1972 Garden International Circus Herald
DESCRIPTION
This herald announcing that the 3-Ring Garden International Circus had come to New Haven promises such spectacles as the "World's Largest Group of Lion's & Tigers" and a three-man high-wire act involving bicycles and a common chair.
Through a vibrant purple-yellow palette, playful typography, and alluring vignettes, this herald was designed to catch the attention of viewers wherever it might find them. Since Heralds like this were printed in bulk and never meant to be context-specific, the attention-grabbing techniques had to play no matter whether the piece was stuffed into a mailbox, pasted on a wall, or folded inside a newspaper. Tried and true techniques such as bright colors, frame-breaking typography, and promises of danger are here deployed to ensure everyone in New Haven was well-aware that Garden International Circus had come to town for one weekend only. Highly recognizable names such as high-wire artist Karl Wallenda and big-cat tamer Jean "Tarzan" Zerbini are trotted out for their ability to draw a crowd. The show's supposed 200+ accompanying acts however remain nameless.
Since heralds like this were often never meant to last or serve any further purpose advertising a particular show, this piece doesn't explicitly date itself to a specific year. However, a number of constraints date it to 1972. A floor comes from the title "Garden International Circus" seen here rather than "Garden Bros. Circus" as had been used up to 1968. The show's venue provides a ceiling seeing as New Haven Arena was replaced by New Haven Coliseum in 1972. This window of 1968-1972 is then narrowed down by the fact that May 5-7 only fell on a weekend once during that period in 1972.
Two Diverging Lots in Life
The show's two headliners, Wallenda and Zerbini, are both captured here at pivotal points in their careers—one for the better and the other for the worst.
Zerbini, inducted into the Circus Hall of Fame 2011, had already achieved wide renown for his showmanship and daring exploits as an animal trainer. Clothed in nothing but a leopardskin diaper, Zerbini would literally swing on a rope into his the animals' cages to perform routines so daring that they left him mauled on more than one occasion. In 1980, he founded the Tarzan Zerbini Circus, a European-style tent still in operation today.
Alternately, Wallenda led a life marked by high highs and devastating lows. As founder of The Great Wallendes, a circus troupe of daredevils, he would lead group high-wire acts like the one seen here—often foregoing any safety net for extra flair. Sometimes this paid off, such as when Wallenda performed a quarter-mile skywalk across Georgia's Tallulah Gorge with two headstands thrown in to make the 30,000-strong audience gasp. Wallenda is largely remembered however for the occasional tragedies that marked his career. First, it was the 1944 fire in Hartford, Connecticut that broke out in the middle of a Great Wallendas performances that killed 168 people but left the troupe unscathed. Then there was the 1962 incident in Detroit when the front man of the group's iconic seven-person chair pyramid act faltered and left 2 members dead. And finally, after a number of more minor deaths in which Karl was only an adjacent player, there was his 1978 skywalk across the towers of the Condada Plaza Hotel when he fell to his death at 73.
CONDITION
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