Friday, July 27, 2007

Sells-Floto & Buffalo Bill 1914


Scan10127, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

From Anonymous:

Paired elephants, side by side, worked well together, but why was/is there such difficulty with tandem elephant hitches? They only appear infrequently in circus history. Even Smokey Jones had a challenge when he tried to do it for the Milwaukee parade, so you know it wasn't a cakewalk.

"I'm surprised to hear this, as a rule, elephants in tandem were only used in spec or street parades, as seen in this picture with Lucia Zora at the reins. The "wheeler" pulled the wagon while the leader was mostly for show. Sounds to me like Smokey didn't want to mess with it.
I might add that when these two elephants were imported in 1909, they were named "Kas" and "Mo" after the States "Kansas" and "Missouri" as a publicity gimmick by the Denver Post (the show's parent company) to increase newspaper sales in those States."
Buckles

Posted by Buckles at 7/27/2007 09:44:00 AM

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Note the elephant hitched to the wagon is between "shaves". This is not unusual for a single elephant hook up and I have used it and will note that Hugo hitched John that way to pull the Bell Wagon in the 100th Anniv. Spec.Horses when working single are always in Shaves.

27 July, 2007 10:38
Anonymous said...

I wouldlike to note that I had Topsy and Eva pull the Ken Maynard Air Calliope as a team in the Milwaukee Circus Parade before Smokey-Bobby Moore effort. I did not lead them, but had my excellent assistant Frank Brown do that and they made the ntire parade with no incidents and had Jester Blankets and clown collars on them. Incidentally I had Frankie work them equally as well as a team in loading and unloading the circus train.

27 July, 2007 10:45
Anonymous said...

I believe the Smokey-Moore effort was as a team and not Tendem. I am not quite sure on this, but I do know they did not finish the parade.

27 July, 2007 10:52

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