Kelly-Miller 1951

Scan10561, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. From Anonymous: Acts often enlist the use of props commonly known to the audience. Ergo, the French would see wine bottles, Americans milk bottles. America had a much greater German influence, so one was more likely to see barrels in acts than wine bottles. Working with an object familiar to the viewer heightens the interest. That's the idea with jugglers tossing chainsaws and whatever. By the way, it looks like glass milk bottles of the type used or imitated were first used by dairies in the late 1870s. Those impossible to win ball-toss bottle games must date from sometime thereafter. Ned, later known as Tusko, was also photographed doing a bottle walk of sorts with an apparatus not unlike the Jacobs item you described. I'm sure Buckles is familiar with it and other similar elephant acts. "My dad always called this a "bottle walk" for lack of a better name. The winter of 1949-50 he trained five young elephants to do a lot of stuff "Jenny", "Kay", "Hattie", "Barbara" and "Anna May". Not only were they the center ring elephant act but were the last thing in spec but rather than follow the rest of the herd out the back door they went directly into the rings and the show opened with a five ring elephant display. "Kay" and "Hattie" (seen above with Red Smith) did bottle walks, "Jenny" walked a plank, "Barbara" did the hand stand pedestal and "Anna May" rolled a globe. As you can see, the bottle walks were the most clumsy and difficult to load and unload." Buckles