PBS Leaves Big Apple Tent Before the Show is Over: Strange Disjointed End to a Scattered Take on Circus Life

[Update: I called the local PBS station; they say technical difficulties caused the second hour not to be shown. It is being repeated next week on another of their channels. I'm going to watch the Monte Carlo episode]

Was that all there was my friend? -- as Peggy Lee would sing. Then let's keep dancing. Let's hope for a better season.

I don't know how to begin this. Such a strange fragmented evening that almost didn't happen. For the first fifteen minutes here in the S.F. Bay Area of tonight's last scheduled two hours of Circus, I sat munching on popcorn while gazing at a notice on my TV: Please Stand By; We Are Having Technical Difficulties.

When finally they got the show rolling, we were, I think, in the backyard. No, make that somewhere around one of the LaSalle brothers, ruing the death of his juggling partnership with the brother headed for medical school.

The sadness I felt last week only elaborated upon itself during this anti-climactic evening. It made me feel like I felt years ago, after looking back at my brief six-week run with Wallace Bros, allegedly clowning, and realizing that "circus" life wasn't for me, that I much preferred sitting out in the seats and watching the show, thank you.

So many early departures on this Big Apple tour. The non-communicating LaSalles, and to think how they thrilled me and I suspected not a thing -- safe illusion out in the seats.

Young Christian Atayde Stoinev, a fine performer, ready to take a crack at college, in effect departing the family tradition.

Big Apple founder Paul Binder wrapping up his last season, his appearances this evening gracious, kind, humble.

Even was Barry Lubin a more sympathetic figure this time out, admitting how "scared to death" he felt contemplating the very idea that in this business, you can be gone tomorrow. His contract, said he, runs through 2012. He knows that new artistic director Guillaume Dufresnoy may have another idea in mind.

We saw a lot of likable Glen Heroy, the new but soon-to-be-gone clown who, according to Lubin, along with Mark Gindick were "invited" guests for only one season, which made me wonder why Binder told Heroy, early in the game, with the delight of discovery, "we have found in you a new character." Who really runs this show, or ever did? Perhaps it's been years since Binder held a firm "yes and no." The producers, I wish, had asked a few more pressing questions. They might have asked to speak with the musical director. They might have introduced us to vibrantly engaging ringmistress Carrie Harvey, who actually announced Play On! They confused viewers, instead, by showing the audition for a new ringmaster that went no where. Did I say "fragmented"?

They might have sent to the cutting room floor some of the dull back-of-the-tent stuff about kids and their romantic and/or sexual escapades. So utterly common.

What else? Before a premature ending, my mouth dropped open wide as that guy Tavis appeared at ten o'clock when I was expecting Circus to roll out its final hour! This I might have seen:

"Big Apple Circus founder Paul Binder embarks on his annual trip to scout new talent at the renowned Monte Carlo circus festival. Not only is this one of the glitziest social events of the year, but it's also an opportunity to stay connected with the international circus community, the extended family if you will. Here, we learn about the long tradition of circus, and how those in this community are working to ensure that circus survives."

But I didn't. Perhaps others will feel much differently than I. The whole thing left me with an empty feeling. I was so taken at first. until they reached a New York opening night that seemed missing in action. I ended up wanting to run away from this circus.

Perhaps the show started an hour earlier than is clearly listed on the local PBS website.

Sorry for this scattered report. OK, I got to see Grandma dance in the rain. I didn't get to see Paul Binder in operation at Monte Carlo. I guess it was just too much circus for the producers of Circus.

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Sunday Morning, Looking Back: Who's Show is the Truest? The Most Hip? The Purest? The Most Unpretentious? Bring on the Circus Cultural Wars

Traces from 7 Fingers, at the Broadway Playhouse in Chicago

Oh, the scourge of commercial circuses compared to those more enlightened ones publicly funded. Oh, may I ad, the folly of such self-serving illusions. The evil of animal acts! The insulting overkill of three rings, gone at last! The absence of a direct through-line into the soul of the artist as living breathing human being! And, now, horror of horrors, that you should ever be tagged as being "corporate." Yet another new nagging trend may be on the horizon: the substitution of that one remaining ring for the stage.

Luckily for me, a circus agnostic, I was raised amidst two durable forms -- the exemplary one-ring Polack Bros. Circus, which played Santa Rosa two days in the late winter/early spring, and virtually all the other shows, three ring behemoths, some of which actually more than once managed to fill up three rings with action. The best of all was THE Big One, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, which I only once saw under the big top. Ah, that mighty spread of deep blue canvas! Those three imperial circles, hardly an affront to my younger sensibilities. The suavely attired usherettes (North Starlets doing pre-show cherry pie); the magnificence of the show itself, opulently costumed by Miles White, rambunctiously scored by twenty five-plus musicians daring to play common ordinary pop hits of the day under the determined direction of fanfariffic Merle Evans.

And all the while, great acts appeared. I never once spent an anxious circus-searching moment asking myself; which is superior, one ring or three? Never had to undergo psycho analysis over an issue that is still to me a non issue. I know the arguments against three; I have my own in favor.

So, as of two years ago, down in Arizona when even Carson & Barnes played out its final performance in three circles, came a bitter sweet end to an epoch in world circus born of American gigantism and all the other we-are-biggest-and-bestisms that justified a scale of circus not seems since, well, should we factor in our rebelliously violent forebears who held court over bloody Roman Coliseum sawdust?

The younger kids tossing clubs in the 1970s smugly dismissed those three ring monsters as not worthy of the high ring arts they delivered. A young Paul Binder, speaking for many, maybe not so smugly, used the word "seedy." In its early more innocent days, the easy breezy Pickle Family Circus out of "City-That-Knows-How" San Francisco steered clear of dismissive rhetoric, simply struggling to turn a few pennies off an egalitarianism operation, not just almost ring-less, but for sure tentless. Co-founder Peggy Snider had a daughter, Gypsy, destined in years ahead to relocate to Montreal and join the moderns harboring their chic disdain for the heathen status quo. She found the perfect partner in aerialist Shana Carroll.

You could argue the little Pickle troupe was revolutionary, in a manner not exactly felt world-wide. What set them dramatically apart was a global first of sorts, as far as my research has taken me: the first to put on a circus without a single animal in it. Even the Chinese, despite a popular impression, in times past now and then included animals in some of their shows.

But not until the advent, really, of Cirque du Soleil did the world that resided in the United States finally come to grips with an emerging paradigm: three rings were doomed. Animal acts might better be left back in the barn. American circuses, including Ringling-Barnum, are still foundering and floundering in the shadows of a ground-breaking new circus theology turned into a commercial phenomenon by Cirque du Soleil. A paradigm tricky to duplicate that fosters an ultra elitist approach to circus art. You've got to, first of all, give Jumbo and Gargantua, the seals and the dancing poodles their walking papers. You then, of course, get rid of those extra rings. And from there you "reinvent." Good luck.

Their creative energy has been spectacular. Even has China, no less, been smitten by the example of CDS, where private (read: corporate) funding has given rise to exciting new modes of showcasing ancient Chinese acrobatic arts, in both Shanghai (Intersection of Time) and Beijing (Flying Acrobats show). Go to the Middle Kingdom. my friends. See both and believe.

Live long and you'll observe a lot. I witnessed the historic rise of Cirque du Soleil in 1984, when it gambled its small cookie jar on making a date in the City of Angels, and overnight redefined circus art. Actually, Cirque had taken its deepest cues from what the Russians (who love animals acts of all ilk) had been doing for decades, and doing it well in a single circle. And with lavish funding from the state government. But CDS followed a path of funding that should be adopted in this country. Let the government dole out seed money and see if the young troupe can make it on its own in a few years; each year, give the upstarts less. In three or four seasons they are on their own in the private sector (sorry for dropping a term so repellent to some), or back to their day jobs.

Putting down your rivals is hardly new. The Ringling brothers took out full page ads brazenly laced with inflated claims cleverly assailing their competitors as being pitifully out of touch, behind the times. Around a century later, Cirque's head honchos did essentially the same thing, aiming their sniping barbs to the press at that Ringling thing, in effect denouncing the entire American circus playground. The box office does not lie, kids; the Montreal monster, within a few years totally off government support, today has 22 shows in operation around the world, and more on the horizon. Ruefully I suppose, someday, their star, too, will fade.

Now comes Traces, from another Montreal-based company named 7 Fingers, and with it a few traces of elitist efforts to deconstruct old circus traditions that began in San Francisco when the Pickles, heady into their better years (mid 1980s), published a virtual manifesto condemning major old-circus traditions: the demeaning inclusion of women in flashy tights to serve as flesh props for the men doing tricks and taking applause; the abused animals, so alleged, in feathers and high heels. And, not to be overlooked, exploited roustabouts deserving proper egalitarian respect.

But the cultural wars over whose circus is the purest and most deserving are never quite as simple as that. Among the new generation of circus producers out of the 1970s, Paul Binder, for one, never intended to remove the animals altogether. Big Apple Circus still features dogs and horses. Circus Flora for a time featured elephants. And Cirque du Soleil never advertised a no-animals mantra. In fact, in the beginning it had a duck on the bill, and it toured Europe with a famed circus troupe that featured its own animal acts. Cirque's Vegas illusion show, Believe, employs a live elephant.

Even as I write this, audiences continue delighting in the charming, dare I say instructive, interactions between beast and human. At the Chimelong circus in Guangzhou, China, they are presenting animal acts. Mainstream circuses that shun the menagerie do not do very well. The Pickles are gone, and so is Circus Chimera. This contentious issue, kept alive by a very small but hysterically vocal and media-savvy circle of activists, both paid and volunteer, is far from a settled issue.

Might the next Big Epoch end up, like it or not, without a single animal on a stage? The innovative spirit of the long-gone Pickles may be said to live on in Traces, the show crafted by Pickle descendants, Snider and Carroll, who are not hesitant to dis old circus traditions. Apparently taking their cues from a cheerfully communal new theatrical form developed by the Italian director Daniele Pasca (Rain), their Traces in its San Francisco premiere not quite five years ago, impressed me to a degree with a gracefully hip experimental spirit. The next dominant format (and the operative word here is dominant) to deliver tomorrow's tumblers, jugglers, and buffoons? I doubt it. But it does give me pause to wonder, as here I do for the very first time, if the stage will, indeed, eventually replace the ring. That's how it always was in China.

Traces is currently the hit of Chicago at the Broadway Playhouse, claims one-time Pickle Family Circus director Judy Finelli, e-mailing me her elation over its success in the Windy City. The Chicago Tribune's Chris Jones gave Traces a dream review; I'd have to reach back, maybe to the Brooks Atkinson Sunday piece in The New York Times, essaying his joys over the 1942 Ringling-Barnum opus, to find its equal. Perhaps Traces really is as good as it appears to both Finelli and to Jones. Both sources suggest the talent is simply tops, evidently superior to the original infectious cast of five whom I saw; the replacement performers are mostly from Over There, and when we talk about Over There, we are talking usually beyond U.S. borders.

Boasts Finelli, and I'll take her for the moment on her word, Traces is "mopping up the floor with the bomb of Cirque's Banana shpeel. It is the hottest ticket in Chicago right now. They have improved the show immeasurably, gotten an out-of-sight cast who can do top-level skills, and Traces is reaching a young, hip audience."

Compared to which, adds Finelli, obviously still longing for the San Francisco Circus Century that never arrived, "Seven Fingers [the producing company run by Snider and Carroll] is what Cirque used to be but isn't anymore. Cirque used to be oh so experimental. Now Cirque is corporate, corporate, corporate - a carbon copy of itself ad [naseum]."

Funny, nothing about Cirque's thrilling OVO or Ringling's thrilling Boom-A-Ring felt at all to me "corporate." The acts were terrific, the music wonderful, which is why, my best assumption, people are still drawn to circus. Which is why Jones, in his rave review, made clear the presence of an imperative: "Of course, none of this conceptual packaging would have much impact if the skills on display -- this is, after all, a circus show -- were not extraordinary. But they are."

When interviewed about Traces by Chris Jones (very possibly the finest U.S. newspaper critic writing about circus today), argues Shana Carroll, "In the Cirque-style shows, the circus acts are decorations inside the structure. We want the acts themselves to be the core of what is being expressed."

Decorations? Such an inexplicably snide insult brings the art of transparent professional envy to breathless new heights. Tell that to juggler Anthony Gatto, or to any number of other world class circus artists who appear in any number of CDS shows on tour.

Circus without a ring? As adjunct to theatre? I'll continue betting my money on the private sector, be it Carson and Barnes or Cirque du Soleil. And expecting more. The youthful experimenters will always be with us, as they should. A precious few will succeed. And they will put the others down, until the time comes for them to be put down. Most will have their brief stay in the sun and either, short of ticket sales to pay the nut, resort to corporate welfare or the boiler rooms.

Perhaps I got an early head start on these cultural wars, thanks to the great Barbette. For one of the Polack shows he directed, in between the Zoppe family riding act and the nine Ward-Bell Flyers, he inserted a mystically enchanting little roll-on ballet, "Carnival in Spangleland." And by so doing, he was teaching me at about the age of 12 not to be fixed in my expectations, but to be open to the anticipation of many surprises in the rings. And he was more than right: They keep on coming.

Enjoy yours, Judy! ...

11.14.10

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Saturday Slide Bys: A Covington Cameo on PBS & Other Misc. Goodies Randomly Down the Runs ,,, Well, Have You Anything Better to Do?

Cyber Courier Don Covington, a Mighty Contributor to this here blog in the form of captured news stories about circus lore from far and wide that he e-dispatches my way, landing his 15 seconds of fame in Circus, the PBS doc slowly fizzling out before our eyes. We spot him answering a complaint by clown Glen Heroy about frozen water in his trailer. Notes Don about his brief cameo, one reason he may not have reaped more air time is because he was "shadowing the PBS crews." And a good giving shadow was Don, evidently letting see-all cameras poke revealingly about the premises; my, what filthy restroom conditions are the crews stuck with over there! Did you see? And here I wondered about the leaky Kelly-Miller clown alley truck ...

About Circus, Paul Binder's soft humble honesty moved me. After announcing his retirement, noted the BAC founder with a twinge of regret, "The response has been subdued." About as subdued as was the treatment of opening night in NY, an opening that seemed never to have happened, I might add, Mr. Paul ... Another reason why I believe that behind and around this cumbersome, staff-heavy organization overseen by 33 -- count 'em, 33 -- board of directors, Binder was likely pressured to hang up his ringmaster's hat and step aside. The mystery of this exit, however, is worthy of a Sherlock Holmes examination. Does anybody have Doc Watson's address? Okay, I'll move on, to another obsession. But what should that be?

So silent out there, over still-surviving sawdust, even if the seats are ominously blank. One sturdy source opined earlier that Carson & Barnes came close to heading back to the barn early. A check of their website shows Texas dates a-go, and we are are almost in Christmas Tree buying time. That old circus-as-holiday theme, I guess, still at least pulls in a few hundred, enough to keep the old pony ride in motion ... Also still up and tenting is Johnny Pugh's redoubtable Cole Bros Circus, the new or old or starred version, name keeps changing. ... And what else?

Why so silent? Blame it on the Kelly-Miller bloggers, who spread accounts of what's up day by day. They've conditioned us to a new form of intimate reporting. So quiet over on Steve and Ryan's blog. Last posting, up in the air like an ambivalent flyer frozen in space: October 27. Is Steve still stewing about having to keep up a blog he originally had fun with? He has far more "followers" than my humble stand; oh, I just can't give out a number; even I may have to start peddling Peterson Peanuts ... Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, Steve, the clown, who once so zealously shared his daily Kelly Miller rituals with us, is now hiding somewhere in the early winter. He left without a sign-off salutation to his many followers. Not a happy trouper, I'm left thinking ... Those K-M blogs, and I've questioned the savvy of telling so much for one who wants to stay active under big tops, do give us a real sense of a show out there on the road. Compared to which, Cole Circus of Stars feels so anonymous to the point of virtual non-existence. Ditto the Byrd big top. Perhaps the most snidely, purposely anonymous show is Mr. Walker's Its-A-Black-Thing-Thank-You-Not UniverSoul Circus. So we can maybe thank John Ringling North II for casually tolerating all those keyboard pushers who flourish on his lot ...Yes, okay, let's get back to legit bits:

And where are there any? ... Lot's of stuff from across the pond, and stuff about Tuffy Nicholas, son of late ringmaster Count Nicholas, touring a Hawaiian circus round the Islands. And I've run out of oomph; Anyway, Gotta get back to the runs. Show is leaving another burned-up town early. Where did Sid Kellner go?

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Big Apple Circus on PBS: Paul Binder's Retirement Highlights An Evening of Sad Stories Beneath and Behind an Unspectacular Big Top

Maybe circus is not as much a family as my niece, Lisa, feels good thinking it is after having discovered, last week, the first of three installments of the PBS series, Circus. She called me this afternoon from Virginia, and we talked about the show we were both high on.

This evening, I didn't feel so high. For a show about the circus, there was an awful lot of sadness. So many little stories, both personal and professional, more troubling than triumphal. Saddest and most disappointing of all, the lack of a splashy opening night in New York with reviews, etc. Not the drama I expected. They got to NY, and on the way, the tent was full of empty seats, shockingly empty. Mime Les Feres Taquin, in a surprising fit of candor, stated "the show could be much better than it is. It is just one act after another act."

One of the juggling LaSalle Brothers spoke of the tension and conflicts with his brother, over the latter's plans to go off to medical school, and of how it felt like a kind of divorce in the making. Barry Lubin was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, although, luckily, he seemed by show's end to be out of the woods, and was happily back in makeup as Grandma. The Neves flying trap act were fired on opening day in the second stand, a radical event for any circus; Paul Binder said this was the first time they had ever terminated a major act go into the season.

We never heard a word from music director Rob Slowik, particularly odd given that the show was titled "Play On," the theme crafted around a diversity of musical styles. However, viewers would not know this, for as of this point, it still goes by the name "Change On."

Paul Binder's decision to retire was made known. We saw Binder discussing how to break the news with his long-time associate and the man who would replace him, Guillaume Dufresnoy.

At one point, three potential ringmasters were auditioned, and five BAC top guns adjourned to a trailer to compare reactions: Binder, Christen, Dufresnoy, Lubin and director Steve Smith. Lubin was the first to proffer his opinion. And here things got very interesting, inviting all sorts of between-the-lines speculation.

After the meeting let out, Steve and Michael contacted Dufresonl, asking to meet with him. The three alone readdressed the issue of discussing respective reactions to the announcer tryouts -- without Paul, without Barry.

For me, the most revealing moment of these two hours was a poignant position firmly expressed by Steve Smith both before and after the segment focusing on Binder's retirement. Not once but twice did Smith assert essentially the same thing, as if Binder's exit was almost foreordained, and here I am almost quoting him word for word: "Paul has to step back so that BAC can have a future without him. It is hard for him to let go." I wonder what he may know that we don't. I wonder what pressures may have been placed on Paul behind the scenes leading up to this pivotal moment in his life.

In fact, Big Apple Circus perhaps has grown to staid in a ritualistic preparation process. I've more than once suggested that Barry Lubin, as talented as I believe he is (a legend, no doubt) is nonetheless symptomatic of an organization that may need to break free of staid traditions and a find bold new ways to refresh and reinvent itself. To blow up a few boxes. It also finds itself suffering an ominous decline in corporate funding and box office sales.

Most missing from tonight's show was a sense of a terrific performance. A number of worthy acts got air time and impressed, none outstandingly. We were not shown any of the tops turns from start to finish.

The producers wandered out of the tent many times, producing segments that felt listless and too far off the circus angle, to spend time with Lubin in hospital exam rooms, to listen to the kids discuss their personal lives. Very funny was an early segment lending the impression that three young women wanted to be known as lesbians in order to stave off the advances of the prop crew. And Heidi, earlier an item with the bomb kid, linked up with a member of the tent crew and the two left the show for Colorado. I predict it won't work out.

The Paul Binder I saw this evening matched the image I have always had of the man -- full of conviction and passion for his work, the producer in charge and a cheerful salesman for the circus in general. He also displayed humility and even not a little ambivalence about his decision to retire. He seemed genuinely conflicted -- like the LaSalle boy ruing the immanent loss of his brother as partner. Said Binder near the end, "Am I sad? Yes."

One of the few artistic high points: Lubin rehearsing an idea he and Mark Gindick came up with, needing something to replace a number not clicking with crowds. They called it "Singing in the Rain." Absolute brilliance. Finally, I got to see it; I did not when I saw the show on Long Island, and had I kept my ticket stub, I would have sent it in for a refund. False advertising. Another department that needs a refreshing makeover is marketing and promotion.

How could they have reached new york without an opening night?

Now, that makes me sad.

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PBS Returns to Circus Tonight: Will Binder Blow His Top Again? Can Lubin Control His Ego? Will the Bomb Kid Return? & How Will Steve Smith Cope?

Are you geared up for tonight's hours 2 and 3 of the 6-hour Big Apple Circus documentary, Circus, on PBS? I am for sure. Can't wait.

Last week's first two hours were sufficiently entertaining, mainly because the cameras rolled while familiar BAC figures revealed very-human personality traits I'd not known about. We got to see founder Paul Binder in anger meltdown. We watched Barry Lubin pushing around new clown Glen Heroy, trying to lock him into strait jacket direction. Look over there. Right hand move this way. Now turn. Pause. Look up! No, not right. Do it again!

And, in dubious retrospect, I asked myself: Hmmmm, yes, hmmmm. Let's see. Director Steve Smith ran the Ringling Clown College for ten years; in fact, he was a Ringling joey for six seasons, and on this show, he was, of record, the official "director." Of record, Lubin was a "production consultant." (says so in my copy of that year's program magazine), not the "Director of Clowning" for BAC that his Wikipedia profile claims him to be.

So I'll be watching to to see who directs Heroy the most, Smith or Lubin.

We got a prop kid getting tossed behind bars for allegedly wondering on his PC how one could plant a bomb under the big top. I saw somebody near the end of the program who looked like him, leading me to wonder if he's back.

Lots of tense plot threads that could explode into high drama. I'm taken by the premise, in which it appears the producers were given fine and full access to freely walk the lot and record whatever they found.

Last week I wondered if the unbecoming hissy fit thrown by Mr. Binder might have been staged for theatrical effect. Evidently not, comments posted here state clearly (as did a comment posted last year), that this is in fact the real Paul Binder. (For the record, Mr. Binder graciously granted me a long telephone interview five years ago; not once did this side of his personality surface.)

I'm not any where near as surprised with the Barry Lubin I am seeing for the first time. I've always had the impression that he lusted after as much power as he could grab. Among the perks he has extracted from management, getting long periods away while an understudy played his "Grandma" character, unheard of, to my knowledge, in big top history.

Binder's obvious fear of a performer so much as stubbing a toe has only added to my suspicions that he is one very cautious producer, perhaps too much so.

And then there's new artistic director G. Dufresnoy (I have HAD IT trying to spell this man's first name, and my exasperated spell checker is filing for divorce). In my first glimpses of G.D., I enjoyed yet another surprise and a favorable one. Mr. D. said almost nothing last week, but his few words struck me as strong and authoritative, and in his fleeting persona I could see an impresario in the making. I noticed him sitting a few rows above Binder & Christensen -- power play? I'm hoping to see more of him in action tomorrow night. Whether he will endure in his new post is far from a settled matter; Early luke warm reactions to his first fully controlled opus, Dance On!, do not bode so well. The show on TV is getting immense amounts of media attention, far more than it's getting for its new opus in Gotham.

So here they come -- explosive outgoing founder-artistic director. Clown Grandma who seems hungry for greater power and recognition. Bomb kid possibly just misunderstood. And the endearing director of record brimming with enthusiasm in the face of it all. I will be studying Steve Smith's subtle facial expressions, looking for deliciously telling hints he may be telegraphing our way. Oh, the fun of it all.

Big Apple Circus, bring it on!

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An American in Paris: In It's Ageless Magic, I Rue the Demise of Romanticism

Will the generation now growing up on hip hop power, or on Britney and her peers, ever in a future day, then wrapping their emotions around the songs and cinematic images they once embraced, feel anything close to what I embraced a few evenings ago watching the MGM musical, An American in Paris?

Or are we all doomed to the replay of feelings as distinctly different as were the entertainment forms that first engendered those feelings? The fifties was a romantic era. Few people resisted the artifice of "breaking into song" as they now do. Today’s younger set responds to sounds and images decidedly more smug, more cynical. Some would argue, more realistic. Perhaps they simply will never feel what I felt, nor what I still feel when confronted by The Bandwagon, Singing in the Rain, or Gigi, to name a few.

Still, I feel sorry for those who may never thrill to the dancing of Gene Kelly, the songs of George and Ira Gershwin, the artful cinematic genius of director Vincente Minnelli, the remarkable scripting of Alan Jay Lerner in his prime. Perhaps the best hope is the fresh inspiration that more recent pop stars, like Rod Stewart, are bringing to the Great American Songbook.

A few weeks ago, I re-watched Hairspray, a contemporary movie musical that lifted my spirits as high as a fifties MGM song and dancer when it first came out. I remember being mightily impressed. So what has happened since then? Somehow since, I’ve lost my taste for the film. I can still appreciate its high qualities, yes, and yet the second time around, for me the thrill was gone.

How strange, or might it be merely fateful?, that we each, in our own younger years, may acquire feelings unique to our time, feelings that possibly may never again be felt by others who succeed us. If that be the case, how glad I am that I was born when Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron were the stars. When we all sang and danced in the rain.

I have very few DVDs on my shelves. I think I'll add An American in Paris, and maybe send Hairspray to my sister -- younger then me by one significant year.

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Sunday Morning with Frank Braden: Rack Up Another Record Ringling Ramble ...

"Confounding big top strategists and its own high command, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus last spring began topping its 1948 banner Manhattan business even before it opened the 1949 season in Madison Square Garden.

By April first, the advance mail orders for seats had reached a new high. Modest, but striking, display ads in the New York newspapers had precipitated the golden deluge of check-enclosed letters, for these ads alone annually inform the New York public of the when, where and how for ticket purchases by mail. Then, as the lines stormed the selling windows in the Garden, John Ringling North's 1949 edition of The Greatest Show on Earth, the best in 79 years, was in the bag before the band played opening night.

New York acclaimed the new performance, told the nation via newspapers, radio, magazines and word-of-mouth, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Minot to Miami . Capacity and turnaway business prevailed throughout the four-and-a-half weeks Garden run, and often one day's gross exceeded a week's abundant "take" for a two-train circus of former years, Of course, nowadays, there are no other circuses half as large, so there is no current comparison. The Big Show, railroading from Coast to Coast on its four long streamlined carriers of ninety 72-foot and 84-foot steel cars, is as conspicuously supreme as is the love of liberty in the heart of mankind."

-- from his route book summary of the season, 1949.

Oh, the talk of turnaway crowds, of Ringling exceptionalism by this exceptionally gifted press agent and writer, gives me the urge to watch my DVD of The Greatest Show on Earth tonight!

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