Saturday, February 24, 2018

#1 Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus!


Posted by Buckles at 2/24/2018 05:54:00 AM

7 comments:

Hal Guyon said...

This picture was taken in Augusta, GA I believe in September of 1984. Left to right is my dad Harold Guyon, Russ Snyder, Doug Holwaldel and myself. It was very cold that day and I remember the show lined the trucks around the big top to help block off the wind.

24 February, 2018 10:15
Hal Guyon said...

Proud to say I`ve lost a lot of weight since this picture was taken.

24 February, 2018 10:19
Chic Silber said...


Guess Doug was kind of a necessary

evil who hepled Johnny rescue the show

but then became a real problem & was

very hard to get rid of (like a rash)

24 February, 2018 11:37
Roger Smith said...

While Johnny was out managing the show, it was E. Douglas Holwadel, back in DeLand, who sold off way too much of the show's Winterquarters. Horrified, Johnny hied himself back to salvage what he could. He did re-buy some of it, but one or two of the new landowners refused to sell, and the property was drastically reduced. As Johnny told me, "On what we have left, we have to move something to move something." The partnership with E. Douglas was shortly dissolved.

24 February, 2018 14:37
Jim Alexander said...

My tale of E. Douglas Holwadel goes back to pre-CBCB when Doug was President of the St Louis Zoo Friends. He found out I liked circus too and would come to the employee lunchroom to jackpot. He would talk about buying the Beatty show and how he could make it profitable. I thought, another rich guy loosing a load with a circus. To me he was a nice guy but he didn't always follow through on his plans. I'll believe the tales I hear.

24 February, 2018 15:11
Chic Silber said...


I was being too kind in my

earlier comment as Doug was

truly a disaster to the show

He would go on these wild

self arranged press events

& say the stupidest things

Johnny asked me on several

occasions to take him on a

joy ride & keep himm busy

for as long as I could just

to get & keep him off the lot

Doug was very full of himself

His cement money was useful

but as they say NO FREE LUNCH

24 February, 2018 15:35
Cindy Potter said...

He was a REAL piece of work, and used to hang around on tear-down and tell the bosses "what they needed to do." He "ordered" two bulldozers on one wet tear down to haul the trucks off the lot. The bosses decided to show him how it was really done... Not one of those bulldozers ever cranked up!!!
:-)
CIndy Potter

26 February, 2018 15:08

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