by Paul R. Spitzzeri
We are getting, albeit slowly, to the Baldwin Park part of this post on some of the history involving the Al. G. Barnes Circus, which migrated to this region in 1911 to establish winter quarters in Venice, largely remaining there for more than fifteen years before the move to the rural San Gabriel Valley town. In the early Teens, the trustees in the independent coastal burg were more than excited to have Barnes spend the period, generally, from December to March in town as it was viewed as giving Venice visibility, not to mention revenue.
Because of its lengthy presence in the area during that period, Barnes often allowed for elements of his establishment to be utilized, such as having animals exhibited in the auditorium on what was called the Windward or Abbot Kinney Pier or, in early 1913, allowing some of his menagerie to be used for a benefit put together by the Shriners fraternal order at their auditorium (precursor to the current facility) in downtown Los Angeles.
An interesting description of the circus appeared in the Pomona Progress-Bulletin of 29 October 1914 when the “general contracting agent,” Murray Pennock was asked to explain the difference between Barnes’ show from the typical “regulation” circus. The short answer was that it utilized “trained animals—largely wild animals” and it was further explained that, in the nine years since the “innovation” was created, “the new amusement idea met with approval from the public” such that “his circus now ranks as the largest animal show in the world.”
Pennock listed the variety of “big, thrilling, sensational wild animals” in the show, including bears, camels, dogs, elephants, kangaroos, lions, monkeys, sea lions and tigers, along with “a troupe of 550 beautiful horses and ponies.” The agent continued,
For thirty-five years, Mr. Barnes has been a trainer of wild animals, and early in his career decided that the public would welcome an exclusive clean wholesome entertainment given by educated animals, and to that purpose he bent his efforts . . .
A many-sided man, is our Mr. Barnes. He fondles the lions, tigers and bears and they answer his call as that of a friend. When they become unruly or “go bad” Barnes becomes the trainer and reduces the beasts to a state of tractability again. He is known as the only circus owner in the world who can work any act in the show.
There is a fair amount to unpack in that statement, starting with the assertion that Barnes was 35 years into his career, which meant that he supposedly began when he was about 17. The 1880 census, however, lists him with his family in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and his occupation was given as a farmer—perhaps breaking horses, these said to be his “particular hobby,” was his entré into that world.
Also of note is the difference between a “trained” and an “educated” animal, as it became more common for Barnes to use the latter as a level above the traditional sense of circus animal training. As to the idea that wild animals and humans can be friends, there has been or remains a good deal of debate about that description and a core reason for the decline in circuses is the question of animal welfare.
Part two ended with some discussion of the failed marriage between Barnes and his wife, performer and purported business partner, Dollie, with controversies between them carrying on for many years, as we shall see. There was a circus culture far different than that of mainstream American society, and with men and women mingling together for months each year and traveling in a peripatetic life, it is hardly surprising that issues came up like alcoholism, drug abuse and romantic quarrels.
Early in 1915, the Venice Vanguard addressed a controversy involving trainer Louis Roth, his wife, former trainer Mercedes, and a third such figure, Mabel Stark, who also practiced that occupation—more on her later. Mrs. Roth had her husband picked up by the police after she went to Los Angeles County District Attorney Thomas Lee Woolwine “and unfolded a tale of married life’s uncertainties.” Naturally, infidelity has long been abandoned as a justification for arrest, but it was then very much a moral question—though it could also be a tool for revenge.
In any case, Stark insisted that “this woman is insane when she says that her husband is in love with me or that I am in love with him. I have enough to do to mind my own business without running around with or for any woman’s husband.” The trainer, who achieved no small renown in the field as a rare woman of note, added, “I feel safer with my family of leopards than I do with her, and as for tigers I would rather face a cage full of them than this woman’s tongue.”
Moreover, Stark claimed that Mercedes Roth had her arrested many times and insisted she had no relationship with Louis Roth—she did, though, marry him later. Barnes, too, had his run-ins with the allegedly jilted woman, stating,
I have letters in my possession in which she said she was going to shoot me unless I discharged Roth. I could not have her around my show because she was incompetent, and for that reason she wanted me to discharge her husband.
While the city was happy to have the circus keep its winter quarters in Venice, there were residents who were less than thrilled. The Los Angeles Times of 12 February 1916 briefly reported that, due to a local judge’s decision, “Al. G. Barnes was given less than a week . . . in which to remove his lions, tigers, bears and other noise-producing animals to quarters where they will not interfere with the tranquility of Ernest and Dorothy Miller.” The couple asserted that “the sounds [the animals] produced were alleged to resemble a buzz-saw cutting through a knot [in wood], and again the squeal of an oilless trolley car wheel.”
The Vanguard, in its 8 April edition, reprinted correspondence between Barnes and the corresponding secretary of the chamber of commerce with the circus owner responded to a request to pay his dues by airily asking, “will you kindly use these two iron men [two dollars] to try and pacify the so ‘particular’ citizens of Venice who objected to the noise from the shoe factory[?]” while he offered a little verse: “When the summer time is over / And we are thinking about going home / We’re going home to some town / Where they treat us like their own.”
While the chamber official did not directly address the crack about noise cancelling neighbors, he did offer his own bit of doggerel:
When winter drives you to retirement
And the summer’s work is o’er
Bring your animals to Venice
For we miss their joyous roar.
As mentioned in the last part of this post, the Barnes circus was domiciled in an area east of Pacific Avenue (then called Trolleyway, because it had the track of the Pacific Electric Railway streetcar) and south of Windward Avenue. By late 1916, the quarters were situated to the north with one street mentioned being Vista Place, now running between Pacific and Main, and the other being Elena Street—perhaps someone can alert us to its current moniker.
The Vanguard of 16 December, however, reported that
There is no little complaint from the residents of Vista Place and Elena street, about the noises of the Al. G. Barnes’ wild animals at present located in these districts. The residents complain that it is impossible to get a night’s sleep because of [the] howling and roaring of the animals.
The paper, though, was informed that the plan was not to have the animals kept there during the winter, but, instead, to place them at the Venice Pier for public viewing as soon as new structures were completed. The Elena Street property was to be retained by the circus, but used as a repair and paint shop for its fleet of vehicles, “thus removing any annoying features.”
Barnes, however, began looking for other locales. The Los Angeles Express of 8 February 1917 observed that “prospects that Al. G. Barnes’ wild animal shows, now at Venice for the winter, will spend the winter’s layoff of three months in Los Angeles next year are declared by the Chamber of Commerce officials to be bright.” It was added that some $100,000 in revenue accrued to the coastal city.
The prior day, the Vanguard remarked the the Venice chamber was meeting in a few days on “the subject of offering inducements” to Barnes and his circus “to winter in Venice next year.” This was because “the Los Angeles chamber is planning to offer many inducements to the show, realizing the publicity it affords the city in addition to the money spent in preparing the circus for the next season.” Moreover, it was reported that “Los Angeles is planning to offer free grounds and buildings.”
Whatever the chamber and the trustees came up with obviously worked, as Barnes sent a “route card,” which provided a list of all the cities visited by the circus during its season, and, after traveling some 16,000 miles during that period of close to nine months, the correspondence, commented the Vanguard, “shows a very strong longing for the finish of his long season and a little restup in his winter home at Venice.”
Barnes wrote on the bottom of the card,
We winter in “Venice by the Sea” in Sunny Southern California. Beautiful climate all winter. We can always use show people and working men in all departments. If you want to spend your winter in “Beautiful Southern California,” in “Venice by the Sea,” join the Al. G. Barnes Circus.
Another notable sidelight during this period was an early reference to connections to a burgeoning film industry in Los Angeles and the 19 February edition of the paper informed readers that “the world renowned circus magnate, Al. G. Barnes and his handsome looking ‘trusty,’ [meaning, manager] Al Sands, have at last broken into the ‘movies,’ and after a successful try-out with the Universal Film Company, they have been offered a salary running into six figures, so it is rumored, if they would promise to desert the ‘tan bark’ and spend their remaining days before the camera.”
It is interesting to ponder, for instance, where the jungle animals were procured for the series of short films based, very loosely, on the African explorations of Henry Stanley and starring Josephine M. Workman, granddaughter of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste and known by her stage-name of Princess Mona Darkfeather. In trying to break free of the obvious stereotyping engendered by that moniker, Darkfeather and her producer/director husband, Frank E. Montgomery, made these pictures and used elephants and other animals. But, did these come from the Barnes circus?
We’ll conclude this part by going into some detail concerning a fascinating article from the Vanguard and its 23 December 1918 edition. Penned by Emma W. Miller, it was titled “Christmas in the Circus Winter Quarters In Venice” and began with, as American troops will still largely stationed in Europe some six weeks or so after the end of the First World War,
When reveille is resounding throughout camps and cantonments and sleepy doughboys trundle forth, the circus family smile[s] when daybreak comes and turn over in bed to snooze. For seven months or more they have been lulled to sleep by tooting railroad engines and the swir of rushing trains past their car windows at an hour long after midnight taps have sounded over the land; and are awakened a few hours later by a burly trainmaster yelling: “get up, you!” From the advance guard who are awakened by more polite bell-boys, to the real heroic performer[s], who are given until eight o’clock [t]o rise, circus reveille becomes a bugbear that only the visions of rest in California winter quarters can rouse them to the affairs of the day—with its varied colorings and experiences.
Miller went on that it was seven weeks ahead of schedule that the Barnes circus returned to Venice for its winter. This was due to “great confusion” as the owner tried to secure proper arrangements “for the winter housing which Miss I.N. Fluenza has hastened home.” In other words, the terrible scourge of the flu pandemic that ravaged much of the world during that period led to the cancellation of performances and the early return.
Still, the writer continued, agents and managers soon went right to work looking to establish the 1919 schedule, while “the lay members, except the 150 or so who remain on duty the year round, either went forth seeking temporary jobs to tide them over until spring, when the nomads of the saw dust trail will again begin their annual jaunt” for the show’s upcoming season.
Miller observed that circus folk “will swear that there never was such a hard life as circusing” and were “glad the season is over . . . apparently showing their displeasure with the life they have chosen.” Yet, she added, “before the Xmas bells chime forth its ‘Peace on earth’ those same members are wondering when the ‘troup is going out.'”
Employees kept on hand for the winter break were kept busy enough, caring for the animals, refurbishing equipment like wood or iron work for wagons, “for although the intense work of renewing does not begin until after the New Year there is some activity already to be seen at the show’s winter quarters at Venice.” An office and wardrobe department included women recently cheered as they worked with horses and lions sitting at tables and getting costumes readied for the next season.
With the coming of 1919, animal training (education) would resume in earnest and “the new arrivals are to have an opportunity to get acquainted with their future comrades before the intense training begins.” Work with lions and tigers took place in the middle of the night “for this is the time the wild beats are most active and show greater agility and individuality,” while camels, elephants, horses, llamas and zebras were “educated” during the day. Notably, animals were kept on short rations, though with minimal activity and what was described as “comfortable housing” so they would not “get so lazy.”
As for the Yuletide, Miller noted that the life of circus employees “is one of glitter and good-will but their home ties are few.” Consequently, they “will mostly be eating a frugal holiday dinner at a public eating house, or a frugal dinner in a small apartment house.” Those few who were with their families “will make a sham fight at playing Christmas, but the soul will not be there” as “their life is the spring and summer seasons” of performance. Part of that “sham fight” was embodied in her description of the fact that,
They hear the expressions of good cheer, look into the shop windows and make a few purchases, perhaps, of the season’s gifts, drop a few pennies into the Salvation [Army] Xmas pot, join in the raffle to raise funds for the orphan and renew their Red Cross subscription, but the real Christmas is not a part of life . . . because it is the season when all their facilities are taking a rest, when the pocketbook is leanest, when the anxiety is for the coming season.
The writer concluded that it was hardly a lonely life, but “the jingle of Santa is not the jingle they know best,” nor were they well-versed on the religious significance of the holiday season. Instead, “wait until the bugle to assemble for the [circus] season’s trouping and these nomad entertainers will be there,—and all there.” With that, Miller ended with the note that “now, they are enjoying their California winter quarters and believe themselves the luckiest of creatures to have such a place of comfort and happiness to come to.”
Soon, though, there would be a move to another quarters, a few miles inland, and that foreshadows the fourth part of this post, which comes soon. So, keep an eye out for that next segment of our story.