Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Ken Maynard Wild West 1936 #2


Scan10221, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Mr. Maynard at right (check book in hand) is now the proud owner of a circus. Once loaded it will be California bound.
Dick Flint has identified the hand writing as that of Circus Historian, Col. C. G. Sturtevant of San Antonio.

Posted by Buckles at 5/28/2008 06:53:00 AM

4 comments:

Harry Kingston said...

Great photos Buckles of the way it was.
I think the man on the left in the photo is George W. Christy from south Houston, Texas.
Ken, must have got what was left over after Christy sold much of his equipment to Adkins and Terrell to start the World's Newest show, Cole Bros. Circus with Clyde Beatty in 1935.
Harry

28 May, 2008 09:08
Anonymous said...

With the exception of the "Beauty" tableau, most of the Maynard purchases were vehicles that had rolled in service on Christy's second railroad circus, Lee Bros. Most ended up going to United Tent & Awning, Dave Bradley and then Disney, who reconstructed them, replacing all of the woodwork.

There were no train cars with the Maynard purchase, it appears that he leased system flats and may have obtained some stocks from Warren on a short term basis for the move from Texas to California.

Maynard cleaned out most of the wagons at the South Houston quarters, but Christy went on to replenish his vehicle holdings by acquiring most of the wagons from Floyd King's failed Cole Bros. outfit of 1930.

One item that Christy retained through all of this was the 1883 Barnum & London tableau cage that bore the carved inscription of "Barnum, Bailey & Hutchinson." Two statues were stolen off of it and these ended up at the Shelburne Museum, where they are today. Christy later donated the cage and the canopy from the Swan bandwagon, which had been separated from it years before, to Baraboo.

As to why Maynard bought more parade wagons than baggage wagons, one can only surmise that he was more interested in flash than moving the show.

Fred Pfening, Jr. published an article about the Maynard operation in Bandwagon. They had a mutual friend that ended up peddling Maynard's archives. It was through that friend that Fred, I believe, got to meet Marilyn Monroe when she was making the movie "Niagara." Being a circus historian sometimes has fringe benefits.

28 May, 2008 17:27
Anonymous said...

Note the use of a "snatch block" to halve the force required for pulling the wagon up the steel runs and also wire rope used in lieu of conventional rope in loading the wagon.

29 May, 2008 08:21
Anonymous said...

Alot of the Christy baggage wagons look overbuilt with the size of the timbers in the under carriage,the extra wide wheels,etc. So maybe this was just an easy way to pull these wagons up the runs. Also,his show had been off the road for six years by then, and maybe his help that day had some oil field experience.
There are not alot of photos of any shows loading up in the 20's for some reason. Maybe the film would be better in the 30's to take photos in the late afternoon light as the cookhouse and horse tops would be loaded. Or maybe the fans knew they had better record what they were seeing, as it was disappearing at an alarming rate.
P.J.Holmes

29 May, 2008 09:26

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