Thursday, November 23, 2006

Winter Circuses in England #2



Freddy and Olga at theHippodrome.

Enclosed are some pictures of my mother and father, Freddy and Olga Yelding, working a Stage Circus. The riding act with two partners, Valeska and Roberto, are brother and sister. Roberto later became one of the biggest Booking Agents in the UK and Europe and only passed away a few years ago.

When Rudi and I started our own Chimpanzee Act in 1964, after Bertram Mills closed, Roberto did most of our bookings. He booked us a lot in Europe and with RBBB.
My mother Olga also had a House Cat Act from 1949 until 1960, long before they became popular by the Russians.

Sorry to say most of the lovely theaters are now gone, many turned into parking lots and shopping centers. That's progress, so they say.
I feel lucky to have such wonderful memories of the business that has been my life and my love.
Sue Lenz

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Posted by Buckles at 11/23/2006 06:18:00 AM

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

To Mrs. Lenz, Those are certainly magnificent looking theaters, and as you say, a shame so many are gone.

I recall seeing Buckles work the Polack Bros. Circus elephants on a large theater stage in Akron, OH in 1968. Buckles told me that there was heavy timbers added under the stage to acomadate the weight of the elephants.

Thank you for posting these great photos and sharing with us all your family's great circus history!

23 November, 2006 07:40
Anonymous said...

I'm Thankful for Sue sharing her photos of English circuses and Buckles Blog for displaying them.

A great memory for me was watching the 1963 Polack show at Medinah. I had a seat close to the stage so I looked up at Pat Anthony working 17 cats, including the tiger that jumped over the fire hoop. Closing the first half the Besalou elephant came on, chugging around the ring to great music. You could feel the building shake -- it was terrific.

23 November, 2006 09:10
Anonymous said...

Sue: The late Great Harold Alzana use to tell me about the Blackpool Tower Show. Do you have any pictures of him working that building? Sounded like that was one of his favored buildings. I too appreciate you going to all the trouble of sharing your pictures with us.

23 November, 2006 15:43
Anonymous said...

Several years ago we went to a holiday season "Circus Pantomime" at Blackpool Tower that was just too much like Disney to throughly enjoy, though the performers were pretty good. I remember that my older son liked the aquarium as much as the circus. There's a certain charm to the English seaside attractions that remains a bit of a mystery to me, though here in Monterey we try really, really hard to recreate it.

23 November, 2006 18:32
Anonymous said...

Yes, I remember the circus on the stage. We toured a stage show as late as 1983. The coconut mat was always the heaviest part of the get-out. And then you had to scrub the stage and dressing rooms before you left that night. You couldn't show on Sundays before 1971, so you used to get out on Saturday night and have nowhere to go until the get-in on Monday morning. At one theatre in Great Malvern they built an apron in front of the stage to make it bigger and assured me that it was strong enough. Our elephant, Tina, went round once and the second time tipped it over. She almost ended up in the front stalls. Another time we couldn't build the tunnel to get the lions on stage, so I told everybody to close the dressing room doors and we just herded them down the dressing room corridor and straight in. By the way the beastwagon was parked in somebody's garden that adjoined the theatre, as there was no room on the side of the stage to keep the animals. When I was with Chipperfield's we often had two cage acts on the big theatre runs and often had to stack the boxes, one of top of the other, to make room. We had a big chimp then called Charlie, who on the get-out managed to pull a poor dwarf underneath the feeding trap that hadn't been locked. I could go on forever about those theatre tours. They seem fun now, but believe me they were harder than tenting. Ask Norman Barrett, as he was doing it long before me and we often exchange stories.

24 November, 2006 12:45
Anonymous said...

Jim:
I don't need to ask Norman Barrett anything about the winter dates as we were together then on Cody's Circus & Robert Bros. It still was a wonderful experience that the younger generation will never know.
I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

24 November, 2006 14:05

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