Business & Finance: Fallen Ringling

One summer evening last year a Manhattan newspaper carried a story that John Ringling was in a private hospital recovering from an amputation of both legs. Mr. Ringling, who was actually at Coney Island’s Half Moon Hotel recovering from an infected blister on his instep, was exceedingly angry. The huge moon-faced circus tycoon summoned the Press. Sitting in an armchair, he waved two thick, muscular legs at the reporters and shouted: “It’s terrible to send out a story of that kind. I have many friends all over the country and they will be shocked when they read that one of my legs, or both, have been amputated.” What the Press did not learn was that while John Ringling was still in a wheel chair at the Half Moon, a Manhattan financier by the name of William M. Greve had deftly amputated John Ringling’s entire fortune—or most of it.

Last week the last of the Brothers Ringling, ill and aging John, who had owned more circuses than any other man on earth and whose fortune was once estimated to be $50,000,000, hobbled into a Federal Court in Brooklyn to testify on the loan that brought him low. The firm that held his note was in bankruptcy. At a prize fight in 1929, Mr. Ringling related, he met William M. Greve, president of New York Investors, Inc. (realty), who agreed to lend him $1,700,000. As collateral Mr. Ringling put up one-half of all his circus stocks. Shortly afterward New York Investors sold the Ringling note to the now bankrupt subsidiary. While ill last year, Mr. Ringling had been unable to meet an interest payment of about $18,000. Financier Greve promptly marched out to Coney Island. Threatening to attach the circus receipts, Financier Greve demanded: “Put all your assets in a bag and give them to me.”

That night, despite a fever of 104, Mr. Ringling was put in a wheelchair and brought to another room. Over the protest of his nurse he signed papers which gave most of his assets to New York Investors. Later he learned that swift Mr. Greve had formed a voting trust to hold the Ringling stocks and manage the circuses, another trust to hold some of the Titians, Rembrandts, Hals, Rubens from his famed collection in Sarasota, Fla. Mr. Ringling was left with nothing. But he was one of the five voting trustees, and as soon as he could pay off the loan he would get his bag of assets back.

Chief cause for the Ringling Fall was the low estate of the biggest show business. Only three of the six Ringling circuses were on the road this season. And there had been four straight seasons when net receipts were almost as low as they were when the seven sons of August Rungling of Baraboo, Wis. toured the prairie towns in ”Ringling Brothers’ Moral, Elevating, Instructive & Fascinating Concert & Variety Performance.”