Saturday, September 21, 2013

Bear Acts #7

10 comments:

John Herriott said...

Klausers bears with Goldilocks [Herta Cuneo]. johnny

Chic Silber said...


Herta Klauser & ?

JC Hall said...

Walter Klauser
High bike bear Catia

Chic Silber said...


Was Walter her father

John Herriott said...

Yes he was and her mother also was with the act. Herta was a fine acrobat and she and the bears did similar things. Rolling globe, roller skating. With her blonde hair she personified "Goldilocks and her bears" One of the all time great stage bear acts. johnny

John Herriott said...

All well and good, but I saw Filatov here. I believe twice with tours of the Moscow Circus. Basically all young bears [kind of like young performing elephants doing great stuff] and of course help and p-loenty of it [grooms] and of course the perfect in and out set up with back door are, curtain entrance, always exactly the same. But it was great no matter what. Donna Kaseeva [david and donna quick change] showed photos of her father in Russia as an all time great bear act with similar presentation. I note all Russian dog acts do similsar type routines in parts of their acts. I guess that is true among us shit kickers here in good old, much maligned, USA. PS. By the way have you all seen the commercial on TV of the farmer in a spelling B and spelling "cateieio" its hilarious. I think so. johnny

Chic Silber said...


Yes John that farmer is quite funny

& I think of you when I see the 1

with the camel wandering the office

"what day this is?) both very clever

JC Hall said...

Walter, indeed was Herta's father.
At 11 years old I had gotten my first pretrained bear and my first bear schooling by and from Buckey Steel. At the age of 12 I was lucky to have toured on the Gil Gray show for five weeks along with the Klauser's bears. It was my first meeting of Mr.Walter. While practice my critter, I would notice away off, low and behold the master trainer Mr.K would be sitting in his chair with coffee in hand observing me. Upon concluding my bear sessions each day he was very complimentary and would make very kindly suggestions. This continued throughout the entire five week run.At that age I found that older trainers could be quite annoying. The last week or so of the run after Mr,K. repeated his complement and the same suggestions, I thanked him for his advise and THIS 12 year old pro said, "Mr.K, that is not my style of training". This did not waiver him a bit. The entire last week on the show him with coffee in hand watched me and repeated that same old advice.
P.S.; Oh, by the way, yes, what I told Mr Klauser back then still haunts me to this day.

Chic Silber said...


Great story Jimmy & I surely hope

this Mea Culpa is sufficient to

relieve you of those nasty pangs

Never met the man but I'd bet he

would have gotten a kick out of

reading this today

Chic Silber said...


If we only knew as much today JC

as we did when we were 11 or 12

(or so we believed)