Friday, March 17, 2006

Ringling Park 1974/ Doc Henderson


Twenty five years later Doc is still making the same photo-ops, this time with "Anna May".

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it was" Circus Doc" - I did a book report on it about a hundred years ago..cc

Anonymous said...

Karen Glenn --

The book is titled "Circus Doctor."
By J.Y. Henderson as told to Richard Taplinger. Published in 1951 by Little Brown. It was first circus book I got when I was a kid. Fascinated by it. A big TV star of the day --- Arthur Godfrey --- was also fascinated by it. He had an hour long TV show at 8 on Wednesday nights. One Wednesday,while the Circus was at the old Garden on 49th Street and 8th Avenue, Doc Henderson, the elephant Ruth, and a whole bunch of animals were taken to the CBS-TV studios in midtown where Doc Henderson and his animals were the featured guests during Arthur Godrey's entire show. Arthur Godfrey owned horses. So he was familiar with vets and animal care.
On that particular TV show, he had a great time with Doc Henderson and the Ringling animals. -- ToddP

B.E.Trumble said...

Saw Godfrey ride once at the National Horse Show at the Garden. May have been a gaited horse, I can't remember. He was pretty good.

Anonymous said...

From Eric:

Arthur Godfrey hosted two of the Ringling TV specials: 1961 and 1969. At one time, a video tape of the 1961 TV special was available on eBay.

Eric

Anonymous said...

Speaking of Arthur Godfrey, Arthur Konyot, whose tales are in the book entitled THE WHITE RIDER, settled in Chicago after leaving Ringling Bros Circus at Ambassador Stables on the near north side. He had a stallion named Prince and taught riding. He was known by the students as POPS.
I used to hang around Ambassador Stables and took riding lessons from POPS. His daughter, Dorita, owned a riding stable a few block north.
Arthur Godfrey hired Arthur Knoyot manage and train Arabian horses at his horse farm in Virginia. I believe he was still woring for Godfrey when he died.