Circuses and carnivals have played important roles in American life and imagination and continue to influence U.S. entertainment and popular culture. Although the two have separate histories, they share common elements, draw upon overlapping industry sectors and audiences, and have influenced one another for over a century.
Circuses and carnivals have European and English antecedents in medieval fairs, menageries, and performances and have been traced back to the Roman Circus Maximus and ancient fertility rites. The first circus to perform within a ring dates from 1770 when Englishman Philip Astley created an equestrian entertainment that expanded to include acrobats and comic acts. Astley's show soon went on the road and inspired competitors.
The idea quickly spread to America, and by 1785 Philadelphia could boast a permanent circus-like event. Scottish equestrian John Bill Ricketts added spectacle and attracted famous patrons such as George Washington. At the same time, traveling menageries featuring exotic animals became popular, beginning with the exhibition of
Old Bet, an elephant owned by New York entrepreneur Hachaliah Bailey.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the two forms had combined, with pioneers such as George Bailey, nephew of Hachaliah, exhibiting animals during the day and mounting circus performances at night. The addition of wild animals and handlers such as famed lion tamer Isaac A. Van Amburgh added excitement; in 1871, W. C. Coup introduced a second ring.
The transformation of the circus into a national institution was furthered by legendary showman P. T. Barnum, who joined James A. Bailey in 1880 to form the company that was to become Barnum & Bailey. Barnum's fame rested on his promotional genius and exhibition of human oddities, helping to make the "side show" an indispensable element of the circus.
As America expanded westward, so did the circus, which by the 1880s boasted three rings and was using rail transportation. Between 1870 and 1915 the circus evolved into a big business and established itself as an American icon. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the annual circus parade, including animals and performers in full regalia, electrified midwestern communities.
In 1917 the Ringling Brothers, siblings from Wisconsin, purchased Barnum & Bailey and rechristened it "The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows"—or, as it is known to most Americans, "The Greatest Show on Earth." During its heyday, and throughout the twentieth century, Barnum & Bailey recruited some of the most celebrated circus performers in the world, including the great clown Emmett Kelly, the trapeze family known as the Flying Wallendas, and May Wirth, the incomparable equestrian acrobat.
The circus began to slip following World War I, the victim of competing forms of entertainment such as Amusement Parks, carnivals, radio, and movies. In 1956 Ring-ling Brothers passed into the hands of Irvin Feld, an entrepreneur who modernized the show and the business. In the twenty-first century only a few circuses travel in the United States, but the spectacle retains its appeal, especially to children.
Carnivals
The American carnival built on the tradition of the fair and also borrowed from new forms of entertainment that emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century, including the Wild West show, the medicine show, and the circus side show. The crucible of the American carnival, however, was the world exposition or fair, which evolved as a monument to technology and progress from agricultural fairs, trade centers, and "pleasure gardens" of medieval and Rennaissance Europe and England. Beginning with London's Crystal Palace in 1851, this phenomenon reached its height with the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago. Millions of Americans experienced the marvels of electrification and the scientific and technological wonders that were showcased in the beaux arts buildings of the "White City."
The exposition also featured the Midway Plaisance, a thoroughfare crowned by the newly invented Ferris wheel and enlivened by purportedly educational displays of near-naked Native Americans and "savages" from Africa and the South Sea Islands. The popular and lucrative midway led away from the exposition proper to more sensational, privately owned concessions pandering "freaks," sex, and rigged games.
The exposition brought together the elements that defined both the American carnival and the stationary amusement park for over 50 years—mechanized rides, freak shows, participatory games, food, and blatant seediness and hokum. In the years following the exposition, showmen such as Frank C. Bostock and Samuel W. Gumpertz reprised its attractions at Coney Island, New York, where three separate entertainment centers coalesced in the first decade of the twentieth century to create the wild, outré modern amusement park.
By 1920 the United States had over 1,500 amusement parks at the edge of cities, and traveling carnivals supplied similar fun to small towns and local fairs. Gradually, however, the raucous industry felt the impact of local regulation, and many of its popular features wilted. The death knell, however, sounded in 1954 with the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California. While retaining some of the variety, color, and fantasy of the carnival, Disney and its competitors created an entirely different ambiance of a sanitized, idealized world dramatizing icons and heroes of American culture within the context of American economic and technological power.
The relatively few traveling carnivals that remain have adopted the cultural trappings of the contemporary theme park, writ small. Strates Shows, Inc., for example, a family business organized in 1923, explains the changes this way: "In our technological society, the animals and rare 'freak' shows are a thing of the past, and the famous girl shows have disappeared … Strates Shows stays abreast of the market … through continued commitment to producing good, wholesome family fun."
Bibliography
Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Brouws, Jeff, and Bruce Caron. Inside the Live Reptile Tent: The Twilight World of the Carnival Midway. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001.
McGowan, Philip. American Carnival: Seeing and Reading American Culture. Contributions to American Culture Series, #10. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2001.
Murray, Marian. Circus! From Rome to Ringling. 1956. Reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973.
Wilmeth, Don B. "Circus and Outdoor Entertainment." In Concise Histories of American Popular Culture. Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture, #4, edited by M. Thomas Inge. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982.
—Perry Frank
