The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, or simply Ringling, is an American traveling circus company billed as The Greatest Show on Earth. It and its predecessors have run shows from 1871, with a hiatus from 2017 to 2023. The circus started in 1919 when the Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, a circus created by P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey, was merged with the Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows. The Ringling brothers purchased Barnum & Bailey Ltd. in 1907 following Bailey's death in 1906, but ran the circuses separately until they were merged in 1919.
After 1957, the circus no longer exhibited under its own portable "big top" tents, instead using permanent venues such as sports stadiums and arenas. In 1967, Irvin Feld and his brother Israel, along with Houston judge Roy Hofheinz, bought the circus from the Ringling family. In 1971, the Felds and Hofheinz sold the circus to Mattel, buying it back from the toy company in 1981. Since the death of Irvin Feld in 1984, the circus has continued to be a part of Feld Entertainment, an international entertainment firm headed by his son Kenneth Feld, with its headquarters in Ellenton, Florida.
In May 2017, with weakening attendance, many animal rights protests, and high operating costs, the circus performed its final animal show at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum and closed.
In September 2023, after a six-year hiatus, a relaunched animal-free circus returned with its first show in Bossier City, Louisiana. It also did not include clowns or a ringmaster.
History
Predecessor circuses Hachaliah Bailey appears to have established one of the earliest circuses in the United States after he purchased an African elephant, whom he named "Old Bet", around 1806, just 13 years after John Bill Ricketts first brought the circus to the United States from Great Britain. P. T. Barnum, who as a boy had worked as a ticket seller for Hachaliah Bailey's show, had run the Barnum's American Museum from New York City since 1841 from the former Scudder's American Museum building.
Besides building up the existing exhibits, Barnum brought in animals to add zoo-like elements, and a freak show. During this time, Barnum took the Museum on road tours, named "P.T. Barnum's Grand Traveling American Museum". The Museum burned down in July 1865. Though Barnum attempted to re-establish the Museum at another location in the city, it too burned down in 1868, and Barnum opted to retire from the museum business.
In 1871, Dan Castello and William Cameron Coup persuaded Barnum to come out of retirement to lend his name, know-how, and financial backing to the circus they had already created in Delavan, Wisconsin. The combined show was named "P.T. Barnum's Great Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Hippodrome". As described by Barnum, Castello and Coup "had a show that was truly immense, and combined all the elements of museum, menagerie, variety performance, concert hall, and circus", and considered it to potentially be "the Greatest Show on Earth", which subsequently became part of the circus's name.
Independently of Castello and Coup, James Anthony Bailey had teamed up with James E. Cooper to create the Cooper and Bailey Circus in the 1860s. The Cooper and Bailey Circus became the chief competitor to Barnum's circus. As Bailey's circus was outperforming his, Barnum sought to merge the circuses. The two groups agreed to combine their shows on March 28, 1881.Famous Elephant. Thai Elephant Conservation Center, Lampang Province. Retrieved August 28, 2010. Initially named "P.T. Barnum's Greatest Show On Earth, And The Great London Circus, Sanger's Royal British Menagerie and The Grand International Allied Shows United", it was eventually shortened to "Barnum and Bailey's Circus". Bailey was instrumental in acquiring Jumbo, advertised as the world's largest elephant, for the show.
After Jumbo died, Barnum donated his taxidermied remains to Tufts University on whose Board of Trustees Barnum served as one of Tufts' first trustees. The Barnum Museum of Natural History opened in 1884 on the Tufts campus and after his death in 1885, Jumbo became a prominent part of the display. To this day the Tufts athletic mascot is Jumbo and its athletic teams are referred to as the "Jumbos". Barnum died in 1891 and Bailey then purchased the circus from his widow. Bailey continued touring the Eastern United States until he took his circus to Europe. That tour started on December 27, 1897, and lasted until 1902.
Separately, in 1884, five of the seven Ringling brothers had started a small circus in Baraboo, Wisconsin. This was about the same time that Barnum & Bailey were at the peak of their popularity. Similar to dozens of small circuses that toured the Midwestern United States and the Northeastern United States at the time, the brothers moved their circus from town to town in small animal-drawn caravans. Their circus rapidly grew and they were soon able to move their circus by train, which allowed them to have the largest traveling amusement enterprise of that time. Bailey's European tour gave the Ringling brothers an opportunity to move their show from the Midwest to the eastern seaboard. Faced with the new competition, Bailey took his show west of the Rocky Mountains for the first time in 1905. He died the next year, and the circus was sold to the Ringling Brothers.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
The Ringlings purchased the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth in 1907 and ran the circuses separately until 1919. By that time, Charles Edward Ringling and John Nicholas Ringling were the only remaining brothers of the five who founded the circus. They decided that it was too difficult to run the two circuses independently because of labour shortages and complications to rail travel brought about by American involvement in World War I, and on March 29, 1919, "Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows" debuted in New York City. The posters declared, "The Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows and the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth are now combined into one record-breaking giant of all exhibitions." Charles E. Ringling died in 1926, but the circus flourished through the Roaring Twenties.
John Ringling had the circus move its headquarters to Sarasota, Florida, in 1927.
In 1929, the American Circus Corporation signed a contract to perform in New York City. John Ringling purchased American Circus, the owner of five circuses, for $1,700,000 (equal to $ today).
In 1938, the circus made a lucrative offer to Frank Buck, a well-known adventurer and animal collector, to tour as their star attraction and to enter the show astride an elephant. He refused to join the American Federation of Actors, stating that he was "a scientist, not an actor." Though there was a threat of a strike if he did not join the union, he maintained that he would not compromise his principles, saying, "Don't get me wrong. I'm with the working man. I worked like a dog once myself. And my heart is with the fellow who works. But I don't want some ... union delegate telling me when to get on and off an elephant." Eventually, the union gave Buck a special dispensation to introduce Gargantua the gorilla without registering as an actor.
The circus suffered during the 1930s due to the Great Depression, but managed to stay in business. After John Nicholas Ringling's death, his nephew, John Ringling North, managed the indebted circus twice, the first from 1937 to 1943. Special dispensation was given to the circus by President Roosevelt to use the rails to operate in 1942, in spite of travel restrictions imposed as a result of World War II. Many of the most famous images from the circus that were published in magazine and posters were captured by American Photographer Maxwell Frederic Coplan, who traveled the world with the circus, capturing its beauty as well as its harsh realities.
North's cousin Robert Edward Ringling took over as president of the show in 1943 with North resuming the presidency of the circus in 1947.
Hartford circus fire
On July 6, 1944, in Hartford, Connecticut, during an afternoon performance attended by some 8,000 people, the Big Top tent caught fire. At least 167 people were killed and many hundreds injured. Circus management was found to be negligent and several Ringling executives served sentences in jail. Ringling Brothers' management set aside all profits for the next ten years to pay the claims filed against the show by the City of Hartford and the survivors of the fire.Fox, Charles Philip. A Ticket To The Circus (New York: Bramhall House), 1959
Feld family The post-war prosperity enjoyed by the rest of the nation was not shared by the circus as crowds dwindled and costs increased. Public tastes, influenced by the movies and television, abandoned the circus, which gave its last performance under the big top in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 16, 1956. An article in Life magazine reported that "a magical era had passed forever". In 1956, when John Ringling North and Arthur Concello moved the circus from a tent show to an indoor operation, Irvin Feld was one of several promoters hired to work the advance for select dates. Irvin Feld and his brother, Israel Feld, had already made a name for themselves marketing and promoting D.C. area rock and roll shows. In 1959, Ringling Bros. started wintering in Venice, Florida.
In late 1967, Irvin Feld, Israel Feld, and Judge Roy Mark Hofheinz of Texas, together with backing from Richard C. Blum, the founder of Blum Capital, bought the company outright from North and the Ringling family interests for $8,000,000 (equal to $ today) at a ceremony at Rome's Colosseum. Irvin Feld immediately began making changes to improve the quality and profitability of the show. Irvin got rid of the freak show so as not to capitalize on others' deformations and to become more family oriented. He got rid of the more routine acts.
In 1968, with the craft of clowning seemingly neglected and with many of the clowns in their 50s, he established the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. Circus Williams, a circus in Europe was purchased for $2 million just to have its star animal trainer, Gunther Gebel-Williams, for the core of his revamped circus. Soon, he split the show into two touring units, Red and Blue, which could tour the country independently. The separate tours could also offer differing slates of acts and themes, enabling circus goers to view both tours where possible.. Also in 1968, Feld hired The King Charles Troupe, a unicycle club from The Bronx and the first ever African-American circus troupe, to perform unicycle basketball for 18 years with the circus. Performing unicyclists also included Ted Jorgensen.Chris McNab, (2022). Jeff Bezos: The World-Changing Entrepreneur. United Kingdom: Arcturus Publishing.
The company was taken public in 1969. In 1970, Feld's only son Kenneth joined the company and became a co-producer. The circus was sold to the Mattel company in 1971 for $40,000,000 (equal to $ today), with the Feld family retained as management.
After Walt Disney World opened near Orlando, Florida, in 1971, the circus attempted to cash in on the resulting tourism surge by opening Circus World theme park in nearby Haines City, which broke ground in April 1973. The theme park was expected to become the circus's winter home as well as to have the Clown College located there. Mattel placed the circus corporation up for sale in December 1973 despite its profit contributions, as Mattel as a whole had a $29.9 million loss (equal to $ today) in 1972. The park's opening was delayed until February 1974.