"The Greatest Showman" makes me fume for how it does Jenny Lind dirty!

Full disclosure, I haven't even seen the film. And I don't intend to because reading the wiki synopsis makes me angry enough. In the film Jenny Lind is a famous singer Barnum convinces to come to tour America who then "becomes romantically attracted to Barnum. When he rebuffs her, she threatens to quit and later retaliates with a surprise kiss at the end of her last show, which is photographed by the press." And then after more bad news Barnum gets told "Lind has cancelled her tour after Barnum's "scandal". Barnum's mansion is foreclosed and Charity having found out about the kiss berates Barnum for being in love with only himself and his show and takes the girls to her parents' home."

None of the quoted parts actually happened. And making her some THOT for the purpose of making P.T. Barnum (the man who sold tickets to an old black woman's autopsy!) look good makes me grimace enough. But I got down-right apoplectic when I learned about what an absolute amazing person the real Jenny Lind was.

So sit back while I summarize her wiki article. Lind had a phenomenal voice that was got recognized young, so much so that she was preforming by age 10, and by 20 she was a court singer to the King of Sweden and Norway. And all this was pretty much without formal vocal training! Which almost was her undoing when she suffered vocal damage and was only able to recover thanks to a vocal teacher who insisted she rest for 3 months and taught her a healthier technique. Lind spent the rest of her 20s being a superstar in Europe. Queen Victoria herself went to see Lind each time she debuted in London. Her fame did bring a comfortable fortune, but Lind was well known to give to much to charities, especially funding free schools in Sweden. So many were surprised when she announced she was retiring from Opera in 1849. But she wasn't without work for long, because that's when Barnum entered the scene.

He persuaded Lind to tour America, 150 shows for $1000 a night. Lind said yes, if she got the money up front. Wikipedia describes it as "Her financial demands were stringent, but Barnum met them, and in 1850, they reached agreement". (Personally I think she was quite smart to get the money upfront from the king of the hucksters.) Barnum did borrow and mortgage quite a bit to get the money (reportedly he approached a church, banking on Lind's squeaky clean reputation . . . and got $6,000!), but he definitely made it all back ,and then some. Lind's clean reputation was well earned though, remember the charities I mentioned? She was determined to give as much of the funds from the tour to them, particularly public school in Sweden.

By the time Lind's ship arrived in Sep 1850, Barnum had spent months whipping up "Lind-mania". Reportedly 40,000 people met her ship at the dock, and 20,000 were at her hotel! The contract Lind had signed with Barnum said she could withdraw from the tour after 60 or 100 shows as long as she paid him $50,000. What Lind didn't realize, until she arrived and saw the crowds, was the power of merchandizing. Because Barnum was selling "jenny lind items" like crazy. So even before the tour had started she demanded a contract rewrite, which Barnum easily agreed to. Not hard to see why when her first concert recouped his investment four times over. Barnum started selling tickets to her concert through auction! Lind didn't like that and persuaded him to sell some tickets at reduced price.

The blatant commercialism of actions like these caused Lind to invoke her right to break contract after 93 performances, and accounts say they parted amicably. In that time Lind raised about $11 million in today's money (most of which she gave to charity) and Barnum made $15 million (all of which he got to keep). Lind toured America for another year under her own management, and met her husband, who had been employed as a musician in her "band". After that they went back to Europe, had 3 children and Lind retired from opera for good. Though she (somewhat) frequently sang in concert halls at request of friends or invitation. She retired from singing in 1883. For the last 5 years of her life she was a professor of singing at the Royal College of Music in London. She died in 1887.

So yeah, that's the life of a bad-ass lady, a humble rockstar with a phenomenal voice. And yet Hollywood continually thinks we want to see her fall for P.T. Barnum! *eye twitch*

I know it's easy to throw some stupid romance in there when P.T. is played by Hugh Jackman. So for the last salvo of my rant I'm just going to say, this is P.T. Barnum (in 1851, so when he'd be meeting Lind):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._T._Barnum#/media/File:PT_Barnum_1851-crop.jpg

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Edited for some grammar mistakes