Sunday, December 11, 2005

Baseball elephants #1


These are the Powers elephants of Vaudeville fame that were originally trained with the Walter L. Main Circus. When that show went off the road in 1905 "Lena", "Julia", "Jennie" and "Roxie" were retained and performed as an independent act, appearing for many years with the Bertram Mills Circus in England.
Being confined to a theater stage or circus ring they obviously didn't play a game but the number was very entertaining due to clever training. The batter above would tap on home plate a few times with the bat before swinging and often an erratic pitch would go into the audience.

Posted by Buckles at 12/11/2005 06:56:00 AM

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Buckles,
Great set of pictures which I thoroughly enjoyed! Where did the pictures you shared with us first appear as I judge it is from some publication? I recall your barbershop routine on Big Apple and our converstions about these vaudeville style routines. Mooney did the baseball routine on the Barnum show in the early teens and there is a Strobridge poster advertising the "game" and depicted in a ballpark.

12 December, 2005 00:16
Buckles said...

Good Morning Dick,
I'm sure you know that the Talent Agencies uses to publish big catalogs each year sent to Fair Boards, Circuses, Vaudeville Agents, etc. advertising the acts they represented.These pictures came from an assortment of those that I have.
For some reason the same act would appear with a different name some years. Maybe the Agency figured most clients couldn't tell one act from another and they could rehash the same date over.

12 December, 2005 07:05
Anonymous said...

Is this elephant pictured waiting to catch a pitch or ready to take a dump?(maybe both?)
Anyway who originally trained elephants to do sports such as baseball and footaball games.
I believe George "Deafy"Denman trained some of the Ringling elephants to do a baseball schtick.

17 December, 2005 19:27

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)