Rudy Bros Circus #14
Posted By thecircusblog on June 4, 2012
Here is another example of using the wrong photo with the right name. I understand that the audience doesn’t know the difference f who is who, but you and I do. Putting a program together with incorrect photos and names, is just not the right thing to do! The above photo is Julius Von Uhl.
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thecircusblog
My name is Ivan M. Henry and I am the 4th generation of a circus/show business dynasty. I hope you enjoy the blog.Comments
4 Responses to “Rudy Bros Circus #14”
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Dear Ivan: I just found something on the Buckles Weblog about Baron Julius Von Uhl. It’s a comment I posted back in 2008 and forgot all about. I was talking to Bob Cline, although I’m not sure who he is. I don’t remember leaving the comment 12 years ago, but it shows that I had two separate phone conversations with Von Uhl, which I had also forgotten. The comments are on here, about the Paul Kelly Farm.
https://bucklesw.blogspot.com/2007/07/paul-kelly-farm-18.html
I also had a phone conversation with Dorothy Kelly. It was her farm of course. I spoke to John F. Cuneo Jr., Dan Morris at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha (which bought four of Julius’s tigers in 1978 including Radja and Sheba II who are both in the above picture you posted), and to Michael Dulaney at the Cincinnati Zoo. Both these zoos started breeding white tigers from tigers which belonged to Von Uhl. I read a newspaper article from 1976 which showed that Von Uhl was already working as an illusionist with tigers in August in Hawaii, making his wife disappear and having a tiger appear in her place. Von Uhl was the first illusionist with a white tiger eons before Siegfried & Roy got their first white tigers from the Cincinnati Zoo in 1983, and their white tigers were great grandchildren of Von Uhl’s pair of orange tigers, Radja and Sheba II, pictured above. Von Uhl looks really young in your picture, I guess from 1969 and nicely dressed. In one of the newspaper articles Von Uhl said that he hanged communists in Hungary. I kind of doubt that’s true. I tried my best to find out if he was a real Baron, but found nothing. As far as I can tell there were never any hereditary nobles in the history of Hungary with the name Von Uhl (which is a German name of course.)
Dear Ivan: I should have figured this out sooner, but Gyula is just Hungarian for Julius, so that was Von Uhl’s real name, Gyula. He just translated it into English to assimilate himself. He didn’t lie about his father’s name, but I can’t confirm that his father was a “famous brain surgeon”, or a Baron, but maybe he was. Von Uhl said that his uncle worked at the Budapest Zoo, and he got him a job there. That could certainly be true. His obituary says that he used to go sailing on Lake Balaton as a child. That is not too far from Budapest. And he worked with his father’s Lipizzans. Von Uhl said that there was a shortage of lion tamers. He said that there were 40 circuses and only 11 lion acts. He was famous for putting his head in a lion’s mouth. He revived that apparently. He said that “ready trained” lions were sold for $800. That makes me think that when he was asking for $5000 from Richard Hartman for his three big cats, the tiger Takila alone was worth $3400. I would like to write a biography of Von Uhl, but there’s so much negative baggage I’m afraid it would be hurtful to his family. His obituary says that he was the first in North America to breed white tigers, but Cuneo had two born a year before Von Uhl in 1972, and the Washington DC zoo had a white tiger named Rajkumar born there in 1964, the first one in the Western Hemisphere. Oh well. Take care.
Dear Ivan: He was calling himself Baron Julius Von Uhl as early as 1959, before his American circus career started. I found this article about 11 year old Tommy winning an award for riding, and he’s giving all the credit to his instructor Baron Julius Von Uhl at the Ramapo Valley Riding Stables. It says two years ago he came under the tutelage of Baron Julius Von Uhl a former Hungarian freedom fighter of the old Hungarian cavalry school and was a wild animal trainer with a Hungarian circus. The News Paterson New Jeresey Saturday May 6, 1961 Page 6. It says Monroe Ave. Wyckoff. See a year later he said his father, Baron Dr. Julius Von Uhl was in a communist prison camp, but a year earlier he was Baron Julius Von Uhl, not his father back in Hungary. This is the earliest newspaper article about Von Uhl, from before he was drafted and went to Vietnam. After he left the Army he bought those two tigers, Rajah and Sheba II, from the Sioux Falls Zoo for $8000. They were born in 1966 and were siblings and littermates. That’s how you get white tigers, from inbreeding, because the gene was rare and recessive. He started from breeding a brother and sister pair of mongrel tigers, bred from a Siberian father and a Bengal tiger mother named Susie, who belonged to Clyde Beatty until he died in 1965. I think he was some sort of blue blood, but I can’t say what.
Dear Ivan: I was thinking of something, that Von Uhl must have learned his wild animal training in Hungary like he said. He said that he started out as a “cage boy” at the Budapest Zoo and progressed to head trainer. In 1895 the Budapest Zoo was put in charge of the Capital Circus of Budapest. The earliest American newspaper story I found about him was from 1961 and he was working as a riding instructor, and calling himself Baron Julius Von Uhl. The earliest he seems to have had a circus act was 1964. In 1965 he had a lion named Goofy, and five other lions besides, a leopard, and a chimp. He didn’t get his first tigers until 1966. He said that his uncle worked at the Budapest Zoo. Austria abolished all titles in 1919. I kind of suspect that Hungary did the same. Let’s see he was born in 1938, so he would have been seven when Hungary became communist. It would have been under Russian occupation from 1945-1990 I guess. One of the articles quoted him as saying that he hanged communists. He was lucky to get out of Hungary and make it to the USA.