Allen Bloom, famed booker and negotiator for Irving Feld’s Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, is a legend in the entertainment industry. He helped orchestrate the circuses’ big ancillary income flow — popcorn, sno cones, cotton candy and souvenirs.
Linc Cavalieri is also a legend in the industry, having run several buildings in Detroit, including the old Olympia Stadium, home of the Detroit Red Wings hockey franchise and famed as the “Old Red Barn.”
The first time Linc Cavalieri met Allen Bloom, Irving Feld didn’t have the circus yet. Feld was promoting concerts like Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell and Bloom worked for him, taking the shows on the road.
A young Allen Bloom brought such a show, probably Frankie Avalon, to Olympia Stadium in the 70s. Cavalieri, who had run a beer distributorship for the Norrises, had been moved to run concessions at Olympia Stadium. After a year, he canceled the Sportservice contract and took concessions in-house, hiring the Sportservice GM, Raoul Sartori.
The arena seats 13,000. The concert tanked, with about 1,500 people at the show.
A distraught and unhappy Allen Bloom says to Linc Cavalieri:
“We’re going to run straight through. We’re not going to have an intermission, we’re going right through.”
“No, we have to sell food and beverage. We have to have an intermission,” Linc says.
“No, we’re not going to have an intermission.”
The show goes on and gets to the headliner, Frankie Avalon, and Cavalieri says to the head electrician, “Pull the cord on the power.”
They did and Frankie is singing into a dead mike. It’s intermission time.
Allen Bloom goes ballistic. The two young men confront each other in the hallway and are literally almost ready to come to blows. The concessions manager has to break them up.
They get the show restarted and Frankie plays — after an intermission.
Allen Bloom, who later created an incredible business in ancillary income for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, stipulating in every contract that they circus retained the right to sell popcorn, sno cones, cotton candy and souvenirs — a lot of it during intermission — eventually calmed down. Years later, he was talking to Linc’s son, Bob, who is now with SMG, and Bloom recalled the story of no intermission.
“Bob, I was 100 percent wrong. Do you believe I didn’t want to have an intermission? Oh my God.” — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard by Bob Cavalieri
PHOTO: Linc Cavalieri, right, and Allen Bloom, center, at a later date with Vince Egan of VEE Corp. Today, Aug. 27, would have been Allen’s birthday.
That’s the Allen we knew and “loved”!!
Cliff, look again – we now have a photo of Linc and Allen.
I heard Allen tell this story a number of times. By the way, today (August 27) is Allen’s birthday.