Saturday, April 15, 2006

Clyde Beatty 1945 #1


After Clyde Beatty left the Cole Show he managed to assemble quite an entourage. Aside from his big lion and tiger act, he had three elephants and an assortment of followers like Albert Fleet and his chimps, his sister in law Jean Evans, Kinko, Ernie Sylvester, etc.
This package would be added to various circuses and Mr. Beatty & Co. received salaries plus a cut on the front door.
So great was his fame that upon his arrival the shows would change their titles so we had "Clyde Beatty and Hamid-Morton Circus", "Clyde Beatty and Wallace Bros. Circus" and "Clyde Beatty and Russell Bros. Circus".
This arrangement ended in 1945 with the death of Ray Rogers owner of the Wallace Show. This would be Mr. Beatty's first year of sole ownership.

Posted by Buckles at 4/15/2006 07:21:00 AM

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would you have any info particularly a photograph of the dwarf elephant"Baby Lily"?
Reportly she was the star attraction of the Carl Hagenbeck trained wild animal show on the midway of the 1893 World's Fair Columbian Expo that was held in Chicago.The Fair opened in May,but Baby Lily reportly died from the heat in August.
Lily was reported to be 3 feet high and 180 lbs.
"the smallest elephant in the World".
BTW The Carl Hagenbeck show was reportly the most poular attraction on the midway,next to the streets of Cairo show.9with the coochie dancers).

15 April, 2006 15:14
Anonymous said...

A fan magazine article, maybe by Joe Bradbury, held the 1945 Beatty show as the largest truck show ever until that time. Mr. Beatty is quoted as saying with the grief of so many trucks, their breakdowns and blown arrows, he'd never take out a truck show again. A number of those there at the time expressed to me their crushing disappointment when the show went back to trucks for the season of 1957, after the industry-wide disasters of 1956.

16 April, 2006 03:38

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