Buckles Blog: #4 Clyde Beatty

Saturday, April 08, 2017

1933 picture with John Guilfoyle second from left.

Chic Silber said...: Plenty of flags on

those center poles; 08 April, 2017 09:43
Roger Smith said...: John "Chubby" Guilfoyle, Beatty's 2nd mentor after Louis Roth, lost that right arm in a lion attack on Sparks, in '28. Nothing stopped him, and he went on to become the chief mentor during Pat Anthony's breaking-in years at World Jungle Compound. The man @ R is John Helliott, a master trainer and a staple of the Corporation shows. I have no ID for the man @ L.; 08 April, 2017 17:09
Roger Smith said...: This 9-pole menagerie top, on Hagenbeck-Wallace, was necessitated by the cage wagons needed for the seasons in which Beatty worked the Big Act, of 40-plus cats. In 1981, I showed this photo to our Beatty-Cole canvas crew, and they were astonished to see a top that size, when ours forever had 4 poles.; 08 April, 2017 17:33
Roger Smith said...: Wait a minute. Looking again at the man @ L, this very well could be Billy Richards, the Kansas City showman, who threw in with Trader Horne to co-own World Jungle Compound from 1946 to 1955. Richards was about this size, and given to this hat style. In Compound photos, Horne towered over him by a foot.; 08 April, 2017 17:37

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