JOHN RINGLING NORTH, at 48 the guiding spirit of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, is a burly, stubby man with an air of natural vigor about him. His thick eyebrows are black, the color of his face is high, and the flesh around his nose and jaw inclines to coarseness. He moves fast, with a short, brisk stride, and makes rapid gesticulations with his short-fingered, square-palmed hands when he talks. (He is not often silent.) There is nothing light or graceful about him when he stands chunkily on his own two feet, but on a horse he looks as well as any man could wish to look.

People who see little of him think of him as a garrulous, facetious and easygoing nightbird whose one aim in life is to figure in the list of spurious personalities who make up cafe society. Those who have seen him from inside the circus know him as a stubborn man of uncommon determination, whose whole life is devoted to proving himself as big a man and a better showman than his uncle, John Ringling.

THE LEGEND surrounding old John Ringling is a hard one to live up to. His ambition and drive helped build the Ringling show up from a family affair with four performers and one wagon to "the greatest show on earth," with 1,200 horses, 2,000 employees, a zoo-car circus train. Ringling's favorite saying was "I've got no use for midgets." He liked big, eye-catching things. He bought thousands of acres of land in Minnesota, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Florida. He built a bank, a hotel and two huge, Italianate palaces in & around Sarasota, speculated in railroads and oil, was the first extensive collector of baroque paintings in America (because they were bigger than the paintings done in any other style). He lived high, wide & handsome, dressed like a raffish fashion plate, ate grossly, drank fine wines by the magnum and Jeroboam, kept pretty women about him, slept most of the day, and worked and played all through the night.

John Ringling North lives as much like his uncle as he can. He, too, sleeps till noon or later, and is torpid and drowsy till evening. By midnight he is fully awake, and his best hours run on from then till 5 or 6. Around the circus he wears riding clothes, but towards evening he assumes a somber elegance. In New York he goes on the town dressed like a career diplomat, sporting a cane or tightly rolled umbrella, black hat in the Anthony Eden style, gloves carried but not worn and suits cut in the English fashion.

HIS HOSPITALITY is lavish and memorable when he entertains in his uncle's old private railroad car, the Jomar, which now stands permanently in a barn at the circus winter quarters in Sarasota. The guests are warmed up in the car's pale green drawing room with North's own brand of Old-Fashioneds, then the party moves to the dining room, which is dominated by a large mural of Lady Godiva setting out on her ride. A French chef produces a four-or five-course meal (with three vintage wines), and the meal is rounded out with liqueurs. Towards midnight the party moves off to the hotel North owns in Sarasota, to take in the cabaret, which is entirely composed of acts being prepared for the circus.

Towards i in the morning, North moves from the ballroom to the bar, where he sits radiating good will and telling stories about the past, present and future of the circus. The barmen and the spectators cave in about 3 o'clock, and North then shepherds his guests back to the Jomar for a nightcap, and more monologue, as long as there is anyone awake to listen to it.

The circus is usually in training at the Sarasota winter quarters for about 100 days before the spring opening at Madison Square Garden at the beginning of April. North spends the last couple of months in this period in the Jomar, living inseparable from his henchman and chief of staff, Arthur Con-cello, who was one of the best trapeze men in circus history, assembling and tuning up the new show. He lives with the circus through the New York season, and travels with it for the first half of its 200-day season on the road. He then hands it over to Concello, and spends the rest of the year in Europe, scouting new acts. He takes a month or six weeks off in Spain to watch bullfights--the only thing he considers to be in a class with the circus as a spectacle. (He would incorporate a bullfight in his circus if he could figure out some way around the humane prejudices of U.S. audiences.) But in Spain, as everywhere else, his mind is on the job and he often picks up acts there, traveling thousands of miles in pursuit of new material.

NORTH is always ready to add extra mileage to his itinerary if he hears of a good restaurant. He makes a point of getting to such gastronomic meccas as the Pyramide at Vienne, or the Mere Fillioux at Lyon, but he also follows up tips from food-loving friends, and constantly tries out new places. When he returns to America in the autumn or late winter, he generally has to diet hard to get himself down from the 200 Ibs. he has ballooned up to, and back to the 160s that his doctors recommend as reasonable.

North's gifts as a showman are not to be denied. Circus purists say that he has defiled a form of folk art and turned it into an unholy middlebrow hybrid, part

circus, part girl-show, part musical comedy. He has engaged such men as Norman Bel Geddes to modernize the circus style, and now employs Miles White, one of the best Broadway designers, to plan his spectacles and costumes. Stravinsky has composed music for his oompah circus band, and George Balanchine devised an elephant ballet for him. All this profoundly shocked those who loved the garish color, the curlicued baroque style and the blare of the old circus. But, as North points out, the oldtime circus was limping along when he started to modernize it, and since he has put girls, tunes and fresh color into it the great show has been making more money than ever.

fPHE CIRCUS' survival is due partly to North's showmanship, JL partly to his efficient organization. The circus gives a bigger show than it ever did in Ringling's day, but it travels on a train with 30 fewer cars. North cut out the army of horses which fans used to say was one of the chief draws of the circus, and replaced it with a fleet of high-powered tractors. He has trimmed the number of hands from a thousand to just over 600.

North has had his share of luck, too. His uncle, suspicious of everybody, and bitter, in his last years disinherited him and left his $23 1/2 million fortune to the state of Florida. A syndicate, headed by North, bought back part of the estate--including John Ringling's 30% of the circus stock--for $1,250,000 in 1947. A section of what was supposed to be worked-out oil land in Oklahoma was included in the deal. Soon after North had closed with the state, three deep wells came in on the property. The Rockland Oil Co. has given North back his $1 1/4 million a couple of times already, and there are several more millions in it for him yet. But that was only a byproduct. North wanted a majority interest in the circus, and by 1948 he had accumulated enough stock to give him what he wanted. He beams radiantly when he speaks of it. "Fifty-one percent is enough," he says. "If you have 51% of a thing nobody can tell you what to do." He leans back and claps his hands together with an explosive pop: "You tell them."

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