| I called Dorey to tell him the elephants seemed to be sound and mentioned that one "Sally" was pretty tough. I had heard that years before, on the Polack Show, she had done a number on dog trainer Sonny Moore. I once asked Sonny about that and he said he got all drunk one night and decided to try to make her jump thru a hoop. |
Sunday, November 18, 2007
D.R. Miller
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9 comments:
Buckles:
Is this the same "Cross-Country Sally" that you and your dad helped Dorey load in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to send to Clyde Beatty's compound in South Florida? The one that dragged Junior Ruffin across the pavement when he unloaded her?
Lane T.
This was one of the MGM elephants "Happy", "Sally" and "Queen".
My dad trained the one you refer to with Kelly-Miller in 1950. He used to call her "Sally Kadoola" after the Walt Disney song.
She was nice looking, very gentle but flighty.
Great story, Buckles! The wonderful thing about show biz stories (particularly when D.R. is the subject) is you couldn't make that stuff up.
Ah!!! So, that's where that saying came from!!! Mystery solved!!!
Pete, the Baraboobian!
That’s an interesting story concerning E. James Strates in 1972. I remember entering his plush office in 1975 after a long bus ride from Winston-Salem. I was a JCL and had always wanted to work for the big show that I had seen in my hometown and in Raleigh since a kid. I called ahead and made an appointment, put on my best blue suit, and thought that I might land a job. Strates asked me what I wanted to do and I told him that I had worked concessions in a park and also worked for a small racket show for a season. He told me that the only opening that he had was in kiddy land working with a guy named Dave Parks. To be honest, I wasn’t very thrilled about this job, but I accepted. Strates went on to ask me how much I wanted to be paid and I said $200. a week. Little did I know that all of his ride jocks at that time were getting only $80. but Strates agreed and I was to report back in a few weeks. As you say, “a complicated story”, but I ended up only getting $150. but that was still almost twice what the other guys received. So the part about Strates being a slow payer doesn’t surprise me at all. I stayed the whole season and his bonus left something to be desired too.
As to the reason for this story, I ended up in Strates’ kiddy land and right beside Steve Fanning who has the live ponies. Steve was a super guy and told me how he had come off the circus to manage Strates’ Wild Animal Menagerie in the 1950’s. Steve was really respected on the show. In addition to having the ponies which traveled on the train, Steve also had the mail and AB. Steve as they say, has a direct ear to the “boss”.
By 1975 all that remained from the Wild Animal Menagerie was the ponies. I‘m sure Steve did quiet well with them and he was always talking about expanding to another show. I saw Steve again in 1976 when I visited in Raleigh with my girl friend. Steve was his usual self and whispered into my ear a very derogatory expression that I won’t repeat here. (He always used this expression whenever he referred to a young woman) The only thing I remember else about Steve was seeing his death in the AB a few years later and that his wife carried on his tradition on the Strates Show with the ponies and the mail.
I should have made it clear that the MGM elephants were sold to James E. Strates not his son.
James E Strates died in '59 and probably still had a few bucks tucked away from his first job wrestling as Strangler Lewis in the early '20's. By all accounts a generous man, but he did keep his eye on the bottom line.
Monte:
I don't think Steve came to Strates until sometime in the 1960s, although I didn't run into him there until I visited in the early 1970s.
I know he had the Beatty-Cole herd in 1960 and prior to that had been with Cristianis for several years and I believe King before that.
He may have come to Cristiani from the King-Cristiani period and I know he came to Beatty-Cole in 1960 with the Norma Davenport five.
During the 1960 season he took those five over to either Tom Packs or Polack Bros to play some dates that had been booked before Beatty-Cole bought the act.
Buckles:
Wasn't Steve's first wife an Orton?
When he came to Beatty-Cole he had had a lady named Irene who worked the floss joint out front. I recall her saying she had been on Cetlin and Wilson at some point.
He met Irish on Beatty-Cole in 1960. She had been on the 1959 Kelly-Miller show.
Is Irish still around? She once said her father had been trainmaster on Dodson's World Fair Shows and that's all I remember about that.
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