Word: barnumism
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Legend says that when P. T. Barnum, James Gordon Bennett, Edwin Booth or Colonel Joe ("Gin") Rickey began to brim over at the Hoffman, Bouguereau's girls came to life. In 1934 a smaller Nymphs and Satyr appeared in Trenton, N.J.'s Stacy-Trent Hotel, where novices are told that on the stroke of midnight the picture turns around, reveals the nymphs to better advantage. Robert R. Meyer, owner of the smaller painting, thinks that Bouguereau may have painted a second, but has not proved...
...private at South Carolina's Fort Jackson: Woo Eng Bunker, grandson of Eng, one of Phineas T. Barnum's original Siamese twins (Eng & Chang...
...blood among some Barnum & Bailey sideshow performers produced a dressing-tent brawl in Kansas City involving the fat lady, Baby Betty, Sword-Swallower Patricia Smith, The Great Shackles, and a hula dancer. (The midgets ran out.) For hitting Baby over the head with a pop bottle, Swallower Patricia was fined $20 by a city judge. She said it was worth it. Shortly 500-odd-pound Baby sued the swallower for $3,000. The bottle had hit her so hard, she claimed, that "all bones, muscles, tissues, nerves and my entire body were bruised, contused, lacerated and sprained." Old Fashioned...
...though the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey show has traded atmosphere for oomph, its exhibits are much the same as ever. There are no longer any tumbling Japs; but 600-lb., 12-year-old Gargantua is still on display in the basement. The sad, crummy-looking clowns still provoke mirth. Massimilliano Truzzi still juggles flaming torches; the Wallendas ride a bicycle tandem on the high wire; the Flying Concellos do their breathless, double-and-triple-somersault flying leaps; the lions & tigers look simultaneously ferocious and bored; the trained seals render My Country, 'Tis of Thee; and the band still...
Bridgeport, Conn., the home town of Phineas T. Barnum, is laying down some fine new streets. They cut through the circus lots and leave no space for tents...