Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Bailey Bros. Elephants #2 (From Dave Price)


Buck4, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

This isn't much of a picture but the poster shows the Bailey Bros 1947 imports; it's by that great circus artist Forrest Freeland.

When I took the picture I couldn't afford color film and now I'm too cheap to buy a digital camera, so we're stuck with this B&W shot.

I was putting some Beatty-Cole paper in an empty in 1960 and this poster was lying on the floor, where it must have been since the late 1940s. In the window were a couple of date sheets for Howe's Hippodrome which I believe was Art Sturmak's title in 1952 after the Biller daze.

By the way it was not unusual in those days to find old posters in empty buildings. Some of these places sat for years without being leased and were never entered except to let the occasional circus biller in.

Posted by Buckles at 1/15/2008 12:17:00 AM

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dave,
My dad be-friended a biller back in the 30's and every once in a while he would receive an bundle of posters from an empty that added a lot of posters to his collectiojn. Too bad You didn't send these empty posters home. You could have had the largest poster collection in the US.
Bob Kitto
PS, I know that you only wanted CB posters, but just think of the money you could have had.

15 January, 2008 20:42
Anonymous said...

Well I did save a few but they are pretty well stained, faded, torn, ragged, etc. You didn't find many pristine ones this way.

Dick Flint and Harry Kingston both have great stories of bundles of old lithos turning up. I hope they'll chime in here.

15 January, 2008 23:22
Dick Flint said...

Growing up near Springfield, Mass., I knew Roy Arnold who built the magnificent 1-inch scale, 500-foot long model "Circus Parade" featured in Life Magazine in the early 1950s and now ensconced in its own building at Vermont's Shelburne Museum. He was one of the pioneering model builders whose research during the 1940s on many classic B&B parade wagons helped discover some of their history. He also had a wonderful collection of about 200 fine posters (also now at Shelburne) of the 1880-1930 era. The best, he told me, came when he stopped at some store asking for the circus poster in the window. The owner asked if he wanted all the others he'd been saving waiting for the show's to pick them up. He came away with Great Wallace and original Walter L. Main show posters of the 1880s-90s, among others!
Dick Flint
Baltimore

15 January, 2008 23:38
Harry Kingston said...

Dave,
Sure anything to help out another great collector.
I knew Bubba Voss for many years as he lived in Orange, Texas just a few miles from me.
He was band leader on the old Al. G. Kelly and Miller Bros, played with Merle Evans on the 1955 Ringling show, and Clyde Beatty Cole Bros under chuck Shlarbaum.
Well Bubba collected posters for his collection and one day going to ask for the psoter the guy said yuo want the rest up stairs
So up bubba goes and a bill psoter must have roomed there.
He found Downie Bros all kinds fom 1 to 12 sheets, A few Chrsity Bros from 1 to 8 sheets. And many more from various shows. They were great as I saw them all. Never been put up and like new.
So Bubba hit the jack pott on this one.
Great memories of the circus.
Harry Kingston

16 January, 2008 16:11

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