Friday, August 25, 2006

Gollmar Bros. Circus 1922 #5


My father wrote the information on the back of this picture, identifying Joe Metcalfe as the elephant man and the three large elephants "Lockhart Nellie", "Barnum Alice", "Lizzie" and the male "Toto" who were purchased when the show was first framed in 1920.
The three punks on the right are "Babe", "Katie" and "Mary" added in 1921 from Fred Buchanan's "Yankee Robinson Circus" (Mary was the elephant some of us saw at Gee Gee's Birthday Party in a film taken twelve years later, doing the head carry with Matt Laurish).
However my dad missed the little elephant in the center, collared to "Toto". The only explanation I can come up with is that the Corporation purchased 12 punks in mid-season that year and "Danny", "Pearl", "Jewel", "Judy" and "Modoc" were added. Yes the same "Modoc" that eventually made her way to Ralph Helfer and was destined to become something of a cult figure due to an imaginary tale of an unrecorded ship wreck.

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