Category: The Greatest Showman

Hugh Jackman as P.T. Barnum surrounded by his circus performers.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

Film review by Marlene Ardoin

When P. T. Barnum was fifteen, he became head of his father’s household, which included ten children and his own mother, who was his hardworking father’s 2^nd wife.

In the mid-eighteen hundreds, there were no safety nets to catch you, if you fell off the trapeze of life.

The story told in the film, ‘The Greatest Showman,” touches up the rough parts of his story, but only focuses on a very simplified aspect of his life, which was his ability to create acceptance and dignity for individuals, who did not fit into society’s norm.

The real P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman), was a shrewd businessman, a store keeper, a lottery organizer, a newspaper publisher, an author, a speaker, a politician, and a showman, who re-invented himself many times.

He did not start the circus until he was in his 60s.

He had two museum buildings that burned to the ground, before he was forced to come up with the circus tent idea.

Barnum backed the Union during the civil war, which was most likely the reason his museum buildings kept catching fire, not because of what he was displaying in his buildings.

Religious-wise, Barnum was a Universalist and had a solid marriage, which lasted for forty years. He fathered four daughters with his first wife.

When his first wife, Charity (Michelle Williams) died, he married a 2^nd time to a woman, Nancy Fish, who was 20 years his junior, and that marriage lasted another twenty years.

In the film, his partner Zac Efron’s character, Phillip Carlyle, is purely fictitious .

In real life, he met up with James Anthony McGinnes, who had been orphaned at eight years, then adopted by another circus owner, who gave him the name, James Anthony Bailey.

When the two circus’s merged, it became Barnum and Bailey’s Circus. The real Bailey died in his fifties of a horrible skin disease. And, he was about 20 years younger than P.T. Barnum. Not too romantic for a Hollywood film.

The reason I am giving you all of this information, is because, even though I loved the film, “The Greatest Showman”, the real story was so much greater.

So, do the filmmakers go for beauty and romance, or what would happen if the filmmakers attempted to tell the real story in its context? If they had, I think it would have been Oscar worthy.

P.T. Barnum Bio:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._T._Barnum

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/phineas-taylor-barnum-2499.php

https://connecticuthistory.org/p-t-barnum-an-entertaining-life/

History vs hollywood

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/greatest-showman/

James Anthony Bailey Bio:

http://www.circusesandsideshows.com/owners/jamesbailey.html

Universalist Church:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalist_Church_of_America