Saturday, January 06, 2007

From Buckles #3



Kelly-Miller Bill Crew 1954. Posted by Picasa

Posted by Buckles at 1/06/2007 05:54:00 AM

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

could any of these men have been jack lewis, who worked on the kelly-miller bill car for a long time? i didn't know him until later, so i can't tell if one of these might be jack in his younger days.

06 January, 2007 10:44
Anonymous said...

No. none of these is "Dry Jack" Lewis, but I knew Jack pretty well.

In 1959 when we were billing Long Beach for the Cristiani show, Elmer Kauffman (the car manager) was down at the pier looking over the attractions when he heard over a P-A system, "Elmer Kauffman- come over to the Ten-and-One". It turned out to be Jack working as a talker and Elmer hired him on the spot to join our advance.

Fast-forward: In 1965 I was working for Jack on the Kelly-Miller advance and he got on the sauce pretty bad. On one jump he rode over with me and as I pulled up to the hotel in the new town he said, "I can't remember if I've checked in- go inside and see if they've got a Jack Lewis registered." This in a town we had JUST driven into!

In the background of this photo is the famous "Iron Lung" - the sleeper carried on the advance for years. The second guy from the right might be Jimmy Crabtree.

06 January, 2007 12:26
Anonymous said...

i learned a lot about billposting from jack, some good, some more of the "what not to ever do" variety. His drinking was legendary. once the whole sells and gray bill crew got locked up because jack tore a prosecuting attorney's poster for re-election off a telephone pole so he could tack a sells and gray poster on the pole, then threw the politician's poster on the front lawn where the telephone pole stood. it happended to be the city attorney's lawn and he happened to be mowing his lawn at the time and saw the whole thing. there was never a dull moment when jack was around. but on those rare occasions when he wss sober, he could be a nice guy.

06 January, 2007 12:54
Anonymous said...

After the War, Kelly-Miller started beefing up their advance about the same time that RBBB was cutting back, or maybe I should say "weeding out." KM ended up with a number of ex-Ringling billers who knew how to put paper up but some of whom had the thirst for Ole John Barleycorn.

Regrettably many folks back on the show only knew us from our scandals, our arrests, fines paid, etc and the term "drunkenbillposter" (one word, like damnyankee) came into being. There were many great people on the advance, however, and many tickets were sold because of good billing.

I recall one show owner telling Kitzman, "Business has been off, you'd better let one of the billposters go" to which Kitz replied, "When business was bad, Ben Davenport always had me hire more billposters!"

06 January, 2007 15:20
Anonymous said...

I remember a man named Jack ? who worked as an advanceman. I did not know what that was.. JOE MacMan ask this Jack what he was drinking and the man said I quit until St Patricks day. This was like in November. A very well dressed heavy set gentleman.

07 January, 2007 14:43
Anonymous said...

Henry Edgar on (What not ever to do)
One winter Bobbby Gibbs was cussing out Hog jaw,I said what happened? He said the dummy is in the slammer in Houston. He has been in there since Nov and it is now Feb. and I need him and thought for sure they would have cut him loose by now.They want a G note to spring him. What did he do I asked? Oh he stole an old car battery. They are holding him over a car battary? Gibbs said well I guess he got a little drunk and the car was an unmarked squad car behind the police station.

07 January, 2007 18:22

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