72 years ago this month, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ran the following photos in its September 1938 issue. This first photo was one of the illustrations used for an article on Connecticut. The caption reads:
“LIKE COALS TO NEWCASTLE, THE CIRCUS COMES TO CONNECTICUT - P.T. Barnum was born at Bethel and for many years kept his menagerie in winter quarters at Bridgeport. Train passengers were often amazed to see mahout-guided elephants drawing plows.”
The date and location where this photo was taken are not given, although the elephant is undoubtedly listed in the Woodcock files.
"It's probably "Teddy".
TEDDY
1925 Rosa's Midgets "Toy Town" N.Y. Hippodrome
1926-30 Downie Bros. Circus (Andrew Downie)
1931-36 Downie Bros. Circus (Chas. Sparks)
1937-38 Kay Bros. Circus (Wm. Ketrow)
1939-41 World of Mirth Shows
(Shot in 1941) |
5 comments:
Kay Bros. was Burt Lancaster's first circus. He and his partner did a ground horizontal bar act.
I saw one of their publicity photos in Bandwagon. The caption read, "Cravat and Lancaster- Slick tricks on the hickory sticks!"
Is that small clown 4th going to the right, Shorty Hinkle????
Harry
Might be.
And the clown seated looks like Buzzy Potts.
His partner was Nick Cravat and according to IMDB.com - "Long-time circus acrobatic partner of Burt Lancaster (performing as "Lang & Cravat") may have been short on stature, but he was big on athletic prowess and highly enjoyable to watch on-screen. According to reports, Cravat was as strong as a bull. When he lost his cool, it took several men to hold him back. Cravat appeared with Lancaster in nine films. The best remembered were The Flame and the Arrow (1950) with Cravat playing Piccolo, and The Crimson Pirate (1952) with Cravat as Ojo. Another of Cravat's key roles was as the aircraft-eating gremlin terrorizing nervy passenger William Shatner on "Twilight Zone: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (#5.3)" (1963) in the episode, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Interestingly, Cravat & Lancaster both passed away in 1994."
First I thought the bull was moving his trunk to the left, why you cant see the tip.
And then I found in the "Elefanten in Zoo und Circus II Nordamerika" by European Elephant Group, on page 50, a black and white photo from the Pfenig Arhives, a picture with aa bull, that has less than half of his trunk left. The tusks look rather identical.
The caption says he was with Ringling at the beginning of the 20th century, which may of course be an error.
Its difficult to see, does the bull really have a normal trunk, or may this be the same elephant with a deformed trunk, as from Pfenig Archives?
Was Teddys trunk normal?
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