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Remembering Butch Butler: Carnival Showman & Class Act

Posted in In Memoriam, tagged Butch Butler, Butler Amusements, California State Fair, carnival, Coney Island, obituary, San Jose, winter wonderland on December 26, 2011| 4 Comments »

Memorial to Butch Butler, Carousel at Winter Wonderland in downtown San Jose, CA. Courtesy of Facebook Page: Remember and Honor Earl 'Butch' Butler

Last week, ATZ learned the sad news via a message about a new Facebook Page “Remember and Honor Earl ‘Butch’ Butler” that the owner of Butler Amusements, the West Coast’s largest carnival company, died on December 21. We first became acquainted with Butch Butler as a reporter for the trade publication Amusement Business in 2004 and picked up the conversation again in 2009, when Butch sent a few rides to our part of the world — Coney Island. We found him to be a great interview and a class act. His intelligence and generosity of spirit will be missed.

Butch Butler served as President of Showfolks of America, Showmen’s League of America, and Pacific Coast Showmen’s League. Butler Amusements, whose motto is “Cleanest Show in the West,” was awarded the prestigious Circle of Excellence Designation by the Outdoor Amusement Business Association in 2005. The fact that Butch passed during the holiday season and his portrait is enshrined on the show’s carousel at San Jose’s Winter Wonderland reminded us of his love of Christmas.

For a 2005 AB story about business opportunities in the winter months, Butch spoke enthusiastically about the Christmas Wonderland in San Jose, where he made his home, and how the event had grown from three rides and a popcorn trailer to 18 rides and wreath-trimmed Giant Wheel. He told us that before the festival, he had four Christmas tree lots replete with rides and had even set up a carnival on the rooftop of a now-defunct department store. “There’s something about me that can’t turn off what I do. I like to be part of the entertainment package for the community,” Butler said.

Butler Amusements Carousel in Coney Island, June 6, 2009. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

“He always compared the night time lights of his carnival midway to a brightly decorated house during the Christmas season,” Andrea Owen, marketing director of Butler Amusements, tells ATZ. “Christmas was Butch’s favorite time of year. Time spent with family was most special to him. He was such a generous loving man who made everyone around him feel like part of his family, he took care of so many.”

According to a bio released by the family, Earl “Butch” Butler was born in 1942 in Austin, Minnesota. In 1955 his parents started operating game concessions at various weekend events sparking his interest in the carnival industry. The sale of the family grocery store funded Butler Amusements’ first ride – a Tilt-A-Whirl – and the new show made its debut at a California shopping center in 1970. That winter the Butlers signed a contract for their very first fair, the Redwood Empire Fair in Ukiah, which the show still plays.

Today Butler Amusements has more than 135 rides and is the carnival provider for over 120 different events. The California State Fair, Big Fresno Fair, Evergreen Washington State Fair and both the Western and Eastern Idaho State Fairs are among the company’s major fair contracts.

The famed Neverland Ranch Bumper Cars, owned by Butler Amusements, were permanently installed at Cal Expo for the California State Fair in July 2011. Photo courtesy of Butler Amusements.

In 2009, Butch Butler sent four rides to Coney Island, including Michael Jackson’s Dragon Wagon, one of five rides purchased from Neverland Ranch. When ATZ saw “Butler Amusements” name on the cotton candy trailer in Thor Equities’ temporary park on the Astroland site, we were absolutely astonished. What made Butler come all the way from California to Coney’s sandy shore? He told us that he sent the rides to “test market” Coney Island at the urging of his old friend John Strong, whose sideshow had been operating on Sitt’s property since April. (“Calif. Carnival Sends Rides to Coney Island….Including One from Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch,” ATZ, June 30, 2009)

For Sale in Dreamland: Dragon Wagon from Michael Jacksons Neverland Ranch. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

Dragon Wagon from Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch brought to Coney Island by Butler Amusements. May 30, 2009. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

“John grew up on our show,” said Butler, “but has since gone off on his own. He said, ‘you’ve got to come out and see this.'” Although Butler’s strong fair route precluded sending more rides for the summer, he expected to put kiddie rides in Thor Equities “Flea by the Sea” tents for the Christmas season. But Butch Butler’s Coney Island Christmas was not to be. Thor CEO Joe Sitt, whom the NY Post previously called “The Grinch Who Stole Coney Island” for a Christmas Eve 2008 lockout, abruptly closed down Dreamland Park before Labor Day while Flea by the Sea flopped. Butler’s Dragon Wagon, Star Dancer, Carousel and Kids Zone returned to California and continue to travel with the carnival’s different units, which play events in seven states in the West.

Butch Butler’s entire family, including his four daughters and their husbands, and his son, are involved in the operation of the company. As one of the comments on the Facebook page says, “Great showman, Amazing father. His legacy will live on!” The family asks that in lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be sent to Pacific Coast Showmen’s Association Scholarship Fund or Showfolks of America Scholarship Fund. Butler’s funeral will be held at St. Christopher’s Church in San Jose on January 3, 2012. Details are available on the OABA’s blog.

Memorial to Butch Butler, Carousel at Winter Wonderland in downtown San Jose, CA. Courtesy of Facebook Page: Remember and Honor Earl 'Butch' Butler

Artifact of the Day: The Lure of Carnival Signage

Posted in Artifacts, history, tagged carnival, collectibles, girl show, Johnny Meah, posing show, signage on November 23, 2011| 5 Comments »

Currently up for sale on eBay, these hand-painted, text-only signs for a carnival girl show continue to exert a powerful lure, just as they did on the midway in the 1940s. “NOT FOR…Junior” “Intimate SEXY! “It Tells ALL!” “It Shows ALL!” “Adults ONLY…”

A seller in Texas rescued the trio of tantalizing signs from an old show trailer, where they were stored for more than thirty years. “This is a must for any collector of carnival or sideshow memorabilia,” writes eBay seller gm3320 in his description. “These signs were a great ‘come on’ of what was inside. The show was never as risque as the signs described. There will not be any more of these Traveling Girly Sideshows like in the early days.” His asking price is $1,495 or best offer. The dimensions are 48 inches wide by 60 inches high.

The wooden signboards are akin to word banners, one of our fave forms of carny advertisements. Based on the text, ATZ’s best guess is that “La Femme” was probably what was called a “posing show.” Looking through old issues of The Billboard, we discovered that a “La Femme” Posing Show managed by Jack Norman was actually part of the lineup of Hennie’s Brothers Shows 1948 season!

The show featured a talker, two ticket sellers and four performers. Ads like these were plentiful too: “WANTED— GIRLS FOR POSING SHOW Must Be Young and Attractive (experience not necessary)” and “Have complete outfit for Posing Show, will furnish to a capable manager that has people and can get money with same.”

The job required the girls to strike poses reminiscent of famous paintings or models in an artist’s studio. The phrase “posing show” first caught my ear as a carny kid in the 1960s, though the Sunday school outfits that my concessionaire parents traveled with didn’t have girl shows or posing shows.

At night when the grownups cut up jackpots about carnival days gone by, my mother had a story about how her first husband had helped Zorima, Queen of the Nudists’ husband frame a posing show. I asked, ‘what’s that?’ Mom said they put up sheets and the girls would pose behind the curtains.

When I pestered her for details, Mom would say “Zorima was a beautiful girl,” but that she’d never been inside the show and didn’t know what they did. “You don’t want to tell me,” I complained and we’d argue. By then I was a teenager. “Tricia, I’m telling you the truth,” my mother would say. “We didn’t go in the shows. We were busy working our joints.” Clothespin Pitch. Devil’s Bowling Alley. Guess Your Name, Age, Weight and Shoe Size.

As for the beautiful Zorima, she must have have been an imitator of the original Queen Zorima, whose nudist show was the sensation of four world’s fairs, including the 1935-36 California Pacific Exposition and the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair.

UPDATE November 23, 2011, 1:40 pm

Many thanks to Johnny Meah, master sideshow banner painter and friend going back to the little New England midways of our childhood, for the following update on Posing Shows. It Tells ALL! After writing this post, ATZ sent him a note: “Came across this on eBay and thought you might enjoy seeing it. I imagine that you painted some of these too. Would love to hear your comment.” Visit Johnny Meah’s website- The Czar of the Bizarre– for news, art, prose, and to download a font in his idiosyncratic handwriting style.

MEAH ON POSING SHOWS:

In the heyday of backend shows with carnivals, the female pulchritude dept. fell into four categories : The white revue, the black revue, both of which were tented burlesque shows with a band, a comic, sometimes a variety act, a chorus line and two or three feature strippers. Next was the cootch show, strictly strippers usually working to recorded music. And the posing show—-as the title implies, girls posing behind a gauze or cheesecloth curtain, either nude or as close to it as the local law would permit. The blowoff,(added attraction for another fee), would be very simple—-the curtain was raised!

In many cases these shows were operated by the same person who operated the cootch show and were utilitarian masterpieces for the operator as they could use the same girls for both shows, running them back and forth between the two shows. When legal porn theaters came in it took its toll on all of these shows, the first casualty being the posing show. Seeing a statue-still girl standing behind a gauze curtain suddenly wasn’t very exciting.

The posing show became extinct and remained so for many years until one year two operators on Royal American Shows, the biggest railroad carnival of the era, decided, for God knows what reason, to resurrect the idea. The show was titled Girl World, themed to “girls of all Nations” who appeared behind the obligatory gauze curtain on a revolving stage with appropriate ethnic music. The show was not only a financial disaster but a mechanical monstrosity as well. The front had a triple cantilevered top sign, the top of which had a painting of a girl sitting on a globe of the world. It was so high that even on a mildly breezy day they had to have a guy seated on the roof of the wagon to lower it in sections the moment the wind picked up. Towards the end of the season, to salvage some of the money dumped into it, it became—–what else—–a cootch show.

For the most part, posing shows had silhouettes of girls painted on the front panels, below which hung “bally boards” bearing slogans like RACEY, SPICEY, NAUGHTY, EXOTIC, RISQUE, etc. These same worn out slogans also appeared on most cootch show panels. One day, tired of the repetitiousness of these slogans,I painted, “SCINTILATING.” The owner came out on the midway, looked at it and said, “What the hell does THAT mean ?!” I painted it out and replaced it with “EXOTIC”.

Up for Auction: Rack of Vintage Carnival Knockdown Dolls

Posted in art, Artifacts, Auction, Carnival Games, tagged carnival, cat rack, folk art, Knockdown dolls, outsider art, punk rack on November 11, 2011| 4 Comments »

Carnival Knockdown Dolls. Slotin Folk Art Who's Who in Folk Art Auction. November 12, 2011

Remember when carnival cat racks were hand-painted and each one had its own unique personality? This tier of hand-painted canvas knockdown dolls from a vintage cat rack, also known as a doll or punk rack, will be on the auction block this weekend at Slotin Folk Art. The rack measures 74″ long x 5″ deep x 14″ high and is hinged. The pre-sale estimate is $1,000-2,000. It’s rare to find a whole row of ’em, since the majority of vintage games that have survived are broken up and sold piecemeal to collectors.

In 2009, ATZ wrote about an auction of a complete cat rack as well as a duck pond, stick joints and all, which belonged to an old-timer whose father had been in the business forever. The seller tried to preserve these pieces of Vermont fair history and offered the games in their entirety for many months on eBay, but no buyers came forward. The dolls were (and some of them still are) being sold separately for $150-$175 and the antique stick joint is now available for a mere $249!

Carnival Knockdown Dolls. Slotin Folk Art Who's Who in Folk Art Auction. November 12, 2011

The rack of nine carnival cats in Saturday’s Slotin Folk Art Auction is from the collection of George and Sue Viener, who own the Outsider Folk Art Gallery in Reading, Pennyslvania. The couple were introduced to the world of Outsider Folk Art and Americana in 1970 during a visit to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia. Viener told ATZ that he acquired the carnival doll rack a couple of years ago from a dealer in Pennsylvania. The dolls are decorated on both sides and each one is unique, unlike the standardized cat rack manufactured today. The row of dolls tips slightly forward, says Viener, which he theorized made it more difficult for players to knock them down and win the game.

Carnival Knockdown Dolls. Slotin Folk Art Who's Who in Folk Art Auction. November 12, 2011

The cat rack has already attracted online bidders and will be sold at Slotin Folk Art’s “Who’s Who in Folk Art Auction” on November 12. A larger, 21-inch tall carnival cat from the Viener Collection is also up for bid. The two-day folk art auction consists of over 1,000 lots, with the first day devoted to the Viener Collection. The live auction will be held at Historic Buford Hall in Buford, Georgia. Absentee, phone and online bidding are also available on auction days.