Jungle to Garden

With lights blazing, band blaring, batons twirling, and all signposts seeming to point to Gargantua the Great, described as "the only full-grown gorilla ever seen on this continent," Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey circus arrived, as punctual as spring, for its annual opening in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden last week. Gargantua out-ballyhooed a whole battalion of new acts, out-ballyhooed Frank ("Bring 'Em Back Alive") Buck, who appeared-- elephantastically in a howdah--for the first time in any circus, out-ballyhooed John & Henry Ringling North who, after payment of $823,000, last winter brought back into the Ringling family control of the circus it lost to creditors six years ago.

Appearing as Display No. 14 on the 26-item program, Gargantua was hauled round & round the Garden in a heavily barred, thickly glassed, air-conditioned wagon drawn by six white horses. Stocky & truculent, he stared menacingly out of his cage, was characterized by Frank Buck as "the most ferocious, most terrifying and most dangerous of all living creatures."* A coastal gorilla from the swamps of the Belgian Congo, Gargantua was brought to the U. S. as a baby by Captain Arthur Phillips, was bought by Mrs. Gertrude Lintz, animal-training wife of a stomach specialist, grew to apehood in Brooklyn. Now seven years old, 460 pounds when last weighed, with a savage 6-foot arm reach that has mauled many a bystander including Owner John Ringling North, Gargantua began to get ferocious only six months ago. Until then--at which time she got busy and sold him to Ringling Bros, for something less than $10,000-- Animal Trainer Lintz found Gargantua "a lovely pet."

If he did steal the show this year, it is a good show Gargantua has stolen. Brilliant with new costumes, electric with man-&-beast action on its three rings and two stages, the 1938 circus has, besides a full deck of routine, such new acts as:

P: Terrell Jacobs, lion tamer who gets inside a cage with 18 lions & lionesses, masses most of them, climbs on top himself.

P: The Paroff Trio, acrobating wildly on unsupported ladders atop a tiny perch right under the roof of the Garden.

P: The Gibsons: rat-tat-tat knife-throwing around the contours of a girl posed on a revolving wheel.

* But Captain Larry Davis, Ringling elephant superintendent, has stated that the 8-year-old Ringling elephant, Fanny, "could demolish Gargantua . . . and it would be no more than a breather for her."

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