Chicago Circus

"Skyrocket," an individual who dives 80 ft., his clothes flaming, into a little tank of water--"Candy" Hammer and his Congress of Wild West Riders of the World -- the Van de Velde Family, "Greatest gymnasts of all time!"--Mayme Ward, the only lady catcher in the world and her troupe of Flying Wards (29 people in the air at one & the same time!)-- who would be hiring and advertising such folk but the greatest show-business man now on earth, John Ringling?

Yet it was not John Ringling who began billing these performers in Chicago last week. It was, instead, a young man who is vexed with John Ringling. It was 32-year-old President Sidney Nicholas Strotz (rhymes with "boats") of Chicago Stadium Corp.--out to beat John Ringling at his own game. Last autumn Mr. Ringling refused to book his Sells-Floto circus at the Chicago Stadium for this spring. Instead he took the older, smaller Chicago Coliseum, for a generation the South Wabash Avenue scene of circus in Chicago before the handsome greystone stadium was built on Madison Street. To teach John Ringling a lesson, young President Strotz announced that his own Great European Olympia Circus, which he last week had almost in readiness, would perform daily at the Stadium for null admissions on the same days (April 4 to 19) that the Sells-Floto show is in town charging 50-c--to-$3, plus an extra week.

Interesting as a business fight, the Strotz-Ringling battle is significant of a change that has come over the show industry in Chicago. Sidney Strotz, the tail, lean, hard-chinned younger son of a North Shore socialite family, has been successful in a variety of businesses (wrapping-machinery, Korn King products, auto supplies) since leaving Cornell in 1919. Like most of his friends he lives in fashionable Lake Forest. One of his friends who did not live in Lake Forest was the late Patrick T. ("Paddy") Harmon, proprietor of "Dreamland" (dance pavilion) and promoter of bicycle races who was killed in a motor accident last July. For years

Paddy Harmon nursed the idea of an athletic emporium in Chicago comparable to Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. It was young Strotz who finally showed him how to finance it. He got several sport-loving businessmen of his own kind --Vincent Bendix, John F. Jelke, Jr., Vice President B. A. Massee of Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, Grain Trader James Norris-- to go on the board. People like Jack Mitchell (Lolita Armour's husband) and Clement Studebaker, as well as most directors, bought stock.

Paddy Harmon soon proved himself no showman. In autumn, 1929, after a half-year's operation, the stadium was $300,000 in the red. The directors got Sheldon Clark, vice president of Sinclair Refining Co., to come in as president. Business got no better. Bond interest had to be defaulted. In June 1930, Sidney Strotz asked to be given a crack at the presidency.

He closed the stadium from July till last November. Since then its lights have blazed every night, and into its till has clinked good Chicago coin. The bond interest has been cleared off. Accounts due have come far down from the $120,000 that was owing last July. President Strotz boasts that his business has been better than Madison Square Garden's-- and the latter offers no figures in dispute. The Stadium costs about $1,350 daily to operate. But it will seat 24.000 at a pinch and Sidney Strotz has managed to find people who could show him how to fill it. The hockey games have paid well. The Chicago Tribune held its Golden Gloves boxing matches there, the News ran an ice carnival. For political rallies and the like, the rental is $2,000. Greatest Stadium crowd was the night of Senator "J. Ham" Lewis' big rally, with some 25,000 standees turned away.

President Strotz was chagrined when Madison Square Garden, with connivance from its Chicago allies, euchred him out of the Schmeling-Stribling world's title fistfight contract (TIME, Jan. 26). But he and his up-&-doing backers--who include his smiling, big stockbroking brother Harold--vow not soon again to be outsmarted by the Easterners. If their circus battle with John Ringling in Chicago goes over, they may carry that fight to other cities, may send a circus through the land some of the proceeds from which will find their way back to the lawns of Lake Forest.

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