RINGLING BROS and Barnum & Bailey, America’s largest circus, knew how to make an entrance. For decades, its elephants promenaded through the Midtown Tunnel into Manhattan, then walked trunk-to-tail along 34th Street to Madison Square Garden. New Yorkers of all ages lined the streets, often in the early hours, to see the annual elephant march. In 2015, bowing to pressure from animal-rights groups, Feld Entertainment, the circus’s parent company, did away with its elephant acts, and once the big beasts were taken off the show ticket sales plummeted. So on January 14th, after 146 years of touring, Feld decided to close the circus nicknamed “The Greatest Show on Earth”.
PT Barnum, one of the show’s founders, is said to have remarked that “clowns and elephants are the pegs upon which a circus is hung”. Sending in the clowns was not enough to keep Ringling Bros going. More than 400 performers and roustabouts will lose their jobs, and scores of animals, including tigers, horses, dogs and kangaroos will need new homes. The retired elephants are in a sanctuary.
Ringling Bros is only the latest circus to call it a day. Cole Bros Circus...Continue reading
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