Monday, December 10, 2007

H-W- Ready for Parade 1930's #1


Scan000010573, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Posted by Buckles at 12/10/2007 06:08:00 AM

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems like the one person in management in the Ringling org. having come there when they purchased the AMC was Jess Adkins who liked the circus street parade and would bring it to Cole in 35 when he jumped ship and became a secondary partner with Terrel.Others in the industry in those final years of parades would be Floyd King, George Christy and Andrew Downie [Downie Bros.] My uncle George Engesser [Schell Bros] motorized circus liked the parade as well. Naturally it would bring the news of the show being in town in a dramatic fashion. James Bailey certainly along with 4-paw and the Ringlings put on some big spectaculars. I suppose among the Ringling Bros. some were pro and con in its regard and believe once they were so established with bringing the awesome tented show to town found no need to put it on the street. Once Adkins was gone it seems Terrel faded out that daily hike as well. Why? Well cities and towns were getting more and more anti parade, with liceses, street litter clean up, blocking off streets, more police, etc. Plus is was getting more difficult for acts to sign that contract that had the stipulation of appearing in the daily parade. Feature acts had "no parade" clauses in their contracts and even lesser acts would be reluctant. Aerial acts with rigging would be exempt and am sure the elephant Captions disliked it for obvious reasons, especially on a muddy lot when you spend all morning with work elephants on the lot and then have to get ready for the God Damned parade. { have been there ].Almost always you would be late for the Cook house and had to hop like hell if you were involved with one o'clock "doors". So the demise of the street parade was a happy occaision for all, performers, muscians, teamsters, elephant men, etc.. Naturally circus fans loved it.

In Baraboo during the Schlitz days Ben Barkin and Schlitz became aware that Chappie was a one man operation in regard to parade preperations and were afraid of what would happen if he became incapacitated during those times, so when I signed my contract to work for the state hist. sciety and CWM a clause was inserted that I would be Asst. to Mr. Fox in parade involvement, so I would go frequently to Milwaukee for parade plan meetings and would generally sit and listen. After each parade a follow up meeting would be held with Police, fire, zoning, planning honchos joining in and of course would all get their ntwo cents in. But Schlitz had alot of clout being the biggest brewery in the city and no. two brewer in the nation behind Busch, but it was always a pain in the ass listening to their so-called problems, especially the Mayor's office as the Mayor hatd the parade as he had created his own "baby" , "summerfest" and he would have liked to see the parade and "Old Milwaukee Days" long gone. This is my personal insight to the Grand Free Street Parade and having been in the trenches during its last gasp I feel qualified to express my opinion. Thanks for your indulgence and naturally expect to hear more on the subject.

10 December, 2007 09:19
Anonymous said...

Richard Reynolds says - - -

I think this and the following photos are from 1934. The giraffe wagon is significant.

The show picked up a Ringling giraffe when it played the Bronx in 1933. She had been on loan to the Bronx zoo since the two big shows combined in 1919.

She was pregnant at the time and gave birth the following winter in Peru. However, she was killed by a careless train loading crew when the ’34 edition was loading out. (Wagon was handled too roughly and she fell inside breaking a leg). So for 1934 they carried her small calf.

As is well known, Jess Adkins talked the RBBB brass into a daily street parade on HW in 1934. They had given parades in select cities in 1933 and I think they did the same in 1935.

The photo has in the lower right corner what appears to be the name of W. H. Penoier (sp?) of Hornell, NY. According to HW’s 1934route, it played Hornell on August 9, 1934.

Penoier once had a huge collection of circus photos. The late Joe Bradbury got some of them in the late 1940s or early 1950s. I wonder what became of Penoier and his photos.

10 December, 2007 13:16
Anonymous said...

The late great Alfredo Codona after his shoulders gave out was given the job or title of Eqestrian Director of HW in the thirties where his wife and her family [Bruce] would be performing as bareback riders, aerialists, etc. It must have been as Mr. Reynolds states that they did not parade every day inthe mid thirties so he would put up a notice in the back door stating "to all performers. You are cordially invited to tour tomorrows city from the circus grounds tomorrow morning starting at 10:30. Please be prompt." u 4

10 December, 2007 17:13
Bob Cline said...

The Corporation cages as they have been referred to over the years sure weren't built for the beauty but they were built tough.

There's a terrific article about these cages in the Bandwagon or White Tops but as is normal these days, I can't find it right now.

Most if not all of them were built with the animal entrance doors to the left of the wagon pole on front and back. Some of them even had a chute inside the cage wagon to allow passage of the animals through them with other animals in their cage dens.

Sometime in the 1980's I believe, the Circus World Museum lined all the Corporation cages they had end to end in the menagerie top for Ada Smieya's tigers to work out of all summer. It was pretty impressive. Jim Peterson posted a couple pictures of this on his blog sometime back.
Bob

11 December, 2007 08:31

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