Sujets :
Butler, Roland - 1887-1961
Journalistes - États-Unis - Biographies
Histoire des arts du cirque - États-Unis

Résumé :
For forty years this book begged to be written but Roland Butler, a modest individual, consistently refused to allow it. Several offered, but the crusty old fellow insisted he was "Nothing but a good circus press agent tryin' to do a job".
He claimed there was nothing newsworthy about him and stubbornly refused interviews, but his peers put him atop his profession, where he belonged.
Butler gave us the saucer-lipped Ubangis, the giraffe-necked women from Burma, the man who performed atop a ten-storey buggywhip, the man who walked on his forefinger, a child prodigy at the xylophone, and a group that "shakes dice with death at dizzy heights."
He promoted Goliath, the sea elephant; Lotus, the blood-sweating hippopotamus; Modic, the great old elephant, and five babies billed as "The only family of African pygmy elephants that ever set foot on this continent. Not babies, but full-grown middle-sized tuskers, the most curious proboscidean creatures ever captured." Later they grew up.
Butler's greatest achievement in promotion was converting a household pet raised in Brooklyn and fondly known as 'Buddy' into "Gargantua the Great, mightiest monster ever captured by man; most fiendishly ferocious brute that breathes - the world's most terrifying living creature". [editor summary]

Collection : Collection Pascal Jacob

Localisation : Bibliothèque

Cote : 791.309 2 P732c 1984

• Ex. 1 — disponible