From Dave Price

This picture of a 1959 Famous Cole daub in Bridgeport, Texas, may take some explaining. This daub is 5-sheets high and includes an 8-sheet date, a 20-sheet pictorial, a 5-sheet title streamer, at least nine 1-sheet flat dates, two 1-sheet upright dates, a 3-sheet date (barely visible behind the car at the far right end of the daub, a 2-sheet pictorial (barely seen at left above the truck cab), and probably several more bills not seen because of cars and trucks in the way, no doubt parked there by men who as children had stood in front of wagon numbers when circus fans came around to take pictures. It is at least a fifty-sheet daub. The expression "fifty-sheet" as used here refers to the area covered, not the actual number of pieces of paper used. Larger bills are printed on extra large sheets of paper so that an 8-sheet may only have three or four pieces of paper in it. Even then, they are sometimes "frozen" meaning that the seams are sealed so the entire poster can be put up in one gigantic piece. That "Bull Date" at the left is an 8-sheet and believe it or not this little truck show was the last circus to use 8-sheet dates. Kelly-Miller, Cristiani, Carson & Barnes, Beatty-Cole, etc were by that time only posting dates up to 3-high, in most cases only up to a 3-sheet date but there were a few 6-sheet dates still in use. You understand that a 3-sheet and a 6-sheet are only 3-high whereas an 8-sheet is 4-high; in other words they are used to date different size pictorials. Here the 8-sheet date is the same height as the 20-sheet menagerie bill, which as you see was printed for Cole Bros, not for Famous Cole. Most shows were by then only using 3-high pictorials like 3-sheets, 6-sheets and 9-sheets. The Beatty-Cole daub on my earlier picture was a 3-high stand of paper consisting of two 6-sheet pictorials with a 3-sheet date at each end, making a total of 18 sheets of paper. But let me get to the 20 sheet menagerie bill, which by the way is a stone lithograph printed by Erie Litho. Francis Kitzman had managed the billcar on one of the two 1956 King shows, had closed with quite a bit of money due him and had been awarded at bankruptcy court the billing truck (a nice ton and a half Jimmy with a Fruehauf body) "and contents" which of course consisted of a ton of paper. You recall that for the last year or two of the King show they had obtained a quantity of Cole Bros paper - I forget if from Paul Kelly or from Arthur Wirtz, but I think- Kelly- and were using both King Bros and Cole Bros titles in their billing. The newspaper ads read "King Bros Circus and Cole Bros Combined Shows"- but there was never any poster with both titles (at least not until Acme Circus Corporation combined the titles again years later as King Bros-Cole). So what Kitzman got with the truck was an assortment of both Cole Bros and King Bros paper (some of it still reading "King Bros-Cristiani" but with the Cristiani name blanked out). Regarding the Cole paper: as late as the 1940s Erie was still printing their large posting sizes by stone lithography while printing most of their window lithos by offset. In this bunch we got a few window lithos done by stone but most of them were offset. The King paper was all printed on a flatbed letterpress by Enquirer. When Glen Jarmes -with the backing of a Hugo dentist- bought a sizeable part of the Famous Cole show, Kitzman talked him into buying all this paper- to be paid off at a dime a sheet and payable weekly as it was used. The five-sheet title streamer along the bottom of this daub reads "King Bros Circus" but some guy parked his pickup in front of the word "King." And the more observant will notice in the very far upper left corner a familiar King Bros 2-sheet showing the riding Cristianis. You can see that over part of the word "Bros" on the Cole Bros 20-sheet, Kitzman has posted a Famous Cole title, evidently torn from a 1-sheet upright date. For the window lithographs, Jarmes had slips printed, some of which read "The Famous" and others "World Famous" and we pasted these over the word "Bros." So these beautiful lithos now either read "Cole The Famous Circus" or "Cole World Famous Circus" and with the King Bros lithos, we pasted these slips over "King" so they read "World Famous Bros Circus." And of course we also had a lot of "Famous Cole" posters, not to mention a few that still read "George W Cole." It was a damned duke's mixture of titles. But we were never challenged, even though the "little Cristiani family" had taken out a little trucker using the King title that year and of course the Beatty show was now "Beatty-Cole." I suppose there were some people who saw our paper and confused us with Cole Bros, but no one who came down to the lot ever made that mistake. It was a fine show though and Herb Walters was a wonderful man to work for. Glen had actually hired me and was pretty nice to me, though that didn't last. His backer financed the purchase of the rest of the show and Glen wanted to dump the Kitzmans (Francis and Elsie) and for me to do all the billing. No one predicted success for the show under Glen so Francis got me a job on the Cristiani advance and he and Elsie went to visit relatives in California. Glen was somewhat pee-oed when I left. Late in the season the Jarmes family ended up on Kelly-Miller after selling Famous Cole back to Mr Walters at a loss. A couple of circus fans I knew visited the Kelly-Miller lot and, knowing that I had worked for Glen early in the year, went back to the Jarmes trailer. "We're friends of Dave Price." they began, and they were promptly told exactly what they could do with Dave Price! I ran into Glen at the Milwaukee parade grounds maybe ten years later and we patched everything up. Elsie Kitzman died in about 1962 and Francis in 1984. I haven't seen any 50-sheet daubs in years.