Three Ring Ruckus

At Ringling the clowns were allowed one five-minute center ring gag. This was the only time during the show that the clowns were spotlighted in center ring.

The year I joined the show in 1971 the center ring gag was a bakery riff, featuring a clown bride, a clown groom, several clown bakers (including me), a towering foam rubber wedding cake filled with shaving soap, and an exploding oven. There was no storyline as such; while the band tootled “If I Knew You Were Comin I’d’ve Baked a Cake”  there was much frantic and confused action centered around the wedding cake, into which the hapless bride was eventually thrown, leading to the blow off when the stove erupted into a fumarole of sparks and black powder smoke. During those hectic five minutes I was slapped half a dozen times, took several pratfalls, was slathered with soap and doused with flour, and finally propelled over the ring curb by the oven’s pyrotechnics. It was a crash course in the rough and tumble of slapstick for me; the first few weeks of the season I was covered in bruises and limped around like Walter Brennan in “Rio Bravo.”  I thought about asking for combat pay.

In the course of time I wised up, learning to go limp when I fell and to jerk my head back before a slap actually connected with my face. I also learned how to protect myself from hazing. Dougie Ashton, an Australian clown, enjoyed rubbing my face in a bucket of Old Spice shaving soap suds during the gag, an unscripted improvisation that took off most of my whiteface makeup. After the blow off I’d race back to clown alley to reapply my makeup, which would take a good fifteen minutes. This, in turn, made me late for the next production number, which would infuriate Herr Charlie Baumann, the Performance Director. His teutonic growl followed me all the way from clown alley to the curtained arena entrance, threatening demerits and fines if I continued to hold up the show.

After one particularly thorough dunking by Dougie I decided to put his makeup back on, instead of my own. Ashton used a basic character makeup -- just black mustache and eyebrows with some rouge on the cheeks. I was able to show up on time for the next production number, which made Baumann happy -- and gave Dougie a conniption fit.

“That bahsterd is using me makeup!” he complained to Bauman. When confronted by the Performance Director, I innocently explained my predicament and how I had solved it. Charlie barely suppressed a smile as he listened, then turned to Dougie.

“Vhat you vant me to do? He must be on time for der next number or I fine him, yah?”

After that, Dougie left my clown face intact.   

  

Keeping all three rings filled with entertaining action for a full three hours was no walk in the park for circus management. Even with dozens of top flight acts from around the world to keep things going, we clowns were called upon to display our waggery a half dozen times or more during each show. We were required to fill all three rings with tomfoolery, as well as parade around the track with ‘walk-arounds’, which are portable sight gags. And when you fill three rings with a total of thirty professional clowns, each ring competing against the others for attention, you create a tumultuous bedlam that makes Chinese New Year seem like a Presbyterian funeral service.

The veteran clowns, naturally, were awarded the center ring for their shenanigans. The rest of us riff raff were assigned the two outer rings. One of the outer rings was always given over to a table rock routine, a chari vari demonstration, or a juggling display. You needed real talent and skill to participate in any of those routines. Which I did not possess. The other outer ring was used as a catch-all for those clowns who didn’t juggle or do acrobatics; we untalented hacks generally hurled buckets of water at each other and ran around the ring like lunatics, chasing each other, dropping our pants, and firing off blanks from starting pistols.

When presented with three rings of slapstick, an audience’s attention will naturally gravitate towards the ring where there is the most noise and fire. Artistry goes by the board as the decibels increase. The jugglers switched from Indian clubs to fire torches. The center ring clowns, those sly masters, used blank shotgun shells to punctuate their gag -- that particular season it was a balky Model T that refused to start without squirting water and smoke in all directions. Our ring of misfits fought back with a small bore canon purchased collectively from some Civil War buffs in Pennsylvania. It not only created a sound wave that could knock you down at thirty paces and make your ears bleed, but produced an impressive smoke ring that billowed out over the audience, causing them to “ooh!” and “aah!” like crazy.

Mark Anthony, known as Tony the Happy Tramp, was producing clown that year. A producing clown gets paid more in order to supply all of clown alley with an adequate supply of gags. Mark knew every clown gag there was, having clowned with circuses since the 1940’s. As one of the veterans in center ring, he did not appreciate our Civil War artillery. So he pulled out the ultimate  attention getter: Rocket balloons.

Rocket balloons are four feet long and sausage shaped when inflated. Mark put a little cardboard doohickey in the mouth of each one, which allowed it to slowly expel air and sail majestically above the heads of the audience in a magnificent arc before landing in the very back row. He sent a dozen of these babies out into the audience during the Model T gag, which created a shrieking pandemonium that effectively ended the competition for laughs and attention.

Admitting defeat, the outer rings went back to quieter skylarking. Mark put away his rocket balloons. After all, he told us with a grin, those balloons cost a hell of a lot and were not in the clowning budget. And my tinnitus eventually cleared up.