Tuesday, September 26, 2006

To KC


You are right, yesterday's picture of the big bull in India is similar to this elephant.
Louis Reed at right, buying elephants for Ben Davenport, gave this picture to my dad in 1948 and mentioned that this was the biggest elephant he had ever seen. Also that the gentleman in shorts was the Game Warden.
Mr. Reed made two trips to India and brought back 16 elephants in all. When we saw the Dailey Show in '48, all 23 elephants wore bells like the one seen here. Ben liked it since it drew attention as they marched back and forth to the train.

Posted by Buckles at 9/26/2006 06:27:00 PM

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would you have any photographs in your collection of "Irawatha" the elephant as it appeared in the 1937 movie ELEPHANT BOY?
It would have been
about 40 years old in it,
52 years old in 1948 if this is the same elephant.
There was a book published when the movie was released in 1937,that is chock full of photo's of Irawatha and Sabu from the movie.
I think you buy a copy pretty cheap from one of the used on-line book stores like Albris.

26 September, 2006 18:47
Anonymous said...

I watched the 1937 classic movie
ELEPHANT BOY the other day.
Im still not sure if this is Iravatha or not.
Notice the apparent
de-pigmentation on this elephants trunk and face in the photo?
The main elephant in ELEPHANT BOY did not appear to have any(known as "leopard-spotted elephants),then again it usually happens when a elephant,particularly a bull, gets mature and older,most noticable on the trunk and face and bottom of ear and sometimes on the belly,usually by then the whole tip of trunk is entirely pink.
Iravatha would have been about
52 years old in 1948 and on the decline as far as health.

30 September, 2006 15:03
Anonymous said...

As far as the bells go.
I remember reading in the classic book
ELEPHANT BILL,
about
the work elephants in Burma in the lumber camps,that once an elephant kills its mahout, they have it wear a brass danger bell.
Docile elephants wear wooden bells.
In the movie ELEPHANT BOY,Iravatha can be seen waearing a bell almost the size of the Liberty Bell9well maybe not quite that big).
Im not sure if Temple elephants were brass bells for the same reason.

30 September, 2006 15:53

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)