Chapter 2 – Part 3
The Brothers (1885-1921)

The Picard Brothers, known also as the Picard Troupe or French Gymnasts, and sometimes mislabeled in the press as the Flying Picards [9], were Saginawians who performed on the horizontal bars in the late 19th and early 20th century in circuses and vaudeville but most notably with Ringling Bros. and Hagenbeck and Wallace. The Brothers Picard were considered “among the best aerialists in the nation.” [10] Contemporary newspaper reports described the four brothers as “”. . . The clean-limbed, graceful acrobats, flying through space and accomplishing seemingly incredible feats upon the elevated bars . . .” [11] Vincent Picard performed in vaudeville and the circus from 1991 to 1928.

Though P. T Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome was founded in 1870, the beginning of what we now call Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily Circus usually dates from 1884. The Eastern Michigan Picards’ relationship with Ringling Bros. dates from 1895-q928. Eight years after Ringling Bros. was founded, Fred Picard (1869-1921) began performing on the horizontal bars (c. 1892) soon there after joined by his brother Phil (c.1893).

Fred was said to have gotten his start in Vaudeville at the Boardwell Opera House in Saginaw where he played with Marie Dressler. This theater was said to be a place well known at the time for “harlots.” Phil (1877-1912) also worked in Vaudeville with various partners in the 1990s and early part of the twentieth century.

In 1901, a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily Circus program (page 2) described Alvo, Boise & Picard as “astonishing evolutions, somersaulting, swings, drops and exhibitions of strength and daring upon the aerial bars.”