I don’t know if kids still go through a period of being attracted to the circus, but when I was a kid, most of us still did at some point. As a result, we all knew at least the chorus of that song about the man on the trapeze. Or at least the line that goes:
He flew through the air with the greatest of ease,
And this song would propagate through generations of children as older ones sang it to younger ones.
But does anyone know where this song came from? It’s sung in the 1934 movie It Happened One Night, but it seems older than that.
The man who inspired the song was Jules Leotard (1838-1870) and the song was written by George Leybourne in 1868. Leotard is also credited with the suit of the same name. Surprisingly, considering his relative youth at the time of his death, he did not die from a fall but from smallpox.
I know the rest of the chorus (or maybe it’s a verse):
He flies through the air with the greatest of ease,
This daring young man on the flying trapeze.
His movements are graceful, all girls he does please,
And my love he has taken awa-aaay.
It’s one of the universal Life Experiences, this losing one’s girlfriend to a dashing young trapeze artist.
After a lifetime of only knowing these two lines, it was fun to hear the entire song in It Happened One Night, as well as the band arrangement–singer, guitarist, and fiddler.
The tune, played on calliope and minus words) showed up a couple of times of the 1960’s show The Wild Wild West, as incidental music. Jim West was looking for someone in what I believe was a seemingly deserted carnival.
A joke no one gets anymore. From a circus-poster site: “In 1881, when James Bailey and P.T. Barnum entered into their new partnership, they traveled under the title Barnum and Great London Circus. It was at this time that Chang-Tu-Sing, the Chinese Goliath, was an attraction in their combined shows. According to the text which accompanies the Asian titan on the poster, Chang was the most gigantic and finely proportioned man in existence.”
