Thursday, January 05, 2012

1927-28 Bertram Mills #1 (From Buckles)

01-02-2012 11;46;23AM by bucklesw1
01-02-2012 11;46;23AM, a photo by bucklesw1 on Flickr.

Posted by Buckles at 1/05/2012 05:59:00 AM

4 comments:

jerry digney said...

back in the day, Mills was also the UK's #1 tented show (Olympia was its much hearlded winter/Christmas date in London) and as far as i know it was the first circus to "go public" with stock, etc., long before RBBB's short-lived existence as a public company. Hard to believe but at one time, Mills, Smart's (Billy Smart was a carnival guy turned circus impresario)and Chipperfield's, all big time operations featuring numerous animal acts--both independent and show owned, competed on the same UK landscape. When we opened Circus World in Fla., Smart's had just closed shop and RBBB bought its elephant herd (Buckles knows how many)for the park. some of these may still be in the RBBB herd?

05 January, 2012 15:09
Unknown said...

Bertram Mills Olympia seasons at least had very strong links to Barnum & Bailey. A number of acts & musicians winter seasoning in UK from the US show. I'd say Mills was the 1st UK show to go public, remember Barnum & Bailey had aimed to stay in Europe and start a new US show - hence, the 1899 creation of Barnum & Bailey Limited in London. Mills also tried to find the Barnum & Bailey rolling stock to move his show but it had been sold/scrapped by then.

Fred Neill

06 January, 2012 05:26
Chris Berry said...

Gargantua was featured at the Bertram Mills winter circus of 1938-39. The story goes that there was no ship leaving from the east coast that had a hatch large enough to accomodate Gargantua's "air conditioned cage wagon". Finally, the S.S. Massdam, sailing from New Orleans on Dec 3, 1938 was located. It had 28 foot hatches, big enough that they could lower the wagon below deck. Ringling-Barnum press agent Frank Braden related the story that a terrible storm rocked the ship enroute and Gargantua was the only passenger on the ship who didn't get sick! (I'm sure that story got a lot of newspaper pickup!)

06 January, 2012 09:30
Unknown said...

I'm very wary of what pressmen say about circus animals!! Chasing Barnum & Bailey's comings & goings saw a lot of sea-sickness/lack of sea-sickness depending on who reported the voyage! - strange, some of these reports got changed (by a real staff member) later....
The elephants & Johanna "the Gorilla" seem to have been smashed out their minds every time they moved if you believed the press team (or, was it their handlers?)....

Fred Neill

09 January, 2012 04:47

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