Tuesday, December 20, 2005

"Mary" and Theol Nelson


I don't know if this picture is legit or not. Richard Reynolds would know.

I feel it only fair to warn people that I have at my immediate disposal two Ray Dirgo characatures and a drawing recently received from Paul Gautheil should there be any more disruptions like yesterday.

Posted by Buckles at 12/20/2005 05:48:00 AM

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dennis the mennis was named that for a reason. Now we know why.

20 December, 2005 08:14
Anonymous said...

John - - -Thanks for forwarding this item from the Buckles' blog. I tired to call up the blog but got a "cannot access" reply, as though it was temporarily out of service.

Here is the answer which Buckles or you can paste to the blog.

The photo is a fake. I thought so when I first saw it in the 1935 RBBB program. For beginners Theol is far too small in comparison to Mary. Black rhinos, of which Mary was one, are seldom higher at their backs than about midway up the average person. Of course Theol may have been a tiny woman. Still the way this looks, the rhino is of elephant size in comparison.

To put the matter to rest I wrote Theol Nelson about it - - in the late 1960s as I recall. She said the photo was one of Roland Butler's tricks. He photographed her doing a handstand atop the corner of a baggage wagon. Then he superimposed her picture onto one of Mary. The show used that rhino head shot, sans Theol, as stock photo in a number of publications. See, for example p. 48 of the 1947 program.

As you may know Mary was the so-called Tarzan rhino. She was bought by MGM from John Benson (no doubt a Hagenbeck animal in origin) to be used in what is called the greatest ever of the Weissmuller Tarzan flicks, namely "Tarzan and his Mate" (1934). Hundreds of feet were shot and sequences were used in two subsequent Tarzan films, "Tarzan Finds a Son" (1939), and "Tarzan's Secret Treasure" (1941).

Mary was trained by George Emerson and was a remarkably tractable animal. Weissmuller himself rode her in one sequence, and I have a rare photo of that. MGM sent Mary on tour ahead of the 1934 movie with Volney Phifer in charge. She rode in a special trailer that would be parked outside the movie house so folks could go see her. When that was done MGM sold her to RBBB in late 1934. She met the show in Memphis and Gumpertz tried to put her in a flimsy old cage wagon which promptly broke under her weight. So they took her to Sarasota to await the arrival of the show at season's end.

Lacking imagination Gumpertz, just bought her as a menagerie animal. She could have been a sensation in the performance, trotting around the ring. She was used to being ridden.

Mary did not last long with RBBB. She was with it when the season started but died up in New England that summer. Phifer told me a disgruntled menagerie guy stuck her with a pitchfork and she died from the injuries. What a tragic and inexcusable loss of a fine and rare animal.

Richard Reynolds III

20 December, 2005 12:18

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)