....Old Clyde Beatty Circus Pictures....

Cat Man

Monday, Mar. 29, 1937....Time Magazine....

Padding about uncertainly in the tumbled sawdust of the big cage, the last three or four lions responded to a cue from outside the bars, wheeled and sped toward the runway leading to their own cages. The crowd that packed Manhattan's cavernous Hippodrome one night last week was up in its seats, streaming toward the exits past the array of jabbering freaks in the lobby. And ducking into the wings with the last salvo of applause still drumming in his ears a small man, in a shirt and breeches that had once been spotless white, shouldered through a clutter of clowns, girls, circus hands and hangers-on, scurried up a spiral staircase to his dressing-room. He was streaked and spattered with muck from head to foot. Sweat trickled down his nose and cheeks, dripped from his chin. As he collapsed into a chair while an attendant pulled off the dusty boots, Clyde Beatty, the most celebrated trainer of lions and tigers in the world and part owner of the newest and most extraordinary U. S. circus, honestly sighed: "It's good to sit down!"

Clyde Beatty was thankful that he had got through the trying first day of a new season without a scratch for himself or a catfight among his 40 surly charges. To show business, however, the first day's two performances of the Cole Bros.-Clyde Beatty Circus marked a more important accomplishment, one which old John Ringling, last of the seven brothers, vowed he would never see but which he did not see only because he died last December. John Ringling was accustomed to open his season every year in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden with no rival in sight. His show had done so ever since 1909, three years after the Ringling and Barnum & Bailey outfits joined forces. With Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey still in Florida winter quarters last week, this tradition was shattered when Cole Bros.-Clyde Beatty moved into the Hippodrome, became the first important tent show in a generation to challenge "The Greatest Show on Earth" not only by playing New York, hitherto practically a Ringling monopoly, but playing it before Ringling got there, and playing it under a "permanent top" (a building as distinguished from a tent).

Colossus. The last circus that tried to slide into Manhattan under the Ringling shadow was Sells-Floto. "Mr. John" stifled this competition in a characteristic fashion.

He bought up not only Sells-Floto but the other four circuses—Hagenbeck-Wallace, John Robinson, Sparks, Al G. Barnes— grouped with Sells-Floto in American Circus Corp. The property comprised 150 railroad cars, 2,000 animals, 4,500 people.

That was in the annus mirabilis 1929.

Independent— One ultimate effect of Depression on the circus business was that John Ringling eventually lost control of his shows. Unable to meet interest on a $1,700,000 loan, he was forced to turn over most of his assets to New York bankers. Another important result of Depression was to disgust Clyde Beatty, who had built his cat act into the world's most sensational one-man spectacle during the lean years, with the miserably disproportionate $100 a week salary his friends whisper he was getting from Ringling in 1934. Since there was no other circus to offer him more, Clyde Beatty decided to have his own circus. The 1935 season found Ringling without its standout attraction and it found Clyde Beatty starting an independent 200-town tour of his own. He had made some money from book royalties (The Big Cage), more in Hollywood from two motion pictures (The Big Cage, The Lost Jungle). So he and two other Ringling malcontents—Jess Adkins, long-time manager of Hagenbeck-Wallace, and Zack Terrell, longtime manager of Sells-Floto—had pooled their resources, scraped up a half-dozen backers and built a circus around Beatty's hair-raising cat act. The Cole Bros, name, an old and respected one in the circus world but dormant since the last Cole brother died in 1904, had been bought from the Toronto heirs of the family. For two years the new show toured the Midwest, fared well, stayed out of Manhattan.

Good times were returning. Last year the show was reported to have made $250,000 (of which Beatty received $40,000) and to have cut seriously into revived Ring-lings' business.

The Show— Except for a few great flash acts like Beatty, Con Colleano on the high wire or Ringlings' late great Aerialist Lillian Leitzel, one circus, at least to adults, is pretty much like another. One after another last week in the Hippodrome, which the musicomedy-circus Jumbo remodeled so that it ideally accommodates a condensed circus, 29 Cole Bros. -Beatty "displays" followed in fairly rapid, fairly unimpressive, succession, led off by "a magnificent and kaleidoscopic inaugural pageant participated in by hundreds of men, women, horses, elephants, yaks and beasts of the forest and jungle." Shiny seals balanced spinning balls on their moist noses, snapped up gobs of fish, barked lugubriously, played unrecognizable tunes by blowing into horns through their nostrils. One of the Picchiannis landed expertly in a chair after a triple somer sault from a teeterboard. Trainer Jorgen M. Christiansen put a troop of 24 fawn Colored horses through a series of maneuvers. "The Great Gretonas," like Ringlings' daring Wallendas, rode bicycles on a high-wire 45 ft. above the ring.

No. 29— With the 29th and last "display," the Cole Bros.-Clyde Beatty Circus stepped up into another class altogether A rising curtain disclosed a steel cage, 32 ft. in diameter, with a web of netting guarding the top. The lights were lowered a sound like thunder rumbled and syn thetic lightning glimmered. A big, heavy maned lion loped from the runway into the cage, slithered along an upward-sloping row of pedestals until he was crouched on the highest one. Two tigers came in and took their places beside him. Ten or twelve more beasts entered. While some of these were still milling around on the cage floor, Clyde Beatty, holding a blank-loaded pistol and a steel-bolted chair in his left hand and a whip in his right jumped into the cage, slapped the gate shut behind, pranced, crouched, cracked his whip. A lion made a tentative lunge at him. The pistol barked, the chair legs blocked the thrust of the paw, and the beast took his place. More cats ran in—a batch of lions, a batch of tigers, a batch of lions—keeping their heads and shoulders low to avoid cuffs from the others. Crack, Crack! Crack ! The whiplash exploded like a bunch of firecrackers until all the animals were pedestaled—25 lions and lionesses, 15 tigers and tigresses. A tiger with ominously writhing tail left its post, slunk toward the small figure in white. Beatty put his head down almost to the sawdust, pretended to be staring the animal into submission. Actually he was giving invisible "cues." The tiger bellied down, backed slowly away.

Darting, posing, shooting, the trainer made a bevy of his charges change pedestals. He fought off a lion that seemed to have pinned him against the bars. Every now and then a lion took a swipe at a tiger—or vice versa. Then the whiplash flicked over. The trainer swaggered up to a pedestaled tiger, thrust the chair at its open jaws. The animal knocked the chair aside. Soon the same tiger was obediently rolling itself along on top of a large cylinder. The trainer next made a lion sit up with its paws upraised like a begging dog's. Finally he made a tiger whirl round .& round like an animal obsessed. When he had cued most of the 40 beasts from their pedestals and driven them out the runway, came the great climax to the act.

Beatty made a dash for the gate. One of the remaining lions streaked after him, crashed against the gate just as Beatty, slipping outside, shut it in his face.

Tooth & Claw— The Beatty cat act is so thoroughly dramatized and "hoked up" to get the last tingling thrill from the most distant customer, that the skeptical are likely to be unaware of the act's real dangers. The lunges, feints and sham attacks of his beasts help make it a magnificent feat of showmanship, but they are not what Beatty worries about. Lions hate tigers and tigers hate lions, and in this atmosphere of hate the unexpected is always on the verge of happening. Beatty started mixing lions and tigers of both sexes in 1926 after a wise old "cat man" told him the old one-species, one-sex acts would not much longer satisfy a surfeited public. In 1928 his act contained 32 assorted cats, an unprecedented number. When he moved up to Ringlings' main how two years later he added eight more.

In such company Beatty cannot hope to prevent fights, is satisfied if he breaks them up without a killing or serious injury. He has had his arm chewed by a tigress, lis nose and forehead ripped open by a leopard, but his worst experience came after a big lion named Nero knocked him down and bit his leg. Jungle fever and gangrene set in and Beatty spent ten weeks in bed, almost died.

Altogether Beatty has lost 18 tigers, two lions in fights. Replacements cost him $500 or more and he values cats which have been through his step-by-step training course at $5,000 up. First step is to familiarize a "freshman" with the barred arena, make him understand thoroughly that Beatty is the Boss. He may spend weeks persuading the animal to go right or left after entering the cage, more weeks to elect and mount a pedestal. "Advanced trickology" is a matter of subtle, wordless cues, endlessly repeated. Lions and tigers cannot be instructed by pushing them around. Courage and showmanship avail a trainer little if he has not the almost telepathic knack of making his beasts understand what he wants.

Beatty strongly prefers jungle-born to cage-born cats. Three-quarters of this year's troupe were captured in the wilds. His reason for this preference is that animals familiar to man from birth are spoiled. As his good friend and collaborator Edward Anthony paraphrased his feelings in The Big Cage: "Cubs born in captivity simply do not have a chance. Their cuteness is their undoing. . . . Our civilization places too high a valuation on the cute and the cunning. There is nothing more characterless than a spoiled lion or tiger cub. . . ."

Clyde Raymond Beatty (pronounced Baity) is 31, 5 ft. 5½in. tall, weighs 145 lb., has enormously muscular forearms. He was born in Ohio and speaks pure Chillicothe (a tiger is a "tagger"). As soon as he finished high school he started training domestic animals in his backyard, got his professional start with a bear act. Soon he was mixing bears, lions and leopards. He never smokes or drinks hard liquor, sometimes quaffs beer. His only recreation is golf. His cats are fed—not by him—once a day, 18 to 20 lb. of prime beef after the afternoon performance. His own big meal of the day he consumes after the night show.

He has a small daughter by his first marriage. His second wife is a blue-eyed onetime circus aerialist named Harriet Evans, whom he persuaded to quit because he was afraid she would fall.

Away from the barred arena, Clyde Beatty is mild, friendly, unostentatious, likable. But he is a showman and he is on top. After the first two performances last week, convinced that New Yorkers are too blase to wait patiently for his act through the other 28 "displays," he conferred with his partners, had his act spotted immediately after the intermission. "After all," the world's greatest cat man blandly observed, "most of 'em must come here to see my act. It was just too long for 'em to set there."

CLYDE BEATTY TO OPEN LION TAMERS' SCHOOL....1939

Atlantic City, N.J., July 1. - Clyde Beatty, formerly of Rochester, Ind., the wild animal trainer, reported today, that the circus business hasn't been any too good the last two summers, announced he's going to conduct a "lion tamers' school" here this summer.
Beatty said there is a "crying need" for good lion tamers in the world, and he's going to begin training ten students next Friday. Each pupil will pay $100 down, $50 at the end of three weeks, and another $50 at the end of the semester - if he lasts that long.
[The News-Sentinel, Saturday, July 1, 1939]
CLYDE BEATTY TO OPEN LION TRAINER'S SCHOOL
Atlantic City, N.J., July 6. - Clyde Beatty, of Rochester, Ind., who makes his living escaping death daily in a cage full of lions and tigers, announced here that he will open the first lion trainers school in the world on Friday.
"Lawyers and doctors have to study years before they are allowed to practice and aviators have to have an accredited amount of time in the air before they can commercialize on their knowledge," he explained, "but today all a man needs to get into a cage is courage.
"I hope to establish a definite preparatory standard because there are too many non-qualified lion tamers. But they don't last very long," he added ominously.
The small, wiry, soft-spoken number one animal trainer expects at least 200 applications for admission by opening day. Of these only 10 will be selected for the eight-week training routine which, when completed, will enable them to work with lions and tigers.
Classes will be held daily in and around the huge circus cage at the end of the million dollar pier where Beatty is appearing.
Beatty, who started his career by cleaning out cages and gradually worked his way into the performing arena, said that he planned to eliminate the need for this menial work by those capable of training animals.
But unless the students have a natural talent for handling animals no amount of training will do any good, he said. The most important requisites for prospective trainers are speedy footwork, excellent eyesight, courage and the ability to think fast.
Beatty outlined the school's curriculum as follows:
During the first week the students will spend their time around the cages getting acquainted with the beasts. In the second week each student will be assigned a lion which he will work with later, and spend the time observing that animal. At the start of the third week the student and Beatty will go into the cage and learn to "cue" an animal. At this point Beatty will decide whether the student is capable of continuing the course.
If accepted for further work, the student will continue to put the lion through his paces and during the last three weeks more animals will be added until the student is able to handle a cage full.
And if this college for big cagers works out, George A. Hamid, who controls the million dollar pier, plans to set up schools for other potential daredevils such as tight rope walkers, high divers, and auto crashers. If that develops you will have to show a diploma before a showman will permit you to risk your neck.
[The News-Sentinel, Thursday, July 6, 1939]

Clyde Beatty

OFFICIAL PROGRAM - SEASON OF 1936 COLE BROS.-CLYDE BEATTY CIRCUS

[The News-Sentinel, Wednesday, April 29, 1936]


DISPLAY NO. 1 - The Serenade of Spain - Participated in by more than 1,000 men, women, horses, elephants, yaks, and beasts of the forests and jungle . . . native singers . . . dancers and musicians. Staged by Rex de Rosselli.
DISPLAY NO. 2 - Positively the Greatest Single Array of Athletes and Gymnasts of Pantomime Who Combine Buffoonery With Supreme Tumbling and Gymnastic Feats. An Enormous Special Congress of Clowns Gathered This Year From Every Country on Earth.
DISPLAY NO. 3 - Educated Shetland Ponies - Highly trained Dogs - Siamese Elephant, Nubian Lion, Bengal Tiger Act by Harriet Beatty - Educated Dogs - and Tiny Performing Ponies.
DISPLAY NO. 4 - Ring No. 1 - A beautiful and Talented English Equestrienne, Miss Ernestine Clarkonian. Ring No. 2 - A Peerless European Rider Introducing Unusual Feats in the Equestrian Art, Miss Elizabeth Hanneford.
DISPLAY NO. 5 - Thrilling and Daring Aerial Gymansts, Easily the Greatest Single Array of Champions of the Lofty Horizontal Bars.
DISPLAY NO. 6 - An Exhibition of Outstanding Feats Performed by Four Great Troupes of the World's Most Remarkable Educated Sea Lions Marvelous Actors From the Deep. Presented by Jack Joyce, Albert Mann, A. Fleet and Walter Radde.
DISPLAY NO. 7 - An Astounding Array of th World's Foremost Aerial Athletes in a Lofty Mid-Air Tournament, Performing Seemingly the Impossible.
DISPLAY NO. 8 - The World's Largest Group of Performing Lions and Tigers Newly Recruited From Native Jungle and Mountain Fastnesses. The Most Startling Wild Animal Display Ever Presented In Which a Fearless Youth Presents His Uncanny Power Over the Most Ferocious of All Beasts, CLYDE BEATTY.
DISPLAY NO. 9 - Sensational Wild West and Rodeo Round-up Presented by the Foremost Champions of the Great Frontier and Wild West Exhibition of the Western Plains and Northwestrn Canada. Tex Elder, Climaxing This Frontier Day Exhibition, Jumping Two Horses Over a Flaming Automobile.
DISPLAY NO. 10 - Horizontal Bar, Swaying Table Pyramids, Prof. Curtis, the European Comedy Cyclone, Equilibrists , and LeRoy Bros., Gymnasts.
DISPLAY NO. 11 - Queen of Aerial Gymnasts, Who Will Amuse You With Her Wonderful Feats of Strength and Endurance. Suspended at Dizzy Heights This Miniature Marvel in Mid-Air Breaks Every Law of Gravity Casting Her Body Over Her Own Shoulder Scores of Times, Without Pause, Mlle. O'Dell.
DISPLAY NO. 12 - Presenting Three Great Troupes of Performing Elephants From Siam and India in a Single Display Enacted in the Three Rings. Elephants Who Dance the Carioca and the Continental.
DISPLAY NO. 13 - A Thrilling and Spectacular Array of Human Butterflies in a Vast Aerial Offering!
DISPLAY NO. 14 - America's Foremost Bareback Riders in a Sensational Exhibition of Hazardous and Unequalled Feats, THE DAVENPORT FAMILY.
DISPLAY NO. 15 - Matters of Mirth in a Hilarious Musical Festival.
DISPLAY NO. 16 - The Canadan Juvenile Wonder, HAROLD BARNES, Walking, Running, Dancing on a Swinging Wire. Then Letting His Lithe Body Sway Like a Pendulum Until the Arc of the Swing Brings Him Parallel With the Ground.
DISPLAY NO. 17 - Introducing the Greatest Liberty Act in Circus History in Three Separate Rings, Simultaneously Presenting Complete Companies of Performing Horses Trained by Europe and America's Three Premier Trainers, Jorgen M. Christiansen, Albert Hodgini and Joe Hodges. Easily the Greatest Equine Display of All Time.
DISPLAY NO. 18 - Wedding Bells Ring in the Parade of Mirth.
DISPLAY NO. 19 - The Most Thrilling High-Wire Act Ever Presented, As Incomparable Company of Intrepid Performers Whose Astounding Exploits Have Made Two Continents Gasp. Directly Imported From the Winter Garden, Berlin, Germany.
DISPLAY NO. 20 - The Triumphant Culmination of all Circus Athletic and Gymnastic Exhibitions - The Supreme Achievement in the Impressive Array of Daring Tumblers and Stalwart Athletes. A Vast Array of Performers Unexcelled in all Circus History.
DISPLAY NO. 21 - In the Dome of the Arena on a Slender, Swaying, Steel Pole, 125 Feet Above the Ground, An Amazing Spaniard Will Thrill You. This is the Last Word in Dangerous Exploits, The Great Floresque.
DISPLAY NO. 22 - On the Hippodrome Track and in Rings Nos. 1, 2 and 3, You Are Now Witnessing the Greatest Array of High Schol Horses in Amusement History. No Other Circus in the World Boasts of a Display Even One-Half as Large. Europe and America's Most Noted Mistresses of the Manage Who Have Won Countless Ribbons in Foremost Horse Shows Throughout the World.
DISPLAY NO. 23 - A Multitude of Amazingly Clever Clowns in all Parts of the Arena at the Same Time! A melange of Outstanding Funmakers.
DISPLAY NO 24 - A Great Company of Mid-Air Aerialists in a Thrilling and Breath-Taking Series of Astounding feats.
DISPLAY NO. 25 - Rome's Ancient Glory Lives Again - Magnificent Revival of Speed Duels on the Hippodrome Track, Including Roman Standing Jockey Race, Liberty Race and Fleeting Ponies With Simian Jockeys. No. 1 - Jockey Race. No. 2 - Shetland Ponies and Monkey Riders. No. 3 - The Riderless Horse Pitted Aginst the Jockey Rider. No. 4 Roman Standing Races.
- - - - - THE GRAND FINALE - - - - -

CLYDE BEATTY STARTS TRAINING NEW CAT ACT

[The News-Sentinel, Tuesday, November 20, 1934]

The managerial family of Rochester's new circus is swiftly formulating, and already four or five of the officials have taken on their residency here. Clyde Beatty - world-famous lion tamer, and his wife, have leased the Mrs. H. O. Shafer home on [531] North Pontiac street, where he and his wife are now residing. Mr. and Mrs. Allen King, also of the new Cole Bros. Circus, will reside in Rochester just as soon as a suitable home can be secured for them. King, with his "Live Power" lion and tiger act was the stellar attraction at the Century of Progress during the '34 season.
Activity at the new winter quarters will get under way today when Beatty starts training the 40 big cats on new and sensational tricks for several weeks run at the Shriners Circus at Detroit this winter. Beattie has erected his portable aluminum training cage at the north edge of the cat building.
Several more lions and tigers will soon be added to the circus cat family and both King and Beattie will be busy for the next several weeks in whipping their thrilling acts into shape.
Along with the training activities at the quarters to be launched this week will be the school of 24 new ring horses and 21 ponies. These recently purchased animals were transferred from one of the Bradley farms to the circus barns Monday. The horses and ponies will be drilled by John Smith, veteran horse trainer of the Al G. Barnes shows, now affiliated with the new circus corporation.
Earl Lindsay, former secretary of Jess Adkins, during the time the latter was manager of the Hagenbeck-Wallace shows, arrived in Rochester Monday, where he is taking up a new clerical position with the Indiana Circus Corporation.
A crew of a dozen laborers is now at work near Burket, Ind., where a three-quarter mile section of the Winona Interurban line tracks and ties are being taken up for removal to the circus grounds, where side tracks from the Erie and Nickel Plate railwoads will be constructed.
Representatives of press from the South Bend and Logansport newspapers were at the inter quarters today taking pictures and obtaining data for feature stories in their respective papers.