Tuesday, November 28, 2017

#3 Herriotts!

John Herriott, Jim Herrington, Jerry Collins and Jimmy James

7 comments:

Chic Silber said...


Three great fellows & a bum

John Herriott needs no details

Jimmy Harrington who I worked

for on Gran Circo Panamericano

for many years in Puerto Rico

& Jimmy James on the right

who was a clown on the Beatty

Show for years before becoming

the ringmaster & the bald one

was Jerry Collins a politician

& part owner of Beatty before

he donated it to a University

Roger Smith said...

Jane Beatty encouraged me to join out on the 1980 Winter Tour and the '81 season of the Beatty show to be her eyes and ears on the lot. Jerry Collins had tried backing out of paying her royalties on the use of the Beatty name, and she took him to court and won. The very lengthy final judgment in her favor can be found online.

My uncle, John Trenam, of Tampa and Miami, was tax attorney for Collins, John North, Art Concello, and numerous other Florida names which are better left in their familiar shadows. Thereby, I knew things in detail I would never have known but for dear old Uncle John. All way in the past now, everyone long dead and buried, but at the time...boy, oh boy, the stories.

Jerry Collins made a brief splash giving a million dollars to the self-claimed suicidal television preacher Oral Roberts.

Jimmy James was a top-rate Ringmaster, modeling himself after his idol, Harold Ronk. I can testify that Colonel Herriott also shone brightly at the microphone, and looked the part with the best of them.

Chic Silber said...


Collins claim to fame was

ownership of the Sarasota

dog track (his family may

still own & operate it)

& that he outlived both

McClosky & Kernan but he

was never a circus man

Chic Silber said...


Aside from his own show in Puerto Rico

Jimmy Harrington followed Frank Orman

as General Manager of the Beatty Show

Down the Road by Jim said...

The 4 J's !

Chic Silber said...


That's why I titled this photo "J J J & J"

I had the greatest respect for 3 of them

Roger Smith said...

It is more accurate to say that Collins was named as owner on paper of the dog track, when the true owners--guess who they were--lurked more or less out of sight. Collins provided the public face for the track, serving as the front man.