CLOWN ALLEY: More With Milton

Scans courtesy of circusbutterflygirl



Last week we saw, courtesy of Greg DeSanto, a Hy Gardner column from the Roanoke Times dated May 21, 1970 that featured Milton Berle with several members of the Ringling Clown Alley.

Today we see, courtesy of circusbutterflygirl, two other Hy Gardner columns, one from the Salina Journal in Salina, KS dated August 5, 1969 (featuring a different photo from the same photo op) and another from an unidentified source date May 28, 1970 with wider version of the first photo.

And this info comes to us from Michael Karp, who can be seen on the far left in all three photos...

The photo itself reveals less than meets the eye! It is a living example of the old PR dictum, often quoted by George Burns: "If the legend doesn't agree with the truth, print the legend!"

For example: the clipping is dated May 21, 1970.

But the photo itself was taken in the summer of 1969, at the Inglewood Forum outside of Los Angeles, and was merely a straight-ahead photo op.

Jack Ryan of Solters and Sabinson, who handled the show's national PR, simply hustled several of us out of the alley, shot the photo and whisked Berle away!

Contrary to what's implied in the caption, there was no sitting around with Berle shooting the breeze, telling stories of legendary vaude performers, dissecting comedy...nor any CC Graduation appearance!

The photo became a "stock shot" to be used for whatever publicity hook Ringling's various press agents could come up with!

The photo first ran in the LA Times during our run in Inglewood...Now, a couple of weeks later, in Long Beach, the paper there ran a "Local-Boy-Makes-Good" story on Scott Bryan and used the same photo.

BUT! Since the article wasn't about Berle, they cut ME out of the photo entirely, and pasted MY face on Milton Berle's body!!!!! Berle wasn't mentioned in the caption at all!

(Scott tells me he has a copy of that photo; maybe he could post it here...it's a hoot!)

I often wanted to send a copy of that photo to Berle and tell him, "With your body and my head, we could really go places..." Thank God I never did!