Word: barnumism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
WINDING up a five-week stand in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden last week, Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus was off for Boston on the first lap of its annual 10,000-mile tour. As always, the "Greatest Show on Earth" was jammed with enough clowns, animals and death-defying aerialists to bewilder the most attentive youngster in the audience. And, as always, the whole show sparkled with a brand-new spring outfit of costumes, scenery and floats. The man who dresses the circus anew each year, "from the sawdust up" (moss-green this year), is a mild...
...opening night of the Ringling Brothers circus in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden this week, the beasts took second billing to beauty. Among the scheduled attractions: Marlene Dietrich, in a ringmaster's uniform that would have had Barnum himself barking with pride. The occasion: a three-ring benefit performance for cerebral-palsy victims...
...with these highbrow attractions, the picture presents a fairly lowbrow, offstage story loosely based on Hurok's 1946 autobiography, Impresario. Hurok (David Wayne) is depicted as a sort of Russian Horatio Alger who migrated to America, and became in short order the Barnum of the arts by purveying musical culture to the masses. For drama, the picture develops a domestic schism between Hurok and his wife (Anne Bancroft), caused by his excessive devotion to his work...
...onetime landmark in Bridgeport, Conn, was marked for demolition by a real-estate developer: the full-size house with doll-size furnishings built in 1863 for the 31-in.-high circus midget Tom Thumb, who gained world fame and fortune with Circus Tycoon P. T. Barnum...
...twice ran away with circuses, and at 16 made his way to Paris, where he learned animal painting from Rosa Bonheur. On his return, he went west with a circus, painting the animals and developing an interest in Indian life. Later he decorated circus wagons for P. T. Barnum, finally decided his life was too tame and set forth in search of savages...