Greatest Show on Earth

Flamboyant Showman Roy Hofheinz already has his own personal steel and Lucite colosseum--the $38 million Houston Astrodome. But he figured that the old Colosseum in Rome was the only place for last week's occasion. Leading a flock of family, flacks and photographers, plus an unruly lion, Hofheinz and his partners, Washington, D.C. Impresarios Israel and Irvin Feld, met in the grand ruins to buy the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus from John Ringling North for $10 million. North, after all, has a home in Rome, so the Colosseum, said Irvin Feld, "was a natural. You could hardly have done the thing any place else."

The Roman cops were not so sure. When the visitors, lacking a table to sign papers on, began moving a heavy stone slab around to make do, a dozen carabinieri came on the run to halt what looked like desecration of a national monument. When the sideshow ended at last, "the Greatest Show on Earth" passed to its new owners.

At 64, North had been boss of the 97-year-old family circus since 1936, and with his brother Henry, 58, held a controlling 51% of the stock. While John lived in Paris, Rome and Zurich for most of the past four years, he left details to Henry and grew ever more weary of dealing with fractious minority shareholders.

One reason why North finally agreed to sell was that the deal included the Felds, who gross $6,500,000 a year handling such headliners as Harry Belafonte and Andy Williams. As agents for the circus since 1956, they were credited with helping it survive at a time when TV was hurting the box office and its own costly small-town "big top" shows were hurting profits. Now well in the black, the circus is expected to end its current season next week with a record $8,500,000 in receipts.

The circus also made a mark at Hofheinz's Astrodome two years ago, when it drew a record crowd of 41,000 for a single performance. Hofheinz, 55, wants to cover "the gamut of family entertainment." Along with a convention-minded Astrohall and four Astromotels in the works, he is building a $10 million, 56-acre Astroworld (a Texas version of Disneyland) hard by the Astrodome to be "the greatest complex of family enjoyment, sports entertainment and show facilities in the world." That does not leave much for the Greatest Show on Earth, but its fans can be thankful that it will be on the road next year, just about as before.

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