by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As the 1910s came to an end and the Roaring (literally, in this case) Twenties approached, the Al. G. Barnes Wild Animal Circus, which began modestly some fifteen years prior and grew to a massive enterprise, moved its winter quarters from downtown Venice to an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County close to the recently established town of Culver City, best known for its growing film studio presence.
The relocation seems to have been because of the expansion of Venice as well as the larger space acquired to the east, though it is not commonly known that, for the winter of 1919-1920, the Circus did not return to California. The Venice Vanguard of 13 November reported that,
The Al. G. Barnes shows will close their 1919 season in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 15, where it is believed the show will winter. It will not come to Venice . . . Letters from the show tell of a veery [sic] prosperous season and in fact some of the letters contain information that the season has been the largest financially in the history of the aggregation.
It may be that negotiations concerning local headquarters for that winter failed to yield a satisfactory result for Barnes, so he opted to remain in Phoenix. When the 1920 season, however, ended, the Vanguard of 10 November remarked that the last performance was to be in San Bernardino, but,
The show will not winter in Venice this winter, but will winter on the old Sabacha ranch, between Culver City and “Death Curve” on Washington boulevard. It is claimed that the Al. G. Barnes show has acquired this property and will make a permanent winter quarters on it. In addition to this it has been announced that in addition to it being the winter quarters it will also be used for motion pictures and that a company has been organized for the taking of motion pictures in which animals will be strongly featured.
Some sources render the ranch name as “Sbacha,” but neither that moniker nor “Sabacha” could be found in newspaper or other searched. In any case, what has generally been referred to as the second winter quarters of the circus became a well-known enclave of structures and pens on the east side of Washington Boulevard west of today’s Interstate 405. The name “Death Curve” concerned a portion of Washington to the southwest near present-day Marina del Rey.
The 15 November edition of the Pasadena Star-News commented that, as the show came to town for a performance at Carmelita Park, the former estate of Ezra and Jeanne Carr to the west of downtown where the Norton Simon Museum is now, Barnes recently returned from Africa to acquire more animals for his circus. Moreover, the paper noted that “a new departure with this show its [sic] a musical extravaganza known as ‘Alice in Jungleland,'” apparently inspired by Lewis Carroll’s famed fantasy, “Alice in Wonderland.”
For a short period earlier in 1920, Barnes penned a series of article for the Los Angeles Record called “Wild Animals I Know,” in which he shared stories of the dangerous animals and the training he and others undertook to “educate” them during his long career—this was in advance of a four-day set of performances at Prager (Praeger) Park on Washington and Hill Street, a consistent venue for city shows during these years.
During this period, however, more legal troubles were afoot. While his wife Dollie Barnes, who claimed she fronted him most of the money to get Al started in entertainment, sought a share of the business and also accused him of adultery, but was unable to secure a divorce, as was he, she kept pursuing the matter.
At the end of 1919 came the sensational report that one of his purported paramours from the circus, Babe Eckhart, killed herself at the steps of Al’s train car as it was at a stop in Idaho, and Dollie’s attorneys were previously prepared to have Eckhart testify in a new divorce filing by Al charging her with desertion a half-dozen years prior. When he was asked if she’d committed suicide as described, “he would not admit it, nor that she had taken her own life.
There were two other young circus employees named in Dollie’s cross-complaint, Vivian Bordeaux and Jane Hartigan. In its 27 March 1920 edition, the Vanguard observed that,
It looks like “Out of the frying pan into the fire” for Al G. Barnes, the showman. His evident love for the opposite sex is keeping him continuously before the public to a greater extent than does all the advertising he does for the show . . .
A federal grand jury indicated Barnes on two counts of violating the Mann Act concerning the transport of women across state lines for illicit purposes, while a county grand jury charge of perjury was also filed. The first count of the former concerned Hartigan, brought from Yuma, Arizona to Venice in November 1917, while the other regarded Mrs. Katherine Thompson, who came to the coastal city from Phoenix as the winter downtime came to an end. The latter dealt with testimony before a Superior Court judge in which Barnes denied traveling with Hartigan and Bordeaux in his private rail car.
In her testimony, Bordeaux related how she traveled in the car with Barnes and referred to him as “Daddy,” adding that “he put his arms around me and kissed me.” When, however, she asked about another woman and mentioned Hartigan, Barnes reportedly answered, “well, yes, honey, she’s the woman.” She added she met Barnes when she was just 13 years old and was invited to join the circus and traveled with him from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and then to Venice. After they separated, she went through three failed marriages in very short order, but still professed love for him.
In a separate report by the Long Beach Press-Telegram of 30 March, Barnes’ defense was reportedly going to be that the women “were transported here by the Al. G. Barnes Amusement Company, owners of the Al. G. Barnes circus, in which he is but a small stockholder, not even holding the majority of the stock” and, moreover, “the show, it will be claimed, is owned by his wife, his brother, and other close friends,” so “he is therefore not personally guilty of transporting the women to this city.” The government’s answer simply was that the pair were in his car and shared his berth.
The 27 May edition of the Los Angeles Express found Barnes in more trouble as he was charged with not providing financial support to two children “alleged to be his by their mother, Jane Hartigan.” Yet, Barnes’ attorney told the court that, in the divorce case involving Dollie, Hartigan testified that the children were not his.
In April 1921, however, an agreement was reached by which Dollie and Al were divorced, she received $100,000, he was able to marry Hartigan, with whom he had another child by then, and all of the criminal charges were dismissed. Two years later, however, a Las Vegas divorce (these went back at least that far!) was obtained, by which Sarah was given $300 monthly alimony and $1,000 to pay her attorney’s fees. Notably, reported the Los Angeles Times of 5 May 1923:
Stonehouse [Barnes] asserted that his wife was guilty of many acts of cruelty and that she had whipped him and forced him to take refuge on top of an animal cage to escape her fury. In her cross-complaint Mrs. Stonehouse asserted Stonehouse cut holes in her new riding costume bought for a new riding act. This was admitted by the husband.
Amid all of the personal turmoil, Barnes pressed ahead with further changes and expansions that, naturally, came at a significant financial cost. The Pomona Bulletin of 4 March 1921 noted that, when the circus came to that town for the first shows of the new season, its denizens “will gaze upon the best equipped show train in America, which means in the entire world.”
Specifically, for the new season, “all the coaches are new, and the wagons are loaded on especially built flat [railroad] cars that cost $4500 each,” while “the wild animals and horses are housed in palatial stock cars, and the two big trains are practically new.” With the “Alice in Jungleland” centerpiece reconfigured under the impresario’s supervision, moreover, the circus’ press agent declared that the circus “is better equipped . . . to give satisfaction to the public than ever before” and insisted that critics called the show “the most pretentious offering of the kind ever attempted.”
Not quite three weeks later, as the circus headed to Los Angeles for another Prager Park engagement, the Express of the 24th observed that thousands of children lined the streets for the usual pre-show parade to see the usual components of clowns, elephants, horses, lions and others, while the circus band and a calliope kept accompaniment to the cavalcade. An accompanying photo featured tiger trainer Mabel (written as “Maybelle”) Stark and praised here as fearless while the article also remarked,
For the call of the bigtop is irresistible. Like the wanderlust, the lure of the sawdust ring is perennial, needing only the blare of the circus “perade” to rouse it from slumber. If you do not believe it, ask your neighbor.
Stark was featured again in an 11 November article in the Star-News, as the circus came to Pasadena, and the piece remarked that “woman has achieved many startling things in the recent years” in law, politics and other arenas, but Stark, it asserted, “has done more than this.” Namely, “not only has she achieved that which no other woman has ever done before her, but her feat has never been accomplished by man, either,” in that she tamed Bengal tigers “which circus men have long declared to be untrainable.”
That day, however, the Press-Telegram reprinted a report from Colton near San Bernardino, in which it was noted that the “circus train was stopped here early today by a sheriff’s posse, following a shooting scrape starting between two negro circus employees shortly after the train had pulled out of Riverside.” The conflict happened in a segregated car for African-Americans in the show’s crew but “resulted in a general battle in which a dozen whites and twenty negroes took part.” This was the only racial incident found in the searching for this post, though, of course, issues of one kind or another were likely at least occasional.
It was mentioned above that the move to the second winter quarters involved discussions of a motion picture component to the Barnes enterprise and the New Year’s Eve 1921 issue of the Express reported that Warner Brothers was producing a 15-chapter serial called “Shadows of the Jungle,” which ended up being renamed “A Dangerous Adventure” on release in November 1922. The paper added that, given it was the winter rest period,
Scarcity of animals has always been the handicap under which directors worked in productions of this kind, and to overcome this difficulty the entire collection of animals owned by the Al. G. Barnes circus has been taken over. It is the first time that these animals have ever appeared before the [motion picture] camera, and S[am] L. Warner, who is directing the serial, declares that the climaxes are thrilling and realistic.
An excellent description of the Washington Boulevard winter headquarters was written by “Col. J. Cresson” in the Vanguard of 7 January 1922 and he informed readers that, while the circus was on the road during the preceding summer, Barnes’ brother, Captain Albert Stonehouse, was farming grain, hay and oats on the 75 acres embracing the property for the feeding of the animals.
Cresson continued that,
The circus came home the latter part of November to find everything in good shape, but more buildings had to be put up. A beautiful arch costing thirty thousand dollars has been built. An ornamental fence enclosing the seventy-five acres, paint-shops, wardrobe shops, office building, additional stables for horses, harness shops and many other buildings in addition to those built during the summer, have sprung up. To one passing on Washington boulevard, it has the appearance of a new city.
Walking toward the arch, 14 seals were seen sunning themselves or enjoying a pool and, once through the entry and to the right, there were long animal quarters where “you see lions, tigers, leopards, wild cats, monkies [sic], gorillas, all housed in sanitary dens with plenty of room to pace up and down.” Fourteen elephants were next encountered, followed by zebras, who, apparently, had “a happy smile on their faces,” while their horse cousins “are being trained by the best horsetrainers in the world.”
Next were 15 “grisleys from the North Pole” who were “floundering around in pits of water,” though there was also plenty of work in training. Beyond this were the dogs, goats and pigs, with a canine observed riding on the back of a goat “and he is the trainer.” Once past the animal pens and houses, a blacksmith’s shop was encountered “where some twenty men are working repairing wagons” and then the paint shop “where a crew are [is] painting circus paraphanalia [sic] for the parade.” Forty men were in the harness shop and worked in the wardrobe shop made costumes for 400 performers. Lastly,
Coming from this wonderful department you wind up at the office, the smallest building on the ranch, but there you find Mr. Al. G. Barnes always surrounded with an eager crowd looking for positions for the next season. Mr. Barnes always greets you with a smile and always has time to show you the winter quarters.
It was concluded that the impresario’s permanent residence was in Venice as he purchased “a beautiful home on Lincoln Boulevard, west of the winter quarters, though specifically where was not stated.
We will return tomorrow with part five, carrying the story of the Barnes circus and its winter quarters at Venice through more of the Twenties, so check back with us then.
As noted in this post, Al G. Barnes was a typical womanizer, much like certain infamous movie stars, politicians, or both. Yet the records and descriptions of this man appear refreshingly real and unfiltered – unlike many historical figures whose legacies are often shaped by exaggerated autobiographies, flattering obituaries, or carefully crafted newspaper accounts. These sources tend to highlight moral virtues while downplaying or ignoring moral shortcomings.
But men are men, and it’s hard to believe that all those celebrated pioneers – always busy with business, vineyards, or ranch work – never found themselves entangled in a romantic relationship with a secret lover or companion, at some time, in some place, with someone.
An old Chinese saying goes: “Heroes find it hard to resist beauty.” (英雄難過美人關) It means that no matter how great, persistent, or self-disciplined a hero may be, he is often vulnerable to the allure of beautiful women. This proverb not only captures an essential truth about human nature, but also encourages those seeking romance to see themselves as heroes.