The Greatest Show on EarthStep right up! Lists about the strange, fascinating, and horrifying history of circuses and carnivals in America and around the world.
Is The Greatest Showman a true story? The movie musical is many things - but historically accurate isn’t exactly one of them. It’s necessary to look beyond the film in order to get to know the real P.T. Barnum and the circus he created.
The musical claims to tell the story of Phineas Taylor Barnum’s rise from rags to riches in antebellum America. According to the film, Barnum was an orphaned child whose head was full of dreams. As an adult, he married his childhood sweetheart and did all that he could to give her the life he thought she deserved. After losing a boring, uninspiring office job, Barnum decides to take the plunge and pursue an extraordinary career: he purchases a museum and recruits outcasts to be a part of his show. It becomes wildly popular, and he fulfills his dream of living a life of success, wonder, and entertainment.
To be fair, it gets some basic details correct. Barnum was born in Connecticut in 1810, and he spent much of his life chasing down the American dream. In his case, that meant establishing an entertainment network through his American Museum - which included a so-called “freak show” that exhibited actual human beings as objects of curiosity, oddity, and terror - and, eventually, his famous circus. By the time he died in 1891 at the age of 80, he had been many things: promoter, entertainer, businessman, politician, abolitionist, teetotaler, and writer.
But Barnum’s larger-than-life story, in all its complex glory, doesn’t completely make it into the film. The Greatest Showman's accuracy is mediocre at best, and the film ignores his sins, manipulates his relationships, and simplifies the long trajectory of his rich life. Among the many errors is the film's depiction of the relationship between P.T. Barnum and Jenny Lind and its unwillingness to engage with the undeniable racism in Barnum's past. The film may be good entertainment, but it’s also bad history.
The Film Forgot To Mention The Time Barnum Bought An Elderly Slave And Put Her On Display
What The Film Portrays: When Barnum strikes on the idea of starting a museum with "living curiosities" - i.e., people with unique features or disabilities - he holds open auditions to round out his cast list. He also tracks down a handful of star performers, like the Bearded Lady and General Tom Thumb.
Jenny Lind Was A Lot More Than Arm Candy For P.T. Barnum
What The Film Portrays: P.T. Barnum first meets the singer Jenny Lind in London, and he is immediately taken with her. He builds a professional relationship with her that comes dangerously close to being intimate, especially after Lind declares her feelings for him.
What Really Happened: Jenny Lind, the so-called "Swedish Nightingale," was the Adele of her age. Yet, the film reduces her to a symbol of decadence and beauty that threatens to seduce Barnum away from his principles, his family, and his performers. In reality, she had a successful career. While she did apparently break the heart of several significant men of the 19th century - including Hans Christian Andersen and Felix Mendelssohn - P.T. Barnum was definitely not one of them. Her goals for her American tour were strictly philanthropic - she was raising money for a school in Sweden - and she didn't particularly like Barnum. She married German pianist Otto Goldschmidt in 1852.
The Bearded Lady's Story Was A Whole Lot Sadder Than What The Film Showed
What The Film Portrays: One of the most moving, commanding characters in the film is Lettie Lutz, known as the "Bearded Lady." When Barnum is on the hunt for unique acts, people, and curiosities to bring to his American Museum, he first hears Lutz's singing voice and follows it to a laundry room, where he finds an adult woman with a beard. Though she is reluctant to join Barnum's show, he manages to convince her. She is one of many so-called "freaks" in the film, whose outsider status is marked on their bodies.
What Really Happened: "Lettie Lutz" never existed - Barnum's famous Bearded Lady was actually a woman by the name of Annie Jones. Barnum didn't find her in a laundry room, either. She attracted attention when she was born covered in hair in Virginia in 1865. He actually started exhibiting her when she was only one year old. Though Barnum paid her parents $150 a week for the privilege, the young Jones did not get a say in how her body was displayed. She spent much of her life as an attraction and died when she was only 37, in 1902.
It Was Barnum's Family - Not His Wife's - That Opposed His Marriage To Charity Hallett
What The Film Portrays: The whole world seems to be against P.T. Barnum - even his in-laws. His wife Charity is a privileged, angelic young woman from a ridiculously wealthy family who lives in a mansion by the sea. Her father in particular grumbles about losing his daughter to the poor and good-for-nothing P.T. Barnum. Becoming a successful showman is Barnum's way of sticking it to the man and proving his father-in-law wrong.
What Really Happened: Charity wasn't the rich girl that the film makes her out to be - she was actually a "tailoress" when Barnum first met her. So it wasn't her well-to-do family that was turning its nose up at Barnum's offer of a dollar and a dream - it was actually his own family. As Barnum himself recounted, "My good mother and some other relatives feared that I was not looking high enough in the world" when he decided to marry Charity. The couple married in New York City in 1829 without any of Barnum's family present.
What The Film Portrays: The beginning of the film tells Barnum's supposed origin story. His father is a tailor who dies when Barnum is still a child, and there is no mother in sight. After his father's death, the young Barnum seems to live in poverty and even steals food to survive.
What Really Happened: His father was indeed a tailor who died when Barnum was young. But Barnum was 15 when it happened - old enough in the 19th century to make his own way, and that's just what he did. Though he lost his father in 1825, Barnum didn't lose his whole family, and he worked to generate an income for his mother and five siblings. In fact, he wouldn't be "orphaned" until his mother died at the ripe, old age of 83 in 1868.
Sorry, But Zac Efron's Character Never Existed - And Neither Did Zendaya's
What The Film Portrays: One of the most sympathetic love stories in the film is the interracial romance between Zac Efron's character Phillip Carlyle and Zendaya's Anne Wheeler, a trapeze artist. Carlyle - a white man who grew up in New York high society - is initially ashamed of his feelings for Wheeler, a Black performer in Barnum's show, especially since the racist world seems to be against them.
What Actually Happened: Yes, it's a compelling love story - but it's also 100% fictional. Neither Carlyle nor Wheeler actually existed. Instead of confronting the actual racism that ran through Barnum's entertainment ventures, the film concocted a sympathetic love story that made Barnum appear more tolerant than he actually was.
