Posted 10 years ago
Circuspost…
(30 items)
By Chris Berry
email: circusposters@gmail.com
When Jess Adkins and Zack Terrell formed their Cole Bros Circus in 1935, the headliner was Clyde Beatty, and several new posters featured his image. The artwork associated with this lithograph is among the best, and as seen below, it was used for over 15 years with various titles above the image of Beatty and his "40 Man-eating Lions and Royal Bengal Tigers". This particular poster was produced as small as a window card and as large as a barn-covering 24-sheet.
In 1941, the Hamid-Morton Circus moved from indoor dates to a canvas show. The artists at Erie Litho did an amazing job reworking the title on the five year old poster without affecting the integrity of the artwork.
During the mid-1940s the same artwork was used by Clyde Beatty-Russell Bros Circus in 1943 and Clyde Beatty-Wallace Bros in 1944. It was such a great design that the exact same image was as used on the Russell Bros Pan-Pacific Railroad Circus of 1945, even though Beatty himself was on road with his own Clyde Beatty truck show that season.
By the time the "Clyde Beatty Trained Wild Animal Circus" poster was used in 1947, the original artwork was now over 10 years old. The Erie Litho and Ptg company was still in business in 1947 and the original Cole Bros title was removed and the lettering reworked so that the title of the new railroad circus was prominently featured. A version of the poster was used as late as 1950, 15 years after it was first put in store windows promoting Cole Bros.
By 1950 however, Erie Litho and Printing was no longer producing circus posters, and the lithograph that was used that season was actually a rehash of the 1943 version with "Trained Wild Animal" pasted over the words "Russell Bros." Evidently there was a stash of "Clyde Beatty Russell Bros" posters on a shelf somewhere, and rather than waste them, they were recycled with the newer show title.
-Chris Berry
circusposters@gmail.com
