SNAPSHOTS: ALLEN'S BEARS
Jumping forward a few years to the early '60's on The Gil Gray Circus, in the top photo is Charlie Allen & daughter Kay, in the bottom photo is Beverly. Charlie had one Black bear named Jim, who seemed to have a super gentle nature,(if that's possible for a bear), I remember while in Kennywood Park, Jim was sleeping in the grass beside the stage, and one of the kids playing on stage fell off & landed on top of him, he just moved over and went back to sleep.
posted by 24-HOUR-MAN | 12:08 PM
3 Comments:
Charlie and I became fast friends during our Jungleland days. We had a few over-nighters with beer and hot dogs at Malibu Beach, leaving the womenfolk at home. Charlie brokered my deals for my two tours with Miller-Johnson when I took out the Jungleland Fighting Lions and doubled as Ringmaster. We also worked on Dr. Dolittle together where Beverly and the bears were on camera in the Blossom's Circus sequences. To my dismay, Information no longer lists them in their long-time stronghold, Pixley, California. We know Charlie passed. Maybe someone has an update for us.
Charlie had a ball-kicking zebra he had spent major training time with to get the animal in the ring, not to mention working. It killed Charlie to hear some kid say, "Mom! Look at that zebra!" And Mom retorted, "No, son. These are circus people. All they did is paint stripes on a horse."
Charlie visited us on a mudshow in the 60's and got the organist to change music for the ropespinning..To see Richard do a skip done all the way down the front track to a "pretty girl is like a mellody.."one of the outstanding memories cc
I did not catch if Richard is an elephant or Human doing the skip.
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