Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Miller-Woodcock Elephants #2


Scan000010133, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

My dad named "Lydia" after Obert Miller's wife, a lady from Hugo whose maiden name just happened to be Miller.

Posted by Buckles at 9/12/2007 06:02:00 AM

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the great pictures of this group that your Dad trained.
I was also interested in the props in the photos. I see a tub that was actually a tub, (solid sides). I have only seen those in use a couple of times. Also tubs with straight sides. And one tub that appears to be set up so a spindle could be placed in the middle.
I was thinking that although I have seen the plank walk performed many times at parks, the times I have seen it does by elephants on the road I could count on one hand and have three fingers and a thumb left over.
I see the ball in the background. I also noticed a corner of what I call a pedestal walk and I have seen referred to as a bottle walk. I found a similar prop at the Nugget Casino and trained “Angel” to perform on it. But, I am not sure what the common name is for this by elephant trainers.
Could you enlighten me?

Don Bloomer

12 September, 2007 08:31
Buckles said...

My dad had the tubs with the vertical sides made, pointing out that they rolled in a straight line.
The first year they only had 3 tubs, "gizmo" for the figure 8, spindle, plank, ball and track.
By the time I worked the props two years later my dad had added a tambourine (including castanets and mantea for Anna May), dinner table, dinner bell, wooden bottle, top hat and policeman hat, wooden razor, bucket, brush and towel.
Not to mention that "Lydia's" plank now had steel truss added due to her increased weight. The only thing missing was a "bottle walk".
I used to complain "This act has more pieces than a fifty broad notch joint."

12 September, 2007 10:24
Buckles said...

I forgot to mention the dinner plates, bread and the policeman's bat.

12 September, 2007 10:28
Anonymous said...

This reminds me of Roger Boyd on the Beatty-Cole show in 1964. The dog act had more prop changes than you could shake a stick at and to top it off they had a 3 page script. Needless to say Roger tore the script up in front of the dog act owner and did his own thing (thank God).l

12 September, 2007 19:22

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)