The Circus is Coming to Town!
Circus season traditionally begins in April, and it's one of the highlights of many folks year.
Joy and I had tickets booked for May, but this has now been postponed due to Covid-19, so we figured we would bring the circus to you instead!
Life under the big top has always made for great radio stories from all genres, and the old time radio series, Jerry of the Circus, is a wonderfully heartwarming children's series, which delighted audiences in 1937. Each episode was 15 minutes long and the stories were set around characters of the circus and their lives.
There are also quite a few shows about when the circus came to town, and the great showman, P T Barnum. In fact, there are so many shows, Joy and I decided to put together another radio station!
You can listen to any of these shows on the new RUSC Circus Radio Station
As well as finding lots of circus related old time radio shows during my research, I also discovered that lots of old time radio stars come from a legacy of circus performing!
- Margaret O'Brien was the daughter of a circus performer.
- Harry James was the son a traveling circus bandleader.
- Arthur and Florence Lake's father toured as a circus aerial act known as The Flying Silverlakes.
- Joe E. Brown joined a troupe of circus tumblers aged 9.
- Dick Lane was doing an "iron jaw" routine in circuses around Europe by his teenage years.
- Red Skelton began his show business career in his teens as a circus clown.
- Mickey Spillane spent a short spell during the summer as a trampoline artist.
- Burt Lancaster was once part of an acrobat duo called Lang and Cravat
- And before Parley Baer began his radio career, he was a circus ringmaster for Barnum & Bailey, where he met his wife - a circus aerialist and bareback rider!
Do you know of anyone else famous, whose career before the radio or silver screen, was that of a trapeze artist or something equally as exciting? Let me know in the comments below, and I'll add them to this list.
Happy listening my friends,