Sunday, September 24, 2017

#16 Clyde Beatty


Posted by Buckles at 9/24/2017 04:53:00 AM

8 comments:

Chic Silber said...


10 days in Lighthouse Field

in Philly over Memorial Day

weekend with James E Strates

sharing the lot (great date)

Princess Grace's family was

in a Philly suburb

24 September, 2017 08:44
Chic Silber said...


Had to have been early 60s

24 September, 2017 08:46
Chic Silber said...


The boy on Prince Rainier's lap

is Prince Albert who together

with younger sister Stephanie

(not in photo) continues to run

the circus festival started by

their father in 1974

24 September, 2017 10:08
Unknown said...

I loved to go to Lighthouse field every year. Always a good time. One of my favorite stories with Clyde was when I was a teenager and we went to a gun shop to get some work done on revolvers he had recently bought. The guy kind of doubted Clyde about who he was etc. Anyway, about two weeks later I went to pick up the revolvers. The guy was all excited and told me that the guy I was with the other week really was Clyde Beatty. He had seen him on tv the night before.

I get the guns in a paper bag and walk up the main street of Allentown to drop them with my Dad at work. I thought I had bomb under my arm!

24 September, 2017 17:58
Roger Smith said...

Grace's father, old John Kelly, toughed it out in his youth as a brick-laying streetworker, straight off the boat from poverty in Ireland. He literally helped pave Philadelphia's streets one brick at a time, and some of these streets still exist. John fought it out the hard way and made himself a place among the city's richest elite. He was a hard case as a father, and opposed Grace's dreams of acting stardom. She found an out, and as we know, won a Best Actress Oscar in 1954 for THE COUNTRY GIRL.

In 1964, when I joined Beatty, I quickly became his chauffeur. Wherever he went, Mr. Beatty was driven. So I was a little surprised when he took off several mornings, saying he had errands, and didn't need me right then. I later learned that Ranier and Grace had gotten him in with the top Philadelphia doctors one could not otherwise get appointments with for a year. He was given extensive examinations by leading specialists, but alas, it was 1964, and diagnostics then failed to define his cancer. Later that summer, his symptoms of internal burning increased, and he entered Billings Hospital, in Chicago, for that first cancer surgery. He did not return to the show that season. He gave it a hardy try in early 1965, but had to return home to Ventura, in May. He died on July 19th, in Community Memorial Hospital, at age 63. He is interred in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hill's mausoleum, Courts of Remembrance.

24 September, 2017 18:10
Unknown said...

Behind every great act is great music and Clyde[s act was no exception. Karl Knecht, I believe, put it together. It sent chills down your spine and Boom Boom had it down to a science. Those really were the days.

24 September, 2017 19:47
Eric said...

On Washington’s Birthday in 1962, I saw Clyde Beatty perform in Cleveland Public
Auditorium as the featured act of that year’s edition of the Al Sirat Grotto Circus. The music played for his act was as follows:

William Tell Storm Music (Rossini)
Burma Patrol (King)
Bolero (Ravel)
Caravan Club (King)
Malagueña (Lecuona)
March from the “The Love for the Three Oranges” (Prokofiev)
Malagueña (Lecuona) reprise
Miserlou (Roubanis)
The Big Cage Galop (King)

This might have been the music used for Beatty’s indoor dates, which featured larger bands than the under canvas CBCB band.

Later, when I was in college, “Boom Boom” Browning lent me his collection of CBCB performance tapes to copy. They included the 1963 CBCB performance recorded in Philadelphia. That year, Beatty’s music was slightly different:

William Tell Storm Music (Rossini)
Burma Patrol (King)
Bolero (Ravel)
A Salute to the Sultan (King)
Malagueña (Lecuona)
March from the “The Love for the Three Oranges” (Prokofiev)
Miserlou (Roubanis)
The Big Cage Galop (King)

It would interesting to know the numbers that were played for Beatty’s act back during the 1930s, ‘40’s and ‘50s. If someone has them written down somewhere, please share them with us.

25 September, 2017 18:29
Roger Smith said...

Jane Beatty asked me for the score of the Beatty act, during her legal battles with Jerry Collins over his refusal to continue royalty payments for Beatty's name. The list I gave her for '64, owing to the variables of season-to-season choice of selections, differs only slightly from ERIC's list.

Storm Scene from the Wm. Tell Overture (Rossini) - Entry and seating of the lions
Bolero (Ravel) - Entry and seating of the tigers
Salute to the Sultan (King) - Barrel roll by Duke lion, his return and lion sit-ups
March from The Love of Three Oranges (Prokofiev) - Stalking come-down by rollover
tiger Prince
The Queen's Entrance from Scheherazade (Rimsky-Korsakoff) - Rollover tiger Prince
Drum rolls - Boom Boom Browning - Spinning tiger Frisco
Jungle Drums (Lecuona) - Lion lay-down (In other seasons, Miserlou accompanied this
feature. For one year, Jane Beatty had it
working to The Breeze and I (Lecuona))
The Big Cage Galop (King) - Break-up of the lay-down until all lions exited.
Storm Scene (Rossini) Reprise - To play Beatty off

26 September, 2017 02:22

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