So it turns out David Lynch had a bigger impact on my subconscious than I imagined ten days ago, when he died on January 15.
The small ads in the Village Voice for midnight showings of Eraserhead(thank you Mel Brooks!) first piqued my curiosity about Lynch, but it wasn't until the release of The Elephant Manthat I began tracking the career of this all-too-straight looking dude with a thick head of hair and an ever-present cigarette.
Photo by Pete Weeks (2002)
Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks (both scored by the incomparable Angelo Badalamenti) cemented his reputation as Hollywood's oddest duck, as if Doris Day had been possessed by Charles Manson. But his later films (we'll forget Dune, an anomaly), beginning with Wild at Heart mostly exhausted my patience. I fell asleep multiple times during Mulholland Drive, one of "cinema's" most acclaimed films, although truth be told I'm not that big a fan of Hitchcock's Vertigo, either. Sissy Spacek, my favorite actress, proved a big enough draw to see The Straight Story (lovely) but three hours of Inland Empire? No thank you, I don't need to pay ten bucks for a nap.
So I was conflicted about whether or not to include the guy in "People I Loved" until last night when Lynch directed one of my strangest dreams, starring Warren Beatty and Mike Faist. Faist and I were friends on a road trip. We ran into mid-career Beatty who had parked his antique car outside a barn. The three of us were hanging out inside the hay loft intensely-discussing 20th century film history. I couldn't decide whether or not to ask Beatty about the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. When I did, Faist pulled out a gun and shot Beatty in the face before he could answer. The camera pulled back to reveal that aliens composed of icky grey matter and shaped like leprous cones had been watching us on tall blue monitors with red framed screens. They were heaving and wailing as their antennae quivered, traumatized by the black & white violence on screen.
It's big, I'll give the museum that. You'd expect nothing less from a man who owned "The Greatest Show on Earth."
And greenery has been restored to the gorgeous interior courtyard after last season's hurricanes. Chris said the grounds reminded him of the Getty Villa.
Maybe, maybe not (I've only been to the museum), but they provided Thom with a pretty backdrop.
One museum gallery--of more than twenty--is filled with Italian Renaissance art, handsomely mounted but unidentified.
St. Francis definitely seems like he belongs at the Ringling!
John and Mable Ringling adored Venice--it inspired Cà d' Zan, their bay front mansion. This busy scene is painted on Venetian glass.
"The Flaying of Marsyas by Apollo" by Antonio de Bellis (detail, ca 1637-40)
Does this monochromatic painting--at least 12 feet tall--say Tiepolo to you?
Two Allegorical Figures (1760)
Members of the One Percent often buy old books by the foot for decorative, rather than intellectual reasons. Size and volume, not quality, seem to have been the primary impetus behind the Ringlings' acquisition of 10,000 art objects, some purchased in auction lots.
The Ringling reminded me of Crystal Bridges, another museum constructed with a self-made businessman's personal fortune: the Waltons, now the richest family in the world, arrived on the scene after other institutions already had acquired many of the best art works from the past. That's why a good curatorial eye can be more easily expressed through contemporary art, although the Ringling, now administered by Florida State University, can no longer compete with the Waltons' acquisition fund.
"Ain't I a Woman (Sandra) by Mickalene Thomas (2009)
Gifts from board members like Ellen R. Sandor help the museum stay relevant. As a student at the Chicago Art Institute, photographer Danny Lyon documented the Civil Rights movement through his affiliation with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He's probably best known, however, for his book TheBikeriders, turned into a terrific movie last year.
Sheriff Jim Clark arrest two young men demonstrating for voter registration on the steps of the federal building (Selma, AL, 1963)
The Ringling has plenty of space for traveling exhibits.
Joo Woo, born in South Korea, now lives and works in Tampa. She hand-paints random cut outs from various sources, assembling an eye-popping collage that reflects her immigrant experience with highly personal symbols
. . . including American slang.
Before you leave the Ringling, take some time to get acquainted with the denizens of the Dwarf Garden.
And we're not talking plants! Statues like these--some people liken them to Britain's garden gnomes--first became popular in the Medici court of the 1600s.
Okay, so it wasn't the nicest day. And as we'd seen for ourselves the day before--schockingly--on well-to-do Siesta Key, Sarasota did suffer a one-two punch from Hurricanes Helene and Milton last fall. But the Venice-inspired "House of John" (Ringling) disappointed, big-time.
The surge from one of the storms flooded the basement and denuded Mable's Rose Garden which looked worse in color, believe it or not. The salt water must have killed all the bushes.
The first floor of the 56-room mansion re-opened to visitors only in mid-December. Dancing couples from around the world--painted on the ceiling by Willy Pogany during the Roaring Twenties--raised an eyebrow: Florida didn't stop lynching African Americans until 1926, the year construction of Cà d'Zan was completed.
Some of the furnishings could only be described as vulgar.
Threadbare upholstery on this Venetian dining chair reflected the overall sense that Florida State University wasn't maintaining the mansion very well.
Only the bar seemed in tip top shape.
The bay front exterior was more appealing, except for the appalling easy chairs.
Tinted windows shielded the living room from the afternoon sun over Sarasota Bay.
Thom and Chris are standing at the edge of the marble terrace. Imagine doing the Charleston on a warm February nigh with a live orchestra playing under a full moon instead of this dreary scene.
Sarasota beckoned when the Folly had to be tented for a couple of nights to get rid of the termites that were chowing down on our Florida pine roof and cabinets. The Ringling provided a day-long refuge from the unseasonably cold, miserable weather on the Gulf coast.
The Ringling campus includes an art museum established by John--that's him on the lower left--and a circus museum on property that he bequeathed to the state of Florida, where he and his brothers had invested heavily in real estate in addition to running their Big Top and railroad empires. He and his wife Mable lived nearby in a waterfront mansion called Cà d 'Zan.
In his heyday, John, who outlived all his brothers, was one of the world's richest men with a $50 million fortune. But by the time of his death in 1936--more than 25 years after the family had purchased Barnum & Bailey Circus--he had just $311 in his bank account. His nephew eventually sold it to Irvin and Israel Feld whose company finally ended "The Greatest Show on Earth" in 2017, after it had entertained Americans for nearly 150 years. Feld Entertainment commissioned the massive mural that welcomes visitors to the Tibbals Learning Center. one of two buildings on the Ringling campus devoted to circus history.
The mural features nearly 30 circus performers, past and present, that artist William Woodward met before completing it in 1989, as well as dozens of animals. And a trio of elderly clowns from Lake Worth Beach!
Changing attitudes about the treatment of animals contributed to the decline of the circus. Although I never saw a circus as an adult, I do remember the news coverage it generated when dozens of elephants lumbered through the Lincoln Tunnel to get to Madison Square Garden. Here's Moroccan strongman Tahar Douis, an alligator wrestler. He also earned a spot in the Guiness Book of World Records during the 1970s by supporting a pyramid of twelve men, weighing 1,700 pounds, on his shoulders. Bragging rights were the currency of the circus world.
One of several circuses purchased by the Ringling Brothers featured "champion Great Danes from the Imperial Kennels of Prince Bismarck."
Chris and his family spent a month traveling with the Mills Brothers Circus over two consecutive summers in the 1960s. The Circus Fans Association of America relied on members like his father, an Episcopal priest, to legitimize a form of entertainment that also had its detractors. Sideshows had fallen into disfavor long before the era of political correctness.
Chris vividly recalls an aerialist being shot from a spring-loaded cannon like this one. "They saved the best act for last."
Locomotive trains transported hundreds of performers, trainers, animals and laborers--plus tons of equipment--to small towns and big cities all across America in the early 20th century. Sometimes they stayed only a day or two.
Chris said he dined in a tent much like this one. One of the performers taught him and his brother how to snap a bullwhip, a skill that came in handy when they staged their own circus in the back yard after returning home to suburban Chicago.
It's hard to imagine today, but many of the people who bought circus tickets had no other way to see live exotic animals like camels and ostriches, festively costumed.
Howard Tibbals began the model as freshman in college and continued working on it for more than 60 years. He wanted to call it the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus but the owners at the time refused permission to use their name or logo. Now his model is one of the few reminders of the company's vanished significance in American culture. It simulates nighttime conditions, too.
The realistic detail offers something for everyone. No electric clippers at this bare-chested barbershop.
Here's what the Big Top--just one section of the model, which occupies a large gallery--looks like from the second floor.
Another gallery exhibits well-preserved circus memorabilia, big and small.
Low ticket prices kept the crowds coming. Reserved seats cost just $0.75.
This papier-mâché head isn't a very good likeness of Buster Keaton, my favorite silent film star. When I visited Forest Lawn Cemetery, his modest grave made me like him even more.
Many circus performers were European, including Gunther Gebel-Williams, an animal trainer who emigrated from Germany after World War II. "Every day starts out the same, but each one unfolds and ends differently. That is part of the allure of our business." Television, which brought the world into everyone's home, increased his fame--he appeared on both the Ed Sullivan and Tonight Shows--also reduced the demand for live entertainment.
Video screens feature a variety of performers, including horse acts.
I have my own childhood circus story, although I have no way of confirming it. My parents took me to my first in Munich during the mid-1950s. According to family lore, the top-hatted ringmaster plucked me out of the audience and handed me off to a man on a horse who carried me around the ring. I take this with a grain of salt, given the Hon penchant for hyperbole.
An upstairs gallery reproduces historic circus posters.
"Van Amburg, The Brute Tamer" by Archibald Alexander Park (ca 1840)
Barnum & London: Jumbo (1882)
Although this satirical lithograph doesn't mention P.T. Barnum by name, his identity is pretty obvious. Funny story: to keep the crowds moving through his tents, Barnum--who once claimed that "no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public"--put up signs saying "This Way To Egress," as if it were a special attraction, not a lesser known word for "exit." His condescending ploy worked.
"Hum Bug from Comic Natural History" by Henry L. Stephens (1851)
Oddly, given their ubiquity at the circus, clown displays were few and far between.
Lifecast of Tammy Parish
The Rotunda building housed the entire circus collection when the museum opened in 1948. It's now used for rotating exhibits.
Circus Banner by Frans De Vos (ca 1900)
Horse Head Helmet from "Rainbows Around the World" (1955)
The Wagon Room also features reproductions of the banners that hung outside of the sideshow.
If only Donald and Elon were circus attractions on their way to Mars!
