Sunday, November 19, 2017

#17 Clyde Beatty!

West Coast  people!

Posted by Buckles at 11/19/2017 05:37:00 AM

3 comments:

Patricia said...

I think someone commented on this photo before (Maybe Roger S.?) that the lady with the monkey next to Clyde Beatty was Olga Celeste, the one with the leopard act, a friend of Mabel's. I don't know much about Ms. Celeste's history; anyone?

19 November, 2017 08:56
Roger Smith said...

Olga Celeste was born in Lund, Sweden, on April 9, 1888, a birth-year she shared with Mabel Stark (born on December 9). She began with wild animals at age 11, and worked at the Luna Park Zoo, aka the Selig Zoo, in California, from 1925 to 1931. Her leopards worked in many films, most notably in BRINGING UP BABY (her leopard, Neissa, was "Baby"), with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, in 1938. (See Olga's page on IMDb.) Her leopards were featured in DeMille's CLEOPATRA (1934), starring Claudette Colbert, in the sequence DeMille liked to call his "lesbian dance". Ms. Celeste had her spotted stars on the Johnny Weissmuller TARZAN series, most prominently in TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN (1946). Since she did not elect to work with tigers, she and Mabel Stark became close friends. Ms. Celeste died at age 81, in Burbank, California, on August 31, 1969. She has many notations on Google, and scores of photos on Pinterest.

The photo also shows us child actress Jane Withers, seated @ C. She is still very much with us at 91. Clockwise, Clyde Beatty kneeling, Mel Koontz, the ever-congenial Frank Phillips, next to Beatty's 2nd mentor - John C. "Chubby" Guilfoyle. Note his right sleeve is empty, the result of a lion attack in 1928, on the Sparks show. Then, Billy Richards, who partnered with Trader Horne, to operate the Goebel place as World Jungle Compound (1946-1955), and seated next to Ms. Withers is Harriett Beatty.

19 November, 2017 18:46
Patricia said...

Thanks for the bio, Roger. I'm sure all the blog readers are glad as well. You are a circus encyclopedia.

20 November, 2017 08:07

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