18. Send in the Clowns, after training them in special schools
In 1968, as part of his drive to make the circus more family friendly, Irvin Feld began to revamp many of the acts presented, beginning with the clowns. Feld noticed that most of the clowns then with Ringling Brothers had been there for many years. Most were over fifty, and were performing the same acts which they had been presenting for decades. If one had seen them before, one would simply see the same act repeated. Feld created the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Clown College in Venice, Florida. It later moved to Baraboo, Wisconsin, and then to Sarasota, Florida, before closing its doors in 1997. Before it did the college trained approximately 1,400 clowns.
In 1988, a television special was taped at the clown college as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations. Hosted by Dick Van Dyke and broadcast on the CBS television network, it featured a fictional storyline in which the clowns practiced their routines while a custodian at the school, portrayed by Van Dyke, covertly watched them in order to learn their routines and steal their material. Willard Scott, who was the first to perform as the McDonald’s mascot Ronald McDonald, did not attend the college but was named an honorary graduate, as was Dick Van Dyke. The college eventually closed, as much a victim of its own success producing training videos and graduating clowns who then trained others outside the school as for any other reason. By the end of its operation it provided eight week training courses in the art of clowning.