Word: circusing
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...entirely different breed of Democrat than the Floridians brought from Mississippi. From New York they summoned onetime (1944-50) U.S. Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas and Eleanor Roosevelt to testify as "character witnesses" for Stevenson's liberalism, particularly on the civil-rights issue. As any performer in the political circus knows, flying cross-country from the hands of Sam Wilhite and Daddy Sikes to the trapeze platforms of Helen Douglas and Eleanor Roosevelt is a catch act that calls for expert political kinking...
This week, with the last of the Stevenson-Kefauver contests out of the way, the primary circus of 1956, with all of its boz-woz, came to an end. Now the Democrats could get down to the serious political maneuvers that will produce a nominee for the presidency...
...Tinsel. Beatty's collapse left only one railroad circus-Ringling-in business, v. 26 in 1940. Through most of the U.S., circus day, with its "glittering galaxies of prancing pachyderms and death-defying daredevils," has vanished like the throngs through Barnum's Egress. Of less than a dozen truckborne, one-ring shows that remain, only a handful still play outdoors; all but a few are leaving trails...
What killed the Big Show? Circusmen blame skyrocketing costs. Ringling last year paid a $500,000 railroad bill v. $150,000 in 1940. Downtown circus lots big enough for the 26,000-yard oval of the Big Top are either unavailable or exorbitantly expensive in most U.S. cities. For a business whose methods have changed little since its cheap-labor heyday, the cost of moving from town to town has become prohibitive. On top of that, today's children, surfeited with TV tinsel, no longer quicken to the real-life roar of lions, the aerialist's heart-stopping...
...attempts to "Hollywoodize" the show. Recently union contract negotiations broke down before the Madison Square Garden opening; Ringling has since been picketed by the American Guild of Variety Artists. Last week in Boston many of Ringling's top artists worked in a cut-rate, "kiddies free" A.G.V.A. circus aimed at luring business away from Ringling, threatened to carry the competition to every town played by the "Greatest Show on Earth." Few circus veterans expected Ringling to stay in the black after moving from big-town Eastern audiences into smaller communities in the northeast and Midwest next month. But even...