Monday, October 09, 2006

Paul Miller Shopping Center Show 1959 #5


As I recall there were about six cats in the act and maybe you lion guys can come up with more details.

Posted by Buckles at 10/09/2006 06:38:00 AM

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw this act only once at the Hartford CT Shrine Date. Might have been 1968. For some reason I didn't have my camera with me. The one thing that stood out more than anything about the act, was this very large sized male lion that everyone used to talk about. That might be him in the picture.
Didn't he have a son who worked a bear act?

09 October, 2006 07:06
Anonymous said...

Swede Johnson turns up on various shows over the years. Working and training cats elephants etc. and clowning. I remember he and my Dad talking about being on Honest Bill together. I was on the Blue show where he clowned and wife Mabel worked i9n wardrobe. Daughter Ann married Frank Stephenson. Hunkie, his son had his own bear act for many years and his horrible death received intence news reports. In conversation with Swede on the Blue show he mentioned that he had been on the Rose Kilian Wagon show. Rose Kilian's daughter was the great bareback riding star of Sells Floto and other shows and was compared to May Wirth as one of the great riders of that time. Incidentally on the blue show Swede and Marc Anthoney did a parody lion act routine that was hilarious.

09 October, 2006 09:03
Anonymous said...

Similar small cat acts on shopping centers at that time were Capt. Engerer and Capt. Christy and Dick Clemons, who would set up his thing wherever in between peddling horse meat to cat acts and zoos in the middle west. Capt. Engerer was killed when his lions mauled him right in the cage during a shopping center performance. Incidentally, similar to Chubby Guilfoyle he had only one arm in his late years.

09 October, 2006 09:27
Anonymous said...

For benifit of you uninformed the great lady bareback rider I referred to was billed as Rosa Rosalind

09 October, 2006 09:50
Anonymous said...

Swede Johnson's Big Johnny lion was said to go 800 pounds and to stand 48" at the shoulder, truly an exceptional animal, who also walked the wire. I never saw Big Johnny, and don't know if this handsome guy is him in the picture. Johnson was an astute animal man, and it is known that Charly Baumann, in rare moments of humility, would consult with Swede about animal care.

09 October, 2006 13:34
Anonymous said...

Now trust me, I'm not animal rights, but Mr. Swede Johnson seemed to be a bit ahead of his time by having larger sized cage wagons for his cats. The full mane on that male lion indicates the good quality of care the animals must have recieved as Roger points out.

09 October, 2006 17:10
Anonymous said...

The death of Captain Ernst Engerer is rather difficult to recount. We were playing Fort Dodge, Iowa, on the Beatty show, in '64, when word got to us. It had happened the day before, July 11, at The Enchanted Village, outside Winston-Salem, North Carolina, before a crowd of about 30. Engerer had his male lion, Monte, on a seat, then cued two lionesses in, when he tripped and fell. Monte broke seat and attacked immediately, killing Engerer with a bite to the throat. An assistant tried to drive Monte off with a cattle prod, but to no avail. The mauling continued some 20 minutes until the Forsyth County deputy sheriffs and Winston-Salem police arrived and dispatched Monte with several bursts of submachine-gun fire. Engerer was from Munich, Germany, and made his home in Florida. He was 70.

10 October, 2006 12:41

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