Tuesday, January 09, 2007

George Keller #1 (From Jim Cole)

 Posted by Picasa

Posted by Buckles at 1/09/2007 06:04:00 AM

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

For someone who just got his Medicare card, growing up I saw a lot of the Professor. He was on television several times. He was also the first cat act I remember seeing on the Polack show. He would wear a gun belt into the arena and snap the whip a few times. Then, with great fanfare, he would hand over the gun and whip to his assistant an put on white gloves. With his white gloves and special wide-eyed whammy he'd control a cage full of jungle killers. Wasn't a big act as I recall; 2 lions, a tiger, 2 pumas, and a leopard or two -- don't recall the cheetah but we're talking 50 some years ago.

Pat Anthony talked about working with the Professor on the Texas dates. Pat, then Tony Vitanza with a lion act from Jungleland, in one arena snapping the whip and firing the gun while the Professor was quietly working on the other end. Talk about displays that don't make sense.

09 January, 2007 15:42
Anonymous said...

Pat and I shared a dressing room on the '72 Castle date in Memphis, and both of us had fighting acts. I think Pat fired more blanks than I did, but we were about equal in whip cracking. His act was bigger and better than mine, but we were in the same display and gave Memphis plenty of excitement.

And as old Compound alumni, we also got along great in the dressing room.

09 January, 2007 16:38
Anonymous said...

From Eric:

The first music cue in the Professor's act was always WASHINGTON GRAYS MARCH by Grafulla. (It was also the first cue when the act was presented by Wm. Horne.) It must have been closely associated with Keller as I'm not aware that it was ever used for anyone else.

09 January, 2007 16:55
Anonymous said...

This happened to me in Canada at the Canadian National Expedition. There was a write up about it in the newspaper. I remember the other trainers, but not their names. Jim, I just got a notice that Medicare was taking a chunk out of my social sercuriy check this month. They get you one way or another.

09 January, 2007 16:59
GaryHill said...

He reminds me of Dick Dasterdly and Dishonest John?

09 January, 2007 21:43
Anonymous said...

How you get a free trick//. George Kellar told me that when working in that display on the texas dates that one of his male lions would let out a roar when it looked down at the jungle compound female lions, so each show when the lion did that he caught on and would wave his hand in front of the lion. After the dates were over and he was once again working alone at that same moment in the act he waved his hand and the lion roared and did it ever since and he was able to have an announcement preceeding that , whatever the lions name was,'WOULD PROCLAIM THAT HE WAS KING OF THE JUNGLE'. I worked with him many times, especially during the lengthy engagement in the Mickey Mouse Circus at Disneyland. He was a class guy with a neat package, small arena, variety of cats, all well painted with the bottle walk centally located and he had a center pole to hold up the net. After his sudden death during a show in Corpus H
Christy his wife Ginny tried to keep the act together with his long time cage man Bill Horne working it, but it was never the same and did not last very long. Thats why in that picture the leopard was not attentive. Bill just did not have the skill of George Kellar.

10 January, 2007 09:28
Anonymous said...

The talking lions name was Nosey.

10 January, 2007 14:07

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)