SHOWMAN ON TOUR

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6441, 22 January 1924, Page 5

SHOWMAN ON TOUR

PHIL. WIRTH IN U.S.A. SHOWS AND ATTRACTIONS Among, those, on the Niagara, en route for Austoalia from America, is Mr Phil. Wirth, who ha s been for nine months abroad looking for something the public will like as additions to the well-known Wirth’s circus. “It’s hard work to get anything really worth while,” he remarked to a “Sun” man. “And the prices they ask, it would kill you,” he added. “The trouble is, he explained, “they are all flocking'to America, which is the most wonderful country in the word, with the most hard-working and energetic people getic people I ever saw airgoing on top. I consider I was lucky in getting three first-class attractions to add to the show in the midget Prince Bygonga, the Bert Hughes family, and a party of Spaniards who go under the name of the Egochagas. The prince is a very little fellow who is a wonderful horseman; the Hughes’ are Londoners, who play football on bicycles, a very funny act; and the Spaniards stage a comedy bull fight with dogs as bulls, while they also do a very good musica turn. And I also managed to get a baby elephant who is a real baby, about the size of a mastiff dog. While he was impressed with the tremendous high pressure at which the Americtns ive and work, Mr Wirth was not at all enamoured of the climate there. Especially did he dislike the winter, having just left snow and sleet and aching cold at Vancouver, he was particularly taken with the lovely weather with which New Zealand greeted him at Auckland. . “You have the finest climate in the world here,” he enthused. “And that reminds me that I visited al the most talked of hot springs inAmcrica, at Arkansas, Virginia, and Coorado, and they are not a patch on Rotorua. The Americans have no conception of the extent and variety of the Rotorua springs. Why, at Virginia, the hot springs they talk so much about they have only one warm pool. If the American peope knew what you have at Rotorua you would have milions of them coming here for health purposes.” In the course of chatting on things in general, Mr Wirth mentioned that he had a look at Madam Duse, who was the ruling theatrical star in America at the moment. The people in New York had gone mad about her and her opening night had brought 33,000 dollars to the box office, but personally he considered her only a pale imitation.