Sunday, June 04, 2017

#4 Lady Trainers


3 comments:

Jim Alexander said...

Eloise Berchtold. Eloise and Joe Frisco Sr. put lion, tiger, and bear cage act together at Ohio zoos in the early 1960s. Joe was in Cincinnati and Eloise in Toledo. Frisco's act was sold to the Peoria, IL zoo where he presented the act in the summer and played Shrine dates in the winter. He eventually sold the act to the Phoenix Zoo. I know Eloise was on the Polack show in 1966 with the cage act, complete with aoudad, and the Paramount bears. The woman who began in her youth at the Cincinnati Zoo Children's Zoo certainly had an interesting circus career.

Chic Silber said...


Wasn't she 1 of John Cuneo's wives

Roger Smith said...

Yes. Whether formally a marriage or not, it was said to have been. She told me a lot about that era, without being conclusive about that piece of paper.