these deeply social animals.

If an elephant killed someone,

then that elephant
could face execution.

♪♪

These executions were often
protracted and horrific

and deeply disturbing,
violent affairs.

The most famous elephant
in America

came to a grisly end himself,

though his death was accidental.

On September 15, 1885,

Jumbo was struck
by an unscheduled freight train

after an evening performance.

His skull was fractured
in several places.

The circus star died
within minutes.

Jumbo's death, which made
headlines across the country,

was a huge financial blow
to Barnum.

The show had made more money

in the two years
after his arrival

than it would
until the end of the century.

Anxious to minimize his losses,

Barnum arranged
for a taxidermist

to preserve the country's
most celebrated elephant.

They mounted his skeleton
and his hide both,

and they were presented
in one of the tents of the show.

So even in death,
Jumbo was a great attraction.

♪♪

"Dear Sir," wrote P.T. Barnum,

"I desire to carry out
as far as possible

"an idea I have long entertained

"of forming a collection,
in pairs or otherwise,

"of all the uncivilized races
in existence.

"A group of three to six
or even ten

would be specially novel."

In 1882 Barnum sent his letter

to U.S. consuls
around the world,

seeking help with what he called

an "Ethnological Congress
of People."

The Ethnological Congress is
a expansion of the sideshow.

So in the past,
the sideshow had involved

12, 15, 20 different figures
or acts.

Now Barnum wants to create
a kind of living taxonomy

of cultures and races
and nationalities

from around the world.

It's also quite literally a form
of colonialism and imperialism,

because they are being acquired,
transferred,

shipped back to New York City
through diplomatic agencies.

"The remuneration
of these people,"

Barnum wrote,
"is usually minimal.

"I shall see
that they are presented

with fancy articles
and small allowances monthly."

Over the next two years,

Barnum contracted with people
from Asia,

Australia, Europe,

the American West,

and Africa.

At least one of them,

an indigenous Australian
named Tambo Tambo,

was brought to America
against his will.

♪♪

Barnum advertised the exhibit

as a "Huge Ethnological Congress
of Barbarous and Savage Tribes."

The group was exhibited
in the animal menagerie.

When the big-top performance
began,

Chang the Chinese Giant led them
into the main pavilion

for the opening procession.

♪♪

Most visitors were fascinated.

Part of that opportunity was
to touch them,

was to touch their skin,
and to touch their hair.

That touch is about
a kind of separation

of who you are
and what the object is.

And it is acceptable
for you to control it

and touch it in that way.

One of the experiences
of these types of exhibits

is an "us and them."

There's the group of us
who are observing,

and we're connected
to each other.

And then there's the "them"
that we're looking at.

They are the other,
they are the difference,

they are what, in a sense,

gives us a shared identity
as an audience.

By the spring of 1885,

the constant turmoil
of the circus trade

was wearing on James Bailey.

Physically
and emotionally exhausted,

he took a leave of absence.

It took him two years

to feel strong enough
to come back.

Without Bailey,

Barnum's once-meteoric profits
began to sag.

♪♪

In 1886 Barnum and Forepaugh
temporarily made peace.

They mounted a joint show
under canvas in Philadelphia.

Some 15,000 people poured
into a big top

as long as three city blocks

to see 66 acts perform
in four rings and one stage.

The following year,

with posters
from both great shows

festooning the outside
of Madison Square Garden,

the two impresarios combined
their circuses

for an opening run in New York.

As the profits rolled in,

Forepaugh and Barnum divided up
the country between them.

Barnum played the west one year,
and the east the next.

You will see a menagerie
of beasts from the wild.

♪♪

The Adam Forepaugh Circus,
however,

would not much longer be
the greatest threat

to "The Greatest Show on Earth."

A thousand miles west
of Bridgeport,

five sons of a poor immigrant
harness-maker

had just launched
a one-ring wagon show.

It was a small,
inconsequential circus,

but it wouldn't stay that way
for long.

♪♪

"There are no spectators.

"Every last one of us,

"svelte and lithe
and sheathed in silk,

"is swinging in space.

"There is not a flabby muscle,
not an awkward limb,

not a sagging knee
in the whole tent."

The Nation.

Within each of us is that desire
to do something spectacular.

It's that yearning
of being able to defy gravity,

to fly through the air,

to be that princess
on the back of the horse

that everyone is looking at.

♪♪

It's a glory there.

I thought,
"I'm better than anybody else.

"I'm up in the air,
what are they?

They're just on the ground."

you'll see the death-defying...

It just lifts you
beyond anything you can imagine.

You're flying.

You're literally flying.

My mind,
it's completely at ease.

It's just peaceful.

You find peace.

It is an act of creation,

but it has to come
from the heart.

You have to light the fire.

You have to light the desire.

♪♪

There has to be something
burning to give.

For eight minutes,

those performers cease to be
human beings.

They're gods.

♪♪

When somebody tell you
you got sawdust in your veins,

that's exactly what it is.

I used to love to pick
a few people there

and smile especially at them.

♪♪

You got to make it look easy,
look beautiful,

and have them pay attention
to you.

♪♪

The public,
you want them to love you.

The more applause you get,

the happier you are.

And walking out of there
makes you feel so good.

♪♪

"One of the very best ways
to lose a lot of money

and to lose it quickly,"

a reporter
for "Fortune Magazine" observed,

"is to start a circus."

Every year
through the 19th century,

circuses proved the point,

surviving one season
or maybe two

before going belly up the next.

Yet every year,

a few more plucky dreamers
tried their hands at the trade.

In 1882 there were 33 circuses
touring America.

In 1884 there were almost 50.

Among the newcomers

were five brothers living
in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Al, Otto, Alf T., Charles,
and John Ringling

had seen their first circus
in Iowa as children.

They had scrambled out
of the house before dawn

to meet a steamboat
carrying a traveling show

up the Mississippi River.

The kids were out of their minds

even from the moment
they off-loaded the equipment.

You have a steamboat
with a calliope loaded

and smoking and steaming.

By the time they put together
a parade,

the kids were just awestruck.

Al, the eldest,
never gave up hope

of creating his own circus.

In 1882
he persuaded his brothers

to produce
a traveling musical show.

Over several winters,
performing in small town halls,

the Ringlings saved $1,000,

enough money to buy
three secondhand wagons

and a tent
that could seat a few hundred.

With veteran showman
Yankee Robinson's name

to promote the show,

the brothers opened the season
in Baraboo in May 1884.

Their circus featured a handful
of contortionists and jugglers,

one clown,

and AI's wife, Louise.

All the boys, at that point
of time, in 1884,

did something.

So, John Ringling
was a singing Dutch comic clown.

You had Charles
playing instruments.

Al, who knew how to juggle,
balanced plows on his chin.

After the packed first show,

a critic wrote,

"The performances
were very creditable

considering the boys
had never had any practice."

Then, the Ringlings loaded up
12 wagons

and hit the road.

Local kids served as teamsters.

The boys often fished
for their dinner

or shot food for their dinner.

And so this operation

was something
that was really invisible

to the likes
of Barnum and Bailey.

They were so small,
they did the wire act,

walking the high wire was done
on top of the tent,

usually for free,

and it helped move people
into the show.

The first season,
the Ringlings played 114 towns,

mostly one-night stands,
in four states.

The frail
and aging Yankee Robinson

died halfway through the season.

But losing their mentor
didn't slow the brothers down.

Everything went wrong,
but everything went right.

As much as things could fail,

the crowds were there
and so was the money.

That first season,
they paid everybody well,

and they came back home,

and they emptied out
their sack of money,

and they had a lot of it,
and they were really amazed.

The following few years,
the show grew steadily.

Each season they swapped out
their tent

for a slightly larger one.

By 1886 the brothers owned
a bear, an eagle,

and several monkeys.

Two years later,
they bought a pair of elephants.

They were quite young
when they started.

John Ringling was a teenager.

My grandfather and his brothers

never had
a partnership agreement,

nothing in writing.

They were five brothers
that got along.

They were disciplined,
highly disciplined.

They took very little money out
in those first few years

for themselves,

but they really enriched
the show.

♪♪

"It wasn't that they were
so smart," a nephew said,

"but that there were
so goddamn many of them."

If you were going to mess
with one of them,

you were going to mess
with all five of them.

They stuck together.

Once they took a vote,

that was it.

Everybody ponied up,
got in line,

and they all supported
the decision that had been made.

And I think that unity
is really the secret

to their great success
as showmen.

Their circus was always
on the up and up.

They called themselves
the leaders

of the new school
of American showmen,

and they used to call them
the Sunday school showmen,

because they didn't have
all this nefarious stuff

on their lots
like other circuses did.

They had rules for everything.

These were tight rules.

They couldn't drink.

No swearing.

They had Pinkertons on their lot

so the public could see
that they meant business,

and this earned them
the reputation,

the Sunday School Circus

and is probably the thing
that really catapulted them

into their success.

♪♪

For the first few seasons,

the Ringlings were
a regional outfit.

In the fall of 1889 that changed

when Adam Forepaugh agreed
to sell them 11 railroad cars

on the cheap.

The Ringling Brothers Circus
went on rails in 1890.

It was their first season
on the railroad track,

and that's what really put them
into the big leagues.

That was the differentiating
factor of...

between a big
and a little circus.

The following season,

John Ringling routed the show
eastward,

from Iowa to Wisconsin, Ohio,
West Virginia, and Maryland.

For the first time,
the Ringlings hit cities

with populations
of more than 10,000 people,

right in Barnum
and Forepaugh's territory.

The Ringling brothers
returned home heroes.

"The boys are hustlers
and no mistake,"

crowed one local paper.

"They are Baraboo boys."

Adam Forepaugh wasn't around

to see how the Ringlings fared
with his railroad cars.

In early 1890
Forepaugh caught a cold,

which turned into pneumonia.

On the evening of January 22,
at the age of 58,

the great showman passed away
at home in Philadelphia.

Scores of circus folk went
to pay their last respects,

including two
of the Ringling brothers.

Neither Barnum nor Bailey
attended,

but they took note.

When Adam Forepaugh died,

the reality was there wasn't
any other equal competitor

for the Barnum and Bailey Show.

It had been Forepaugh and Barnum

for so long,

that the death of that rival
was significant.

♪♪

Barnum didn't outlive
his adversary for long.

That November,

the 80-year-old impresario
suffered a major stroke.

Five months later, surrounded
by family and friends,

Phineas Taylor Barnum died
in his sleep.

Barnum is eulogized
and talked about

in a way that's
virtually unprecedented

in American history.

Barnum is remembered and debated
on the front page

of literally hundreds
of newspapers around the world.

♪♪

Every major western capital,

small towns
across the United States.

Hundreds of thousands
of words spent

trying to make sense and trying
to understand what it was

to think about P.T. Barnum's
significance

and legacy for American culture.

Just days before he died,

Barnum wrote his younger partner
with some parting advice.

"You must have always a great
and progressive show,"

he told Bailey.

"I am too weak
to write more now,

"but let me entreat you

"to never allow
the honorable title

"of 'The Greatest Show on Earth'

to be in any way lessened
in fame."

Some observers doubted
Bailey was up to the task.

Shortly after Barnum's death,

a journalist predicted
that the old man's show

was too centered
on his remarkable personality

to survive without him.

The writer laid his bets instead
on five young men from Baraboo.

"The Ringling Brothers,"
he declared,

"have hardly more than started

"on their career
as a leading big show...

"Conjecture fails to place
a limit

on their future possibilities."

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪