Friday, July 01, 2011

From Chris Berry

When this window card was used in 1924, the merger of the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey shows was only five years in the making. No wonder it was still billed as "...All That is Great in Circus Achievement". The artists at Strobridge created a montage from four other posters, thus packing this 14"x22" poster with lots of features. Two of the images (the clown over the tents and the highwire artists) were also used on Barnum & Bailey and Ringling Bros. posters prior to 1919. Incidentally this artwork image also appeared on the cover of a courier used by Ringling-Barnum in 1924.
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Posted by Buckles at 7/01/2011 05:59:00 AM

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who printed the window cards?

01 July, 2011 20:02
Chic Silber said...

Many of the early cards for both

theater & circus were by Artcraft

Litho in N Y (a union printer)

I was told that bill posters were

mostly organized & would only

handle stuff with the "bug"

The late night N Y bill gang are

still in some long standing local

Can you help us out Whitey

01 July, 2011 21:13
Ole Whitey said...

Beatty-Cole and Cristiani had union billers and when RBBB had an advance car, they were union. Basically if the show played big cities you better have union billers. Shows playing the "bow and arrow" country did not employ union billers.

There was a "steward" on the car to whom you payed your dues. If we were billing a strong union town we would rubber stamp the bug on our posters and frequently we would give a few days work to a couple of the local members.

I personally never heard any complaints about the printing being done by non-union companies, but in New York it's probably different.

But to get back to the question about this window card, I gather from what Chris said that Strobridge printed it.

01 July, 2011 22:50
Anonymous said...

When were circus advance car crews first unionized? Before AGVA's incursions in 1938? After the Teamsters became active?

The United States Bill Posters Union dates back to the 1880s, but the focus was to protect members against theatrical managers. Looks like billposters unions underwent evolution through time.

One vintage story stated: "Bill posters, like corporations, are considered to have no consciences. They are watched like thieves, and they become as clever as thieves in the tricks of their trade."

That doesn't fit the billposter I know.

02 July, 2011 09:58
Chic Silber said...

I recently attended the gala event

to celebrate the 125th anniversary

of Local 1 Stagehands organized in

1886 as "Theatrical Protective

Union Number 1" "TPU" This was a

few years before the entire IATSE

was formed to cover the whole US

& Canada for all related work

I believe that the Bill Posters

were part of the printing trades

02 July, 2011 10:22
Ole Whitey said...

I do not know when the union started. the full name when I belonged was Internal Alliance of Billers, Billposters and Distributors" and I seem to recall it added, "Of the United States and Canada, Inc."

We had an old timer on the Cristiani advance named Art Beeth. He went back so far that he referred to Ben Wallace as "Colonel Johnson." I asked Art about the "Distributors" part of the title; I thought perhaps it referred to the "programmers" the cars used to carry and who pushed a cart of couriers around town to the stores. He said no, that it had come up at the national meeting one year whether to take in window dressers or people who passed out handbills (distributors) and to his disgust we had voted the distributors in. I never personally met a handbill passer who belonged to the union.

It used to be that every town of any size seemed to have at least one former circus biller. They would come around to see the guys and the old men on the car would remember them. Outdoor billposting was a much bigger deal then than now and every town had some guys who posted the local advertising for stores, theaters, national companies etc and in some of these towns they would have a union local. If this was the case we were encouraged by our headquarters to give the local members some work. It worked out okay as they usually knew where all the local daubs were located and whom you needed to talk to about posting them. Some guys would have locations squared from year to year and all you had to do was drive up and start posting.

But some of these local guys would be woefully behind in regard to lithograph routes. I remember one town in particular where the local guy gave our manager a list of what he considered to be the downtown litho routes. The route assigned to me had all been rebuilt some years before with office buildings and a few very high class jewelry or fur stores and there wasn't a single litho hit on the entire route. Fortunately the boss realized that I was telling the truth when I came back to the car with a full hod, so rather than reprimanding me he just put me in a panel truck and sent me out on a highway route where I got a lot of paper up in short order.

02 July, 2011 11:09

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