| This was the first season for the show, having been built from the ground up by the Acme Circus Corporation. The initial appearance was at Palasades Park in New Jersey where the Side Show was used, the big top seen above served as the menagerie (featuring the remarkable Roy Rogers horses) and the performance held in the Clyde Beatty- Cole Bros. 150' big top. |
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Sells & Gray Circus 1962 #2
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16 comments:
Buckles: You recall Bill English first took out this show (or at least some equipment using this title) for a short late fall tour- I believe all Florida dates- after the 1960 Beatty show was in the barn.
Interesting that you would mention that. I recently had a lengthy conversation with Bob Snowden who mentioned that during the winter of 1961-62 he had King Bros. hopping around Florida as well.
He said that the first thing Rex
Williams did after being hired by Acme Corp. was to take his two baby elephants "Burma" and "Gypsy" (later Bee and Gyp)and put them into the center ring 5-act with the Beatty Show).
Rather than practice in DeLand, Rex brought all five on the show and put the act together while on tour.
Rex was renowned for letting his elephants wander free around the lot and Bob said that one day, one of them slid down a steep embankment into a lake and either couldn't or wouldn't climb out.
A long ordeal ensued dragging her out.
Buckles,
Thanks for these great photos of Sells-Gray.
I never knew that Sells and Gray used the Beatty Cole bigtop.
What did they use for seating as Sells Gray must have had alot lower seats than Beatty Cole??
Also how was the Sells Gray performance staked up to Beatty Cole's?????
Thanks,
Harry
The Beatty-Cole big top and seating was in tact since their opening in Long Island was in a building.
From Palisades they moved everything to Philadelphia and awaited to resume the tour when the indoor date was completed.
The Palasades performance was a first class three ring, affair which intended to feature the ever reliable, Roy Rogers Liberty Horses but was overshadowed by the Wallenda high wire act in their first appearance after their fall in Detroit.
sells and gray got great reviews in palisades park, and the show was outstanding. in addition to the Chet Juszyk lions, the roy rogers horses and the abbreviated 4-person wallenda act, we had LaNorma, the Victor Gaona Flying act in their first year in the air after being a Beatty feature with casting, trampoline and tight wire, Alberto Zoppe riding dogs, the Dorchesters riding act, Barbara Morris Seals, Newman-Dickerson Bears, and others including Johnny Pugh in the Wallabies trampoline act in ring one while the Gaonas were in ring three. it was my first professional circus job and i loved every second of it until i had to leave the show to head for Phoenixville, Pa. to join the bill crew. Bill English was absolutely the best man at that time to be your first circus boss (and, contrary to published reports,the advance crews did answer to Bill, rather than Floyd King. Bill was extremely active in supervising the adavance. He was always the man I answered to for the four years i was on the show, except for the time I was loaned out to do press work for Beatty-Cole in New Orleans in 1964, when i worked with Mr. King)
Sells & Gray served another purpose as well. It was known around the Beatty lot that when Willy Storey had the show, Frank McClosky would take him aside and say, "Willy, don't make any money this year."
Roger Smith
Thanks Buckles and Henry,
It sounded like a great circus and the locals should have loved it.
Henry since you were with it and any more memories of this great date you wish to share with us we would be very glad to hear it.
See I never dreamed that Sells and Gray would ever be the size that Beatty Cole was.
I have many great memories of those shows and those large tents were something to see.
I even got to see Sells and Gray one Fall with a live band.
Thanks so much guys.
Harry
Harry -- even though i've lived a very full life and my years with newspapers were filled with the kind of things most people only dream about, the four years i spent with sells and gray were the happiest period of my life. sells and gray was never a big show, except for the palisades park date but for the most part we always had a strong performance. in 1965, we had a cat act (a dave hoover act worked by several people until johnny golden came aboard) Carmen Del Molino on trapeze and tight wire, pat miller with a beautiful principal riding act trained by rusty parent, phil and bonnie bonta, clowns and dogs followed by jerry lipko, clowning and chimpanzee, hugo zuniga jugling and rola bola, Chris hudson, elephants and ponies, and larry french, ponies and manege. we had a hippo in the menagerie - bill english was emphatic about not wanting pit shows. it was a great show and offered more real talent than almost any tent show today -- certainly superior to ringling gold (and pat and carmen could have easily been center ring on ringling back in the days when ringling was ringling) we always had a live band until concello came in after i left the show because i was drafted. in 1964, chuck schlarbaum was a one-man band that had more excitement than any band around today.
note to roger: that wasn't the case when bill was running sells and gray. bill was determined to make sells and gray the best that it could be; he had high standards and the show always made money when he was there.
Henry,
Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with us.
Do you have any good Bill English and Floyd King stories you want to tell us about.
I heard that later on down the road it was Sells and Gray and King Bros. that helped make the pay rolls on Beatty Cole.
When I would visit them both the billing looked like the ringling show was coming as they put up the posters.
Willy Storey and Harry Rawls and Whitey Black always made me feel at home.
I still have a season pass that Art Miller gave me and when I presented it at the front door the guy tried taking it from me and I said NO you just see it for admission.
What wonderful shows they were.
The real circus.
Harry
Is this the same English Family that had Kathy English working in the Tommy Hanneford Circus and later married a Garcia in Texas?
I might be way off base with this one.
The two best shows I've ever seen were Big Apple's 25th anniversary show (on which I commented just a few days ago) and Sells & Gray about 1963 or '65 (I'd have to look up the exact year). The Riding Santiago's, Ivanov bar act, Van Loo sisters (Heidi later married the late Jimmy Cole and, though she was much younger, tragically pre-deceased him), Carmen del Molino, the Bontas (she played the air calliope that the show carried), the cat act, etc. Just a great performance, let alone for a small show. The ever-friendly Lena Cloutman was in the office with her husband John; for years she would send me the route cards. Dave Mullany was on the show for one year presenting the elephants.
Seeing the photo of the cage truck (#5 in this set) with its notations for the four cages including the "great ape" reminded me just how great he was! He could shake that semi so it nearly would roll over--no exaggeration! It rockled and rolled at times! I don't think the cage truck would pass muster today as they were only half the width of the truck bed with the other half carrying the poles, etc., for the combined side show/menagerie. Stu Miller had the side show at this time before going over to Beatty-Cole.
In addition to carrying an air cally for the old-time feeling, the trucks were about the best painted on the road at that time giving the lot appearance a real circusy feel. Roger Boyd did the spectacular lettering for many years and set the standard from which all subsequently show lettering is judged; he was the inspiration for current show painter Dennis Gilli.
Happy memories.
I have some correspondence and business records for the show in the 1960s that may prove interesting to some. In 1966 the daily nut was $2152 with $405 of that going to the advance and $617 for employees and payroll taxes. The seasonal operating cost of one tractor unit for 24 weeks was $4650. For the Nov 1, 1965, to Sept 30, 1966, eleven month period, the show took in $376,238 against expenses of $356,805. That missing month of October was bad, however, for the initial 1962 season as Bill English wrote to McClosky that the "fall tour cost us plenty of money."
Other gleanings from these records indicates that Hoover did own the Johnny Golden act; Golden's real name was John Wells, Jr.
Today's concern about the immigration bill and getting workingmen seems ageless in the circus business: In 1968 Willy Storey reported to McClosky that "Everything is alright here, EXCEPT: we have 5 men at the big top, one man at the side show, none on props [solves the tipping problem recently discussed on this blog!], the waiter at the cookhouse is on a drinking binge and blew, the dishwasher blew, Billy McCabes house in Sarasota has been burglarized and he has to fly to Sarasota to file a formal complaint...the man at the sound truck blew, we are short three drivers...I sent a man to see if I can pick up some men at the mission...Anyway moral is good, and thank God we have good weather... Trailer came back saturday night, bill 470.00, I will look several time[s] before going under an archway, sorry about that..."
As Johnny Herriott has joked: "What, and quit show business!"
Dick Flint
Baltimore
Growing up as a kid around Winston-Salem, my uncle took me to see Cristiani Brothers sometime in the late 50’s. I was too young to remember very much about the show at all except that I went. Then sometime around 1962, I heard that Sells and Gray was playing in Mt. Airy around 50-miles north. Mt. Airy happens to be the home town of Andy Griffith and of course Mt. Pilot (Pilot Mountain) is right south on Hwy. 52.
It was a hot sunny day sometime in June or July and as we rode into the edge of town, there was the show all set up on a dusty lot right on Hwy. 52. I can still remember how awesome the huge tent was, at least to a boy of only 12-years old. At that time, I had not seen the Beatty show or for that matter any large tent as big as the one on the Sells and Gray lot. I don’t think that my uncle took me to the performance, so we were lot-lice in the grand style. It was 10-years later that I finally got to see the Beatty show with its 300-foot round bale ring top.
For Harry, i would have to start a blog for the Bill English/Floyd King stories. Bill taught me so much, about circus, about press, and about professionalism. I called a short time before he went into the hospital just to thank him for everything he taught me. I still tell people i went to the Bill English University. Except for the year someone decided to drop the big bill cars from the corporation shows (which only lasted a short time on Sells and Gray) we always had strong billing, but what was more important to me was that Bill would drive around the town looking at the paper and he was more concerned about where it was and how effective it would be than how much of it there was. He would rather have had a card in a great location than a block-long hit where nobody would see it. The pass from art miller is real circus history; he was only on the show for part of the first season, so there were never many of those passes given out. i didn't work with mr. king until until i was loaned to beatty for the first new orleans date. I became a sponge and absorbed every tiny bit of knowledge i could get from him and i learned a lot about circus and press. and again, about dealing with people. he was an expert and i never heard any of the "remember the old man, son" lines i had heard so much about.
for cracked nuts, kathy was bill's daughter. she was just a little girl then but was a real trouper. when she was on the show, she always dressed in a ballet costume and made spec, riding eddie santiago's big white horse Tommy.
for dick flint, you are absolutely right. we had a great show in both 1963 and 1965, either of which would be superior to the shows of today. And congo the "killer ape" was a real ham -- when stu miller would talk about him killing the woman who raised him and how he made the covers of life, look and time, congo would rattle the bars and make the kind of commotion that would have lived up to the gargantua hype! the hoover cage act eventually worked by johnny golden was originally to be worked by Prince Gabor (Junior Ruffin) but unfortunately junior never made it into the opening performance in warner-robins.
Sadly, by the time i got out of the army, the show i knew no longer existed; everything had changed. i will always wish the tighly-knit group could have stayed together and i will treasure those four years.
Mr Henry Edgar,
Thank you so much for the great memories of your time with Sells and Gray.
I really enjoy circus history and the way it was.
I have a copy of a letter that Bill English wrote to Jon Friday who was applying for the job of ticket seller on Beatty Cole.
I have never read such a detailed letter on what is involved and what is expected of him.
Mr. English must have been a credit to any show he was on.
When circus billing is done right it is worth it's weight in gold.
I never could figure out why some billers just put paper near a lot or management paper so the owners would see they were there.
The photographer Epstein took the best shot of Clyde Beatty I have ever seen and the one used on the Bandwagon cover when he died. You can see the action in his face.
Again thanks for your memories of the way it was, the great days of the circus.
Harry
Harry mentioned Bill being a credit to any show he was on. It needs to be made clear that Bill was a partner in the ownership of the show along with Walter Kernan and Frank McClosky.
Likewise Bob Snowden was a partner of the same two when they first took out King Bros.
Bill told me that all later managers of both shows were employed but not partners as he and Bob had been.
Yes, Bill English was a great showman and always a gentleman; I remember how polite he always to Mary Jane during the years we worked for him.
Kathy English is Bill's daughter
HM
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