Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Ringling_Barnum_DURBAR_OF_DELHI_(1933)_One_Sheet_Flat

From Chris Berry

The "Durbar of Delhi" was the name of a spec on Ringling-Barnum for four seasons during the mid 1930s when Samuel Gumpertz was running the show. Merle Evans used to chuckle about one of the "displays" in the "Durbar" which had a "dragon" weaving around the hippodrome track...the "dragon" actually being a big piece of canvas painted to look like some sort of reptile with locomotion provided by a group of canvasmen under the canvas - I can only imagine how hot that was in July...

You have to imagine that Gumpertz, the old Coney Island promoter, was reflecting back on the success of a "Durbar of Delhi" pageant that opened in 1904 at the Dreamland amusement part that managed for Fred Thompson during the early part of the last century.

Incidentally - the "Durbar of Delhi" means "The Court of Delhi" and the actual pageant in India happened three times in 1877, 1903 and 1911. The first one - held at Coronation Park in Delhi - was on January 1, 1877 and proclaimed Queen Victoria as "Empress of India". In 1903 it was much more of an event for the masses as it marked the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandria as "Emperor and Empress of India". That two week event was a huge pageant with elephants, etc and no doubt was the model for the Dreamland attraction and Gumpertz' spec. The Durbar that was held in 1911 marked the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary as "Emperor and Empress of India".

Posted by Buckles at 9/16/2009 05:58:00 AM

4 comments:

Eric said...

In 1912, the Coliseum Theater in London staged an elaborate production number entitled THE CROWN OF INDIA to celebrate King George V’s 1911 Indian Coronation. British composer Edward Elgar (who wrote POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE) was persuaded to write the music, which was later adapted into a concert suite. Flash forward 75 years to 1987 and the Ringling Red Unit’s KING TUSK spec. When King Tusk was being led around the arena, the band played MARCH OF THE MOGUL EMPERORS from the THE CROWN OF INDIA SUITE. It was the perfect piece of music to use for that particular spec.

16 September, 2009 10:45
Richard Reynolds said...

The dragon with working men shuffling along underneath the long body made of cloth was also used in the 1940 spec “The Return of Marco Polo.” I saw it and recall the bobbing dragon head and all the legs and feet shuffling along beneath the “body.”

North’s first three specs - - Nepal, World Goes to the World’s Fair, and Marco Polo, were pretty much the same thing as Gumpertz’s several “Durbars of Delhi,” and India (1937), all of them being a procession of exotica – a potpourri of strange things from strange lands. And in North’s first three years they opened the show as they had under the Gump.

The big change came in 1941 when the wild animal acts were moved to the front and the big spec was further down in the program.

Moreover, the ’41spec, Old King Cole and Mother Goose, marked the turn to the themed specs based on fantasy and fairy tales.

16 September, 2009 12:02
Ole Whitey said...

Chris:

I wonder if this was the inspiration for the "Nepal" poster of 1938 which showed Frank Buck's "Triumphal Return from the Jungle?"

It didn't have as many elephants but it had a lot more dancing girls.

16 September, 2009 12:14
Chris Berry said...

Once again Ole Whitey makes a valid point. The 1938 "Nepal" litho (featuring Frank Buck) executed by Strobridge, and the same image from 1939 with "The World Comes to the World's Fair", crosslined onto the poster over Buck's name, does indeed resemble the artwork on this fine poster from Central Print & Illinois Litho.

18 September, 2009 19:56

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