Personality, may 12, 1952

JOHN RINGLING NORTH, at 48 the guiding spirit of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, is a burly, stubby man with an air of natural vigor about him. His thick eyebrows are black, the color of his face is high, and the flesh around his nose and jaw inclines to coarseness. He moves fast, with a short, brisk stride, and makes rapid gesticulations with his short-fingered, square-palmed hands when he talks. (He is not often silent.) There is nothing light or graceful about him when he stands chunkily on his own two feet, but on a horse he looks as well as any man could wish to look.

People who see little of him think of him as a garrulous, facetious and easygoing nightbird whose one aim in life is to figure in the list of spurious personalities who make up café society. Those who have seen him from inside the circus know him as a stubborn man of uncommon determination, whose whole life is devoted to proving himself as big a man and a better showman than his uncle, John Ringling.

THE LEGEND surrounding old John Ringling is a hard one to live up to. His ambition and drive helped build the Ringling show up from a family affair with four performers and one wagon to "the greatest show on earth," with 1,200 horses, 2,000 employees, a zoo-car circus train. Ringling's favorite saying was "I've got no use for midgets." He liked big, eye-catching things. He bought thousands of acres of land in Minnesota, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Florida. He built a bank, a hotel and two huge, Italianate palaces in & around Sarasota, speculated in railroads and oil, was the first extensive collector of baroque paintings in America (because they were bigger than the paintings done in any other style). He lived high, wide & handsome, dressed like a raffish fashion plate, ate grossly, drank fine wines by the magnum and Jeroboam, kept pretty women about him, slept most of the day, and worked and played all through the night.

John Ringling North lives as much like his uncle as he can. He, too, sleeps till noon or later, and is torpid and drowsy till evening. By midnight he is fully awake, and his best hours run on from then till 5 or 6. Around the circus he wears riding clothes, but towards evening he assumes a somber elegance. In New York he goes on the town dressed like a career diplomat, sporting a cane or tightly rolled umbrella, black hat in the Anthony Eden style, gloves carried but not worn and suits cut in the English fashion.

HIS HOSPITALITY is lavish and memorable when he entertains in his uncle's old private railroad car, the Jomar, which now stands permanently in a barn at the circus winter quarters in Sarasota. The guests are warmed up in the car's pale green drawing room with North's own brand of Old-Fashioneds, then the party moves to the dining room, which is dominated by a large mural of Lady Godiva setting out on her ride. A French chef produces a four-or five-course meal (with three vintage wines), and the meal is rounded out with liqueurs. Towards midnight the party moves off to the hotel North owns in Sarasota, to take in the cabaret, which is entirely composed of acts being prepared for the circus.