Friday, March 21, 2014

From Buckles #6


Posted by Buckles at 3/21/2014 05:55:00 AM

3 comments:

Roger Smith said...

Very interesting to see this ultimate classic circus scene used again for promotions in 1945. It had been the 1944 program cover, with Ernestine Clarke also featured inside in a photo array titled "Beauties of the Big Top". In '44, a spec was themed around Emmett Kelly, titled "Panto's Paradise", quite an anknowledgement of his 2nd year on the show. But '44 proved a tragic year. In Washington DC, the infamous chicken-salad food poisoning episode put 160 in hospitals. Then, on July 6th, the Big Top fire brought the season to a horrific close.

22 March, 2014 19:59
JACKIE said...

The food poisoning was not in 1944 as that was my first year and I did not experience it. The Harford Circus fire was certainly 1944, Jackie LeClaire

23 March, 2014 11:40
Roger Smith said...

My comments on the ptomaine episode came from Bradna's chapter "Tragedy in the Big Top". On p. 258, he begins, "In 1944 I almost died of food poisoning." In Washington DC, "Ella saw a chicken salad so appetizing she are generously of it, the relayed the good news to me. That night when the spec lined up at seven forty-five, hundreds of the troupe were missing. Some were so violently sick that they lay doubled up on the ground...a cramp hit me like the kick of a stallion. I almost fainted...By the end of the performance, one hundred sixty of the company, including Ella and me, were in Washington hospitals...I was three days in the hospital, most of it in agony. Ella, less fortunate, was unable to rejoin the show for two weeks." From this account, we see that most of the 1600-odd on the roster were lucky to have avoided the chicken salad.

23 March, 2014 19:21

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)