 They actually did an act like this called "the leaps" and was performed by all the acrobats on the show but with only four or five elephants. It was a house act made possible by a clause in the participants contracts called "generally useful". There was a springboard at the bottom of the ramp and as you can see after completing a leap they would all quickly return and remount the ramp. At first the obsticle would be just one elephant, then for the next jump a second would be added and so on. The most amusing thing was that each leaper tried to look unique, one would be dressed like a "Rabbi" another was "Uncle Sam" and yet another was "Aunt Jemima". In 1950 Concello rehashed the leaps for which Merle Evans band played "The Storming of El Caney", the music was better than the act. Another "generally useful" act was the Aerial Bars with the flyers doubling in brass. |
Friday, October 28, 2005
Barnum Items #1
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8 comments:
Remember Meko at Circus World? The smelly Russian defect that Kenny was hiding at Circus World? Perhaps I should be more candid, but my facts are all screwed up anyway. He built an elephant teeterboard and got launched about twenty feet over the catch elephant before he got the placement right. This guy could drop twenty feet on rubber cover concrete floor and come back unscathed.
LJ
Can't remember the exact year but Bruno Rodos did a "leaper act" on the Polack show. No ramp but a mini-trampoline for an assisted take-off. He'd leap over two elephants then a car with swords on the roof (not a typical accessory).
Jim A.
Good morning Jim, that's another chore I had forgotten. I used "Anna May" and "Opal".
Thirty years later with Big Apple Circus, Bello Nock would leap from the bandstand into a trampoline and bounce over "Anna May", "Ned" and "Amy".
Is the term Leaper really a person who uses a trampoline in the show? I wondered what that word ment. The only acts not including animals that I really loved was Princess Tajiana and the Walindas. It comes to me that when you work an animal act you really don't see much of the circus performers unless you are a visiter to another show. I spent a year visiting while learning the cage act.
No, I think that a "leaper" is the person who does just that in a flying act. The same applies to the "catcher".
I left out Eddie Zakinni(sic) as a person I loved to watch doing the Flying Trapeze. Is he still a producer out of Chicago? Wonder if he remembers Gulfport Mississipi in the year 58 or 59. Spent some time on the beach.
Mr. Zaccini awaits us in heaven.
This is one of the reasons I am looking for friends from the past. You never know what can happen. I will always regret not telling someone how much joy they brought into my life. So many have passed on and I never got to tell them and did not even know when or how they died.
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