Jungleland, located in the heart of film country in Thousand Oaks, California, provided many an animal for the film industry over the years. As you can see here, they also provided some wagons. As you look at these other photos you'll see the Whirling title covered over on the ticket wagon. A different movie title is on the parade wagon. There is a ton of interesting history out of Jungleland with the likes of Mabel Stark, Roger Smith, Dick McGraw, Pat Anthony and a slew of other great trainers.Saturday, October 18, 2008
Jungleland 1959
Jungleland, located in the heart of film country in Thousand Oaks, California, provided many an animal for the film industry over the years. As you can see here, they also provided some wagons. As you look at these other photos you'll see the Whirling title covered over on the ticket wagon. A different movie title is on the parade wagon. There is a ton of interesting history out of Jungleland with the likes of Mabel Stark, Roger Smith, Dick McGraw, Pat Anthony and a slew of other great trainers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I recieved this great email from Roger Smith today and wanted to share it with you.
Hello, Bob:
I just tried to enter a couple of comments for the photos, but I'm not sure they registered. Let me offer what I can as a reply.
Since Louis Goebel gave the H-W wagons to Baraboo in '63, it would have been before my time there, which was 1965 until our closing, 41 years ago this month, October 9, 1969.
There were still some old wagons up at the Movie Barn end of the property, and I used to to go up and prowl through what was left. These may have been too decrepit by then to interest Baraboo. We also had 2, maybe 3, wagons lettered "Clyde Brent Circus", from the Martin & Lewis film Three-Ring Circus (Paramount, 1953). I looked over a few quarter and side poles, some tattered canvas, a few coils of rope, and a bale ring or two, all quietly forgotten and rotting away. Of course, other curious folks had been there first, and there was nothing collectable left.
I also did not see the wagons lettered "Whirling", for the 1959 Irwin Allen film, The Big Circus. It is possible these were off the Howard Y. Barry edition of H-W, and went to CWM. I am not the wagon historian, and have not seen the manifest of what left the Oaks.
Thank you for the kind inclusion of me among the great ones at the Old Place, but in truth, I wasn't. I was there to continue my apprenticeship under three masters I was lucky to know--Benny Bennett, Dick McGraw, and Mabel Stark. I had Uncle Ben and Dick the whole time, but just the last 3 1/2 years of Mabel's life, as she left us in April, 1968. I was grateful to be there and to gain the interest of those who would give me the inside, jealously guarded stepping stones of this work, when the saying in those days was, "If you didn't break in at Thousand Oaks, you didn't break in."
My very best to you in your research of these memorable remainders of true American circus.
Cordially,
Roger Smith
I recieved this today and wanted to pass it on.
"This was the second wagon acquired by Jerry Booker."
Bob
Post a Comment