circus – Page 2 – Matthew Wittmann

Risley’s Circus to the Rescue?

Robert Hewson Pruyn (1815-1882) was an American lawyer and statesman from New York who is the subject of an ongoing exhibition at the Albany Institute. Presently, the fascinating materials on display focus on the years 1862 to 1865 when he served as the U.S. minister to Japan. As a diplomat, Pruyn played a pivotal role in resolving the Shimonoseki War, which was a series of military engagements waged by recalcitrant daimyos (powerful feudal lords) angry with the Tokugawa shogunate’s accommodation of foreign interests. While holding office, he also negotiated a number of shrewd trade agreements that allowed commerce to flourish. And though his diplomatic and economic accomplishments were undoubtedly significant, I was much more intrigued to see a wide variety of ephemera documenting performances by both Euro-American and Japanese entertainers. In the decade that followed Commodore Perry’s expedition in 1853-54, relations between the United States and Japan remained tense, but popular entertainment provided one avenue for cross-cultural exchange and understanding. Indeed, some of Perry’s sailors famously performed a minstrel show at a banquet held when the Kanagawa Treaty was concluded, and the Japanese reciprocated with exhibitions of sumo wrestling, plate-spinning, and acrobatics.

40_014_minstrel_4374641 — MIT Visualizing Cultures

By the early 1860s, Yokohama was a “boomtown,” and performances by both visting Euro-American and Japanese entertainers were patronized by the mixed lot of officials, merchants, and military who congregated around Tokyo Bay. In March 1864, the noted American performer Richard Risley Carlisle (1814-1874), popularly known as “Professor Risley,” arrived in Yokohama with a circus from Shanghai. Risley had ascended to trans-Atlantic fame and fortune in the 1840s with a foot-juggling act that involved spinning and launching limber young assistants high into the air. By the early 1860s, he was touring the Pacific with a small circus comprised of a dozen or so equestrians and acrobats. John R. Black (himself a traveling entertainer that settled in Japan) observed that:

Risley was a man who never did himself justice. He was for some years a resident in Yokohama; but at one time of his life, his name was well known in all the great capitals of Europe and America. I remember him with his sons at the Strand Theatre in London in 1848, when his fame and success seemed carrying everything before him. Apart from his great strength and agility, and the wonderful pluck and cleverness of his boys, which enabled him to present an entertainment as attractive as it was at that time unique, he was peculiarly cut out for the kind of Bohemian life he had chosen. He was a wonderful rifle shot; a good billiard player; up to everything that lithe and active men most rejoice in. He knew thoroughly well the usages of good society, and could hold his own with high or low. His fund of anecdote was marvellous ; and he could keep a roomful of people holding their sides with laughter, without the least appearance of effort, or the faintest shade of coarseness (Young Japan, 1880, 401-402).

Risley’s peripatetic history and his eventual management of a troupe of Japanese acrobats who traveled across the United States and to the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris have been ably chronicled in an excellent study by Frederik L. Schodt so I will not dwell on that here. What is interesting was how Pruyn perceived Risley’s presence in Japan, and the role of popular entertainment in US-Japanese relations more generally. Again, things were particular tense in March 1864, and Pruyn confessed in a letter that he still regarded it as debatable whether “liberality or exclusiveness” would prevail in Japan. In this context, he saw the arrival of the circus as auspicious, continuing: “American diplomacy first opened this Country partially to foreigners & now that this attempt has been made to thrust us out when once in & slam the door in our faces – why should not an American Circus come to the rescue?” While it is of course arguable just how important Risley’s activities were within the evolving relationship between the two nations, it seems significant to see that the American minister regarded the circus as so relevant. In a follow-up post, I’ll develop this point further by looking at how Pruyn’s perceptions of the Japanese were shaped by his experiences with their sundry forms of popular entertainment.

*** The Robert Pruyn Papers are held at the Albany Institute of History and Art library and a special thanks is owed to Erika Sanger there for bringing these materials to my attention.

An Empire of Fun at Ringling Museum

Details here.

Making the Circus American in Albany

Last week I went up to Albany to deliver a lecture on the circus for the “Making It American” series at the Albany Institute of History & Art. My talk explored how various geographic, economic, and demographic factors in the United States transformed this rather quiescent European cultural import into a dynamic commercial industry. My take-home points centered on the way that mobility, diversity, and gigantism defined the American circus. But I don’t want to get into all that here. Rather, I want to write a quick post about the handbill above, which was brought to my attention when the Albany Institute used it to advertise the talk. It is very interesting example of evolution of traveling shows in the United States amidst the ongoing Market Revolution. Although it is headlined as a “Menagerie,” the fact that the advertised benefit is for Mr. Sherman, a “Ring Master,” suggests that the show was something more than just a traveling zoo. Until the 1830s, the circus was a primarily equestrian entertainment with acrobats, clowns, and the like, but it gradually absorbed the related business of itinerant animal exhibitions. This 1834 handbill is for the “Grand Mammoth Zoological Exhibition” run by Eisenhart Purdy and Rufus Welch, and it was one of the last and largest traveling menageries prior to their absorption by the circus industry. The show traveld on twenty wagons from town to town and advertised seventy-five animals that were displayed in three separate tents. The one elephant was Caroline, the so-called “ship-wrecked elephant,” who was known by that moniker after surviving an accident on the Delaware River in late 1831. Caroline performed an act in the ring with her keeper, the Mr. Sherman above, and the other ring attraction involved two pony-riding monkeys, Jim Crow and Dandy Jack. Purdy and Welch also engaged the Washington Military Band for the season, which included some dozen musicians, and seems to have been the first professional brass band to tour with a show. This evolving mix of circus (ring acts), menagerie (exotic animals), and ancillary attractions (brass band) would cohere into what we would now regard as the classic American circus in the decade that followed.

The handbill itself is an interesting artifact. It was printed by Hoffman and White in Albany, but the fine lion engraving was originally made by Abel Bowen, a noted Boston printer. His signature can be seen between the animal’s legs and the “sc.” abbreviation after simply indicates it was “scuplted,” i.e. carved or engraved by Bowen. It was in a likelihood a stereotyped block that either the Albany printers had in their inventory or that the show itself lent to local printers to produce their publicity. There’s a nice mix of contemporary fancy types on the bill, and the “Benefit” line letters in particular have some exquisite detail. The benefit advertised here was a standard event where the profits for a particular performance were set aside for a specific performer or charity. It provided good publicity for the show and also gave the proprietors a chance to reward popular acts. As the ringmaster, Sherman was the public face of the show, but despite his “untiring efforts to please,” he does not seem to have had a long career in show business. After the “Grand Mammoth Zoological Exhibition” left Albany, it continued touring through Connecticut and New Jersey before wintering in Philadelphia. The handbill is a fine example of contemporary ephemera that also gives us a glimpse into the gradual merging of the circus and menagerie business in the United States.

For more, see Stuart Thayer’s Annals of American Circus. I’ve also written more about the evolution of circuses, menageries, and printing in this era here and here.

Ringling Bros. Circus in Brooklyn, 1909

As the ‘Big Show‘ is back in Brooklyn today for the first time since the late 1930s, I wanted to throw up a quick post about the Ringling Bros. first visit to the borough. In late 1907, the Ringling brothers purchased the Barnum and Bailey Circus, and they ran the two circuses separately until 1919, when the combined Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was formed. During the early twentieth century the winter quarters for the Ringling show were in Baraboo Wisconsin, and the circus typically opened in Chicago each season before heading out on tour. The Barnum & Bailey Circus on the other hand was based in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and would open its season at Madison Square Garden. In 1909, supposedly because Al had always dreamed of the Ringling circus conquering the Big Apple, they decided to switch things up and the Barnum & Bailey Circus was sent to Chicago, and the Ringling show made the 1100 mile trip to makes its New York City debut. They opened on March 25, and despite positive reviews, business was a bit slow during their month-long stand at the Garden. On Sunday, April 25, the circus moved to a lot at Fifth Avenue and Third Street in Brooklyn to prepare for the first show of the season under canvas, i.e., in a tent. Traffic and subway construction in Manhattan meant that circuses were no longer able to parade there. This was unfortunate because the 1909 Ringling parade is remembered by circus historians as perhaps the best that the brothers ever put together. On Monday morning at 9am, a procession that included 44 tableaux and cage wagons, a huge steam calliope, chariots drawn by horses, zebras and elephants, mounted riders, and a herd of twenty-two elephants, began its grand march through the streets of Brooklyn. A map of the route:

Rand, McNally & Co.'s Brooklyn, 1903. — Rand, McNally & Co.’s Brooklyn, 1903.
Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection

When I was canvasing for materials for the Circus and the City exhibition, I stumbled across a box of photographic dry plates at the Somers Historical Society. The set of twelve plates depicted a circus parade and were produced by the Obrig Camera Co. of New York. Although labeled as “Barnum & Bailey,” when I looked at them on a lightbox it was plainly evident that they were actually Ringling Bros. wagons. After scanning the plates, the detective work began. Given the box was from Obrig, it seemed likely that the photographs were taken somewhere in New York City. And of course the only year that the Ringling show mounted a parade here was 1909. The seemingly characteristic Brooklyn brownstones in the background offered another clue, and I headed out to the Brooklyn Public Library to figure out the parade route, which the Brooklyn Daily Eagle duly provided. Luckily, the plate that featured Ringling’s famous Swan Bandwagon and its twenty-four-horse hitch gave a long view of the block, which included a rather distinctive cupola.

With the route and photographs in hand, I was hoping to be able to determine for certain when and where they were taken. Starting off from the old circus lot (where the Old Stone House now sits), I made my way through Park Slope and up to Flatbush Ave. via Sterling Place where, much to my delight, a promising cupola came into view. Walking a bit further east on Sterling Place made it clear that this was the right block. The plates were made by a photographer standing on the south side of Sterling Place looking west to the intersection with Flatbush Ave. on the morning of April 25, 1909 (see the red arrow on the map above). A few more slides from the series:

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Here’s a picture I took from the approximate position of the original photographer. The block is obviously a lot greener today, but the north side of the street looks almost exactly like it did over a hundred years ago.

Although Brooklynites turned out to enjoy the parade and the headline verdict in the Eagle the next day was “Ringling Bros. Show Best Ever,” this was the only time that the Ringlings visited Brooklyn prior to the debut of the combined show. And while the parade has long gone by the wayside, it’s nice to see the Big Show back in Brooklyn again.

Frog Benders

Courtesy of New York State Museum — New York State Museum

Here’s a link to a new short piece about what was perhaps the most interesting costume in the Circus and the City exhibition. It belonged to Friede DeMarlo, a German-born dancer and circus performer who learned the art of ‘bending’ from her husband Harry DeMarlo in the 1910s. Their signature act, called “Frog’s Paradise,” was a combination dancing/contortion/aerial routine that they performed around the world in circus and vaudeville. The DeMarlos retired upstate and the New York State Museum eventually acquired a collection of their papers and memorabilia. For a rundown of their globe-trotting career and more on this wonderful collection, which includes scrapbooks, props, and a manuscript autobiography by Friede, see this article by curator Jennifer Lemak.

Walt Kuhn’s Majorette

Walt Kuhn (1877-1949) was a painter perhaps best remembered for organizing the Armory Show of 1913, which introduced avant-garde European art to the American public. Kuhn was also a lover of the circus and the theatre and in the 1920s began to somewhat obsessively paint portraits of circus performers and showgirls. He was eventually institutionalized in the late 1940s, but produced a truly stunning body of work, a sampling of which is now on display at the DC Moore gallery. The exhibition, Walt Kuhn: American Modern, runs through March 16 and the assorted works powerfully demonstrate his simple and affective style. I was of course particularly interested in Kuhn’s circus work and among the paintings are a few wonderful portraits of circus “girls,” as they were known in contemporary show business parlance. Among this group is one simply known as “Woman in a Majorette Costume,” from 1944.

The sitter is not identified, but it might actually be Katherine “Kitty” Clark, who joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1938, and served as a majorette for the circus through the 1940s. Clark was a skillful performer who at different times appeared in equestrian, aerial, and animal acts. She was also a renowned beauty and frequently appeared in the show’s advertising. Below is a 1941 poster produced by the studio of Norman Bel Geddes that was used by the circus throughout the decade with minor variations. It was actually designed by George Howe (you can see his initials between the elephant’s hind legs), who worked with Geddes, and shows Clark kicking up in her majorette uniform. Whether or not she was the model for this particular painting is of course questionable, but she certainly bears a passing resemblance to the woman.

Whatever the case, I highly recommend the exhibition. The Armory Show has unfortunately overshadowed Kuhn’s career as an artist, but hopefully this exhibition will give him increased recognition as a modernist American painter of real import.

The Great American Circus Poster

One of the things that made me the happiest in the course of putting together the Circus and the City exhibition was being able to earmark some hugely important but sorely neglected pieces for conservation. Perhaps the most significant of these was an enormous 1843 poster at the Shelburne Museum for what was variously billed as the “New York Circus” and “Sage’s Great American Circus.” When I first viewed the poster, it was a crinkled and folded mess, and in nine separate pieces. The Bard Graduate Center was able to fund its conversation for the exhibition, though some admittedly poor measurements and math by myself meant that we had to situate it somewhat awkwardly in a stairwell rather than in the main gallery. It is a masterpiece of early American printing and its story calls attention to the transnational legacy of the American circus. For a high-quality zoomable view and more, see my essay here.

The Zoological Institute Poster

My essay about one of the most spectacular works of antebellum American printing, the Zoological Institute poster, has been published by Common-Place and you can read it here. Although I discuss the version held at the American Antiquarian Society, there are three other extant copies, which are held by the Shelburne Museum, the Smithsonian, and the New York Historical Society respectively.