Tuesday, March 31, 2009

King Bros. Circus 1948 #1


Scan11484, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

"With all the promotional and artistic talent at Mr. King's disposal, I fail to see why they would lift this 1937 RBBB program cover."
Buckles

Posted by Buckles at 3/31/2009 07:00:00 AM

4 comments:

henry edgar said...

for some reason, mr king rarely created new material. many of the various programs he put together over the years use the same spec info, for example, and there were certain pictures and stories that he used over and over and over for both programs and press, very rarely updating them other than for a rare feature act. when you buy programs on ebay today he put together, they are often the same with only a change in show title and act lineup, usually only variations of stock covers. i can offer no explanation, and when i worked with mr king, i was only in my late teens and early twenties, and was so much in awe of his knowledge and reputation and legendary status i never questioned anything. he simply had his way of doing things, they obviously worked, and he didn't change them.

yet he understood the need for change. when i was loaned to betty-cole for the huge new orleans date, i brought my own photos and stories and used them with his encouragement to give the new orleans papers photos they had never seen before. i also set up a few new pr photos actually using beatty-cole performers and animals at that time that were used the next season and many, many more.

for me, one of the biggest mysteries about the circus advance is why the old-timers were so reluctant to up-date anything, preferring to re-hash oldies but goodies year after year. it was not particularly difficult to set up new photos nor was it particularly expensive.

31 March, 2009 14:04
Anonymous said...

Same reason the Cristianis didn't append the King Bros. title when they took over in 1950; Floyd still had lots of King Bros. paper left over.

Lane Talburt

31 March, 2009 16:44
Anonymous said...

I seem to think that just about all shows from big to small used whatever they could to make their show seem the biggest and if you look at a lot of posters, mailers and programs, you wil find the same photos all over the place. It was a business decison that made it less costly than to make up your own publicity shots.
Bob Kitto

31 March, 2009 19:15
Richard Reynolds said...

Old Floyd would use Atwell photos of the huge RBBB menagerie and its feature animals as if one could see such on his shows.

01 April, 2009 12:16

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)