In the Shadow of the Big Top - by Maureen Brunsdale (Hardcover)

About the Book

The first-ever biography of Art Concello, one of the world's greatest trapeze artists and circus businessmen, this book goes beyond the showmanship displayed in the ring to reveal the inner workings of the circus that could both thrill a crowd and make incredible money.

Book Synopsis

The first-ever biography of Art Concello, one of the world's greatest trapeze artists and circus businessmen, this book goes beyond the showmanship displayed in the ring to reveal the inner workings of the circus that could both thrill a crowd and make incredible money.

Review Quotes

A stupendously fascinating biography of Art Concello - a complex individual who had a Jumbo-sized impact on the 20th century American circus. Maureen Brunsdale brings to life this enigmatic man as he stayed "in the shadows" yet modernized John Ringling North's giant extravaganza, charting it through turbulent as well as triumphant times. The interwoven account of Concello's first wife and triple-somersaulting flyer, Antoinette, is equally compelling. Bravo!

As Art Concello himself would have said, "Great f--ing read!"

Brunsdale brings to life the controversial Arthur Concello in her in-depth new book. Brunsdale takes a clear-eyed look at the team of Antoinette and Arthur, the Flying Concellos and how Arthur sometimes bullied his way into becoming a circus legend.

Circus is a part of show business. In the Shadow of the Big Top by Maureen Brunsdale chronicles the lives of two extraordinary show people who had a major impact on the business aspects of the circus in the 20th Century.... After reading this scholarly and well-documented book... you will not only know what made these two people circus legends, but you will have also learned a great deal about the history of the American circus.

In the Shadow of the Big Top is a prodigiously researched look at one of the most enigmatic figures of the golden age of the American circus, Art Concello, an extraordinary star of the flying trapeze who dreamed not of further aerial achievements for the enthusiastic audiences below, but of his ambition to run the whole Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus, all three rings of it, which he handily did through his entire life. Think Charleton Heston, running The Greatest Show on Earth, and then meet the man on whom his character was based. It is quite the ride.

In this high-flying account, Brunsdale tells the story of Art Concello (1911-2001), a trapeze artist who became a key behind-the-scenes player for the Ringling Bros. circus. Brunsdale starts with Concello's early days as a "rascally" truant in Bloomington, Ill., where at age 11 he came under the tutelage of a trainer who helped him get his start in a traveling trapeze troupe. In 1927, he met Antoinette Comeau, an orphan who had been on track to become a nun until she ran away to join her sister performing in the same troupe. As Concello taught Comeau how to become an acrobat, the two fell in love and formed a trapeze act, the Flying Concellos, eventually joining Ringling Bros. Brunsdale chronicles how Concello, eager to make more money, moved into circus management and became a first-rate wheeler-dealer who oversaw Ringling's transition from big tents to indoor arenas and advised director Cecil B. DeMille on the 1952 Oscar winner The Greatest Show on Earth. The story crackles with spectacle and danger (Brunsdale recounts Antoinette's sister's horrifying fall after she slipped during a trick).... This intimate look at circus life during its heyday should speak to big top fanatics.

Maureen Brunsdale takes you under the sidewall and into the spangled world of the circus, where the spotlight shines on performers and shrewd operators, and the craftiest of them all provides a breathtaking center ring performance.

One of the greatest circus performers and managers of the 20th century, Arthur Concello was as controversial as he was brilliant. Using a mountain of unmined sources, Maureen Brunsdale has brought this complicated and charismatic showman back to life in this first-rate biography. If you want to know how the great Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus really functioned, this is the book for you.

About the Author

Maureen Brunsdale is a circus historian and board member of the Circus Historical Society. She is the Special Collections Librarian at Milner Library, Illinois State University. Brunsdale is the coauthor of The Bloomington-Normal Circus Legacy. Learn more at MaureenBrunsdale.com.