Word: circusing
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Since the death last year of Dexter Fellows, circus pressagent extraordinary and perennial, the literature of the circus has seemed as subdued as mourning. With Big Show, the first novel of a circus-loving staff member of The New Yorker, the circus goes to town in bigger & better literary spangles than ever. A three-ring romance presenting a tender love story, an engaging dog story and authentic circus life, Big Show shares with Dexter Fellows' ballyhoo the distinction of being frequently livelier than the circus itself...
...story contains many a hero, but its main hero is Bob Boulton, a lazy, circus-struck, upState New York kid who teaches his collie, Skipper, a repertory of backyard tricks, rises from a frowsy dog-&-pony show to headline billing in Madison Square Garden in The Greatest Show on Earth. With him goes pretty Ann, a blonde snake charmer whom he won when she was abandoned by an athletic, womanizing clown...
When Bob and his Canine Prodigy are the stars of a successful traveling circus, he makes a bad mistake, accepts a contract for the Big Show which includes his doubling in a high-wire leap and Ann joining a snake act. Thereafter the story centres on the Big Show at Madison Square Garden, spotlights the thinly disguised big-time circus stars: the Flying Codonas, Hugo Zacchini, Clyde Beatty, and, most brilliantly of all, the "animal-audience." Sure enough, Bob's dog act is a flop. Ann is bitten by a huge python and has a miscarriage. And every high...
...enough just to be good at the job; they had to be constantly different also. The one possible formula was: Don't have a formula; the one rule for success: Don't follow it up. Their last five shows explain what they mean. Jumbo was circus set to music, On Your Toes a spoof at ballet, Babes in Arms about kids in a depression world, I'd Rather Be Right a rubdown of F. D. R., I Married An Angel a pure extravaganza that started in Heaven and ended in Radio City...
...largest small businessmen invited by Secretary of Commerce Daniel Calhoun Roper to a Conference of Little Business in Washington last February was DeWitt McKinley Emery-6 ft. 6 in. When that conference became a circus it made red-headed Mr. Emery very angry. Two months previously he had conceived on his own idea of a national conference of small businessmen, had sent out from his Akron, Ohio stationery plant a form letter to other little men which began: "The sheriff is about to get my business. How's yours?" He attended the Washington shenanigans, was disgusted, decided...