Circus Fans & Friends #1

SAVE2972, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. A portion of a letter from Bill Woodcock (1/8/61) to Chappie Fox. I know that Tom (Parkinson) is working on several projects but had no idea you and he were collaborating on something. One thing that makes your questions so hard to reply to is that they generalize too much, too big a field to cover. That Oriental classification of elephants…that Koomeriah business…is meaningless as far as we are concerned. Forget it. The best old female elephant I was ever around was Ding. Best big male….Major. Best young adult female….Sells-Floto Kas….definitely the Dwasala type. Very hard to select a punk best liked by the writer. There have been numerous good ones….Della, with Barnett-Wallace Bros…..Sydney from Wm. P. Hall…now with Clyde Beatty….Anna May-Woodcock elephants….Barbara….Kelly-Miller….Little Babe…Bailey Bros. now with Cristiani. My opinion of the value of a male elephant with a circus is nil. Invariably they come to a bad end, history shows it. To the public all elephants look alike and an animal with a fine spread of tusks will only draw questions as to why they have the white posts sticking in the elephant’s mouth. One of the most interesting sights I ever saw was the albino elephant Pa Wa with RBBB in 1927, this was on the lake front in Chicago. Standing before this exhibit I could hear the chumps around me wondering why they had one of the elephants “scrubbed up”. No matter how well cared for and clean an elephant is, to the public he looks dirty. Regardless how small a baby elephant is, the majority of spectators think it is a dwarf and at least a hundred years old. Very hard to make a comparison of present elephant men with those of the old rail circuses because conditions are different. There are two fine trainers in the U.S. today, Mac MacDonald and Hugo Schmitt. In comparison, the balance are a sorry lot. It is my opinion that Schmitt is by far the best elephant “trainer” ever employed by the Ringling Show. As far as a department head with the old style railroad shows is concerned, Walter McClain was the best ever with Ringling, Arky Scott was good also. George Denman lasted a long time, probably because he didn’t drink and would work cheap, tho I have no desire to belittle the man, he wouldn’t have lasted but a few days with one of the Corporation shows, I feel sure that the Barnum trainer Harry Mooney was a much better man. I know nothing about Pearl Souder, said to have died insane, most elephant guys are that way when they start. From a standpoint of being able to break, produce and present very fast moving big show elephant displays, move the show with elephants and handle a big menagerie of cages and lead stock, none were the equal of Cheerful Gardner tho a close runner up was Walter McClain. The last of the real old timers died last year, Louie Reed, a real trainer and a real circus man. In the old days we used to say that an elephant man from the Big Show was utterly worthless unless he had learned something on smaller shows. I never saw an exception to this rule. Most helpless bunch of characters I ever saw unless educated with the Corporation units, Sparks, Barnes and the like. Many fine books of circus history could be written without a line on Coming Soon Bros. from Baraboo however I have always suspected that the Kelley “Rain or Sunshine” never published would have been worth reading. Now we come to the rehash of the same old thing….Tusko, Jumbo, Diamond, baby elephants, white elephants. I think the subject has been pretty well covered. Yesterday I wrote a couple of pages for Van Matre on two female elephants named Columbia plus sorting out males named Columbus. Also a long rigamarole on an old elephant named Ena for Homer Walton. If you come at me with questions that I can answer yes or no Chappie, I will be able to give more intelligent answers. Col. Woodcock P.S. Very next time I prank around with a dinner table gag, I must try to get the bull to eat soup with a spoon. Get me a plastic wash basin and a whopping big spoon, yes I think the bull should beat on something with the spoon to attract the waiter’s attention. I am pretty good at getting bulls to do things with their trunks but can’t build or mend anything so elephant props are always a problem for me. A while back Buckles was talking about Hugo telling him about an elephant squirting water in the waiter’s face. I didn’t know any way to start this but finally got Lydia doing a good job of it when we were with Rudy Jacobi but lately Buckles has let it get away, now she just draws water into her trunk and then dumps it out on the table. No good.