Wednesday, April 29, 2009

John Daniel II #4


!cid_X_MA1_1240868458@aol, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.


This open air menagerie photo, taken in San Antonio on October 24, 1924 by the late Tom Scaperlanda (1895-1971), is the only one I've ever seen showing at least a part of the layout for exhibiting J. D. II. As you see it is sort of like an aviary with a tarpaulin from a cage wagon around the top and another around the bottom. From this I cannot tell if the canvas extended like a roof over the entire enclosure. We can only assume that the gorilla used the aviary as a play pen of sorts.

A word about Tom Scaperlanda. He and his brother Pasco were orphaned by the great Galveston hurricane of 1900 which killed upwards of 10,000 and was American's all-time worst natural disaster. They persevered, however, and in time would become two of our most noteworthy circus fans and historians. Settling in San Antonio they were very active in circus matters, noted for hosting train-side tamale and beer parties alongside the performers' sleepers the night the show was preparing to leave. Tom was a prominent San Antonio jeweler.

The late Gordon Potter of St. Joseph, Michigan (a true gentleman on the old school), recorded more about the equipment and physical aspects of RBBB than anyone not connected with the show. His notes from the 1920s -1940s are invaluable. He saw the 1924 show and on July 5, 1965 wrote me about John Daniel 2nd as follows.

"I recall seeing John Daniel II in the menagerie... They had an odd wagon for him. Believe it had an enclosed portion at the front where he traveled. Then the rear half was open (about like a jack wagon ) with corner posts. A trainer would have him out there and he had a swing that he sat in, I believe. [The setup] was near one of the end center poles in the menagerie top."

Of course, we know he did not travel in this wagon - - the enclosed part was likely for props used to set up the display. I wish Tom Scaperlanda's photo (above) had shown the entire set up. Combing the picture with Potter's description means to me that the wagon sat next to the aviary (play pen) shown in the picture and out of sight to the right of this photo. The mesh sides of the aviary were probably loaded at night onto the flat part of the wagon for movement to the next stand.

3 comments:

Roger Smith said...

As many of you will recall, in the Harry Hertzberg Circus Collection there resided the Tom Scaperlanda Room. His vast collection of photos were all framed in red and lined four walls. He and his wife Ginny were great friends of Clyde Beatty who was prominently featured among the photos. As I probably have stated here previously, Curator Leonard V. Farley told me the City of San Antonio always considered the Hertzberg something of a nuisance, but Hertzberg was a powerful US Senator who willed his collection to the City in good faith. Upon his death in 1940, the Main Library at 210 W. Market was deluged with a massive gift it didn't know what to do with, but they braved a smile and muttered thank you. To the everlasting lamentations of researchers like me, the City, while I was there, at last found a way to move the collection over, crating it and relegating it to obscurity in the basement of the Witte Museum on Broadway. The next stop, according to the will, would be Hertzberg's alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, which to my knowledge has shown no interest. Unless a major change of heart occurs, the Hertzberg and the Scaperlanda remain in limbo, buried treasures, unwanted and ignored, unavailable to anyone.

Dick Flint said...

While framed photos went to the Hertzberg room, I believe Chappie Fox scored for the prints and/or negatives and they are now in Baraboo at CWM.
Dick Flint
Baltimore

Anonymous said...

A very sad story with the Hertzberg collection. I don't know if the problem was the funding with the library system or something else.
San Antonio is a major tourist spot, but they couldn't understand opening on Sunday and maybe closing a few days during the week. The worst part was they didn't have a entrance on the River Walk to the Library. You had to go back up to the street level to find it. San Antonio has 26 million people vist each year and not to have a way to enter the building from the the River Walk was crazy. For those who didn't visit, the building backed right up to the river, and they even had doors down there. Just not used for the public. Would have been very easy to put a sign up and station someone to the door. They did have a small vol.group at one time that could have preformed this task during the busy weekends. As it was, people would walk right past it.
P.J.Holmes