MARK ANTHONY: The Bullfight Gag, Ringling 1964

Mark Anthony performs a bullfight (with dogs as the bulls) on the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1964.

The source footage is very dark so we see two performances of the gag from two different shows, the second of which I tried to digitally make a little brighter.

In between we see Jackie Le Claire and Billy Ward performing a variation on Jackie's father's (Jack LeClair) "Spark Plug" bendover walkaround with Jackie replacing Barney Google's horse Spark Plug with a circus elephant.

THIS JUST IN!!!

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From Jackie himself...


You know, of course, that my father created and built this bendover way back in the 40's.

He had previously a bendover horse that he called Spark Plug. Spark Plug was a cartoon horse in the Snuffy Smith cartoon
series. It was Barney Google's horse. The horse was always drawn with a full length blanket, not showing the legs. My father got the idea of what a great bendover it would make as you would not have to worry about legs.

He trained me in it and I must say it was always a great surprise and made a big hit in the show and also on the South American, Cuban, Russian and European tours as it was different. He had the horse head from a wire frame and paper mache. The ears wiggled back and forth, the eyes used to light up and powder would shoot out of it's nostrils, making it all the more interesting.

It was indeed, very heavy, so when he created the elephant, (he laughed that after all his year with circuses, he actually had to go down to the library to get a photo of what an elephant really looked like) it was done with simply a wire frame covered by grey material and accents.

It was so much lighter!

He always admired Paul Wentzel's piano wire creations and would have built it that way but working with piano wire, welding it, that was a skill that he did not have.

Billy Ward worked the cloth and yes, he did it well in Russia (first time I ever worked with him) and Europe and the finish of the '64 season.

I still have it, or rather it is stored at Chuck Sidlow's. We did do it once at Van Wezel.

Hope this is enough information for you.

Love,
Jackie