Thursday, November 01, 2018

BEATTY RUSSELL #5


1 comments:

Roger Smith said...

Tigress was Primba, and the lion was given the unimaginative name of Simba, which is Swahili for anybody's lion. Not long into the history of this act, Simba went blind, and was not replaced. Primba continued on until her role was later re-cast with other tigresses. The last of these was the beautiful Singapore.

Clyde and Harriett married in 1933. By the winter of '34, when they went over to the new Cole show, Harriett decided she wanted a cage act. Her dutifully protective husband demurred, but her operatic demands prevailed. Beatty teamed up with Eddie Allen, the elephant boss, to school that show's Anna May, the namesake of the Woodcock's star, to carry the cats on this specially-built howdah. Read of the development of the act in Beatty's 1941 book, JUNGLE PERFORMERS.