Buckles Blog: Wallace Bros. Circus 1940 #3

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Scan10163, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

This must have been quite a proposition to get these cages butted up together every day, especially on a soft lot.

Anonymous said...: Richard Reynolds says - -

I saw Clyde Beatty here in November 1943 at the old Atlanta Municipal auditorium with the first ever Atlanta Hamid Morton Shrine Circus (Nov. 15-21). Beatty had finished with the Wallace tour on October 5th.

I recall the Beatty cage trucks parked outside the auditorium at curbside on Gilmer St. They were painted yellow, as I recall, and am sure they were same ones shown here. There were four of them with Wallace in 1943 but I cannot recall how many I saw lined up on Gilmer St. See - -“Bandwagon,” May June 1975 (p. 27) for good side views of each of the four Beatty cage trucks while with Wallace in 1943. This was in Bradbury’s fine story of Wallace’s 1943 tour. He mentions they were painted yellow that year, and it’s what I recall.

For that Atlanta date in 1943 (the only time the great Clyde ever played our Shrine circus) he presented his act up on the big auditorium stage which overlooked the lower main floor where the three rings were set up in a triangle because of the old auditorium’s cramped floor. I assume the cats went through those wooden chutes out to the cage wagons on the street.

As information 1943 was the second time I saw the great Clyde in action. The first was with Adkin’s and Terrell’s Robbins Bros. (a rail show) in Atlanta in 1938.; 05 August, 2007 15:25

Buckles Blog