![]() ![]() She swept the nation off its feet, a la The Beatles 113 years later! Perhaps you see where we’re heading… Barnum was also one of the early American music promoters, his most stunning achievement being to convince the most famous female singer of the century, the “Swedish Nightingale” Jenny Lind, to tour America in 1850. At a low point in American thespianism, he invented the first “family” oriented theater, barring liquor and whores and only presenting plays suitable for the little lady and the kids. The American Museum also had a theater, and Barnum employed a company with some of the best actors in America. Various exhibits and members of his museum family regularly toured America and Europe. Barnum’s American Museum expanded on these themes, interspersing scientific wonders (he was a major supporter of the excavation of dinosaurs!) with miniature models of cities, mummies, live animals (like giraffes), America’s first aquarium (including whales!), and exotic people, including fat ladies, giants, trapeze artists, Eng and Chang (the first “Siamese” twins), and General Tom Thumb. His father died when he was very young and he set about making his fortune variously as a grocer, lottery agent, newspaperman, and exhibitor of “curiosities,” early famous examples being Joyce Heth, the “161-year-old slave,” and the “Fiji Mermaid,” a clever fusion of a fish with the head and torso of a female orangutan! By 1841, he was prosperous enough to purchase New York’s American Museum, in Lower Manhattan, which would become his life’s great work.Īmerican museums had begun in Philadelphia with Peale’s Museum (Barnum later purchased the collection), a combination of Linnaean classification of natural history, paintings, artifacts, and amusing oddities to entertain the public. Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in Bethel (now Fairfield), Connecticut. But what has he got to do with this guitar? ![]() Far fewer of us know that he was perhaps the greatest promotion man who ever lived, and that he arguably had more impact on the development of popular American culture as it emerged in the 19th century than any other single person. Barnum probably didn’t coin the classic modern truism “There’s a sucker born every minute,” even though it does fit well with the Barnum legacy! Most of us know Barnum because of his traveling circus, The Greatest Show on Earth, later the Barnum & Bailey Circus, but that was really almost an afterthought from the end of his life. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |