From Dave Price #1

CL56a, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. Well, I don't want to be the only one left out of this first meeting with Beatty series. The 1943 Beatty-Wallace Bros show was the first circus I ever saw. For some reason I remember that Beatty used a chair that was stained like a piece of furniture rather than painted. I also remember that he wore khakis that day although I now realize he had primarily worn his trademark whites for years by then. He brought his railroad show to Nashville in 1953 and a friend of my dad's sent us reserve tickets to see the show (my dad had not seen him since Hagenbeck-Wallace played here in 1932). I remember that someone was taking movies through the bars of the arena; long afterward I read that some "Ring of Fear" shots were made while the show was in Tennessee. Not only did we see Beatty's terrific act but it was the first time I had ever seen the great Tommy Hanneford perform. Prior to the show Mr Beatty had walked right by me in the menagerie to show some visiting friend one of the young elephants- I imagine it must have been Pete, then called Pee Wee- and even though I was close enough to touch him, I simply didn't have the nerve to speak. After the show had left town I talked the owner of a feed store out of a poster showing Beatty in the arena. In late 1956 the reactivated Beatty rail show played through Tennessee and I spent a day on the lot. At some point Mr Beatty drove up in a red and white Ford station wagon. Junior took the car and parked it elsewhere while Mr Beatty walked into the big top to inspect the arena. When he came out I asked him to let me take a photo and here it is. Later during the show I got this other picture of him entering the safety cage. We see Junior again. I remember that the guy seated in front of me chewed me out for squeezing between his seat and the next to get the shot. By 1959 I was off with the circus myself and to my great surprise a package came one day that had been forwarded from home. In it were several autographed 8 by 10s sent me by Mr Beatty himself in response to a latter I had written him the previous winter. That fall I was on the Carson and Barnes advance in Louisiana and my boss Francis Kitzman took me to visit the Beatty-Cole show and introduced me to Mr Beatty, who said he wished Francis still had the advance over there. After that Mr Beatty was always very friendly whenever I saw him. I last talked to him on the lot in Waco in 1963. The day after Beatty passed from life's arena, Bob Good wrote me to say, "He was America's greatest contribution to circus achievement. There will never be another Clyde Beatty. God bless him and may he rest in peace."