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Wednesday, September 11, 2013
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6 comments:
This photo and the information that came with it (Billboard ?) has me a little confused.
The Sparks show was a railroad show during these years, and this looks like a trailer with rubber tires?
Thanks again for sharing all the great photos,
p.j.
PJ: I believe this came out of John Swann's "Circus Review." I wondered about the rubber too. It is possible that some independent units went overland as was true on the Beatty rail show.
What a fantastic job of artwork &
lettering all done by hand back then
So much of our finest craftsmanship
in many endeavors has been lost to
this "modern" computer age
Well, I finally found my copy of this and it was not from "The Circus Review" as I had thought but it was on a Christmas card sent out many years ago by the Merle Evans Museum in Columbus, Kansas,
A wiser and hoarier head than mine has suggested that the "Georgia Minstrels" lettering indicates the pic may have been taken on Clifton Sparks' minstrel show which he operated 1928-1931. Or that it was taken on an Elmer Jones outfit. Jones did have a minstrel show out in the twenties.
All of which gives me a chance to tell my Doc Holtkamp story. If you never knew L B "Doc" Holtkamp, who was with the Cristiani show years ago setting up commercial tie-ins and the like, you missed one of the great characters of the business.
You could hear Doc coming by the "click" sound he made frequently from sucking on an Alka-Seltzer tablet. He had been around every form of show business including once owning a small railroad carnival and for a long time he had the "Smart Set Minstrels" on the road.
In 1959 I was lithographing Grand Avenue in Los Angeles, just a few blocks over from where the crew was staying at the Cecil Hotel at Seventh and Main. There was a big hotel on my route where Doc was staying and a Black Shrine convention was taking place there at the time.
I spotted Doc leaning up against the hotel and stopped to say hello. While I was talking to Doc two different men who were there for the convention recognized Doc and came over. It turned out they had been on his minstrel show many years earlier. For younger readers who think all minstrels were white performers in black face, let me explain that there were many minstrel shows made up of African-American performers and this is the kind of show Doc had.
What are the chances of running into not one but two people within five minutes of each other who had worked for you thirty years earlier?
Shazam!
The new Bandwagon carries a pic of what must be the other side of this same truck. It was the 1932 Downie show owned by Sparks and on rubber.
AND... A pic of some of these same guys- apparently the same day as this pic- on the Downie lot in Evanston in '32.
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