CIRCUS PEOPLE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22712, 26 October 1935, Page 22

CIRCUS PEOPLE

AND THEIR ANIMALS SUPERSTITIONS AND HABITS SWEEPS FOR LUCK. Circus people, like actors and actresses, are extremely superstitious. Many or them, savs William G. Bosworth, in an article in the Sunday Chronicle, believe that the last performance of a season is unlucky. They deeni it auspicious it the first performance is badly attended by the paying public, and at least one owner contrives to play the first performance ot a tour to an almost empty tent, secure in the belief that a bad first house .s followed by many capacity houses to come. A fool who opens an umbrella m the tent is a luckless Jonah, who will certainly bring bad luck to any circus; but a chimney sweep, begrimed by the evidences of his trade, is worth meeting, for soot and brushes prognosticate luck. But in other directions they are right up to date. The Belle Vue Circus, Manchester we’ are told, recently produced the first circus laughometer—four microphones suspended from the roof and connected to a recording chart, where an automatic pen made a permanent record of the intensity of every laugh. Invented by James Edgar, the chief electrician, and William Rubinstein, the laughometer recorded an average of 69.5 laughs per hour. WATCHING THE CHILDREN. Lancashire and the north have always been strongholds of the circus. Ihe Tower Circus at Blackpool is annually visited by 924,000 people, and is now the only permanent circus in Great Britain presenting an animal circus season of approximately five months duration, from Whit Week until the end of OetoBlackpool’s famous clown. Doodles, like others of his fraternity, times his laugns with great care:—Members of the audience fire often utilised as ot the success of a joke or comic action. Doodles watches to see if the children laugh, and if they are not amused he considers he cannot expect many smiles from the adults. The vigour of a horse-play act is regarded according to the sophistication or stupidity of the audience. Last winter London saw its hrst woman clown at Olympia. But Mr Bosworth thinks that women’s humour is not strictly knockabout. It is something far gentler and less formalised than the Joey wuh a red-hot poker applying it to baggybreeched colleagues. The male clown is the true Pagliacci, with pathos behind Ins painted smile, losing nothing by sporting with somersaults, water, sausages, lather, and all the tricks that comprise the traditional clown business. Woman m the motley savours more of pierette than pantaloon, and she will not invade clowning proper with one-tenth of the success she has achieved in medicine or aviation. WOMEN AS TRAINERS. But women have successfully invaded the animal training profession. Indeed, there have been fundamental changes since the last half of the nineteenth century, when the circus wild bcast_ trainer vas a “ tamer,” and exhibited his charges jn a wagon cage, with properties of pitchforks, torches, hot irons, and heavy whips. He and his hussar uniform have vanished for ever, and he has been supplanted by alert men in light attire and even by lithe ladies, some of them in velvet trunks and brassiere, the modern circus version of beauty- and the beasts. And everybody knows the equestriennes and the women trapeze artists. Mr Bosworth spoke to Miss Marie Antoinette Concello, of the “ Flying Cornelias, on the subject of timing on the high trapeze: “We don’t always judge it rightly, she confessed. “We don’t count. VVe just have to feel when it is the right second to take off and sometimes, if I ni a bit tired or have a headache, I choose the wrong second. “When that happens the catchers got to realise it almost before I’m in the air and adjust himself to meet the change “ Sometimes 1 do take off a fraction too early or too late and our catcher fixes it. A good catcher’s an important part of our work, believe me! ” Before an accident forced him to retire, Alfredo Codona was the admitted king of trapezists:— “ He was the only man in the world to turn three distinct somersaults on his flight from trapeze to catcher, and while he flashed through the air he was travelling at the rate of 62 miles an hour.” When they are in England, we are told, “aerialists” are inclined “to look askance at the net which the law of the land decrees be stretched beneath them, believing that its presence robs j their performance of much of its appeal,” IS IT DANGEROUS? For many people the wild animals are the greatest attraction of a circus. Is the trainer's work really' dangerous? It seems to be largely a matter of luck. Anyone might safely walk into a lion's cage, but the walking out is the difficulty-. Even the tamest wild beast still possesses the inherent stalking instinct, and. a retreating man is but a thing to be hunted. The majority of the wild beasts that perform in the circus ring are well be-

haved, although now and again a trainer gets mauled and at times even fatally injured. The roars are not inevitably betokening savagery, for, many beasts roar for the sheer joy of noise. Constant and careful rehearsals .ar« necessary. Lions and tigers betray tneir intelligence by working faultlessly at rehearsals, which has no set time limit, and then, when they get into the ring for the show to which the public is admitted, acting stupidly in the hope that some work will be cut out, knowing full well wat the act has a time limit. Tigers, we learn, are by far the most dangerous of all captive carnivora. They are treacherous, stealthy, and ague, quite different from lions.” But apparently •they can be faithful. “ When Fritz Fischer died in 1926 his tigers refused their tood for four days after his death, . In training, the. -weapons -carried by the trainer are a'kitchen-chair or a birch broom —both chair legs and twigs confuse the animals without irritating them. A beast deciding to attack is met with this weapon, and, in the case of the chair, i» received on one .of the'legs. He retreats, tries again, and once moire is met by the chair. Then co nes'stage two, when training proper begins, and as the chair advances so the beast gives way. “It is taught to move this way or that as the man commands, and to rest only where the man permits. The lion or tiger has learnt not to attack the man and to keep its place. . • Clyde Beatty, the American trainer, uses about 70 kitchen chairs during a season, fending off attacks from his group of 40 lions and tigers, THE DUNCES. Wolves and hyenas are sometimes seen in the circus ring. But they will perform only the simplest feats. They ar« the dunces of the animal ‘training class, but the hyena is fearless and does not hesitate to attack a lion.” Sea lions are intelligent and are born performers. They are natural jugglers and, like horses, enjoy the proximity of crowds and the applause. Mr Bosworth makes an interesting statement about the circus horses which are often such a joy to watch. In the ring, he says, the audience sees the animals apparently keeping time-with the band, but in reality it is the other way round, and the band has a most accommodating beat following the baton of a watching chef d’orchestre. The greatest circus trainers declare that the horses are devoid of any sense of time or rhythm, and when they are seen dancing to syncopated music, it is the result of the rider constricting his legs in a recognised sequence. Of all the circus stories one of the most amusing is of the little girl who was taken to Olympia. When she arrived she. saw Lord Lonsdale presenting his usual bouquets to every woman performer. Then came the dazzling show. At the end sh® was asked, “What did you like best?” Sh§ hesitated, a little girl who had seen all that was finest in circus talent. Then she decided;

“ I adored the old man who was selling flowers to the girls and I was glad he sold all he had.”