Theatre: The Real McCoy

Three years ago Colonel Tim McCoy of cinema and circus fame went to Providence, R. I. as a headliner in Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey circus. There he met Benjamin Ladd Cook, amateur sportsman, former M. F. H.. and 30-year associate in Hornblower & Weeks. The two men discussed circuses and horses, and McCoy wound up by saying that what the U. S. needed was an honest-to-God wild west show. Last “authentic” wild west show. McCoy insisted, had been

Buffalo Bill’s in 1913. Last one of any kind, the “101,” had folded in 1931. Fired by the idea, the two of them decided to do something about it. Last fall Cook left Hornblower & Weeks, McCoy left Ringling Bros. McCoy threw $100,000 of his own money into the venture, acquired 51% of the stock. Cook approached 150 sportsmen and men of substance to buy the remaining 49%, landed 80.

All of the past winter, acts were thought up, men and animals bought up, the show licked into shape. Besides a whole battery of rodeo and roughrider acts, McCoy devised an elaborate pageant that would give a new generation a vision of the old West—cowboys & Indians, stagecoaches & covered wagons, ranches & Indian villages.

In Chicago’s International Amphitheatre last week, with 512 performers, 400 horses, 160,000 square feet of canvas, Tim McCoy’s Real Wild West & Rough Riders of the World made its bow. In Chicago the show seemed good but raw, mingled surefire thrills with extravaganza that fell flat. Flattest of all fell McCoy’s cherished pageantry stuff. Amazed, McCoy could only insist that “it has to be there. It’s like candles and Christmas.” What went over big, besides the imposing grand entry, was straight action: cowboys with lariats climaxed by McCoy himself roping eight horses with one loop; Cossack trick riding, the U. S. Cavalry “monkey drill,” a blind jumping horse.

Five-foot-eleven Colonel Timothy John Fitzgerald McCoy won his military title from years of army service, mostly among the Indians. To knowing the American Indian through & through McCoy owed his introduction to the entertainment business. Called in as a technical adviser in 1924 for the filming of The Covered Wagon, he so impressed casting directors with his vivid Western personality that he was signed up, eventually starred by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Columbia, Monogram (Beyond the Sierras, The Square Shooter, Code of the Rangers). For three seasons he was a star name in the Ringling circus. On the side he owns and operates a 10,000-acre cattle ranch on the edge of a Wyoming Indian reservation.

In Manhattan 200 property men and animal handlers etc. went on strike last week against Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey circus, playing in Madison Square Garden (TIME, April 18). Called out by the American Federation of Actors, the strikers were demanding “under canvas” wages of $60 a month plus board & room. Because Madison Square Garden strictly speaking is not canvas, the management was paying winter-quarters wages of $30 a month plus board & room. For three performances, until the strike was settled with a compromise figure of $45 a month, elephants and lions vacationed behind the scenes, Frank Buck walked democratically in the procession instead of kinging it in a howdah, trapeze artists set up their own rigging, and the caged wagon of the ferocious gorilla, Gargantua the Great, instead of being pulled by six spanking white horses, was pushed around the Garden by puffing & sweating performers.