I took this picture when Mr C was here playing the Outdoor Show early in 1959, shortly before I left Nashville to join Famous Cole, my first circus to work for.
He autographed both posters for me- by the names on the posters: Hal Silvers on the Seils-Sterling and Hubert Castle on the Cole Bros.
I will try to keep this fairly short. First of all Floyd King made a deal with either Paul Kelly or Arthur Wirtz (maybe someone can tell me which) for the use of the Cole Bros title and also the left-over Cole posters. When King Bros played Nashville in 1955 the newspaper ads read King Bros Circus combined with Cole Bros. Billers used paper with both titles but no paper or trucks on the show had both titles.
In 1956 the King show (then in two units) went broke owing money to many people, including Francis Kitzsman, who had the billcar on the Maley unit. After the dust in bankruptcy court in Macon settled, Kitzsman was awarded the main billing truck - a nice Fruehauf body on an International Harvester chassis- "and contents" which means he had a lot of Cole Bros paper.
Fast forward to 1959- Kitz had the Famous Cole billcar and sold the Cole Bros paper to the show. I was on the advance over there and we crosslined the paper with slips reading "Famous" over the word "Bros" so that it actually read "Cole Famous Circus" but we never had a complaint. I must have put hundreds of this particular posters in windows from Oklahoma, down thru Texas and northward as far as Washington state- they were all crosslined with Con Colleano's name. There are many of these in collections with the crossline soaked off and they now read "Hubert Castle."
My old boss. Some memories not so great. Some rather colorful. He made it to the top 3 of the wire-walkers, with Harold Barnes and Con Colleano. He suffered a long, difficult passing with Alzheimer's, in 1989. He was quite a guy. May he Rest in Peace.
Roger. I read all your posts on Buckles Blog. I can not help but wondering why I have only seen one photo of you. Surly after a career such as yours there must be photos. Perhaps your shy ?
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James "Hal" Smith aka Hal Silvers
I took this picture when Mr C was here playing the Outdoor Show early in 1959, shortly before I left Nashville to join Famous Cole, my first circus to work for.
He autographed both posters for me- by the names on the posters: Hal Silvers on the Seils-Sterling and Hubert Castle on the Cole Bros.
The Cole paper was also printed
with exactly the same image but
with the name of Con Colleano
Coin's name was not printed on this poster, it was "cross-lined" by way of a strip of paper with Con's name being pasted over Castle's.
Hi Dave I've just sent you the image
that I mentioned showing it was printed
(I've sent it to Buckles as well)
I will try to keep this fairly short. First of all Floyd King made a deal with either Paul Kelly or Arthur Wirtz (maybe someone can tell me which) for the use of the Cole Bros title and also the left-over Cole posters. When King Bros played Nashville in 1955 the newspaper ads read King Bros Circus combined with Cole Bros. Billers used paper with both titles but no paper or trucks on the show had both titles.
In 1956 the King show (then in two units) went broke owing money to many people, including Francis Kitzsman, who had the billcar on the Maley unit. After the dust in bankruptcy court in Macon settled, Kitzsman was awarded the main billing truck - a nice Fruehauf body on an International Harvester chassis- "and contents" which means he had a lot of Cole Bros paper.
Fast forward to 1959- Kitz had the Famous Cole billcar and sold the Cole Bros paper to the show. I was on the advance over there and we crosslined the paper with slips reading "Famous" over the word "Bros" so that it actually read "Cole Famous Circus" but we never had a complaint. I must have put hundreds of this particular posters in windows from Oklahoma, down thru Texas and northward as far as Washington state- they were all crosslined with Con Colleano's name. There are many of these in collections with the crossline soaked off and they now read "Hubert Castle."
My old boss. Some memories not so great. Some rather colorful. He made it to the top 3 of the wire-walkers, with Harold Barnes and Con Colleano. He suffered a long, difficult passing with Alzheimer's, in 1989. He was quite a guy. May he Rest in Peace.
Roger. I read all your posts on Buckles Blog. I can not help but wondering why I have only seen one photo of you. Surly after a career such as yours there must be photos. Perhaps your shy ?
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