Tuesday, January 09, 2007

From Raffaele De Ritis




The first recorded wire walking elephant (on two cable) is Baby, with Rolf Knie. Baby premiered the trick in April 1941. I never saw or heard of this before that date.
In the picture: Baby and Rolf Knie in Berlin, 1943, walking above a photographer.
I saw the trick in 1982 at Circus Busch-Roland, presented by Ruppert Bemmerl with a Knie group (maybe was the same elephant). After the 80s, i never heard anymore of this trick anywhere. Posted by Picasa

Posted by Buckles at 1/09/2007 06:05:00 AM

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I must go along with Buckles assesment that the trick would not be as difficult as the logistics of guying out the rigging. I can well imagine the producer and prop boss willing to put up with that. Certainly Mr. Knie could do it cause if its your own damned circus you can do whatever. Now back to the plank walk. With the two cables the elephants feet are spread whereby walking the plank the elephant has to put each foot one in front of the other making for a more difficult balance. The plank walk was quite common on small shows for many years. Just lay a wooden beam or channel iron across two bull tubs and your in business. Naturally the turn on the plank was the dramatic moment. The first plank walk I recall was about 39 or 40 on the J. C. Admire small mud show with the very same Kelly Miller "Tina" owned then by Russel Hall, who I believe owned part of the show. [you mud show historians could comment on that]. She did execute the turn. Mack broke Tommy Hanneford, Ina to do a nice plank walk routine. Jenda took the trick to the big time with all of his single O elephants doing during the turn a fine front foot stand. Double wire walking animals are not uncommon in the circus. All the o9ld dog acts did it with two dogs meeting in the middle and doing the over and under pass. Gunther did the very same routine with his leopard act and last but not least, Terrel Jacobs always had a Wire Walking Lion. The best and only single wire walkers have been house cats and goats. Certainly we would respect Mr. Knie for being innovative at the time and thru the years the Knie elephants have always done great innovative routines.

10 January, 2007 09:02
Buckles said...

Johnny, you forgot to mention "Opal" trained by Mac MacDonald that did both a hind leg walk and front leg walk on two planks spaced about eight inches apart.

10 January, 2007 10:53
Anonymous said...

I had the opportunity to work Ricky the Wire Walking Lion with the Hubert Castle Cat Act trained by "Red' Hartman.
It always got a good audience response.I allways liked "feature tricks" like that as it made a recognisable "star" of the animal.
After the show everyone always wanted to see Ricky,'cause he was "special".
He was also recognisable because he was a rather large castrated male lion.

13 January, 2007 12:00
Anonymous said...

The Dan Rice show had a tight rope walking elephant back in the 1840's I believe called,"Lalla Rookh,
I think it had been trained by
Bert Noyes.

18 January, 2007 15:46

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