Saturday, February 24, 2018

#11 Beatty-Cole


2 comments:

Chic Silber said...


Red Hartmann finished out

the 65 season after Beatty

left the show forever

Very sad time indeed

Roger Smith said...

He finished himself, too. Veterans of the season, including a knowledgeable insider known to both Chic and I, remembers the too many times Tommy Clark and the boys had to tear down the cage and clear the ring of props, in front of the seated audience, because Red was either lost in some local bar, or so drunk in the Silver Sleeper they couldn't stand him up to get him dressed. The management brought Dave Hoover in for '66. Hoover bought the Beatty act, equipment and all, got some of it scattered around to such places as Bob Dietch's, and somehow convinced Roy Kabat, manager of Jungleland, to buy the last 7 of the Beatty cats. With them came Red, and with Red came his screaming jags, and drunken rages that got him 86'd, when even the scurrilous Roy Kabat refused to keep him.

Then, Jungleland began cutting down on surplus big cats, and the Beatty cats fell onto that list. Harry Shuster, of the Lion Country operations, made the buys, and 20 lions went to West Palm Beach. Of the Beatty lions, 29-year-old Simba, Congo, and Duke went with them. Caesar and Sultan were shipped out to the park in Australia. Judy tigress went to the zoo in Minot, SD, but Beatty's rollover tigress, Princess, was claimed by Kabat--who never paid Hoover for her. Big John Richards came out to collect for Hoover, but Princess was spirited away, never to be seen again. This was the final dissolution of the Beatty animals, even though there is far more to the story.