Friday, June 29, 2007

Alfredo Beautour.1


Alfredo Beautour.3, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Posted by Buckles at 6/29/2007 06:13:00 AM

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're correct, this is a picture of Alfred (or sometimes, Fred) Beautour -- who was never billed as "Alfredo" but "Alfred," since he was French (he may have become Alfredo in Italy or Spain, but I never saw him working under that name.) He later worked with a good group of leopards (10 to 12, according to when), with a leopard walking on two parallel tight ropes. I have a TV video of his leopard act in the early 1970s. I was there when it was shot, and it was quite interesting to watch: his leopards had traveled all night to do the shooting at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris, and were quite nervous: lights, cameras in the special Cirque d'Hiver TV cage (which had two pannels with intruding niches for the cameramen), TV people all around, waiting time, etc. Beautour was in trouble, yet managed to do the act without a glitch -- but you could see he was not comfortable. What made him feel better, however, is that he was at the Cirque d'Hiver, with Firmin and Joseph Bouglione (the owners of the Cirque d'Hiver then, both great cat trainers) watching closely not far from the cage. I was at the shooting, and felt a little nervous for him. Alfred Beautour always had fast-paced acts, nice to watch, but he didn't have a great personality in the cage. Tarrass Boulba (Emilien), on the other hand, WAS the main attraction of his act. With only three tigers (pretty good ones however), he couldn't do that much, but his very vocal, dramatic and fun presentation was extremely entertaining. He became a very successful cat trainer with this character.

30 June, 2007 12:58

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