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History
The genesis of today’s brand may be seen as the eventual intersection of two parallel tracks. In 1872, peerless promoter Phineas T. Barnum first put his show on rails; Ringling Bros. began to travel by train in 1890. Barnum died in 1891, his reported final utterance being, “Ask James Bailey what the circus receipts were for Madison Square Garden today.” (For the record, Barnum’s alleged remark that “there’s a sucker born every minute” was actually muttered by a disgruntled Barnum competitor.) Sixteen years later, the Ringlings purchased the Barnum & Bailey circus, but their shows toured separately until 1919, when the first combined edition of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey was unveiled at Madison Square Garden.
Today, the tradition of travel by rail continues, and Ringling Bros. owns two of the longest privately owned trains in the world — each over a mile long. Notably, in the early 1900s, the U.S. Army learned lessons from Ringling Bros. on how to load and unload railroad flatcars quickly; during World War II, President Roosevelt, eager to sustain homeland morale, gave Ringling Bros. special dispensation to continue using the nation’s strategically critical railroads.
In 1936, a nephew of John Ringling, John Ringling North, took over the show after his uncle’s death. In 1967, during a contract signing at the Colosseum in Rome, ownership of The Greatest Show On Earth was transferred to Irvin and Israel Feld.
Irvin Feld (1918–1984) is credited with rejuvenating a moribund enterprise. “My father used to say that he knew his clowns could fall down, but wasn’t sure they could get back up,” remembers his son Kenneth. “So he started Ringling Bros. Clown College®.” Irvin led the show out of tents, and into the more spacious metropolitan arenas then rising. To serve these proliferating new venues, he built a second circus unit around the late, great animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams. He also raised a furor by hiring the first African-American act in Ringling Bros. history. “People resigned,” Kenneth remembers. “Dad was a pioneer.”
Kenneth has followed his father’s example, revamping long-held circus traditions to suit evolving tastes. He began combing the globe for the freshest, most spellbinding performers. To maintain interest, he streamlined acts from 12 minutes to six, reducing showtime from three hours to just over two, and placed favorite performances such as the trapeze further up in the program. Theatrical lighting and concert-quality sound systems supplanted lackluster arena equipment. Original musical scores were crafted. In 2000, The Greatest Show On Earth® entered its third century more vibrant and popular than ever.
With the recent leadership involvement of a third-generation Feld — Nicole, Kenneth’s daughter — the family has now guided this treasured American institution longer than any other single family in its storied history.
And aside from its legacy in entertainment and crowd-pleasing, the influence of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® on American culture also stretches to the linguistic. Many commonly used phrases stem from circus terms. Among them:
• “Toss your hat into the ring.” In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson did just that at a performance of The Greatest Show On Earth. Reporters took this as a sign Wilson would seek reelection. He did.
• “Jumbo.” The word did not exist until 1882, when it was given as the name of Barnum & Bailey’s huge African elephant, billed far and wide as the “largest and heaviest elephant ever seen by mortal man, either wild or in captivity.” Today, dictionaries define “jumbo” as anything huge or oversized.
• “Hold your horses.” During pre-auto parades into town, the smell of elephants spooked horses, so a roustabout preceded the fragrant pachyderms, calling out, “Hold your horses, the elephants are coming!” The shortened phrase retains its place in the American lexicon. |
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