Buckles Blog: From Chic Silber

Monday, April 04, 2016

How about some color for today!

Richard Reynolds said...: This poster is by Bill Bailey and was executed for the 1944 season. It is pretty accurate. The show had in its menagerie, at one time of another, all of the animals shown. They never exhibited in pens in the center all the animals shown here but did have them in cage wagons. I cannot imagine trying to handle a white tailed gnu as lead stock. They can be terribly aggressive and ferocious. So can a cassowary.

The Indian rhino would have to be Old Bill, the only one of his species ever seen in a circus menagerie in the 20th century, but he died on RBBB in 1926. Moreover he was shown in a cage wagon, never on a fanciful elevated stage as shown here.

There was a mother hippo and calf on the 1922 show but not in a big pool as shown. Again they were in a cage wagon. And there were indeed 4 giraffes at one time in 1920s and the early 1930s.

RBBB did have in its menagerie in the late'20s and early '30s the large number of camels and zebras depicted.

This poster was the first I ever took out of a store window. That was in Atlanta in 1945 at age 11. For some years it hung on my bedroom wall, but in a fit of teenage impetuosity or stupidity, I gave it away. I later got another but it lacked the Atlanta date tail.; 05 April, 2016 19:53

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