1952 Ringling Program (From Eric Beheim)

1952%20Ringling%20Program, a photo by bucklesw1 on Flickr. In 1952, when I was 6, my aunt took me and my brother to see the Ringling Circus in downtown Cleveland. That year, the show was set up on the East 9th Street lot overlooking Lake Erie. (The same lot where the 1942 menagerie fire had occurred.) The menagerie was located at one end of the big top and I can remember walking passed the elephant picket line and the giraffe pen to get into the seating area. We sat in the blues on the side where the bandstand was located. (Given my extreme youth, I didn’t pay too much attention to the music that was played that day.) Before the performance started, I can remember looking up and seeing a few holes in the canvas top, so apparently on the day of the setup, no one had been concerned about circumventing the “searching fingers of the wind!” During a pre-show clown walk around, I can remember seeing Emmett Kelly juggling some balls. (I knew who he was because I had seen the TV episode where Henry Fonda played Kelly and Kelly had played himself while performing in makeup.) After the performance, we went through the sideshow. As we were making our way off the lot, my aunt bought my brother and me souvenir popguns made of wood and tin. (If you sold ones like them today, you would be jailed for child endangerment because of the flimsy construction, sharp edges and small parts!) Like many circus souvenirs, the popguns only lasted a few days. This was the only time I saw the Ringling show under canvas. While I was in still in high school, I received a set of 30 circus color slides one year for Christmas. This was the set that was sold by Blackhawk Films of Davenport, Iowa under the title CIRCUS TRAIN-LAST DAYS OF THE BIG TOP! (They have been out of print for at least 30 years.) I later learned they had been taken in 1952. Buckles posted some of them a few years ago. In honor of the 60th anniversary of the 1952 Edition of the Greatest Show on Earth, here are all 30 slides, scanned from the set I received over 50 years ago. Your comments as to who and what we are seeing will be greatly appreciated by the rest of us.