The Greatest Showman: The Story of PT Barnum (b. 1810)

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports, and from business to history, and everything in between, including your story. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. They’re some of our favorites. Phineas Taylor Barnum was to the show business what Andrew Jackson had been to politics. And like Andrew Jackson, he became one of the representative Americans of his time, an expanse of entrepreneur in the Great Age of Entrepreneurs. In a big and memorable way, he changed how we all lived. He gave us something to talk about, something to dream about. Our movies, television, our entire entertainment-saturated culture is what it is today because of what P. T. Barnum started. He seems almost a fable now, but then he did in his own day two. For you to tell this story is an expert among P. T. Barnum experts. Let’s take a listen.

Good night.

We welcome America’s Famuli Shrman Veneas Pala Barnam.

My name is Kathleen Maher. I am the director of the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It’s about barely an hour outside of New York City, and it was the home of P. T. Barnum. And the museum that I worked for was actually incepted by P. T. Barnum before he passed away. But sadly, it took two years to build and he did not survive to see it completed. But what I typically loved doing on a regular basis is talking about Barnum and how he’s impacted our lives today, how he has completely designed popular culture, the way we moved through the world, through theater, through gaming. Everything that you could possibly think of actually has some form or some fingerprint of Barnum on it, because he was a brilliant and genius promoter. Most people go back and they think today because of the success of “The Greatest Showman” movie that Hugh Jackman did a couple of years ago, so people immediately think of Barnum in that context. The fascinating thing is the movie absolutely captured his spirit. But Barnum himself actually is born in 1810 in Bethel, Connecticut, a farming community. When you think about 1810 in the context of American history, Napoleon is still a current event. You know, King George is still alive, Founding Fathers are still alive. So America is really a very new nation and struggling with what the Constitution means in their lives. This is something very, very new, and Barnum is born into that. And we all think about Barnum, we think of the circus. The fact of the matter is “The Greatest Show on Earth” was Barnum’s retirement project. He was sixty-one years old before he really embarked on what we think of the circus today. He had decades of struggles and triumphs to really come to this pinnacle of his life, which lingered as The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Balley Circus until a few years ago. So his legacy really began. Barnum’s brand began long before his circus endeavor. So, like I said, he was born in a small town in Connecticut called Bethel on July Fifth. We did not celebrate Fourth of July the way we do today, but he was born on July Fifth. But the truth of the matter is that Barnum’s maternal grandfather was actually well-to-do. The family owned much of the town, the shops in the town, and Barnum’s mother and father own owned shop, so they were working-class people most certainly, but they were not destitute. And interestingly, Barnum was one of ten children, so he had siblings and half-siblings, so it was quite a robust family that worked the farms. He did not like farm work. He liked headwork. He was always calculating, even as a very, very young boy. So they realized he was not the kind of kid that was going to help in the fields with his family. He was going to work in the general store, and that’s where he learns the art of barter in trade. It was Yankee ingenuity at that moment in time, and it was all everything was a negotiation in New England, so it was really the moment where he learns the art of a deal. He learns ingenuity. He’s witty, and he’s humor, and he was charming as young as he was to people in the community. His schooling only went till he was about eight years old when he had to go and work in his family’s general store. He did grow up. It was a very religious community, Protestant beliefs. Barnum didn’t push against that necessarily. He was a staunch Christian believer. He believed that all of the challenging things that happened to him through the course of his life was Divine Providence that he learned and he could be better. When he lost all of his money in the 1850s, he felt that that was the lesson he needed to have to learn humility. Now what he wound up doing in Bethel, he realized shopkeeping was not going to make him the amount of money that he wanted, and he embarked on the lotteries. They were sanctioned by the church at that time, they were sanctioned by the state, and he was making quite a bit of money for his family conducting lottery operations. It’s not until the very Calvinistic ideologies of the church wanted to really ban through legislation lotteries in Connecticut that Barnum recognized he was not going to make enough money living in Bethel anymore. And that’s really when he brings his family to New York City to start a whole new life. But what he does do in Bethel, which is remarkable. He’s a young man, he’s in his early twenties, and he recognizes that the idea of a democratic community, if you had a voice, you had an opinion. You had an obligation and most certainly a right to speak your voice. And he started writing letters to the Danbury newspapers, and nobody would print any editorials, nothing that he would write. So he decided to embark on his own newspaper at twenty-one years old, and he produces a paper called “The Herald of Freedom and Gospel Witness,” and newspapers at that time were huge, just loaded with words. It winds up that, and he even refers to it as his arrogant youth: he’s sued three times for libel, and the last time it landed him in jail.

And you’re listening to Kathy Mayer, executive director of the P. T. Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut. More of this remarkable story. A guy who grows up in a small farm community and ends up in the big city, New York City. His life story continues. P. T. Barnum’s here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we’re bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue here with Our American Stories and with Kathy Mayer, executive director of the P. T. Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut, telling the story of P. T. Barnum. Let’s continue and pick up where we last left off.

He sued three times for libel, and the last time it landed him in jail. He made a comment about usury by a Reverend in town, and he was thrown in jail for libel for two months. People were outraged. They felt it was freedom of the press. He had the right to say what he said, so they had his jail cell decorated. There was a parade for him when he got out of jail. He continued to print the newspaper while he was jailed. So then, if you have to talk about a shift in a moment in time, there it is. And he really finds that’s the moment in time where there’s power in understanding what’s happening in the political world. And later on in life, it shows out that he feels that if you have a voice and you’re living, you know, with the freedoms that we have today, that it is your obligation to have a voice. And that’s really how he conducted the rest of his life. So back to New York City. It’s, you know, the late 1830s, early 1840s, and New York doesn’t develop like a colonial city the way we think of Boston and Philadelphia. It’s really an industrial city, and the harbors are, you know, extremely active with commerce. Barnum finds this to be an extraordinary moment in time. He doesn’t quite fit in. He never works in an office. He’s always working in some type of retail or trade. He tries at hands at promoting different kind of technologies. It just doesn’t work until he discovers Scudder’s American Museum, Lower Broadway in New York, and late 1830s in New York. Remember, there is a financial crash. You know, businesses were just going under left and right, and the Scutterer’s Museum, which had been around since 1810, was dramatically failing. You know, the idea of it being an institute of science and scientific advancement was falling out of favor. People didn’t have the money. It was old, it was tired. Barnum saw opportunity in it, and because the price had been dropped fifteen thousand dollars, he devised a way to actually acquire it. He, as a child, he was told he owned property in Bethel, Connecticut. It was called Ivy Island. He was all excited about it. When he realizes that it was nothing but swampland and virtually useless, he feels by his own community and family. However, going back to his ingenious ability to think of how you can negotiate this. During the negotiation for Scudder’s Museum, didn’t have enough money, and he literally told the bankers, “I have property in Connecticut Ivy Island,” and this is December, you know, in New England, you know, in 1841, nobody was going to take the day’s long journey up to Bethel, Connecticut to evaluate the property. So they accepted the collateral. So he was able to seal the deal for the American Museum using his charm, using his wit, and using his ingenuity, extraordinary by today’s standards. But when he purchases the American Museum, he opens it on New Year’s Day in 1842, and again, it was it was a tired institution. There was nothing alive, nothing charming, nothing innovative that would attract people in. So he realized three things. It needed a major renovation, it needed a massive publicity campaign, and literally an injection of sheer personality, Barnum’s personality. So he did everything that you could possibly think of to clean it up and make it something that you couldn’t walk by. They put huge banners of different types of animals outside. Literally, they put a calcide drum on the roof. It becomes the first—what are they called?—those big spotlights in the sky that would attract people. It opened early in the morning, it didn’t close till ten o’clock at night, and it was available to everyone. The institution was not for just the wealthy and the educated and the traveled. It was open to anybody and everybody who could pay their twenty-five cents. Because when you think about New York City in the 1840s, it’s a tough place. There’s, you know, intense immigration coming into the city. It’s the Irish immigration, where Irish were not allowed into many establishments. That was not the case with the American Museum, so it became quickly became a vibrant part of the developing metropolis. It was an enormous attraction where people could go and feel safe and have entertainment. Another thing that’s interesting to think about. At this time, any kind of theater-going was not really deemed as moral and wholesome ways of spending your time. Predominantly, theaters were attended by mail audiences. There was drinking, there was prostitution, even violence. Barnum would have none of that in the American Museum. It was a place for family entertainment and any kind of missa. He had security guards serving all of the floors, and if there was any questionable activity or language, you were escorted out. Now Barnum actually was buying up the New York Peels Museum. He operated the Baltimore Peel Museum, later integrating the scientific specimens and objects into the American Museum, so it really became our first science, major public science institution. Interestingly, there was everything from whale tanks in the basement. They were pumping water in from the East River. That’s America’s first aquarium. Barnum knew about the National Aquarium in London and wanted to bring one back to his homeland. And also, there were living animals inside the museum as well, so it’s the first zoo. Now, some of the things he exhibited were truly curiosities and wonders. And again, in a democratic America, you had your freedom of your voice. You could decide if it was real, if it wasn’t real. It almost didn’t matter. At the American Museum, if there was truth in anything, the opportunity was you could make up your own mind. So Barnum actually has a friend and colleague, and at one point Barnum borrowed Moses Kimball’s Fiji Mermaid, you know, exotic mermaid. But he didn’t bring it to the American Museum right away. He actually devised a method to get people excited about it, sent letters to newspapers, publishing a story about a naturalist from London coming over with this extraordinary specimen. After weeks of Barnum peppering cities across the East Coast, he ultimately brings the Fiji Mermaid to the American Museum. Hypes it all up. People pay. They don’t pay extra, see? People pay to come into the museum, and they come to find out that it’s just this hideous tale of a fish body of an orangutan, and it’s just detestable. It’s horrible. People were like, “Oh, really, you know?” And believe it or not, the Fiji Mermaid is Barnum’s line in the sand. He felt that that’s the place throughout the course of his life. That’s the place where he went too far. People were expecting something from him at this point, and the Fiji Mermaid took advantage. So he said never again. And that is literally where Barnum sees the line can be drawn, and absolutely would not embark on something that he felt would betray the trust of his public. Now, people use the word humbug today, probably differently, and Barnum’s definition of the word humbug is, in my opinion, the true meaning of humbug is management tact: to take an old truth and put it into an attractive form. So we don’t really think about humbug in modern contexts that way. But Barnum didn’t see it as necessarily duping the people. It was about bringing people in on a story, on an object, to take the journey of what this is together, but making it understandable by today, by that moment’s list of expectations. Now, interestingly, when you think about “The Greatest Showman” movie that came out, that is precisely what they did. They took Barnum’s old story and they put it into a form that would be relatable by modern standards. So it’s a brilliant humbug.

And you’ve been listening to Kathy Mayer, executive director of the P. T. Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of P. T. Barnum, and so much more here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and more of the remarkable life story of P. T. Barnum, the rest of the story in case you’ve seen the movie. As we like to say, and as the great Paul Harvey used to say, each and every day, let’s return to Kathy Mayer, executive director of the P. T. Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

So a lot of people often ask if Tom Thumb was a humbug. And interestingly, Tom Thumb was most certainly not a humbug at all. He was a real person born by the name Charles Sherwood Stratton here in Bridgeport. Now, Barnum kind of discovered him. A lot of things that Barnum actually showcased throughout his life was not discovered by him. He didn’t invent it, but he found it, and he was brilliant at promoting it. So what they did, working to gather by the 1850s, Americans were in pursuit of refinement and cultural engagement. We did not have—Americans did not have—any kind of definable, you know, fashionable culture at that time. We were looking back to England and France to create our own perceived sophistication. And Barnum knew he needed something that was going to sort of elevate his standing. When he was in Europe with Tom Thumb, he attended classical performances and opera, and he liked that. He felt that he did himself prefer a higher grade of entertainment than what the American Museum was offering to the masses. So with that, he had heard of the cultura soprano Jenny Lind, The Swedish Nightingale, while he was traveling with Tom, and never heard her sing. And he decided that her kind of entertainment would not just to be a wonderful, you know, type of performance for just the higher classes in America, because we have always had different levels of classes, but she would actually be a blessing to America. But the trick was he had to prepare the public mind. So what Barnum had to do is flood saturate American newspapers with wonderful stories about Jenny Lind, not about what a brilliant musician she is, but what her, you know, extraordinary character is. Like, she was so kind, benevolent; she was enormously generous. She, too, struggled with the fact that that she had such a remarkable God-given talent that it was her obligation to share that with people. So she would give thousands of dollars away to everything from orphanages to establishment of fire departments all over Europe. And Barnum knew that Americans would love that more so than, “Ah, she sings.” So, I mean, that’s real; again, it was really the traveled who had experienced her type of entertainment. But there were over thirty thousand people waiting for Jenny Lind to get off The Atlantic when it sailed into New York Harbor. It was a frenzy of people, and that’s based on what Barnum did with his ingenious marketing abilities. He got people excited. Barnum actually sailed out to the ship so he could disembark with her. The first concert was actually on September eleve