Dan Rice - Biography, Expressions

Clown, born in New York City, New York, USA. Originally a stableboy and jockey, his act featured his trick horse, Excelsior, weight lifting feats, and homespun orations during his heyday in the 1860s–1870s. His crackerboy commentaries on the contemporary scene prefigured many later comedians' routines.

Dan Rice (1823-1901), was an American entertainer of many talents, most famously as a clown, who was pre-eminent before the Civil War. During the height of his career Rice was more of a household name than Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain. Coining the terms "One Horse Show" and "Greatest Show", he was a leading personality in the new American "pop culture", brought on by the technological changes of the Industrial Revolution and resultant mass culture. Rice became so popular he ran for President of the United States in 1868. With changes in circus venues and popular culture after the Civil War, his legendary talents under the big top have gradually slipped in to almost total historical obscurity when biographer David Carlyon in 2001 called him "the most famous man you've never heard of".

Biography

Born in New York City, Rice gained 19th century fame with many talents, most of which involved him gallivanting around as a clown figure in circuses. Gaining fame and popularity he changed styles once again he starred in various parodies of works by William Shakespeare, including that of "Dan Rice's Version of Othello" and "Dan Rice's Multifarioius Account of Shakespeare's Hamlet" He would perform these with various songs and dialects showing just how versatile he was.

Expanding his horizons he went into producing his own shows and often had more than one tour going on at the same time. He started to take up politics and would often have Democratic undertones in his shows. Mark Twain paid him homage in his description of a circus in Huckleberry Finn, and it is likely a boyhood Twain actually saw Rice perform when his circus came to Hannibal for a show.

His shows became more famous than any of the other shows touring at the time including that of rival, Phineas Taylor Barnum.

Expressions

A number of popular expressions came into being around Dan Rice. Early in his career he was down on his luck and only had one horse (in early circuses the core show was a horse show) - his competitors mocked him saying it was a "one horse show" as a derogatory - he was able to turn the expression around by putting on a good show, and it became famously attached to him for the rest of his life. - later transformed into a noun - originated in New Orleans in 1848 when a member of Rice's troupe was attacked by a mob and he yelled to his friend Reuben "Hey, Rube!" - it is most commonly known today in the circus world as a "Hey, Rube" meaning "come help in this fight". Decades before other circuses used the phrase, an Arkansas paper praised Rice's as "the greatest show on earth."