Thursday, January 14, 2010

Side Show Bally! #1 (From Peter Rosa)

This photo is notated COLE BROS. CIRCUS 1909

ROSA COLLECTION

"The Cole Show title has been in use for about 140 years from W.W. Cole to Johnny Pugh with Al G. Campbell, Floyd King, Zack Terrell, Jess Adkins, Herb Walters, etc. in between.
If the 1909 date is correct, this edition would have been owned by Martin Downs."
Buckles

Posted by Buckles at 1/14/2010 06:12:00 AM

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

There never were any bonafide Cole Bros. in the circus business, they were just one of many faux-titled shows that traded on the success of the Ringling siblings concept, the earlier Sells brothers and other brothers-titled shows notwithstanding and not having made the same impact upon the masses.

Tom and Bob Parkinson were on the 1938 Cole Bros. lot in Illinois when a show attache approached them and offered free sideshow admission if they'd shill. When the showman related that the offer came from Mr. Cole, bright-mind and Billboard-reader Tom asked "Do you mean Jess Adkins or Zack Terrell?" That was the end of free admission. The fellow must have been floored to be so queried by a flatland teenager.

Toronto-based Martin Downs coined the Cole Bros. title, but there were other circuses with the Cole name between when Chilly Billy retired his outfit at the end of 1886 and Downs took his out in 1906. Other retired show titles were revived, including Welch, Sands, Lent, Van Amburgh and more, often by grifters.

W. W. Cole was alive, well and very wealthy when Downs coined his title. If W. W. had need for money, or a reason to control his "intellectual property," he could have pressed a case with the Canadian.

There's no connection between W. W. Cole and the Cole Bros. title, and with such the case why not take Cole Bros. back to the 1837 Cole & Co. and add a few more decades of heritage?

A Woodcock married an Orton, who was descended from other Ortons including that had married a Cole, so there's also a family connection to the title.

14 January, 2010 10:23

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