Word: tanbark
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Gold Dollar bucketed into the glare of the arena. For eight frantic seconds the wild-eyed animal whipped into impossible contortions, trying to unseat its bareback rider. But Shoulders stuck like hide. When the whistle blew, he slid easily to the tanbark, looking suddenly unnatural, only a man walking on his own two legs...
...musical theater the whole carnival romp was a washout. Recording Artist Kay Starr's anvil voice (with a nice built-in sob) led a lusty counterpoint melody between town and clown. But Louis ("Satchmo") Armstrong as bandmaster and oldtime Circus Comic Buster Keaton were so much wasted tanbark. The "original" Jo Swerling-Hal Stanley music and lyrics had a too-familiar ring. ("If fate should hurt you/ I won't desert you/ We'll be together/ In stormy weather...
...script, in short, is just a barrel of soggy tanbark, but there are plenty of comic spangles scattered through it-e.g., the midget who is wakened every morning by the kiss of a giraffe, and the snake merchant who spends the better part of the picture polishing a lady python...
...tent in Burbank, Calif, an audience of 1,200 waited impatiently for the circus to start. Finally the ringmaster made an announcement. Clyde Beatty's Circus, the No. 2 big topper in the U.S. (after Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey), had come to the end of the tanbark trail. It was closing. As the audience filed out, roustabouts dismantled the show for the last time...
...white-red of the costumes, which sound out loud and strong, like chords, against the chilly silence of the curtain background. Although crudely painted in spots, the picture is too convincing for technical quibbles. Each of the three acrobats is characterized as an individual, yet even on the tanbark they seem to soar as a team...