The birth of American popular culture
The Circus 1870-1950. Excerpt from an essay by Dominique Jando
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It is sometimes difficult to fathom the importance that live popular entertainment had on everyday life prior to film, radio, television, and the Internet. Until the development of radio broadcasting in the 1920s, the only home entertainment center that could be found in American homes was a parlor organ or a piano - grand or upright, tuned or out of key - and in the most fashionable homes a green, felted card table around which family and friends gathered during cold winter evenings. But if you wanted true entertainment, you went out to the theater or to a nearby vaudeville house or - when it came to town - to the circus. Before the advent of the moving image, the circus was the great purveyor of fantasy: "The circus is the only spectacle I know that, while you watch it, gives the quality of a happy dream," said Ernest Hemingway.
Live entertainment at this time, in all its forms, was the equivalent of today's television. It could be distracting, funny, often tacky, sometimes interesting or moving - and even educational, or at least pretend to be so, which was useful in a country where stern puritanism still prevailed. For example, legendary entrepreneur P. T. Barnum, who defined advertising's tricks of the trade decades before his involvement with the circus in the early 1870s, named the theater in his American Museum in New York City the "Moral Lecture Room."While Barnum's museum was a hodgepodge of natural history, curious displays, and sideshow exhibitions, he nevertheless knew that the voyeuristic pleasures they offered needed to be delivered with a semblance of respectability to be truly successful.
A Window Onto the World
The American circus functioned like a blend of Animal Planet, the National Geographic Channel, and the History Channel, but it avoided the unsavory path of tabloid reality that vaudeville eagerly embraced with its presentations of notorious celebrities known for tales of sex, crime, and licentiousness. The businessmen behind the American circus consciously defined the circus as wholesome family entertainment, in large measure as a result of Barnum's show business acumen and savvy marketing strategies. Barnum, who was a prominent member of the Universalist Church, always played the family card and was keen to stress the propriety of his various exhibits. But Barnum was also a showman as well as an impresario, and he knew very well that true success depended on broadening his audience. His shows had to please both the straightlaced Anglo-Saxon puritan and the fun-loving German immigrant, and had to appeal to men and women alike, adults and children. The circus had to have universal appeal to be profitable, and Barnum knew from his experience with the American Museum that exoticism was a hot ticket. There were riches to be made in the presentation of the world's wonders, even if those wonders were fictitious. The American circus, not unlike the giant fairs of medieval Europe, pushed the doors wide-open onto the outside world, which for a long time had been known only through written testimonies and pictorial renditions. This exotic and thrilling world had taken shape in people's imaginations - even when it was pure invention. But the circus brought its extraordinary reality right to your doorstep. The mysterious "cameleopard" of yore at long last materialized as the amazing giraffe. Africa, Asia, and the Amazonian jungle ceased to be mysterious lands known only to fearless explorers. The circus brought them - or at least colorful and often fanciful interpretations of them - directly to you as live entertainment...
Page [1] [2] [3]
Page [1] [2] [3]
It is sometimes difficult to fathom the importance that live popular entertainment had on everyday life prior to film, radio, television, and the Internet. Until the development of radio broadcasting in the 1920s, the only home entertainment center that could be found in American homes was a parlor organ or a piano - grand or upright, tuned or out of key - and in the most fashionable homes a green, felted card table around which family and friends gathered during cold winter evenings. But if you wanted true entertainment, you went out to the theater or to a nearby vaudeville house or - when it came to town - to the circus. Before the advent of the moving image, the circus was the great purveyor of fantasy: "The circus is the only spectacle I know that, while you watch it, gives the quality of a happy dream," said Ernest Hemingway.
Live entertainment at this time, in all its forms, was the equivalent of today's television. It could be distracting, funny, often tacky, sometimes interesting or moving - and even educational, or at least pretend to be so, which was useful in a country where stern puritanism still prevailed. For example, legendary entrepreneur P. T. Barnum, who defined advertising's tricks of the trade decades before his involvement with the circus in the early 1870s, named the theater in his American Museum in New York City the "Moral Lecture Room."While Barnum's museum was a hodgepodge of natural history, curious displays, and sideshow exhibitions, he nevertheless knew that the voyeuristic pleasures they offered needed to be delivered with a semblance of respectability to be truly successful.
A Window Onto the World
The American circus functioned like a blend of Animal Planet, the National Geographic Channel, and the History Channel, but it avoided the unsavory path of tabloid reality that vaudeville eagerly embraced with its presentations of notorious celebrities known for tales of sex, crime, and licentiousness. The businessmen behind the American circus consciously defined the circus as wholesome family entertainment, in large measure as a result of Barnum's show business acumen and savvy marketing strategies. Barnum, who was a prominent member of the Universalist Church, always played the family card and was keen to stress the propriety of his various exhibits. But Barnum was also a showman as well as an impresario, and he knew very well that true success depended on broadening his audience. His shows had to please both the straightlaced Anglo-Saxon puritan and the fun-loving German immigrant, and had to appeal to men and women alike, adults and children. The circus had to have universal appeal to be profitable, and Barnum knew from his experience with the American Museum that exoticism was a hot ticket. There were riches to be made in the presentation of the world's wonders, even if those wonders were fictitious. The American circus, not unlike the giant fairs of medieval Europe, pushed the doors wide-open onto the outside world, which for a long time had been known only through written testimonies and pictorial renditions. This exotic and thrilling world had taken shape in people's imaginations - even when it was pure invention. But the circus brought its extraordinary reality right to your doorstep. The mysterious "cameleopard" of yore at long last materialized as the amazing giraffe. Africa, Asia, and the Amazonian jungle ceased to be mysterious lands known only to fearless explorers. The circus brought them - or at least colorful and often fanciful interpretations of them - directly to you as live entertainment...
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The Circus, 1870-1950
Hardcover, 29 x 44 cm (11.4 x 17.3 in.), 670 pages
$ 200.00
$ 200.00
A journey into the glitter, the grit, and glory of 100 years of the American circus, including 1940s–50s color photographs that have never been seen before.
Equestrienne Corky Cristiani, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, 1945. Illinois State University, Milner Library, Special Collections.
Freaks lineup (detail), Barnum & Bailey, 1902. The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Tibbals Digital Collection