Thursday, September 10, 2009

Hagenbeck_Wallace_TIGER_TITLE_(1934)_half_sheet_flat

From Chris Berry:

When this litho was posted in 1934 Capt. Beatty was the top attraction on Hagenbeck Wallace. It seems amazing to me that over the winter of '34-35 he broke in an entirely new act for the new Cole Bros. show (all new cats since the Ringling interests kept the Hagenbeck-Wallace act). Didn't some of the Beatty/Cole Bros. tigers come from the Los Angeles Zoo? (I don't imagine that would happen today, eh?)

Posted by Buckles at 9/10/2009 06:43:00 AM

3 comments:

Bud said...

That's an Interesting & Effective HIGHLIGHT on the Tigers Face

11 September, 2009 09:29
Ole Whitey said...

Chris:

Well I guess we're out of the woods.

I just knew that someone would jump in here and insist that Beatty didn't break his 1935 Cole Bros act himself.

11 September, 2009 13:42
Roger Smith said...

Sam Gumpertz refused to sell a single whisker of the 1934 Big Act, featured on Ringling on the New York and Boston Garden dates, which then returned to Hagenbeck-Wallace for the canvas route--all of which by now is really old news, so forgive me for showing off. I'm just now pulling myself out of bed after 3 months, and I'm trying to feel my oats.

The animosity between Beatty and Gumpertz was at such a level, that when the very canny partners, Jess Adkins and Zack Terrell, approached Beatty, he signed with them without hesitation. Now get this--it was the winter of 1934, in the depths of the Depression--everyone was broke, and there was no future available--but the bankers gave Adkins and Terrell major loans on the strength of Clyde Beatty's name in ink alone. Bert Nelson took over the act on H-W, and Beatty was left without a whiff of an animal. The new Big Act was brought toghether with the help of all the best menagerie guys on the show, and the duplicate aluminum arena was re-constituted by the Nipple Factory, in Chicago, and delivered to the "miracle show", Cole Bros. and Clyde Beatty, in Rochester, Indiana Winterquarters, not just in time for the Spring opening, but for the winter dates the partners had booked, promising the appearance of Beatty and 40-plus cats.

And Sam Gumpertz, who did actaully rather well in running the Ringling show in those years, but who also thought he had demonstrated career-breaking power over Clyde Beatty, was left standing looking like he was, someone who overstepped his self-annointed capacity to bring someone under control.

11 September, 2009 21:08

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)