Tuesday, August 31, 2010

From Richard Reynolds


682, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.


Richard Reynolds says - - -

Does anyone know anything about this Lion Farm in Ft. Lauderdale. The trainer is a black man.

5 comments:

Ole Whitey said...

This is the place that Beatty bought late in 1939 and operated as Clyde Beatty's Jungle Zoo until the city finally shut him down with various ordinances regarding wild animals in the city and what is now called noise pollution.

He made extensive improvements to the originl place and the site now includes Gateway Shopping Center on Sunrise just across from where Federal Highway comes in.

Hal Guyon said...

Manuel Ruffin ?

Ole Whitey said...

Probably taken before Junior was born.

Jimmy Cole said...

I Google searched and came up with this: "1936 McKillop-Hutton opens the area’s first tourist attraction, a Lion Farm, in a rock pit on 10th Street Causeway (Sunrise Blvd.), at the location of the present Gateway Shopping- Theater area."

Roger Smith said...

This man deserves to be credited. I wonder if it is a sign of the times when other information appeared on the photo and his name did not. I hope his identity is not lost.

Charles Sprague's article, THE CLYDE BEATTY JUNGLE ZOO, in the Sept.-Oct. 1973 BANDWAGON, quotes a November 1936 invitation in the Fort Lauderdale DAILY NEWS to "witness a demonstation of training by Captain LaFrance at the [McKillop-Hutton] lion farm." Sprague notes that in 1938, Beatty stopped in and "found a Negro working five lions in flimsy cages made of chicken wire." Beatty returned the next year, bought the place, and opened his Jungle Zoo on December 2, 1939. If this man was LaFrance, or if he may have continued to the Beatty payroll, would be a poignant bit of history if it could be ocnfirmed.