Word: barnumism
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...days of the circus' death-defying stunts, as the days of its parades down Main Street, are over. Both are now an unnecessary complication of an already complicated routine. Since Ringling's and Barnum & Bailey's have combined, such competitive stunts are no longer demanded. Fellows admits that accidents still happen under the big top, but on no such scale as in the dangerous days of looping automobiles and diving bicycles. Such ' hair-raising numbers as Clyde Beatty's animal-training act are not popular with all members of the audience, and present knotty transportation...
...elected President Jerome De Witt Barnum, publisher of the Syracuse, N. Y. Post-Standard...
...Great Ziegfeld (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). According to the curious credo of the U. S. theatre, the late Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was an amalgamation of P. T. Barnum, Lucullus and St. Francis of Assisi. combining the advantageous features of all three, while the musical shows he produced were prodigies of good taste, imagination and romantic ingenuity. The Great Ziegfeld perpetuates this questionable legend with characteristic Hollywood insistence...
...Manhattan 14 years later Showman Phineas Taylor Barnum crowned his noisy career by importing Jenny Lind, a Swedish vocalist for whom he had built up a tremendous ballyhoo, to sing for New Yorkers at five dollars a head. The New York Tribune's reviewer thought this no excessive charge. In his paper for Sept. 12, 1850, he extolled "the quality of that voice, so pure, so sweet, so fine, so whole and all-pervading. . . . We never heard tones which in, their sweetness went so far. They brought the most distant and ill-seated auditor close...
...Some biographers disagree with Ambassador Troyanovsky; they would attribute this remark to Phineas Taylor Barnum...