 2. my first "book publicity" project--promo'ing Charly Baumann's autiobio, "Tiger Tiger." a good read. Charly was very excited as was Playboy Press. Book came out 15 years ahead of Gunther's book. Kismet (seen here) used to lick Charly's head in the act. Don't know what eventually happened to Kismet--somehow recall something unpleasant in the end. Charly died 10 years ago and for all his "gruffness" no denying he had the most watchable and beautiful tiger act in the business---nothing to match it since.  |
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
From Jerry Digney #2
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
It was a wonderful act presented by a true professional. ~frank
Sometimes Charly had a reason to be "Gruff". I took a young boy from the "big brothers" organization to see RBBB. We had front row center seats. At intermission this kid slipped out of his seat and when I looked-up he was "tugging" on a tigers tail that was sticking out of the loading cage. Charly (in coveralls) went "ballistics" when he turned around and saw the kid. The tiger remained calmed. I always enjoyed Charly's beaytiful act.
Lucky the tiger didn't give the tail a flick and send the kid flying.
Bob Kitto
Funny that Charly always opened the show when I groomed for him??
i always remember his act opening the 2nd half--
In February,1964, I was assigned to get Charly and his cats off the boat from Europe and get the cats on the way to meet RBBB in Washington,DC.
It was the eve of a President's birthday.
Back then, the ILA,(longshoremen's union) went into overtime at 5PM. However, on the eve of a holiday, it was double overtime, and on the holiday, itself, it was TRIPLE overtime!
So I was trying to get the cats off before 5PM and Charly was bugging me to get his Mercedes Benz off the boat.
Finally, I told him that we would get his cats off the boat that very day and on the way to DC.
Then, the day after the holiday, we would send his car to him.
Since I was the first person that he met upon docking in the USA, maybe I sent him off in a bad mood that never ended.
The 78 season he opened the show and Jewell New was after intermisson . I guess because Charly was Performance Director that year and wanted to get his act out of the way??
Gary,
My understanding from Irvin Feld, was that Charly had to get his "act out of the way" so that he could better keep an eye on Jewel's act to keep it running up to snuff. I believe the new acts normally opened the second half.
Charly liked the "good life". When he got home to his stateroom after the night show he liked to put on one of those maroon colored "smoking jackets" with his gin and tonic. When I was on Red as perf. dir. and Charly was on Blue. I would tell whatever promoter that would be doing a coming Blue show spot to be sure and tell Charly BARNUM that John RINGLING Herriot sends his regards. I don't believe charlys non existant sense of humour would allow him to understand that. His main goal was to be General manager anf even with a number of knives embedded in a number of backs he never made it. But his act was great and his bark was bigger than his bite. I got where I even liked him and we became friends if you could call it that.johnny
Post a Comment