Caption on reverse "September 2, 1938 L.A Calif. Afternoon crowd now leaving the circus. Sideshow Band was playing in the midway."
Look close and you will see one of the acts was "The World's Lowest Type Human" and I hate to speculate on that one. Suzie born with the Skin of an Elephant.
If the date on the reverse of this photo is correct, you are seeing the sun go down in the afternoon and the lights go out in the evening. Hagenbeck-Wallace ceased operation the same year.
For those of you animal rights folks out there, in 1913 the circus lost 8 elephants, 21 lions and 8 performing horses in a flood in 1913. That pales in comparison to the train wreck they had five years later, in which an engineer further down the track fell asleep at the throttle and crashed his train into the rear of the Hagenbeck's. Kerosene lamps on the circus train spread fire immediately to the wooden cars, and 86 circus members died, another 127 were injured.
AT THE CIRCUS IN BLACK AND WHITE is a occasional feature on Dull Tool Dim Bulb. This is number 31 in the series.
Original Snapshot 1938 Collection Jim Linderman
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