Tuesday, November 13, 2018

BEARS #3


5 comments:

Chic Silber said...


The late Herta Klauser (Cuneo)

was known for many of her early

performing years as "Goldilocks"

Roger Smith said...

Great to see a throw-back shot of Herta and her bear roller-skating. I saw this, but don't recall her skating on Art Concello's ugly rubber mats. CHIC can remind us if at first, these mats were laced together, right? Then, when the lacings presented problems, the show went to heavy industrial-strength tape. The tape eliminated trip hazards.

On the Castle show, in '72 and '73, we had heavy ring mats, very thick in grommeted wedge-shaped sections that were laced together. These lacings never laid well, and gave us threatening loops rising up that everyone had to pay attention to so we wouldn't fall. I hated them for the cat act, and had to watch every step to keep from getting a boot under a loop. Many of us went to Castle about the mats, but he thought he had an invention to top those of Art Concello and Cap Curtis.

Chic Silber said...


Yup on the lacing Roger as the older

stiff rubber when rolled repeatedly

curled along the edges grommets were

set to allow lacing that was hoped to

keep all the seams flat but wasn't

very effective except to provide

additional trip hazards as you said

The rubber wagons were the heaviest

of all & had additional wheels on

the axles to distribute the weight

Nasty stuff to attend to for all

The very best rubber was the poured

& cured in place for the 3 rings

on the Venice floor

Chic Silber said...


After that we got long strips

of similar heavy Tartan for

the 2 units to travel with

Great stuff but heavier yet

Chic Silber said...


Herta's (& her father's) bears

worked on plywood stages that

were set between the rings or

on plywood decking in the rings

similar to the bike acts