Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Polack Bros. (Eastern) 1951 #1


Scan10990, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

From 1947 thru 1957 the Polack Show had two units, called Eastern and Western. Both shows had lengthy seasons but the preferred route was with the Western Unit.
This is a program from the Eastern Show and you can see it is of lesser size, no cat act listed.

When the expansion was made, the Powers elephants (show owned) went to the new unit (Eastern) and the newly purchased MGM elephants became a regular staple with the Western Show thru 1950.
In 1951 the Tom Packs elephants, trained by Mac MacDonald, were the talk of the circus world, so much so that Louis Stern booked the act on the Western Unit for the 1951-52 seasons, after which Mac remained to train the Besalou elephants at Louie Goebel's place in 1954 and made their debut with the Western Show in 1954.

Posted by Buckles at 11/26/2008 06:45:00 AM

1 comments:

Mike Naughton said...

Bill Kay, (William Kay Productions, 3001 Pony Lane, Sarasota) was a promoter for Pollack and later had his own Shrine dates that were part of the original Pollack route.

Bill often told the story of an act, name I cannot remember, that was switched from the Western to the Eastern unit for a season. The act was so upset at being sent to the unit with lesser weeks that they thought they had done something to offend the management and went half out of their minds trying to figure it out. They did nothing wrong, but thought they were being punished with less weeks therefore less money overall.

Bill said that in today's world (early 80's) that an act would be thrilled to have a 30-something week season as seasons were so had to come by anymore. He went on to say how much times have changed.

He wasn't kidding.

26 November, 2008 08:49

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)