Browse Items (34 total)

Ruggera Zoppe on Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus Float.jpg

greatest show titles.jpg
In the movie's end titles, on the center top, the troupe is credited as "The Zoppes", 1952

ringling timeline.jpg
The timeline records the year when the Zoppè troupe joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus

autoscontro.png
With the closing of the Zoppe Circus, Guglielmo started to manage a bumper car ride in the Italian luna park. "It was not like before. Before there was more harmony, more solidarity, We would fight, but we really were like one family.” (Nadia and…

gabri e nadia rullo.jpg
The two sisters would perform with their family

nadia e gabri.png
“I was only 4 and I would have four or five acts. Wake up, Nadia, my mom would say, you need to work… then I would have to sleep in the afternoon or my mom would spank me. She would give us raw egg and Marsala before our exercise. I would jump over…

luigi loris dolores.jpg
When Guglielmo closed his circus in 1953, the troupe broke apart. Rodolfo and his wife Guerrina Verzegnacci joined other circuses with their children Loris (1936) e Luigi (1940). They worked with Circo Nazionale Orfei and with Circo Cristiani: Loris…

on set.png
Cecil DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth won five Oscars in 1953. It was a glorification of the circuses Ringling and Barnum e Bailey (that had united) in the moment of the circus's highest splendor, in all its symbolism of resilience and optimism…

ringling reproduction.jpg
The troupe's famous act, the human pyramid, is featured in the Ringling Circus Museum in Sarasota. The troupe was participating in the shooting of Cecil B. DeMille's film The Greatest Show on Earth (1952).

guglielmo dolores.jpg
The act that earned Dolores the nickname of "fly woman". Her father holds the ladder.
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