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Steve Smith (born August 8, 1951), professional clown and circus director, is best known to audiences as the clown character, "TJ Tatters."
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Steve Smith (born August 8, 1951), professional clown and circus director, is best known to audiences as the clown character, "TJ Tatters."
Smith grew up in Zanesville, Ohio, and is a 1969 graduate of Zanesville High School.
Steve Smith began his career in clowning as a graduate of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, Class of 1971. He then toured with The Greatest Show on Earth for six seasons before leaving the show and moving to Chicago, Illinois, where he attended the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago (now The Theatre School at DePaul University) and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting. At that time, he also hosted a children's television series called Kidding Around for the local NBC affiliate, WMAQ-TV. He was the recipient of five Emmy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Children's Television and was a favorite among viewers for seven seasons.
Steve's connection with Ringling Bros. resumed when he became Director of Clown College in 1985, a post he held for ten years. He was also the director of the 123rd edition of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
Smith became involved with the staging of numerous performances and productions from the off-Broadway hit The It Girl to programs for Walt Disney World to shipboard entertainment with Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. Smith also worked with Academy Award-winning animator/cartoonist Chuck Jones as Talent Development Coordinator for Chuck Jones Enterprises. Smith continued to work with his boyhood hero until Mr. Jones's death in 2002.
In 2005, Smith started working with the Big Apple Circus as their Guest Director for four productions, a collaboration that extended through five seasons, ending in 2010. [1]
In 2011, Smith began his stint as Creative Director for Circus Arts Conservatory in Sarasota, Florida. [2] And on April 1, 2015, Smith joined Circus Center, San Francisco’s circus training and performing arts center, as its Creative Director. [3]
Smith was inducted into the Clown Hall of Fame in 1993. [4] He is also the recipient of several other honors including the Medal of Merit for Notable Achievement in Performing Arts from Ohio University[ citation needed ], the Excellence in the Arts award from De Paul University[ citation needed ], and the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art Circus Celebrity, Power Behind the Scenes.[ citation needed ]
The Greatest Show on Earth is a 1952 American drama film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille, shot in Technicolor, and released by Paramount Pictures. Set in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the film stars Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde as trapeze artists competing for the center ring, and Charlton Heston as the circus manager running the show. James Stewart also stars in a supporting role as a mysterious clown who never removes his make-up, even between shows, while Dorothy Lamour and Gloria Grahame also play supporting roles.
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, also known as the Ringling Bros. Circus, Ringling Bros.,the Barnum & Bailey Circus, Barnum & Bailey or simply Ringling was an American traveling circus company billed as The Greatest Show on Earth. It and its predecessor shows ran from 1871 to 2017. Known as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, the circus started in 1919 when the Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, a circus created by P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey, was merged with the Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows. The Ringling brothers had purchased Barnum & Bailey Ltd. following Bailey's death in 1906, but ran the circuses separately until they were merged in 1919.
Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows was a circus founded in Baraboo, Wisconsin, United States in 1884 by five of the seven Ringling brothers: Albert, August, Otto, Alfred T., Charles, John, and Henry. The Ringling brothers were sons of a German immigrant, August Frederick Rüngeling, who changed his name to Ringling once he settled in America. Four brothers were born in McGregor, Iowa: Alf T., Charles, John and Henry. The Ringling family lived in McGregor, Iowa, for twelve years, from 1860 until 1872. The family then lived in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and moved to Baraboo, Wisconsin, in 1875. In 1907 Ringling Bros. acquired the Barnum & Bailey Circus, merging them in 1919 to become Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, promoted as The Greatest Show on Earth. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey closed on May 21, 2017, following weakening attendance and high operating costs.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College trained around 1,400 clowns in the "Ringling style" from its 1968 founding until its 1997 closure.
A circus train is a method of conveyance for circus troupes. One of the larger users of circus trains was the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (RBBX), a famous American circus formed when the Ringling Brothers Circus purchased the Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1907.
Merle Slease Evans was a cornet player and circus band conductor who conducted the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for fifty years. He was known as the "Toscanini of the Big Top." Evans was inducted into the American Bandmasters Association in 1947 and the International Circus Hall of Fame in 1975.
Kenneth Jeffrey Feld is the CEO of Feld Entertainment, which has operated the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Disney on Ice, Doodlebops Live, Disney Live, Monster Jam, International Hot Rod Association, and AMA Supercross Championship. He is also the producer of several Broadway plays. The business was started by his father Irvin Feld who also promoted Beatles concerts, and Ken became CEO of the company upon his father's death in 1984.
Irvin Feld was a business entrepreneur who built a chain of record stores, promoted rock groups, produced concerts involving some of the biggest names in popular music. He was also the head of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and founder of Feld Entertainment. He was a music promoter who is credited with discovering Paul Anka.
Lillian Leitzel was a Polish acrobat who specialized in performing on the Roman Rings, for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. The inaugural (posthumous) inductee to the International Circus Hall of Fame, Leitzel died in hospital two days after a fall during a live performance.
John Nicholas Ringling was an American entrepreneur who is the best known of the seven Ringling brothers, five of whom merged the Barnum & Bailey Circus with their own Ringling Bros World's Greatest Shows to create a virtual monopoly of traveling circuses and helped shape the modern circus. In addition to owning and managing many of the largest circuses in the United States, he was also a rancher, a real estate developer and art collector. He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 1987.
Greg and Karen DeSanto are professional circus clowns who performed as a husband-and-wife duo for three decades. Greg DeSanto is the Executive Director of the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
Barry Lubin is an American circus performer best known for his Grandma character. His Grandma character was a headline act at the Big Apple Circus in New York City for 25 seasons from 1982 until his 2012 retirement and relocation to Sweden. Lubin's return to the Big Apple Circus in late 2017 was cut short in January 2018 when he admitted to having pressured an underaged, sixteen-year-old circus performer to pose for pornographic pictures in 2004.
Otto Griebling was a German-born circus clown who performed for many years with the Cole Brothers and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circuses. He was one of four clowns given the title Master Clown by Irvin Feld.
Bill Ballantine (1910–1999) was an American writer and illustrator of circus subjects, as well as a professional clown. A prolific writer, Ballantine contributed circus and travel essays to major magazines. His many stories of circus life appeared in Collier's,Holiday,Harper’s Bazaar,Saturday Evening Post,True,Saga, and Seventeen. Ballantine also authored ten books, including Wild Tigers and Tame Fleas, Horses and Their Bosses, and Clown Alley, which chronicles his years as dean of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. Over his long career as a writer/illustrator, he published nearly 100 articles on circus and travel and regularly illustrated True magazine's backpage feature “Strange but True” with his graceful and warmly humorous pen-and-ink line drawings.
The Ringling brothers were seven American siblings who transformed their small touring company of performers into one of America's largest circuses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Four brothers were born in McGregor, Iowa: Alfred T., Charles, John and Henry William, and the family lived in McGregor for twelve years, from 1860 until 1872. The Ringling family then moved to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and finally settled in Baraboo, Wisconsin, in 1875. They were of German and French descent, the children of harness maker Heinrich Friedrich August Ringling (1826–1898) of Hanover, and Marie Salome Juliar (1833–1907) of Ostheim, in Alsace. In 1919, they merged their Ringling Brothers Circus with America's other leading circus troupe, Barnum and Bailey, ultimately creating the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which operated for 98 years, until 2017.
Rob Mermin is the founder of the award-winning international touring youth circus Circus Smirkus.
Henry Ringling North was American businessman, as a circus proprietor who was the vice president, treasurer, director and operations chief, while his brother, John Ringling North, was the president and chairman of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, founded by their uncles.
Timothy J. Holst began his circus career in 1971 graduating from Clown College, touring as a clown in 1972, and then became the singing ringmaster in 1973 with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Glen Gordon "Frosty" Little was a circus clown who served with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for over 20 years. He was one of only four clowns ever to have been given the title "Master Clown" by the Ringling organization.
Barnum's Kaleidoscape was an American circus staged by Feld Entertainment, the owners of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, at a start-up cost of $10 million. It ran for one season, 1999–2000. Inspired by both European traditions and the contemporary circus movement, it was the first Ringling show to be held under a tent since 1956 and also its first one-ring presentation in more than a century. The tent was carpeted with wood flooring and amenities to create an intimate setting with seating for 1,800 on cushioned seats and sofas and no one further than 50 feet from the circus ring. Besides traditional circus fare like popcorn upscale items such as cappuccino and veggie wraps were offered. The show consisted of 62 performers, 54 crew members, 8 horses and 27 geese, with 50 trucks involved in moving it from site to site.