Buckles Blog

Monday, June 09, 2008

Sells-Floto

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Fred Hutchinson, Sells-Floto General Manager

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The mail delivery.

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John Herriott and I were discussing the Cole Show and he pointed out how important the position of Mail Man was, in our case, clown Horace Laird.
He would be entrusted daily with peoples money to buy Money Orders, Stamps, send packages, pick up Special Delivery mail and so forth.
I remember he also delivered The Billboard.

Mrs. Ottokar Bartik

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Sells-Floto & Buffalo Bill 1914 or 1915.

A show of World War 1 patriotism in Spec!

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The Luckey Trio

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I well remember Katey Luckey at left from the Cole Show many years later. Her husband Charlie Luckey was the show's builder and carpenter.
She and Mrs. MacFarlan (Mrs. Mac) ran the wardrobe department.

Clown Paddy Wagon

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At left Fred Guy and Gene Deaut and at extreme right, Jack Harris.

Joe LeFluer and some of the girls 1916.

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Mrs. Mae Curtis

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Ladies at frolic.

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Kids in the back yard.

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The 3 at left are Bouchard kids, 4. Harriett Hodgini, 5. Bert Hobson and 6. another Bouchard kid.

Terrell Jacobs and Arky Scott

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Fred Ledgett

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Sunday, June 08, 2008

Weigh-In, Week #5

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Today's weight............243 lbs.
Net Loss.....................13 lbs.

Charles W. Cushman Photographs

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No. 128- RBBB in Chicago 1949

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Aug. 5, 1949 "Hugo Schmitt and elephants."

No. 129- RBBB in Chicago 1949

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Aug. 5, "Mlle. Unus"

No. 130- RBBB in Chicago 1949

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Aug. 5, 1949 "Elephant tail up!"

No. 131- RBBB in Chicago 1950

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July 21, 1950 "Ringling Circus".

No. 132- RBBB in Chicago 1950

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July 21, 1950 "German acrobatic team with Ringling Circus."

"Jumbo" #1 (From Donovan Glyn)

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Mr Woodcock, I am an elephant trainer from England, and me and the guys in the barn love your blog. Here are some photos from J Edwards book, 'London Zoo from old Photographs', thought they might be of interest to you and your blog viewers. Thanks for sharing your pictures,
Don Glyn

"This book is new to me and 27 pictures were sent that I will include over the next few Sundays. Quite a few I have never seen before including the one above of Barnum elephant man, Bill Newman and "Jumbo's" long time keeper Matthew Scott.

I'm sure many Bloggers would would be interested to know more about Mr. Glyn and the elephants he works with."

Buckles

"Jumbo" #2

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"Jumbo" #3

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"Jumbo" #4

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"Jumbo" #5

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"Jumbo" #6

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Saturday, June 07, 2008

Hanneford Elephants #1 (From John Whitfield)

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Here are pictures of Georgie III with the bulls on Universoul. The show sent me publicity

photos they had made but the pictures were so huge I had to enlist Mike Martin to help

downsize them and here they are. Also a shot of George and Vicky in the good ole days.

George Jr went thru the pacemaker operation and is recovering well. So well in fact that

he flew back to DC last weekend to move the semi to Baltimore.

John Whitfield

Circus Pages #1 (From Colleen Pages)

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Hi Buckles,
How are you?? This Colleen Pages Freddie Logan's Granddaughter
I would like to share with you and your Blog & your bloggers our new baby white lion cubs.
We have a boy and a girl oh what little balls of fire they are. Oh how I wish in so many ways my Grandpa Logan was here to
see what we have a what we will do with them.

Circus Pages #2

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Clyde69 (From Richard Reynolds)

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Corbett’s or Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti). That is what we see in those recent blog site photos of the tiger encounter at the Theraveda Buddhist Temple in Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, Thailand. This subspecies ranges from Malaya up through Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and into Viet Nam.

The closest I ever got to one of them is shown in this photo. It was taken on September 5 1969 at the Atlanta Zoo (now Zoo Atlanta). It shows yours truly with “Clyde”, a female Corbett’s that had just been unloaded from Viet Nam. This is a rather long story but I think a good one.

The mannish name was put her by members of Detachment B-51, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) of the 1st Special Forces (Green Berets). On April 12, 1968 they found her and two litter mates in a den while they were on combat patrol in South Viet Nam looking for the Viet Cong. “Clyde” was a common Green Beret nickname for the VC, so the troops penned it on the young female. She was estimated to be 8-weeks old when they found the litter. The mother was away either hunting or maybe killed by all the bombing and combat in the area.

The Detachment took the cubs back to their cantonment area. There they raised them as pets. The men had war dogs which they trained to attack the enemy. For that the men donned padded equipment that looks like a baseball catcher’s chest protector and the dogs would jump them. They donned that equipment to engage in roughhouse play with the young tigers. When the cats outgrew that sport, two of them were given to the Saigon zoo. Since the unit’s home base was Columbus, GA, they wanted to give Clyde to the Atlanta zoo. But how to get her here? A plane ticket for a crated tiger from Viet Nam to Atlanta cost a heck of a lot of dough. That’s where I got involved.

Zoo Director John Roth asked if I knew anyone with connections to the Air Force who could arrange to have her flown back for free on one of cargo planes that regularly came back empty to the States. I had an acquaintance who was an aide to Georgia’s powerful and influential Senator Richard B. Russell. We batted it around for some time with correspondence between the Senator and me. However, Russell had just left the Chairmanship of the Senate Armed Forces Committee and averred that he no longer had the same influence in such matters (Yeah! - -with him one LBJ’s big drinking buddies). The Air Force was adamant that it could not be done. It seems they were always getting requests to bring back for free this or that including injured children in need of medical treatment etc. So they had a rule against all of it.

Eventually, the zoo’s concessionaire agreed to foot the considerable transportation bill. The tiger was flown here from Saigon via Pan American to San Francisco and Delta from there to Atlanta, arriving September 5, 1969. She rode in a fine crate that the troops used to transport their war dogs. Zoo Director John Roth and I were at the airport to meet the tiger amid a lot of military ceremony. The photo was taken just after Clyde had emerged from her crate.

Well, almost 39 year have passed since Clyde’s arrival. She is long gone, having died around 1974. She contracted some common feline malady like distemper. As for me I can only say poetically, “What ravages hath been wrought by the passage of the years.”

Counting Nepal's Rhinos (From Army Maguire)

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"The Park's habitat is dominated by grass that can reach nine metres high." explained Raj Amin, a rhino specialist from the Zoological Society of London.
So the best way to insure a good view was was to carry out the survey by elephant back. "In Chitwan, this means getting ahold of 45 elephants" he said.
"The distance between elephants was up to 200m, so this meant we had a line stretching for more than 5 kilometres."
"This was a massive exercise".

Downie Bros. Circus (From Robin Estes)

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Buckles,
Thanks so much for all your work with your website. I come there first thing each morning.
I ran across the attached picture on a very interesting historical photo website: www.shorpy.com
They add pictures each day so the page number changes some but today, June 4th it is on this page: http://www.shorpy.com/node?page=205
If you want to see it and it isn't there, just look on 206 or 207. It should be there somewhere.
The caption on the photo reads like this: Posters advertising a 1936 circus near Lynchburg, South Carolina. 35mm nitrate negative by Walker Evans for the Farm Security Administration.
Notice the Cole Bros. bills that they almost covered up.

Robin Estes

Friday, June 06, 2008

More on "Cleopatra".

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Johnny was kind enough to take the time to answer my questions on the "Cleopatra' movie. He said he worked on it's production for over a year due mostly to his father, Digger Pugh's, connection with Pinewood Studio in England and his business dealings with Circuses in Europe.
When they first started, the Togni elephants were used but for some reason had to leave, Digger contacted Dick Chipperfield and a deal was made for four elephants but no trainer was available and they were accompanied only by a Mahout. So at age 19 Johnny found himself in charge of a herd of elephants.
Johnny told of his experience herding them from the baggage car to the movie back lot. After the confinement of the long trip from England to Italy, they were pretty frisky and even attempted to climb into every fountain they passed but after a few days they settled down and for the most part they were fine animals.
He said that the pictures of them shown on the Blog recently were among the few things surviving the tornado that destroyed his home in DeLand.
The girls seen in the pictures were supposed to be tossing gold coins into the crowd and upon their arrival at the podium, Marc Anthony would swoop the first girl off the elephant and as the herd passed by, replace her on the last one.
Johnny added that racing back and forth from the set to the beach where the girls were, was so demanding that he decided to spend his movie income on a new Jaguar. He even managed to park it on the back lot saying that he was carrying supplies for the elephants when actually it contained the day's supply of beer, courtesy of Richard Burton.
After the elephants went back to Chipperfield a search began to locate horses like the ones used by the Roman Army. Again Digger Pugh saved the day by locating a number of that breed in Scotland so the procedure was repeated with Johnny now attempting to ride one at night while it jumped from a barge to the shore below and repeatedly falling into the freezing water.
When the movie was finally wrapped, Johnny found himself back in England without enough money to buy petrol so the Jaguar was sold.
When the movie finally came out he was with Mills Bros. Circus in the US and on a Sunday off "Cleopatra" was showing down town. After Johnny's detailed descriptions, all the performers were anxious to see him in action but as we now know almost all of his efforts were cut.

Incidentally Mr. Pugh mentioned that business so far this year has surpassed all expectations.