Bigger & Better

Grownups are prone to suppose that the only thing new about the circus each year is that large young section of the audience which has never seen the show before. In point of fact this supposition is untrue.

Competition from the new Cole Bros.-Clyde Beatty Circus (TIME, March 29) has caused the Big Show--the one & only Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus--to bestir itself to present this year a spectacle more exciting than ever. Young Si old who marched into Madison Square Garden last week to see the season's premiere emphatically agreed that the 1937 circus was truly, as advertised, bigger & better.

Of the standard acts there had never been so many. And among the great specialty and novelty acts there were hair-raising improvements and additions. Items:

P: This year the Wallendas, originators of the breathtaking moving human pyramid on the high wire, and their Ringling colleagues, the Grotofents, have felt the pressure of competition from the Cole Bros.-Beatty team of the Gretonas. One of the Gretonas goes out on the wire and, holding precariously onto his balancing pole, lies down on his back and rolls over. The Wallendas and Grotofents now not only match this but, as if it were not enough to turn a spectator's head snowy white, send one of their number out on the wire to do a drunken rhumba.

P: Robert Wadlow of Alton, Ill. was at the last moment persuaded to exhibit his hulking 8 ft. 7 in. in his first public appearance. Thus in addition to long and long-memoried 8 ft. 6 in. Jack Earle of El Paso, Tex. Ringlings' is still able to boast THE TALLEST HUMAN BEING SINCE THE DAWN OF CREATION.

In securing the services of Giant Wadlow, Ringlings' Manager Sam Gumpertz once more justified his reputation for persuasiveness and astuteness. Robert's father had turned down all previous show offers. Robert, who is 19 and does what his father says, has gotten to like circus life much better than he expected. The Wadlow contract, whose money terms are unrevealed, calls only for appearances in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Boston.

P: Rudy Rudynoff's four concentric circles of prancing horses have been augmented this year by the appearance--in the centre, holding a whip and a Great Dane--of statuesque Mile Maria Rasputin, billed as the Mad Monk's Daughter, who was out with the Hagenbeck Wallace Circus two years ago.

P: Brand new was the most squirm-making act of all, a Hopi Indian snake dance. While portly Col. Tim McCoy explains that the idea is to placate the snakes because in them rest spirits who can return to the rain gods and intercede for a good corn crop, eight painted, breech-clouted Hopis trail around in a circle holding one or two snakes apiece, while a man in the centre waves a bunch of feathers to divert the serpents' attention. As a public precaution, the snakes' fangs have been removed or are kept folded back by little buckskin muzzles. Even so, as the Hopis let the rattlers coil about them or hold them gingerly in their mouths, they look uncomfortable.

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