Sunday, May 01, 2011

Floats and Tableaux #4


04-29-2011 11;12;22AM, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Posted by Buckles at 5/01/2011 05:59:00 AM

8 comments:

Ole Whitey said...

I think part of this wagon side can be seen at the museum in Peru- the one across from the court house.

01 May, 2011 14:20
Anonymous said...

Indeed it can I'm pretty sure i sent buckles a pic several or more weeks ago.

Paul Gutheil

02 May, 2011 00:59
Anonymous said...

This was the Oriental Tableau, constructed for the Pawnee Bill's Wild West for 1904. It went to the Mighty Haag, then somehow went into the possession of Mugivan & Bowers. Robinson's Famous was the user in 1915. It served on Sells-Floto and was dismantled soemtime before February 1935. It cost $800 new. Fulton & Walker did the wagon work, decorative elements came from carousel builder Gustav Dentzel, both of Philadelphia.

02 May, 2011 13:42
Ole Whitey said...

There's a mention somewhere that C A Wortham may have had this wagon (also called the Jardinière) at one time. I am certain it did some time on some carnival as a high school friend of mine's father worked on a carnival in his youth and had a snapshot taken of himself by this wagon.

You know Danny Robinson operated a carnival and a circus at various times and at one time he wintered in Nashville. The man I mentioned above did not recall the name of the carnival but from his recollections it was definitely a carnival and not a circus he was with. I wonder if this went from Haag to Danny, spent some time with his carnival, and then was with his former circus when Mugivan acquired it, all in fairly short order.

The titles Famous Robinson and Robinson's Famous seem to be somewhat interchangeable. There is a photo of a daub with both titles shown. The thought occurs that maybe one form was mainly used on the carnival and the other on the circus. Or something like that.

I have the snapshot of the wagon on a carnival and will locate it and send a scan to Buckles if he's interested.

02 May, 2011 17:07
Ole Whitey said...

On second thought- I think Mugivan just got the Robinson title from Danny's show, so possibly the wagon may have come from Wortham?

03 May, 2011 07:21
Anonymous said...

The ex-Pawnee Bill calliope and Japanese Tableau, and probably the Electric Organ Wagon, were all with a Wortham and/or Wortham & Allen or Tom Allen railroad carnival and have never been seen again. The White Tableau was also with one or more of these outfits and then on the 1916 Wheeler outfit before disappearing. The Oriental Tableau was with Robinson's Famous no later than 1915 and then continued with other M&B shows until being dismantled.

There's no indication of Haag selling off any of his parade equipment until he returned to overland operations after the 1914 rail tour, but never say never in circus history.

I would look closely at the carnival photograph. Circus and carnival identities have been interchanged for years, despite being entirely different enterprises, just as Congress has been termed a circus and politicing recently termed a sideshow with barkers. Yes, some shows did have dogs with them, and there are a lot of talkers in government.

03 May, 2011 10:34
Ole Whitey said...

Well, here's the man's story. He played a horn in a band. The midway had a semi-circle of various shows around the back end.

The band would duck in through the back of the first show while the talker was out front making his opening. When he started to turn the crowd, the band started playing, giving the impression that the show within was backed by a band.

Then they ducked back out and into the next show where the same procedure was repeated and so on all the way around the semi-circle of shows.

That was it- they never sat down and played for a performance.

03 May, 2011 11:21
Ole Whitey said...

PS: The pic didn't make the cut today.

I guess I shouldn't have demanded the pizza.

03 May, 2011 11:33

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