Thursday, November 30, 2006

Cole & Walters Circus #6




The Cole & Walters elephants always were kept at the Kelly-Miller winters down the road. Here we see "Ringling Jess", "Gollmar Daisy" and "Wm. P. Hall Mabel" in rehearsal with the KM elephants in the background.
The herd worker is Lee Crawford and the Elephant Empress is Herb's daughter Shirley.
Some years later Shirley would marry a young fellow on the show that did a single trap act billed as "Reckless Rex" Charlie Rex and they would eventually work this act together.
Charlie and Shirley attended mine and Barbara's 1959 wedding in Paris.....................(Texas). Posted by Picasa

Posted by Buckles at 11/30/2006 06:03:00 AM

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Buckles: Some years ago, you named each rank men held around a herd. Something like Trainer, bullhand, herd-worker, etc. Please list these descriptions again for those of us who can't locate the right files.

30 November, 2006 16:35
Anonymous said...

Mr. Woodcock,

Where you able to locate any photographs in your collection of Adam Forepaugh's big elephant "Bolivar",
(said by some to be even larger then Jumbo)
Reportly Bolivar was donated to the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens
around 1888.

30 November, 2006 17:39
Buckles said...

No, sorry to say I came up empty on this one. Hard to imagine him being bigger than Jumbo.

30 November, 2006 17:47
Anonymous said...

WOW, hard to picture Charlie Rex doing single traps!

30 November, 2006 17:48
Anonymous said...

I love rec'n the blogs!
Fantastic!
One question is it possible that anyone would know of an Elephant act that wintered in Culver City,CA. in 1949 which had a wonman put the Elephant's throught the paces?
One Elephant waw named Babe the other was Willy?
PLEASE let me know if anyone can help. Tom
Email; bozo_history@yahoo.com

01 December, 2006 16:28
Buckles said...

You are probably talking about "Gentry Babe" and "Wilhelmina" (sometimes called "Willy" or "Will").
In 1949 "Babe" was owned by Luke Anderson who told me that, later that same year he bought "Wilhelmina" from Roy Bible (Sello Bros. Circus).
No idea who the lady presenting them in the ring might be.

01 December, 2006 19:21
Anonymous said...

There were a couple of shows about P.T Barnum's "Jumbo"
on cable television just a few years ago.
One was on History Channel's
"Lost and Found.
The other was on ANIMAL PLANET network.
The show on ANIMAL PLANET was the best,they showed some old photgraphs of circus elephants ca.1900.I think one was of Forepaugh's "Bolivar".

09 December, 2006 12:28

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