JACK BENNY STATUE: Rancho Cucamonga, CA

One of the catch-phrases of the radio show "The Jack Benny Program" involved a train announcer (Mel Blanc) who said over the loudspeaker, "Train now leaving on track five for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cuc... amonga," taking progressively longer pauses between "Cuc" and "amonga."

Part of the joke, for the Los Angeles audience, was that no such train route existed, although all three cities (or at the time, towns) do exist.

As a tribute to this 'publicity', the city of Rancho Cucamonga built its minor-league baseball stadium on a street they named Jack Benny Way, and erected a bronze statue of the TV host outside of the building's entrance.

The Jack Benny statue has since moved to the Victoria Gardens Cultural Center. (Coincidentally, Jack Benny Way intersects with Rochester Avenue, which is not named for the character portrayed by Eddie Anderson on "The Jack Benny Program", but was named in 1889 after the hometown of three investors, all of whom were brothers from Rochester, New York).

FUMAGALLI: Conducting

DAVID LARIBLE: Tour Dates

Courtesy of Giovanni Lagorio and Lee Andrews

GENE SHELDON: Hollywood Palace

Link courtesy of Beth Grimes via Tommy Moore

There is a lot of great stuff in this clip of Rowan & Martin hosting the Hollywood Palace but the most important, for our purposes here, in Mr. Gene Sheldon, who starts at about the 6:00 mark.

MARCO CAROLEI: Korea (2007)

LINSEY POLLACK: Carrot Clarinet

From Jeffrey Potts


Linsey Pollak drills out a carrot and turns it into a clarinet and plays it, live looping with a Boss RC20 to record 3 layers....from his solo show "Making Jam"

TOBY "CIRCUS" BALLANTINE & MARK STOLZENBERG: New York City (undated)

I had another great phone conversation with Toby this morning where he dropped quite a bombshell. He told me that he had been taught the art of wire and silk prop construction by Prof. Paul Wenzel... I'm going to let that sink in for a minute. The "lost art" of wire and silk prop construction isn't lost!

Toby... we need to talk more!

THE LAVRACCIS

BILL IRWIN: Teaching at the University of South Florida

STAN BULT: International Circus Clown Club Eggs

Article courtesy of Mark Newgarden

Please click the title of this post to link to an April 1957 Modern Mechanix article about Stan Bult and his hobby of painting circus clowns' makeups on eggs for the International Circus Clown Club.

DAVID LARIBLE: Theater Tour?

Anyone have any information on Mr. Larible's current theater tour?

PAOLO CASANOVA

COLORS SHOW

CHAZ CHASE: At the Movies

A still from Public Jitterbug No. 1 (1939)

A clip from Tod Browning's West of Zanzibar (1928). Look for Chaz at about 3:20 in.

OTTO GRIEBLING: Undated Press Photo

LAUREL & HARDY: Silent Clowns

COMMENTS

I had to turn on the "captcha" filter for a week in an effort to cut down the number of robo-spam messages that we've been receiving. Each new post was generating about 100 spam messages each and it was getting tiring having to go through and delete them all.

I apologize for any inconvenience. Hopefully, things will be better now.

INTERNATIONAL CLOWN HALL OF FAME: Jango Edwards' $1 Million Dollar Challenge!!!

Jango Edwards called today from Barcelona to make the following offer: If the International Clown Hall of Fame can raise $1 million U.S. dollars in donations by Friday December 31st, 2010 he will MATCH it with one million dollars of his own money... that's right, one million dollars out of his own pocket!!!

Please help us to reach our goal by clicking the PayPal button to the right...

AND SPREAD THE WORD!!!

HAROLD LLOYD: Silent Clowns