End of the Trail

Under the big tent in Burbank, Calif, an audience of 1,200 waited impatiently for the circus to start. Finally the ringmaster made an announcement. Clyde Beatty's Circus, the No. 2 big topper in the U.S. (after Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey), had come to the end of the tanbark trail. It was closing. As the audience filed out, roustabouts dismantled the show for the last time.

Bad luck had dogged Beatty's blue-and-orange, 15-car show train from the time it rolled out of winter quarters at Deming, N. Mex. in March. Fighting bad weather and meager crowds, the once-prosperous circus had topped its $5,000 daily break-even point on only six of 43 days it had been on the road. The showdown came when the American Guild of Variety Artists pulled 55 members off the job until Beatty came through with $15,000 in back pay. Instead, black-haired, claw-scarred Beatty, 52, most famed of U.S. animal trainers, filed a bankruptcy petition. Against $281,758 in debts, his National Circus Corp. listed assets of $260--enough to feed Beatty's menagerie for 2 1/2 days.

TV Tinsel. Beatty's collapse left only one railroad circus--Ringling--in business, v. 26 in 1940. Through most of the U.S., circus day, with its "glittering galaxies of prancing pachyderms and death-defying daredevils," has vanished like the throngs through Barnum's Egress. Of less than a dozen truckborne, one-ring shows that remain, only a handful still play outdoors; all but a few are leaving trails of red ink.

What killed the Big Show? Circusmen blame skyrocketing costs. Ringling last year paid a $500,000 railroad bill v. $150,000 in 1940. Downtown circus lots big enough for the 26,000-yard oval of the Big Top are either unavailable or exorbitantly expensive in most U.S. cities. For a business whose methods have changed little since its cheap-labor heyday, the cost of moving from town to town has become prohibitive. On top of that, today's children, surfeited with TV tinsel, no longer quicken to the real-life roar of lions, the aerialist's heart-stopping plunge. "Suckers may still be born every minute," epitaphed a circusman in Manhattan last week, "but TV gets 'em first."

Elephant Problems. The lone big-time survivor, Ringling Bros., last week said that business in Manhattan and Boston so far this year is down only 7% to 11% from record 1955, predicted that 1956 would be the fourth best year in its history. Ringling has valiantly tried to slash costs in recent years, e.g., by installing a centralized purchasing system, designing a new nylon Big Top which is hauled up and down by hydraulic jacks and should last three years.

But Ringling faces elephant-size problems. In the past year close to 100 top staffers have been fired or quit in protest against John Ringling North's management shakeup and attempts to "Hollywoodize" the show. Recently union contract negotiations broke down before the Madison Square Garden opening; Ringling has since been picketed by the American Guild of Variety Artists. Last week in Boston many of Ringling's top artists worked in a cut-rate, "kiddies free" A.G.V.A. circus aimed at luring business away from Ringling, threatened to carry the competition to every town played by the "Greatest Show on Earth." Few circus veterans expected Ringling to stay in the black after moving from big-town Eastern audiences into smaller communities in the northeast and Midwest next month. But even if the circus ends up in the red, oil-and land-rich John North can probably afford to continue to run it--as he has in the past--as a family tradition.

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