Tuesday, July 03, 2018

CLYDE BEATTY'S CATS #10


4 comments:

Roger Smith said...

There were 4 of these cage wagons for Beatty's act. We see the old wooden tunnel sections in place, providing a complicated system of running the cats from the back trucks to the chutes and into the arena.

Chic Silber said...


This photo is from 1943

How many cats did he work

& how many did he carry

Roger Smith said...

For 1943, Beatty was on Beatty-Wallace. The 4 trucks each had 5 cage compartments, allowing for 20 cats, unless some cages were doubled up at times with two cats. These trucks carried over the next season, on Clyde Beatty-Russell Bros.

Roger Smith said...

A little more history: This paint job suggests a later season than '43 Beatty-Wallace. In Chang Reynolds's BANDWAGON article on '44 Beatty-Russell, photos have the trucks "painted yellow and lettered with blue and green". Here, we see the trucks heralding Hamid-Morton, where Beatty was for parts of 1940 and '41, with this red background and different lettering. I'm wondering if he took this paint job into his season with Beatty-Wallace--?