Sunday, July 27, 2008

Ringling Spec Float #2


Scan10512, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is 1955. I took movies in Sarasota on March 15, 1955 and there are shots of girls sitting up on this float painting the cornucopia. That was under an open sided tent on the west side of that large railcar service building. I gathered the 1955 spec floats were built in Sarasota instead of having them done in NYC and mounted on wheeled undercarriages after the show got there - -likely an economy move.

There is a 1947 film of a section of the train en route from Sarasota to NYC - -I believe it was shot in Bradenton. You can see those wheeled undercarriages riding the flats. I figured they would have the ornamental parts mounted atop them when they got to NYC.

Buckles said...

I spent an entire day on the Ringling Show lot in Chicago in 1955 but I was so engrossed in the huge herd of elephants (52) and being shown around by Smokey that I don't remember a lot about the performance.