In the movie King of the Circus, "Uncle Wolf" Hugh Jackman played the legendary American circus tycoon P.T. Barnum. "Uncle Wolf" regains the best of "Les Misérables", singing and dancing, presenting a "new money" image that has been blocked from high society due to class solidification.
Hugh Jackman plays Barnum
However, in order to create a "prodigal son returns to gold" family happy ending, the screenwriter made a lot of changes to Barnum's life. The real "circus king" in history is far more complicated than the movie.
Legendary American circus tycoon P.T. Barnum
The Barnum family was an early British immigrant from Connecticut, and although not a founding honor, it did have some family property. As shown in the movie, his father is indeed a tailor, but their family has its own storefront, and they will never fall into the level of wearing open leather shoes. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and returned home to work as a clerk, and at the age of 17 he began running his own grocery store (a legacy of his grandfather), including the then-hot lottery business.
In addition, viewers probably did not expect that Barnum started his own newspaper at the age of 19 and was locked up for 2 months for writing defamatory articles. But instead of learning his lesson, he learned the importance of propaganda and incitement to his readers. His extreme views attracted countless fans, bringing him extremely popularity, and even prisons could not do anything to him. He could even squat in his cell while publishing the next issue of the newspaper.
The picture above shows the historical barnum museum, and the bottom picture shows the museum in the movie
The Barnum in the movie is a poor father who keeps climbing up in order to give his children a better future, and the real Barnum comes from the restlessness in his bones.
In the U.S. lottery industry in the 1830s, there were often incidents of bookmakers rolling up money and running away. In an effort to combat crime, the United States ordered the suspension of lottery trading, a move that cost Barnum his most important source of income, so he closed his shop and moved to New York. The year was 1835 and Barnum was 25 years old.
He took advantage of the psychology of the public curiosity to hold various exhibitions of strange people and made a fortune. The first "exhibit" is a 70-year-old elderly black woman named Joyce Hess. She was blind in both eyes and partially paralyzed. Barnum made her the maid of George Washington, the founding father of the United States, claiming that she was 161 years old and a miracle of being alive. Buying and selling people was already illegal in New York, but he took advantage of loopholes in the law and "rented" her for $1,000 for a year, making her work 10-12 hours a day. As a result, the old man died of exhaustion in less than a year.
And that's not all, Barnum is a very "frugal" businessman, and even corpses can earn the last vote. He arranged an autopsy display, cut off her head in public, and collected tickets from the audience. Of course, the movie certainly doesn't act like that.
Stills from The King of the Circus
Hu children in history
After that, he went on to hire bearded women, dwarfs, and conjoined twins. In the film, with Barnum's encouragement, these marginalized characters who have been discriminated against and hurt finally find their own value and live out their true selves.
But the reality is much harsher, and like Hess, the group has become a prop for Barnum's profiteers. For example, "General Thumb" Tom was only 6 years old when he was discovered by Barnum (one said to be 4 years old). Barnum taught him to perform in front of the audience, of course, not just to imitate Napoleon, but also to bottle blow and smoke 7 cigars together.
Historical barnum and Tom
Barnum and Tom in the movie
However, it was such a reckless army of miscellaneous cards that succeeded in Europe. In 1844-1845, Barnum and Tom were given the opportunity to perform in front of Queen Victoria, and Tom made the Queen laugh. After that, European royal families, including the Russian tsar, opened their doors to him, and Barnum made a lot of money. By the time he returned to the United States, he continued to expand his scale and make a big acquisition of his peers, and by the end of 1846, he had reached 400,000 visitors a year.
Restless Barnum found a new way to make money — concerts. In the film, Barnum organizes an American tour of "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Linde. He desperately used all the property as collateral, and then due to emotional entanglement, Jenny quit the tour, and he fell into financial crisis.
In reality, there are desperate bets, and there are jenny quitting the tour, but there are really no emotional entanglements and financial crises.
The reason why the two broke up was largely because Barnum's business style was too "out of line".
Rebecca Ferguson plays "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Linde in the film. The song "Never Enough" performed by Linde in the film is actually sung by Loren Allred.
Jenny Linde in history
Jenny Linde had children out of wedlock, and with unremitting efforts, she successfully transformed from "the undeserved one" into a swan, enjoying a high status in the European music scene at that time, known as the "Swedish Nightingale", and it is rumored that even Chopin and Hans Christian Andersen were her fans, and Hans Christian Andersen expressed his love with the fairy tale "Nightingale". However, Jenny is not interested in the pursuit of men, she is preoccupied with music and philanthropy, and wants to start a girls' music school in Stockholm.
So when Barnum came to her door and offered plans to tour the U.S. for $1,000 each, Jenny was struck. This means that her pro bono program can be realized much earlier. However, after arriving in the United States, Jenny found that Barnum and the European show managers were completely different kinds of people. Barnum had only money in his eyes. After the success of the first performance, Barnum put the tickets to auction, which was tantamount to becoming a scalper himself. Jenny was shocked, and as the tour progressed, Barnum's marketing became more and more excessive, causing substantial damage to Jenny's reputation, so she decisively stopped working together in the 95th scene and kicked Barnum off. While the tour was not completed, Barnum still made $500,000 (equivalent to $14.7 million in 2017).
Privately, Jenny didn't have a crush on Barnum either, because the Yankee was "rude" either. Once Jenny visited Barnum's mansion and saw a pet cow in front of the yard. Jenny was about to cross the meadow when she was stopped by the gardener. Jenny asked in shock, "Do you know who I am?" The gardener replied calmly, "I don't know who you are, but you're certainly not the boss's cow." Barnum poked his head out of the stairs and didn't see Jenny. He shouted at the gardener, "Does she want to milk the cows?" Lind was furious and shouted at Barnum: "I don't want to milk the cows, but I'm pretty sure I want to go back to England now!" ”
The "Yankees" Barnum may not know which point offended the Famous Lady from Europe, but since he has made enough money, it is time to start the next business. Taking Jenny Linder's TOUR in the United States as an opportunity, he worked hard to reverse the image of "liar" and held many exhibitions and competitions for the middle and upper classes in the United States, such as dog shows, flower shows, poultry competitions, beauty competitions, etc., the most popular of which is the baby competition, the selection of the most beautiful baby, the fattest baby, the smartest baby and so on.
The "Thumb General" in history
What is even more unbelievable is that Barnum has put himself in the cloak of a "defender" and built the largest theater in New York, named the "Moral Lecture Hall", to perform some didactic dramas. He also changed his discriminatory attitude toward blacks and began to preach racial equality. It turns out that the masses are not only easy to fool, but also very forgetful. At the age of 65, he was elected mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. As a result, today's political commentators often refer to US President Donald Trump as "another Barnum", believing that they all like to bluff and deceive the people.
As historian Daniel Bourstyn put it: "Contrary to popular belief, Barnum's great discovery is not to tell us how good the public is at deception, but to show how much deception they like." ”