15 – Here is the elephant department of Steve Fanning and Irish Hill with the show’s three elephants joined by Oscar Cristiani’s small herd. Cristiani-Wallace carried Lois (once in the Ringling-Barnum herd, then sold to Remo Cristiani’s King show), Sheba, and Susie. In addition to the elephant act, they were also brought in for the old-time leaps with either Benny or Adolfo “Tripoli” Cristiani (don’t know if one or both were with the show) vaulting over all three. |
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Cristiani-Wallace, 16 Aug 1962 #15
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4 comments:
Years later, Irish had ponies on Strates Shows and was the AB vendor.
That's the exact same pair of jobs that Steve Fanning had. A couple?
Dick Flint
Baltimore
In 2001 fans from France were on the Cirque Vargas lot with fans from America to take in a performance....
The wild animal trainer from England had a bit of an unloading problem and proceeded to throw a real fit, cursing and throwing things about. One of the American friends said that it looks like Irish Hill is back, and until now I never knew who Irish Hill was or that she was a person.....
Was she a bit theatrical and temperamental. Would be interested in hearing more about her...... Pierre.
I first met Irish in 1959 in Jerry Pressley's trailer when John Frazier, Jack Gagne and I visited Kelly-Miller. At that time Irish had an accent of some kind (not and Irish accent, more Caribbean) and she said her ambition was to have an act of three male African elephants. She even had the music worked out in her head and hummed a few bars for us.
The next spring she landed on Beatty-Cole where she worked in all the girl numbers: web, ladders etc, and also worked in the center ring elephant display, the newly-bought Norma Davenport five which Steve Fanning brought over from the Cristiani show. Beatty-Cole also bought a giraffe from Cristianis that year.
Irish no longer had the accent and once told of her father being trainmaster on Dodson's World Fair Shows. Steve had a girl with him named Irene who worked a joint on the midway and had previously been with Cetlin and Wilson. When the time came for Steve to take the Five act over to play several weeks of Tom Packs dates (which had been booked prior to Beatty-Cole buying the act) he took Irish and left Irene behind. Many years later I used to visit Steve when he played here with the Strates show- originally on the menagerie and later with the pony sweep- and Irish was always with him.
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