Friday, May 29, 2009

1949 Grotto Circus-1 (From Beheim)


1949 Grotto Circus-1, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

In February 1949, my parents took me to see my very first circus: a matinee performance of the Al Sirat Grotto Circus in Cleveland’s Public Auditorium. At the time, I was just a few weeks shy of my 3rd birthday and, because of my extreme youth, didn’t retain too many specific memories of who and what I saw that day. To rectify this somewhat, I spent considerable time and effort tying to locate a copy of 1949 Grotto Circus souvenir program. Finally (and just recently) one surfaced on eBay. (If you wait long enough, EVERYTHING will surface on eBay!)

I now know that my first circus had an exceptionally strong line-up of talent. (It also served to “imprint” me with the notion that circuses were presented inside large buildings, with the animals kept in the basement. It would be several more years before I discovered that circuses traditionally appeared under a Big Top.)

Here is the program of acts I saw that day. (Seeing some of these names will probably jog a few memories and perhaps generate some interesting postings.)

Eric

3 comments:

Eric said...

This program came from the collection of Bill Strong. I will be forever grateful to him for making it available through eBay.

Frank Ferrante said...

Eric - I know well that feeling when you find a treasure from your youth. Through eBay, I picked up the comic books from 'Circus Boy' and 'The Big Circus', as well as the Whitman books on 'Circus Boy' and 'Toby Tyler' - all of which influenced me as a kid. ~frank

My wife has never figured out why these were so important to me. >grin<

johnny said...

What a wonderful program of our yesteryears. I so enjoyed reading each and every program line up with great memories. Dick Lewis would work for us in Baraboo in later years and was loved by all public and Baraboobians just prior to his table rock fall and death that Fall in San Antonio. Believe he or Felix Adler would be the champion "Dick Smith" "live one" free loader. They had it down to a science. What a great guy and showman.