Circus Memories #5

1976 Ringling-3, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. That year, the show opened with Ursula Bottcher’s polar bears. Bill Pruyn provided those “Brilliant Bruins of the Arctic” with 14 musical cues: “Regimental Youngsters March” (Fucik), “March of the Ill Assorted Guard,” “Great Adventure” (the theme from an early 1960’s TV series), “Willkommen” (from the musical “Cabaret”), “Skaters’ Waltz,” “Rolling Globes” (probably something brought with them from Europe), “Hofbrau Haus” (played when the bears all drank from bottles), “Wunderbar” (from the musical “Kiss Me Kate”), “Timothy” (an obscure Henry Mancini film theme), “Sleigh Ride” (Leroy Anderson), “March of the Clowns” (the theme music written by Richard Rodgers for the Jack Palance TV series “The Greatest Show on Earth”), an up-tempo rendering of Prokofieff’s “March Opus 99” (when the bears took turns sliding down an inclined ramp), and “The Gladiator’s Farewell March.” Ursula took her final bow to a special fanfare based on the first few bars of “The Gladiator’s Farewell.”