The Sells-Floto Circus along with the rest of the American Circus Corporation had been bought by John Ringling in 1929. Here we find a 1931 Sells-Floto poster proclaiming the hallowed Greatest Show on Earth. Was this poetic licence since John Ringling owned them all or did someone overstep their bounds?Didn't the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus try using the Greatest Show on Earth in the early 1960's only to be hit with a lawsuit?
4 comments:
Hi Bob,
I had thought the dust-up over the Beatty/Cole title was concerning "The Greatest Circus on Earth" inside the globe logo.
Rick Faber
When I was on the Beatty-Cole advance starting in 1960 we had paper with the "Greatest Circus on Earth" globe but we also had printed pieces showing a circle with "World's Largest Circus" wording which we pasted over the earlier design before using those posters. So the Ringling threat had apparently been settled by then. I don't think it actually went to court.
Most of the date tails of Sells-Floto that I have seen have, I think have- "Tom Mix" or "Tom Mix and Tony" and not the GSOA logo. I wonder if there was a switch with dates or the printer had a mistake. I don't recall if there is any 31' Sells-Floto paper with date tags in the Hertzberg collection from this San Antonio date. In the Joe Heiser collection there are only a couple of Sells-Floto with dates, but I think they are 1932 and have Goliath on them instead of Tom Mix and at this late date I don't remember what town he had them for. p.j.
I got to thinking about 1931 and RBBB. They went to the barn early in 1931 after they played Atlanta on sept.14th and they closed the season. Maybe Sells-Floto with Tom Mix replaced them in some of their fall dates??? Maybe that is why the RBBB date tag is on Sells-Floto paper?
p.j.
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