A Pictorial Video of Ringling Clowns

I got a link to a video today, and after watching it, I felt a little sad/verklempt about Ringling going away.  (If you don’t know the word verklempt, you should definitely look it up.  Yiddish words have a way with getting to the heart of emotions.

The video is a sad, maudlin, and touching pictorial tribute/video of Ringling clowns.

It’s not quite an Army of clowns (like the poster says) but there are a whole bunch of clowns in the video. Some are famous, some are infamous, some are unknown to any but a small few.  All of them entertained children and adults across the nation for The Greatest Show On Earth.

RINGLING CLOWNS: THE GREATEST CLOWNS ON EARTH

I don’t recognize all of the photos, and probably there are only two or three guys in the world that could (I’m looking at you Steven Copeland)

Here’s the video:  The video is posted by Jesse Highley, who has a fair amount of Ringling content on his Youtube feed. How many of these guys do you recognize?

It’s also a song that I don’t recognize- a muppets song.  It must be from the end of a muppet movie, but which movie I couldn’t tell you.  (Okay, I did a little research- thank you Google- and it’s Pictures In My Head (From “The Muppets”/Soundtrack Version)” from the 2011 movie The Muppets. (Which is a great movie if you haven’t seen it. I don’t remember the song, but I remember loving the movie.)

At any rate, it’s a nice tribute, a lovely song, and it doesn’t in any way begin to tell the story or even represent the thousands of clowns touched by Ringling.  Either the guys who worked the show, or who, like me, never worked the show, but either went to Clown College, or were just inspired by it and wanted to make people laugh when they grew up.

While I never rode the train or toured with the show, I know a fair amount of these guys (my brother racoons) and I feel for them and the loss of a big professional opportunity. Mostly, however, I feel for the public and kids, who might never get to see a spectacle show like we are used to seeing.

Now excuse me, I have to go be verklempt some more.