Sunday, September 24, 2017

#18 Clyde Beatty


6 comments:

Chic Silber said...


To me he will always remain

"The One And Only" (pick him up)

(light cue follows announcement)

How fortunate that my 1st of May

year (& several more) included

his spectaculer performances

Chic Silber said...


(Spectacular - no spell check)

Unknown said...


My Dad and Clyde were friends from 1920's. Sometimes he would park the airstream outside our house and stay with us. What a thrill to have him at the dining room table. Even Roger was there back in the day!

Unknown said...

One other story from these days was when Clyde and I went into a little appliance store to see if they could put an antenna on the trailer. I can still see the guy's face light up when Clyde told him who he was. Later I heard he took care of the family with passes.

Roger Smith said...

Indeed, BOB, I remember your mother's fine table like few others I've seen. Mrs. Good set out a ham, a turkey, huge bowls of corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, and hot rolls, preceded by a large tossed salad. Present were Bob and his sister, Nancy, Mr. and Mrs. Robert D. Good, Sr., Mr. and Mrs. Beatty, Clyde, Jr., and this humble cageboy. It was at this fine repast that Mr. Beatty's cancer came more into evidence. He took one bite of his dinner and had to turn away, burning up inside. We had been stopping by places like Diary Queen to get him milk shakes with 2 eggs added, so he could try for some nourishment, but even these were hard on him. Mr. Good had arranged for a doctor to be there to give Beatty a massive injection of B-12, in hopes it would allow him, as he put it, "to get the old pep back". But it was not to be. Just a few weeks later, he left the show in Rochester, Minnesota, leading many to think he had entered the famed Mayo Clinic there. But he and his wife and son had flown to Chicago to enter Billings Hospital, in the University Hospitals complex. I had remained on the show until Frank Orman came into the backyard with a telegram from Beatty, which I still have, instructing me to come to Chicago, take the Cadillac, go to Rochester and retrieve the Airstream to a park, where he could try to recuperate after leaving the hospital. As it happened, he returned home to Ventura, as stated earlier, and did not return during the season of '64.

Dick Flint said...

That's me in the photo getting his autograph in 1961! I still have the program he so graciously signed after I knocked on his trailer door. It was a privilege to see him perform each year thereafter, certainly one of the great performers in the ring.