Monday, December 30, 2013

1935 RBBB Program #3

6 comments:

Ole Whitey said...

That appears to be a steel arena in center ring. If so the pic was from a prior year when Beatty played the Garden with the show.

One suspects those wildly cheering silhouettes in the foreground were a Roland Butler addition.

4pawfan said...

Yes, this was taken in the former years when Beatty was in MSG. I have always believed this to be a dress rehearsl photo with the lack of anyone in the far seats and the trainers in street dress.
A good view of how large the middle stages are. The Garden was too small to put up the two smaller stages that went up out side of the end rings.
p.j.

Chic Silber said...


Although it mentions 4 "stages"

the 2 we can see have ring curbs

built into them unlike what I had

seen in MSG in later years that

were merely flat platforms

Chic Silber said...


These silhouetted patrons & the

rail in front of them is shown at

a rakish angle to everything else

clearly an artistic addition

Hard to imagine the damage Roland

might have done with PhotoShop

Clearly he didn't need it

John Herriott said...

For many years they had five rings of liberty acts with smaller groups on stages. Jorgen Cristiansen told me that in his time Mabel Stark presented a six horse liberty act on a stage, Also young Rudy Rudynoff jr. [Gephart] worked a pony drill on a stage in his fathers five ring liberty display. Hence the ring curbs.

Roger Smith said...

After John Ringling 86'd cage acts in 1925, he refused to let Mabel Stark out of her long-term contract. With cats off the roster, he assigned her to horse acts for 1925-1927, an endurance test for Mabel she referred to as "Three damn wasted years." She honored her signature, and did it all--liberty acts, ascension horses, dressage. In winters, he sent her Bertram Mills for the Olympic engagements in these turns. In 1928, with the steel arena reinstated, Mabel went out with John Robinson for 1928, and for the next 39 years was never again without tigers.