"In the Shadow of the Big Top" by Maureen Brunsdale

A plaque standing in downtown Bloomington, Ill. pays tribute to that city’s circus heritage:

“In the era before movies, television, and the internet, it was the circus that entertained us…For more than 80 years, spanning the 1870s until the 1950s, countless numbers of brave Bloomington men and women risked their lives to entertain massive crowds by performing aerial tricks high up on the flying trapeze.” 

After two local brothers, Howard and Fred Green installed a trapeze rigging in a Bloomington building in 1875, the town became known as a center for trapeze artists. When the Green brothers went on to international fame, others were inspired to perform. 

Bloomington became the center of activity for aerialist training and trapeze act recruitment in the United States. More than 200 people from the Bloomington area became circus performers, according to the McLean County Historical Society.

Charting that history today is Maureen Brunsdale, a Special Collections Librarian at Illinois State University’s Milner Library since 2008.

Brunsdale has published dozens of articles and, in 2013, wrote her first circus book, The Bloomington-Normal Circus Legacy with co-author Mark Schmitt. In the Shadow of the Big Top: The Life of Ringling's Unlikely Circus Savior (2023) is Brunsdale’s second book on the circus. 

In the Shadow tells the story of Art Concello, a trapeze artist who trained at the Bloomington YMCA and in a fabled barn on Bloomington’s Emerson Street. Concello became known for performing the triple somersault, “the killer trick,” as it was called because so many trapeze artists had died trying to perform it, said Brunsdale.

With wife Antoinette, they became known as the Flying Concellos, charting circus history with their circus. Antoinette, a trapeze pioneer in her own right, Brunsdale noted, later became the first woman to perform the triple somersault. 

But Art went on to perform amazing feats on the ground, she said. He demonstrated the same skill as an executive as he did on the flying trapeze “after hanging up his tights as a performer,” noted Brunsdale. Concello handled the crushing task of transporting circus acts (that usually only stayed in the same place for two days) with hundreds of people plus animals and equipment from town to town with remarkable efficiency, she said.

Concello is credited with later working out the logistics of transitioning circus acts from tents to indoor arenas, enabling circus acts to reach the public in the 20th century.

Concello also played a major role in the making of The Greatest Show on Earth, the Cecil B. DeMille film made in 1952. Concello trained Betty Hutton on the trapeze for the movie while Charlton Heston’s role as circus manager is a character reportedly based on Concello, himself.

“Once the biggest moneymaker in the world of entertainment, the circus may not have the elevated status it once did but it’s still with us,” said Brunsdale, citing circus acts still performed on television, the success of the Cirque du Soleil, and a revived Ringling Brothers touring show.

Bloomington-Normal’s circus heritage is celebrated every April when the Gamma Phi Circus performs on the Illinois State University campus, a tradition since 1929, Brunsdale noted.