Word: barnumism
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Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein got no encouragement at home to go into show business. His grandfather, Oscar Hammerstein I, was a kind of highbrow P. T. Barnum with a passion for opera. A short, stubby man with a truculent Vandyke and a shining topper, Oscar I roamed the world founding opera houses and losing fortunes in the process of trying to rival the Metropolitan. His sons, William (who managed the famed Victoria which Oscar I built) and Arthur (who became a well-known theatrical producer) were distressed by this operamania. "I wish the hell," Oscar II remembers hearing them...
Ever since Phineas T. Barnum observed that "a sucker is born every minute" and proceeded to prove it with a fabulous assortment of hokum, men have tried to describe the mystery and glamour surrounding circus life. But most attempts at painting the lives and loves of an India Rubber Man or drawing the character behind a barker's chant have failed miserably. Circus people became either ridiculous or dull under the pens of fascinated, but insensitive authors. "Gus the Great" is no unhappy commentary by someone outside the realm. Mr. Duncan treats his subject with great dignity and honest realism...
...train's backers might well have assumed that their project would be as free of criticism as the Barnum & Bailey Circus. But no; the attacks had already begun. Michigan's Congressman Clare E. Hoffman, a hard-shelled, far-right Republican, at once denounced it as a Democratic "buildup for 1948." Illinois' 81-year-old Adolph Sabath, a Democrat, complained because no copy of the Wagner Labor Act was included in the exhibits. In Henry Wallace's New Republic, Langston Hughes, Red-winged Negro poet, heaved a shrewdly aimed rock...
Turnstile Sociology. Jackie's daring on the baselines has been matched by shrewd Branch Rickey's daring on the color line. Rickey gave Robinson his chance. As boss of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Rickey is a mixture of Phineas T. Barnum and Billy Sunday, who is prone to talk piously of the larger and higher implications of what he is doing. There were large implications, of course, in signing Jackie Robinson, but the influence on the box office was a lot easier to figure. Jackie Robinson has pulled about $150,000 in extra admissions this season...
...while, Roosevelt rode in an armored car that had originally belonged to Al Capone. Later, improved models were carried (on presidential tours) in an oversized baggage car that had once hauled animals for Barnum & Bailey's circus. Few possibilities were overlooked by the Presidential Detail: F.D.R.'s special Pullman was watertight and equipped with submarine escape hatches...