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Saturday, October 18, 2008
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5 comments:
Looks like a RBBB cage body.
It is a Ringling cage, Biller Bros had two of them. I have some photos that my dad took of this show in 1950 with my sister who was five years older than me standing in front of one of them. I was only two then and don`t remember, but was probably there. I`ll look these pictures up.
The two ex-RBBB cages (one show here) were built for the big one in 1947 to haul the performing cats and bears.
They were taken into the big top and stationed at the steel arenas and removed after those numbers. But they were too tall and blocked the view from a lot seats. So, the next year (1948) RBBB developed those low silhouette performing animal cages.
Two of those built for 1947 wound up in the 1948 menagerie. They or two of the others were sold to Biller and one of them wound up in Diano’s hands. I think it may have found its way to Peru.
After the 1944 fire, RBBB abandoned the chutes used to get animals from the outside to the steel arenas. They were a hazard because they crossed the hippodrome track and in the great fire trapped a lot of folks. It was some time before RBBB finally settled on a satisfactory alternative.
In 1945, for the Leopards and Ladies Act, they used the small Alfred Court European cages which were brought into the big top and positioned at the arena. In 1946 there was no big cage act. Then in 1947 they used the large cages mentioned above and finally settled on the low silhouette ones for 1948.
Some of the trucks have the following message on the side. "The show that travels on GMC trucks". Boy, could General Motors use that press today.
There was a very good Joe Bradbury-written account of this show in Bandwagon a few years ago. The story didn't mention it directly but I got the idea that Biller carried grift.
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