Tuesday, December 06, 2011

1944 Beatty-Russell #4

12-05-2011 04;31;43PM by bucklesw1
12-05-2011 04;31;43PM, a photo by bucklesw1 on Flickr.

8 comments:

Jimmy Cole said...

I think this photo may have been borrwed from an Alfred Court act??

Harry Kingston said...

Dave Price can tell us if this is right or wrong but I do not think Clyde Beatty ever had a wire walking cat.
Alfred court or Terrel Jacobs yes.
Harry in Texas

Ole Whitey said...

Harry: Jimmy's a pretty good Beatty authority himself and I believe he's right on this call.

Beatty did work a wire-walking lion or two in the late forties but I know of no tiger he did this with.

Roger Smith said...

HARRY and JIMMY are both right. This is a Court wire tiger, and The Lion King used lions up there. Neither Clyde nor Harriett Beatty had wires.

However, confusion can arise from a staged photo of Beatty working a wire lion, in a studio photo-op with a Hollywood starlet, which I will dig out and offer to Buckles.

Anonymous said...

What is even stranger is that the cover photo on Clyde's last book "Facing the Big Cats" (1965), is a color photo of lions & tigers from an Alfred Court act.

Ole Whitey said...

Roger: I am familiar with the photo you mention.

Maybe I don't understand your definition of "staged."
Are you saying Beatty got a lion who did not normally walk the wire to get up there suddenly and walk one for the photographer? Not to mention the matter of getting the wire rigging together for the shot. Or are you saying this was some other trainer's act which they brought in for this photo-op?

What must have confused me is that I have a photo of the act being worked or trained at Beatty's Ft Lauderdale Zoo.

Will send both these pix to Buckles.

By the way, the 1945 Beatty program lists a wire-walking lion presented by one "Capt Cramer."

Anonymous said...

Anyone besides Bruno Blazak out there with a working cat doing this today ?

Inquiring minds want to know.

PS always try to remember the olde addage, "don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see ."

A Fan

Anonymous said...

This is definitely a Court picture. This tiger is Bombay, who was in the last act he trained. The act was later sold to Benson's, where Joe Walsh presented it.

By the way I will be in Florida from 6th to 11th January 2012 and will be at Show Folks on Saturday 7th. I hope I can meet up with many of our friends.

Jim Clubb