Some Facts About the Real P.T. Barnum That Do Not Appear in The Greatest Showman Movie

If you have not seen The Greatest Showman yet, it is a fun movie. It may not be “everything you ever want” and “everything you ever need” (in the lyrics of the title song), but it has plenty of elements that make a movie entertaining. The story is compelling, the characters and performances are solid, the moral messages (diversity, humility, social mobility, and belonging) are welcome, and the film is a sensuous treat of sight, sound, and entertainment.

Here is a movie trailer:

Yet this movie leaves out some of the darker elements of the life of P.T. Barnum, upon whose story it was loosely based. A “feel good” movie cannot go too deep. The moviemakers kept it positive while also probing some very difficult issues. One can’t really fault them too much. But if this is how P.T. Barnum is remembered, there should be an *asterisk that it is very loosely based upon his life.

Here are some other things about the real life character that you might not know.

1.

Despite becoming vocal in his opposition to slavery, P.T. Barnum kept a slave. She was an elderly African American woman named Joice Heth. She was blind and nearly paralyzed when Barnum began to exhibit her in 1835 as one of his earliest ‘curiosities.’ She claimed to be 161 years old and the former nurse of America’s first president, George Washington. On tour, she told the audiences her stories about taking care of Little George.

Slavery was illegal in New York by then, but there was a loophole. Barnum was able to rent Joice Heth from her master in another state for $1,000 per year.

When she died the next year, Barnum hosted a live autopsy of Joice Heth and sold tickets to the public for 50 cents apiece. The doctors who autopsied her concluded she probably was 79-80 years old. So of course, she could not have been the wet nurse of an infant George Washington (who was born in 1732).

To be fair, Barnum’s opposition to slavery became more vehement later in his life, so he may not have been contradictory in his views during the time he kept Joice Heth. He may have learned from his mistakes later on. Nevertheless, there is no doubt he exploited her. While the Greatest Showman movie does a great job showing the cast of unusual characters that Barnum promoted, it never mentions that Joice Heth, a slave, was his first such ‘curiosity.’

2.

For most of Barnum’s career as a showman, he had a variety troupe and museum. The Greatest Showman movie suggests that he applied the name “circus” early on. However, he was 60 years old before he officially had a circus. It was called everything from a traveling world’s fair to the greatest show on earth.

Courtesy of Ringling Bros, Barnum & Bailey.

He is best remembered for the Barnum & Bailey Circus, and certainly there were major elements of it present in his earlier shows. But it was only late in his life that he officially owned and promoted this circus. At that point, the circus show included the emblematic acrobats and exotic animals like elephants. The Philip Carlyle character in the movie is fictional, since Barnum only entered into the circus partnership late in his life.

3.

Barnum became mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut and was politically active. As mayor, he helped improve the water system, brought in gas lighting, and did other things to improve the city. Amongst other pursuits, he designed the cemetery where he later was buried.

The Greatest Showman movie has him based in New York City, where most of the film takes place. However, he was born in Connecticut and returned there. He had several mansions in Bridgeport. In addition to serving as mayor of the city, he served in the state legislature. Barnum once ran for a seat in Congress and was defeated by his cousin (also a Barnum).

4.

Barnum promoted his own hoaxes (see # 1 above), but debunked other peoples’ hoaxes. One of his first curious characters was the “FeeJee Mermaid” who had the head of a monkey and the tail of a mermaid. He gave his customers entertainment value, but at some point, he also explained the hoaxes publicly.

He had a problem with other hoaxers who did not give the public a good show. For example, there was a photographer named William Mumler who made spirit photographs. In one of them, the ghost of Abraham Lincoln could be seen. In others, there were similar ghostly white characters in the background.

A Mumler spirit photo (fake).

When Mumler was tried for fraud, P.T. Barnum testified against him at trial. Barnum had hired someone to re-create a Mumler-style photograph; they used no actual ghosts and achieved something similar. Mumler prevailed in the trial, but his career was over. People had realized that the images he made were fakes.

5.

Barnum’s tour with opera singer Jenny Lind was a commercial success and helped popularize opera in the United States. In the Greatest Showman movie, we were told that the early end to Lind’s tour was the proximate cause of Barnum’s financial ruin (before he made a comeback later on). In fact, when he brought singer Jenny Lind from Europe to the U.S., booking her tour in dozens of American cities, Barnum made plenty of money. By some estimates, he earned half a million dollars in profit from her tour, which would be equivalent to millions of dollars in today’s terms.

The movie also brought into question whether P.T. Barnum and Jenny Lind had some relationship during the tour, even though he was married. The movie did not take this very far, but its suggestion is there. In real life, according to a story in Vanity Fair, there was no relationship between the two. Lind was not as glamorous as portrayed in the movie. The real Jenny Lind wore white, did not wear a tight corset, and tied up her “mousy brown hair” in a simple hairstyle. She was known to be quite plain-looking (though looks certainly are not everything).

Jenny Lind in the movie and in real life.

That’s not to say that P.T. Barnum or anyone else would not have been attracted to her. Beauty is skin deep and her voice was described as angelic. Both Hans Christian Andersen and Frederic Chopin tried to woo Jenny Lind and she broke some hearts. But Barnum was rude and coarse to her in real life and seemed to care only about the money and fame. Vanity Fair concluded that “where Lind would have found a relationship untoward, Barnum would simply have considered it a distraction…from his entrepreneurial ventures.”

In conclusion, enjoy the movie, but remember that the real life P.T. Barnum deserved some asterisks.

Sources:

http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-p-t-barnum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._T._Barnum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Mumler

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/greatest-showman/

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/12/greatest-showman-hugh-jackman-p-t-barnum-jenny-lind

All images are public domain except for those from the Greatest Showman movie, which are courtesy of 20th Century Fox.