Tuesday, April 18, 2017

#13 Lady Trainers


Posted by Buckles at 4/18/2017 05:55:00 AM

3 comments:

Jim Alexander said...

Clyde Beatty's daughter, Albina Seay, billed as Harriet Beatty.

18 April, 2017 14:22
Roger Smith said...

She was born Albina Davilia, on December 24, 1931, in Chicago. Her mother was Harriett Iwicki, which is the Polish equivalent for Evans. Harriett and a Spanish dancer named Davilia became the unmarried parents of the girl when they shared billing in a Latin dance troupe. Someone at a later time listed Beatty's name on the birth certificate as the father, which is false, as it would be 2 years before he met the mother. Not long after, with the Depression era proving tough for a single mom with a toddler, Harriett found work on Hagenbeck-Wallace, and met Clyde Beatty. It was an interim before Clyde and Harriett married, as his divorce from Ernestine Pegg was in the works. They wed in Bristol, Virginia, on September 16, 1933, with Albina toddling along as part of the deal. The couple had a 17-year union until Harriett's death, in 1950. Beatty never adopted Albina, but she took his name whenever convenient. Beatty did well by the girl, sending her to the prestigious Hillsdale College, in Michigan. She later married a bitter enemy of Beatty's, and a great rift began. Beatty was angered when she began calling herself Harriett Beatty, Jr., and filed a lawsuit which was later dropped. Jane Beatty told me Albina continued endless demands of she and Clyde for money, an episode also brought to an end. Stories like hers continue, but Albina's name was Davilia, then Say, but never Beatty.

18 April, 2017 18:55
Roger Smith said...

PS: The lion is posed on a Beatty pedastel, ID'd first by photos of his act, and then by the square bar stock bracing the outside of the legs, and the piece of angle iron welded on the leg at L, which accommodated the insertion of a stretch iron. How she got it, I can't say, but his were painted red and silver, and she painted over it with green.

18 April, 2017 18:59

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