| I read in "Bandwagon" that when Terrell Jacobs was on the Ringling Show in the late 1930's he was featured with a 50 animal cat act in both Madison Sq. and Boston Gardens. |
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Lois Hoover Collection #3
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Great shot. First time I've seen it. Thank you, Lois.
I suppose everyone knows the story of the nine Jacobs lions who died on the train from being wrapped so tightly with cage covers against the weather that they suffocated.
Holy Smokes, this had to be a logistical nightmare. Were these shifting dens literally picked up by hand? Were gilly wagons used to move them from the train to the Garden? How did they shift the animals from the dens to the performing arena, were they all lined up end to end to make a huge run? Does anyone know? I've been around cats a long time. This took some doing. Another interesting question for the historians would be if Terrell trained them at his barn in Peru for these dates, did they go back to his barn then get to sit there for the rest of the year while he continued on the road? What a feed bill that was!
Bob
Ringling moved 4 of the Capt.Curtis sectional cages over in 1938 from the Peru winterquarters to hold the extra cats. I don't know if these cats went into those cages? Also don't recall if they shipped the cages from Peru to Sarasota or if shipped them to their opening canvas date that year. Would think the train crew would have backed a truck up to the side of the flat and used stakes to roll them into the bed of the truck.
regards,
P.J.Holmes
Richard Reynolds says - -
The road cage wagons for the performing cats never joined the show until the first canvas date.
In 1938, the road cage wagons were sent from Peru with the draft horses for the first canvas date. Jacobs’ lions, tigers and one or more black leopards had been shipped in these cage crates from Peru to Sarasota to complete rehearsals. They rode in system baggage cars. Then for the grden opener the crates were used to send the lions et al to NYC . Same was true for 1939.
When Beatty did Madison Sq. and Boston Gardens for RBBB (before going to H-W for its tour), the cats were sent east in these cage-crates which in turn were loaded inside system baggage cars. They went back to Peru in same way.
The photo shown here was taken by the late Bob Good in Long Island City . He took several of the cage-crates on the flat cars. One of them shows men manhandling a crate over the gunwale of the flat car and onto a flat bed stringer wagon. It is shown in Bradbury’s 1939 RBBB story in W-T, , J-F 1978, p. 22
Bob Good wrote me about the suffocated lions that turned up in L.I. City. (There’s a dead lion in each one of those closed crates.) It decimated the act so that it was not as impressive as it had been before.
Those cage crates had small wheels attached underneath. In Durant’s Pictorial History of the American Circus (on p. 290), there is an excellent photo of animals being loaded into them in Sarasota.
In a number of photos taken of the inside the Madison Sq. Gdn. arena, you can see them lined up along the low wall that separated the seats from the hippodrome track.
Thank you Mr.Reynolds for answering my question about the movement of the ex John Robinson cage wagons going over to Ringling in 1938. They aren't on the train lists going north that year. As to the shifting dens I am sure it would have been hard to tie them down with wheels on them. Maybe thats why the canvas was wrapped up so tight to keep them from moving around. Makes sense using the wagon that carried the stages to move them from the train. All the other stringer and jack wagons would have been with the under canvas unit, along with the canvas trucks. I think you can see the stage wagon on the second string of flats in the background.
Will have to check the issue of the Bandwagon and Mr Good's photos after work.
thanks again,
P.J.
Richard: Regarding Beatty going from Boston to Peru: in 1934 Beatty and the cats/cages went from New York directly to Chicago where Hagenbeck-Wallace had already begun their Coliseum opening date.
The under canvas opening then took place in Kokomo which was close enough to Peru to switch the cats to the cage wagons for the road tour.
didn't anyone question this method of transporting the cats? thank god peta wasn't around at that time -- that would have given them great ammunition and those of us born in the 40s or later might have never seen a cat act. (incidentally, peta is being investigated by the dea and one of their employees was recently caught red-handed with a dog that belonged to a deputy sheriff in this area. they were taking the dog to a shelter after picking him up on a rural highway. when they picked the dog up, they removed the dog's collar that gave his name and his owner's name and phone number and threw it in a ditch.)
Richard Reynolds adds - -
I think the canvas train got to L.I. City before the train(s) from Boston arrived. I have the impression the big top was already set up when the train from Boston got there. So there would have been plnty of seat-plank flat wagons available to send to the yard to get the lions.
I gather the lions were transferred to their road cage wagons when they arrived at the lot.
An odd part of the norhbound
canvas train in 1939 were three huge cage-crates each with a hippo inside. RBBB found itself awash with hippos in the spring of 1939, 5 of them - - Lotus,Chester,Alice, August and an unnamed young male.
RBBB sent the 3 RBBB hips (the last three named above) to Frank Buck with the idea that he would sell them for the show. He had a summer zoo at Amityville, and they went there. It is fairly near L.I. City. So they used the canvas train to get them up there. Howard Tibbals has photos of the hippo crates loaded on the train.
Post a Comment