Barnum's camouflage / the cherry-colored cat flimflam

Above At our house we live with a totally black cat named Jinks (short for Hijinks surely). But I recall from childhood an earlier black cat that I was inevitably attracted to during shopping trips downtown, in the Midwestern town where I grew up. Here it is: Lucian Bernhard’s famous logo for Cat’s Paw rubber heels.

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A CHERRY-COLORED CAT: Great Showman’s Little Joke in World’s News (Sydney AU) February 8, 1919, p. 2—

Professor William Lyon Phelps of Yale University, in newly-published reminiscences of the one and only P. T. Barnum, declares that it was the great showman to whom Robert Browning referred in "Mr. Sludge, the Medium," and, incidentally.disclosed a delicious and little-known bit of highly-successful Barnum “camouflage.”

It was while Professor Phelps was a small boy, In New Haven CT, that Barnum advertised as a special sideshow attraction, "A Cherry-Colored Cat!”

Naturally, an enormous crowd trickled in to see the curiosity, and all they saw was a common black house cat. Disappointment, indignation, and chagrin. "We've been humbugged!" was the prevailing sentiment expressed In the equivalent of "stung again."

Then somebody, who was quicker to catch the point, infected the crowd with the philosophy of good humor. "Why, don't you know, certain kinds of cherries are black? This is a sure-enough cherry-colored cat, and everybody ought to see it.”

The victims caught the idea, grinned with delight, winked, and went out, and urged everybody they knew to be sure not to miss the wonderful sight of the cherry-colored cat, with the inevitable result that practically everybody got stung." The cat, which belonged to a local woman, had mysteriously disappeared two days before the circus reached the town, but reappeared the day following the circus' departure, adorned with a ribbon and a card expressing Mr. Barnum's appreciation of the involuntary loan.

Charles Hanford applies stagecraft in WWI camouflage

The American promoter and showman Phineas T. Barnum was born in 1810. He was immensely successful and widely known by 1859, the birth year of Charles B. Hanford, who would in time himself become a leading actor in Shakespearean plays. 

Hanford’s middle name was Barnum, not in homage to Phineas T. (although they may have been related) but because Barnum was his mother’s family’s name.

Hanford died in 1926. Near the end of his life (as reported in obituaries), while World War I was ongoing, he collaborated with Thomas A. Edison “in planning methods of camouflage for ships and land operations of the army, his stagecraft lending itself readily to this work.” In earlier blog posts, we've talked about various aspects of Edison's involvement in WWI camouflage.

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Anon, CAMOUFLAGE IN CLOTHES PASSES in The Cleveland Press, March 18, 1918—

There’s camouflage in warfare,
But for men whose forms are lean,
In spring styles stores are showing
No camouflage is seen.

“Conserve” is the the edict
Throughout the USA
And that applies to clothing
In quite a funny way.

For tailors have elected,
In making suits this spring,
To make lines they call “skeleton”
The fashionable thing.

Th shoulders have no padding,
The waistline’s pulled in tight,
No bit of cloth unneeded
Is anywhere in sight.

So if you’re thin, flat chested,
Or your shoulder blades are round,
Conceal the fact, you cannot,
To show, it’s surely bound.

But there, don’t look so gloomy,
Just think what you would do
If tailors had decided
To conserve in trousers too.

They might have made it rompers
Like children wear in play.
Or maybe trunks and long hose
Like they wore in Shakespeare’s day.

But we’re not the ones to grumble
When all is said and done,
For we’ll go in Injun blankets
If ’twill help to lick the Hun. 

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping