VERA'S LIFE IN THE CIRCUS WAS A ZOO

HER $10 GREENHORN MISTAKE DIDN'T HELP.

- JANA BOMMERSBACH

The first time Vera McGinnis entered the Big Top at Madison Square Garden in New York City, she looked like a giant Dresden doll.

She was atop a black horse, wearing a gigantic hoopskirt that hung from her waist, its flounces reaching the ground. Her head held a giant picture hat with ostrich plumes.

“The huge backstage seemed a fairyland to me,” she’d later write. “The costumes were all crisp, new and beautiful. Everyone went in ‘Speck’—the spectacular parade that opened the show—dressed in fancy costumes. The six of us from the wild-west division had the most beautiful costumes a designer ever dreamed up—also the most uncomfortable.”

This was “The Greatest Show on Earth” and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus paid a lot of attention to the flash and dash of showmanship.

The 1923 run at the Garden was easy and fun. There was enough space for everyone to be camped right by the big tent, and it was a cinch to do several costume changes in one day, either to show off or to perform. So Vera wasn’t prepared for how different things would be on the road.

She soon found that her Wild West dressing room, known as the “Hooligan,” was at the bottom of the pecking order. The big dressing rooms of the circus stars were, naturally, adjacent to the back door of the Big Top. Then came the “band top” for musicians and their instruments, the circus doctor’s office, the wardrobe tents and the pad room for the performing horses. After all that came space for the Hooligan, and finally, the cages for the performing animals.