Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Mickey Mouse Circus #16


MMC-16, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

“’Sitting up’ exercise by painted pachyderms”

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Col.Herriott at his best!!Great showman!!

Wade G. Burck said...

Anonymous,
Back in the day, when you were proud, and you didn't have to try to conceal your aid's with black electrical tape. Funny, but I have yet to see a horse trainer with a pair of spurs concealed with fringe, feathers, flowers, or worn backwards so folks might not see them. Quite the contrary, their aids are a shiny, jinglebobbed, sterlinggerman silvered, conchoed hand carved strap work of art. Go figure. Not me, my aids will be forever white. I've got nothing to hang my head about.

Wade Burck

Anonymous said...

I was 24 yrs. old at that time. I had never trained an elephant before and that season before I had been wiyj Coe Bros. animal that had been sold to King Bros. I had been very involved with liberty horses and elephants under my Dad and the varous elephant Capt. They always needed me as a Herd Worker and we did alot of routing because of older elephants, stiff legs, etc. WE went with the Cole herd to Calif. during that King season for 12 weeks to do extensive elepjhant work for the Hollywood MGM musical "Jupiters Darling" with Howard Keel, Ester Williams, Marge and Gower Champion, etc. The finale of the movie [it was a parody of Hannibal at the gates of Rome] had all the elephants painted different colors and I assisted and saw how it was done and when I went with Gil Gray I painted his elephants green, yellow and red the Shrine circus colors and it was a big hit on the season and the Disney people liked it as well. George King, an older trainer had started Gils elephants and they did a basic routine. I immediately enhanced on it and at seadson s end and prior to Disneyland I was qauite proud that I had a first rate young elephant act. johnny