Amazing Barnum Revival Will Astound the World!
We interrupt our nostalgic return to Bethel, N.Y., for the greatest concert in history to travel to Bethel, Conn., birthplace of the man who dreamed up the Greatest Show on Earth.
And with a no-doubt titanic P. T. Barnum revival around the corner, it’s not a bad time to reconsider the man who during his life was perhaps the most famous American on earth, has been hailed as “the architect of the modern culture industry,” coined the term “show business” and never said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but didn’t have to.
It was a long time ago. And if you don’t count shows like “Jackass,” the collected works of Sacha Baron Cohen and half of what’s on the Internet, we’re a long way from General Tom Thumb and hoaxes like Barnum’s attempt to con people into believing that a blind, 80-ish slave named Joice Heth, whom he bought and emancipated, was really 160 years old and that she had been a nurse to George Washington.
Still, if he were around to view the summer’s endless cavalcade of amusements, you could bet that Phineas Taylor Barnum would feel right at home.
Variety is reporting that Hugh Jackman will play Barnum in “The Greatest Showman on Earth,” an original musical film that focuses on one of his greatest triumphs, his promotion of the singer Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale. This perhaps gives it a leg up on another Barnum biopic reported just last month....
Read entire article at NYT
And with a no-doubt titanic P. T. Barnum revival around the corner, it’s not a bad time to reconsider the man who during his life was perhaps the most famous American on earth, has been hailed as “the architect of the modern culture industry,” coined the term “show business” and never said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but didn’t have to.
It was a long time ago. And if you don’t count shows like “Jackass,” the collected works of Sacha Baron Cohen and half of what’s on the Internet, we’re a long way from General Tom Thumb and hoaxes like Barnum’s attempt to con people into believing that a blind, 80-ish slave named Joice Heth, whom he bought and emancipated, was really 160 years old and that she had been a nurse to George Washington.
Still, if he were around to view the summer’s endless cavalcade of amusements, you could bet that Phineas Taylor Barnum would feel right at home.
Variety is reporting that Hugh Jackman will play Barnum in “The Greatest Showman on Earth,” an original musical film that focuses on one of his greatest triumphs, his promotion of the singer Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale. This perhaps gives it a leg up on another Barnum biopic reported just last month....