Clyde Beatty must have found an "Angel".
Monday, September 1, 2008
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A Blog designed for discussion of topics related to, but not limited to, Circus, Zoos, Animal Training, and Animal Welfare/Husbandry. Sometimes opening up the dialog is the best starting point of all. And if for nothing else when people who agree and don't agree, get together and start discussing it, it will open up a lot of peoples minds. Debate and discussion even amongst themselves opens a window where there wasn't one before.
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7 comments:
Was Clyde Beatty much of an elephant handler or trainer? Its something I never read about. Dion
Dion,
I was told no, years ago, but I have always been afraid to ask, for fear that I would be attacked for even asking such a question, and I should know he was the best at everything. LOL
Wade
as i understand it, he didn't work much with elephants. when they were training anna may for the lion/tiger riding act, i think it was arkie scott and bill woodcock who worked with anna may while beatty concentrated on the cats.
i'm assuming that if he had done much with elephants or horses, he would not have needed johnny cline, who was in charge of elephants and horses. i know that in the beginning, he worked with everything -- he worked with bears before he did cats and for a while used bears in the big cat act. his first job was looking after two hippos. he also had a big polar bear act and worked with hyenas. i have seen harriett's name listed with elephants on some of the indoor dates but not the under-canvas dates. i don't know how involved he might have been with the riding act after it started working, though he was always in the safety cage in case harriett needed help, and i heard he was also there when dorothy herbert took over the act. i think that was about the extent of it other than riding an elephant in spec and parades, often in a howdah with lion or tiger cubs.
Henry,
John Cuneo has an interesting story about Clyde being brought to work the polar bear act.
Lion and tiger cubs in a howda???
When I suggested that a few months ago, I was told in no uncertain terms that only "jungle bred killers/maneaters" were utilized by Mr. Beatty.
Wade
my feeling is that mr beatty preferred jungle-bred cats and in his prime it was much easier to get them. he always said he didn't like working with captive-born animals. on the other hand, if one of his cats had cubs, i don't know how many he kept in comparsion to how many he sold. but, say in the case of his appearance in the orange bowl parade, it was certainly appealing to have tiger cubs with him. and for years there
was a publicity shot of him holding a pair of cubs. whatever anyone wants to thing, i think everyone will agree that mr beatty was a showman!
i didn't realize mr cuneo had worked with mr. beatty. the polar bear act was in the late 1920s, before the cat acts.
Henry,
John Cuneo didn't work with Beatty, he was a young man living in Chicago, when they were looking for someone to work the Polar Bears. Weren't they at some kind of expo or Worlds Fair. And we all know Beatty was candy, Henry and worked with cream puff cats all his career. LOL
Wade
wade - the polar bear act was with one of the corporation shows -- i assume hagenbeck wallce since that was the show most identified with beatty before cole and then his own shows. the bears apparently froze to death at the peru quarters because everyone assumed they didn't need to be in a heated barn since their natural habitat was so cold. i don't know if beatty trained the bears or somebody else did, but i believe it was only on the road one season. i'm not real clear on the details -- my informnation on this is all hand-me-down second or third or fourth or fifth hand,
i have always found mr cuneo fascinating, even though i only met him once, very briefly, about 45 years ago. i am sure mr cuneo has many, many, many stories to tell -- he should write a book. he created many acts and the ones i saw were all quite good. i don't remember much about the new orleans shrine circus the weekend after jfk was killed, but i still remember the sheer beauty of his horse fantasy there. it was oustanding. (but i didn't realize he was old enough to have been around in the beatty polar bear era! that makes him even more remarkable!)
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