Saturday, June 07, 2008

Downie Bros. Circus (From Robin Estes)


Downie Bros. Circus, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Buckles,
Thanks so much for all your work with your website. I come there first thing each morning.
I ran across the attached picture on a very interesting historical photo website: www.shorpy.com
They add pictures each day so the page number changes some but today, June 4th it is on this page: http://www.shorpy.com/node?page=205
If you want to see it and it isn't there, just look on 206 or 207. It should be there somewhere.
The caption on the photo reads like this: Posters advertising a 1936 circus near Lynchburg, South Carolina. 35mm nitrate negative by Walker Evans for the Farm Security Administration.
Notice the Cole Bros. bills that they almost covered up.

Robin Estes

Posted by Buckles at 6/07/2008 05:53:00 AM

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

what a great publicity stand
and the big dates are these great
stands gone for ever a few weeks ago in adelaide i was walking down the street and the circus poster in the window even with my glasses
on i could not read the date the date must be the most important
part of any circus poster
Robert Perry
Australia

08 June, 2008 00:38
Anonymous said...

You are right about the dates Robert - nobody in this country uses bills with big, readable dates anymore.

I wonder if the Downie Bros billposter used that special paste with the dissolving agent in it so that the paper would disappear after the circus had left town - leaving the wall of the barn cleaner than new! LOL.

08 June, 2008 06:53
Anonymous said...

Ol' Whitey would know all about that "special paste with the dissolving agent in it." Let's see what he has to say about it!

08 June, 2008 08:43
Anonymous said...

Modern billposting is a bit of a mystery to me. I understand the part about restrictions on hanging paper on poles, I know paper costs money and all that. But I go through towns with empty storefronts and see a single 11X17 show poster unreadable from any distance and I can't help but wonder; Why put up just one...and why no date sheet? The show I was with this spring played a town in Missouri where the Chamber of Commerce decorated every store window with vintage circus paper as well as current paper for our show. They even decorated the parks. Not surprisingly both shows were sellouts with so many extra people squeezed into the tent the butchers could barely work. Paper can still help build excitement and in small towns circus day can still turn out everybody who lives there.

Ben

08 June, 2008 10:08
henry edgar said...

ben -- the problem with billposting these days boils down to the same problem in so many other areas of this business. people. for years, shows relied on the same pool of great billposters. then the great billposters for one reason or another disappeared. and there was nobody to teach the new people.

you can never depend on cards on utility poles. it's against the law to post paper on utility poles in most states, though the law is often overlooked, and the size is limited, making them difficult to read. it takes a special knack to get paper in windows and even to get into an empty building. whatever the cost, the paper and the great billposters were worth it. today, you'd have to find an experienced billposter like ol whitey who knew what he was doing to train new people. it's a rough job.

as for the way today's cards look, when they're designed by people who have never been in the trenches, it shows. you should be able to read "circus" and the date from at least several feet away without really looking. those words should be big enough to zap your sub-concious thinking. unfortunately, billposting, like press, is too often handled by an office in winter quarters. you need professionals on the road. maybe i'm naive, but i think the tried and true methods of getting people into tents would still work if anybody would try them.

08 June, 2008 15:37
Anonymous said...

steve
pat nichol's used to put caustic soda in the paste i beleive at one time in outback australia the wild goats were liking the bills next day dead goats everywhere
Robert Perry
Australia

08 June, 2008 17:53
B.E.Trumble said...

Henry, I still believe in paper. And I still believe that big hits matter. There's a visual excitement to them that a single poster lacks. With many shows simply mailing a package of posters to a sponsor, at the very least it would be nice if somebody came up with instruction and maybe some pictures for how to make paper really work. Several years ago I would go scouting for show paper every day and call the billcrew to complain when I didn't see it. After a month or so I started to see a lot more. Part of the problem too is that bill crews aren't always english speakers and simply slap a poster on the counter at a convience store and hope it gets put up.

08 June, 2008 19:44
Anonymous said...

Tommy Hanneford and billposting: He believed in posters until his death. I received some of the nicest and the worst comments from him depending on the my ability to get the posters up. He expected them around the outer portion of the venue property. he would get out and about the area just to check on paper....ENQUIRER out of Cincinnati stocked a Ray Dirgo three clown window card that wasn't difficult to post except Tommy didn't want to use it because of the yellows used.. think I could write a chapter in billposting during my years with Hanneford and Hetzer.....I think Enquirer only has a few cards left in stock...

09 June, 2008 08:05
Anonymous said...

Robert - that was the "special dissolving agent" alright. As a matter of fact it was you who taught me about it many, many [too many!] years ago.

I don't think I ever killed any goats but I sure cleaned up some fences and walls!

Will be interesting to hear whether Ole Whitey used the same ingredient in America.

Henry Edgar - we have the same trouble over here in Australia. Nobody knows how to advertise a CIRCUS anymore. As a matter of fact, Robert Perry would have been one of the last to do the big stands. We used to reckon it took about 4 or 5 posters in shop windows to penetrate the public's consciousness - so the bigger the dates the quicker the message would sink in.

Must be a problem all over the world. I've just been speaking with a girl who was on a show in Sweden last year doing two and three weeks stands in each town. She reckoned the bills didn't go up till the show hit town [they all had to go billposting on arrival -acts and all]. Show folded before the end of the season and management is still trying to work out why!!!!

09 June, 2008 08:17
Anonymous said...

Originally billposting cars carried large boiling pots to cook paste, as wheat paste does not become sticky unless it is cooked. Wheat flour must be cooked in order to swell the cellulose contained within it and release it on a microscopic level. If you just mix wheat flour with water without cooking it, it ends up in a slurry and the cellulose is not broken down in sufficient enough mass to produce a very good adhesive. Today in museum paper conservation or restoration, the only adhesive that is used is purified wheat starch paste, which has to be cooked or in this day and age, microwaved. Caustic soda was a quick way to "cook" paste, as when it is added to water, a chemical reaction takes place that is highly exothermic, meaning it gives off a great deal of heat, which in turn actually cooks the paste, making it into a good adhesive that with sufficient drying time even allows the paste to become somewhat insoluble to water. I would imagine that billposters in their day would have had real prolems posting posters/lithos on exterior surfaces in rainy weather, as the rain would have kept the paste soluble, which would greatly reduce its adhesive power. So that's your practical chemistry lesson for today minus the actual chemical equations!
Neil Cockerline
Director of Preservation Services and Conservator of Paintings and Works on Paper
Midwest Art Conservation Center
Minneapolis, Minnesota

09 June, 2008 18:23
Anonymous said...

suely a good bill posting circus advance agent should be on the world heritage list on the world endangered list or both.

Robert Perry
Australia

10 June, 2008 02:05

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