Arthur Konyot, The White Rider: My Sixty Years as a Circus Rider as told to William D. Reichmann

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Text originally published in 1961 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

ARTHUR KONYOT:

THE WHITE RIDER

My 60 Years as a Circus Equestrian

as told to

William D. Reichmann

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

FOREWORD 7

PROLOGUE 9

A Circus Came to Rajec 9

I—My Home Was on Wagon Wheels 11

The Cirkus Leopold 11

Catastrophe on a Summer Day 12

The Path of Our Bright Hopes and Progress 14

II—The Famous Four Konyots 17

We’re Hired by Europe’s Leading Circus Director 17

Opening Night at the Zirkus Busch in Berlin 18

I Watch a Great High-School Rider Train 19

Four Years in ‘The Big Time’ 20

Parties, Pranks and Merriment in the Circus 21

III—A Deal with John Ringling 24

We Go to America 24

‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ 26

On Tour with Barnum & Bailey 28

IV—The End of an Era 32

The Konyot Circus and Wild West Show 32

I Meet Manya Guttenberg 33

Before the Gates of Armageddon 57

Back to Budapest—The Hard Way 58

Under the Red Heel: The Scourge of Bela Kun 60

Rags and Bloody Feet 61

V—A Life Raft to the Drowning 64

We Go to Italy 64

Stones, Riots and Strikes In Italy 64

They Came in Gondolas 65

How My Nose Acquired Its Present Shape 66

Conspiracy in the Circus 67

VI—France and North Africa 70

Five Years in the French Circus 70

Incident in the Cirque Medrano 71

Association with the Rancys 71

Oscar Konyot, Rider, Trainer and Circus Director 72

Lottie and Prinz 74

The Bears: Topsy, Jimmy, Darling, Teddy, and Pete 76

VII—Iberia 79

A Serio-Comic Bareback Act in Barcelona 79

State of Siege in Oporto 80

Expeditions to the Azores and Madeira 83

The ‘Bull Horses’ of the Tourado 83

VIII—Fantasia Ecuestre Portuguesa 86

Señor Arturo of Lisboa 86

Sultan the Magnificent 89

Vulcan, Nobre, Luzero, Pinto Silgo, Immaculado and Pinto 91

Los Aseveros 93

IX—Fantasia Ecuestre Espanola 95

March and Countermarch in Albacete 95

High-School Revue at the Bullfights 96

Revolution in Spain 98

X—As the Clouds Gathered 100

Inflation, Worker of Ruin 100

Hitler Comes to Power 100

Incident in a Friend’s House 101

Bertram Mills Catches Up with Us 101

The Annual Christmas Show 102

Back to the Continent 104

In the Tower Circus at Blackpool, England 104

XI—The Swastika Spreads Its Arms 108

Captain X 108

Walled In 110

XII—Rainbow in the West 116

Escape 116

Paris, 1939; War Comes 117

XIII—A Dream Comes True 120

Five Years with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey 120

Disaster in Hartford 122

Farewell to My Beloved Manya 124

Hurricane in Sarasota 124

XIV—Farewell to the Wagons 126

Friends Have Been My Blessing 126

Bill Reichmann and Kamlah 127

XV—Oscar Konyot, Lion Trainer 130

The Big Cats 130

The Konyot Chimpanzees 152

XVI—Trainer for Arthur Godfrey 155

XVII—Horses in the Circus 159

The Horse of the Bareback Riders 159

The Training of the Liberty Horses 160

The Art of the High-School Horse 161

The Circus in the United States Today 162

EPILOGUE 164

Looking Backward and Looking Forward 164

GLOSSARY 165

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 168

DEDICATION

To the memory of Adolph Konyot,

skilled equestrian, bareback rider, animal trainer,

soldier, and gentleman.

FOREWORD

THE INTRODUCTION which led to my becoming acquainted with Arthur Konyot came about in an accidental way at the 1949 International Live Stock Exposition & Horse Show in Chicago. Ruth Bazy McCormick Tankersley of Washington, D.C., the moving spirit behind a pageant of Arabian horses at the Chicago show that year, introduced me to John F. Cuneo, Jr., a Chicagoan, and in the conversation which followed Mr. Cuneo said:

I know one of the greatest horse trainers in the country. He is right here in Chicago and I think it would be worth your while to have a talk with him. If it is all right with you, I will bring him out here to your stalls in the morning.

That is what he did, and the next day I went with him to the Ambassador Stables on Chicago’s North Side to watch Arthur Konyot train and ride. This resulted in my placing the young Arabian stallion Kamlah in the latter’s hands and to the association which led to my becoming the narrator of these reminiscences.

From 1950 until 1954 Arthur Konyot conducted a Riding Academy & School of Equitation at 1501 North Clark Street, Chicago, and it was there that I began taking down the story of his eventful and dramatic life. The Konyots—Arthur, his wife, Manya, and their son and daughter, Alexander and Dorita, came to the United States from Paris in 1940. They came with a big reputation. Arthur’s center ring performances in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, in which he rode the high-school, put him in the limelight here. It was known that he and his family had passed through some harrowing experiences during their last months in Eastern Europe. As a likely prospect for a good news story, Arthur Konyot was interviewed a number of times. But these were just random, on-the-spot interviews with the accent on a few highlights and little more.

Here was an extraordinary man, as every line in his immensely strong and eloquent face indicated. At 62 he had the vitality and the erect carriage of a man half his age. The impact of his lively and magnetic personality was decisive. And what abilities! A stellar member of the great Konyot troupe of bareback riders and a juggler on horseback in his younger days, he was a circus equestrian and high-school exhibitionist of the top rank. He was an animal trainer in the broad sense and could train an elephant, a camel, a kangaroo, a donkey, a poodle, a pig, or a monkey, all these, and more, with equal facility. That this man had a fascinating story to tell was known by many. Yet no one had bestirred himself to get that story. It became my aim to do so, and to take it down from the beginning.

From the clatter and hubbub of Chicago’s North Clark Street at the Riding Academy, where we got under way, and later from the comparative quietude of the old Virginia homestead on Arthur Godfrey’s Beacon Hill Farm near Leesburg, where the Konyots lived from 1954 until early in 1960, I was taken far afield. In recapturing the memories of his long and notable career, Arthur Konyot had to relive his life. I accompanied him on the journey, shared with him his visions of many a remembered scene in as many lands, felt myself present in the gay and happy days of his youth in the family circus and experienced with him the difficulties met and overcome, his trials and triumphs down through the years.

There were some hard and bitter times in this man’s life, times when hearts less stout might have despaired, but high courage and indefatigable enterprise won the day. All in all, it has been a delightful, very entertaining, and rewarding journey in the companionship of warm-blooded people who were gay and brave, a two-dimensional voyage in time and space—with musical overtones—the action taking place against the background of historic happenings in our time.

It now becomes my pleasure to make some acknowledgements. I wish to express my gratitude to Ed and Janie Jenkins of Youngstown, Ohio, warm friends and admirers of Arthur Konyot, and of mine, and to Bazy Tankersley for encouragement in this endeavor, I thank the friends of Arthur Konyot from the circus world, who came forward with programs and other material, and their own recollections, which were of help to him in clarifying his memories. To Oscar and Patricia Konyot of Sarasota, Florida, I am grateful for material and pictures, and I thank Lilly Reinsch Konyot, Adolph Konyot’s widow, and Dorita K. Humphreys for similar assistance. For editorial counsel and advice I am indebted to Van Allen Bradley of Chicago and Barrington, Illinois, and for courtesies extended I thank the Newberry Library of Chicago. Last, but not least, I express my gratitude to Elizabeth Ann Konyot, Arthur Konyot’s wife, and to my sister, Harriette R. Forrest, for their faith and helpfulness beyond compare.

WILLIAM D. REICHMANN

Barrington, Illinois

August 3, 1961

PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS: Most of the photographs in this book come from the private collections of the Konyot family. A number are official circus photographs, particularly the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey items. In some cases it was impossible to identify sources, and the authors express herewith a blanket Thank you for their use. They also wish to credit the following specific sources for permission to use certain of the pictures: To John Eisenhart of the Loudon (Virginia) Times-Mirror for the picture, first lessons between the pillars; to Lloyd Jones of the Youngstown (Ohio) Vindicator for the picture of Arthur Konyot and Pluto, and to M. E. Morris of Centralia, Illinois, for the photograph of Arthur Konyot and Kamlah at Indianapolis.

PROLOGUE

A Circus Came to Rajec

One day in the late 70’s of the last century a circus came to Rajec, Hungary. It was one of many wandering circuses that took to the road every spring in Europe and the Balkans and with feats of skill and daring, performing animals, and assorted wonders to behold lightened the hearts of the young and old in city, town, and village across the far-ranging land. In Europe, as in America, interest ran high when the circus came to town, and so it was this day in Rajec. The arrival there of this circus occasioned an interest that was exceptional, however.

Twelve years before, almost to the day, a 15-year-old Rajec boy had run away from home to enter that beckoning world apart, the circus. No one had heard from him in all the passing years, though he was reported to have made good, to the extent, even, of having married a beautiful equestrienne, who was the daughter of a famous circus owner. And rumor now had it that the proprietor of the circus that had just come to Rajec was none other than that same runaway boy. When the identity of this man of the circus had been established and the reports about him were verified, the townspeople flocked to the circus grounds to have a look at him and to claim him as their own. Leopold Konyot, the man who was to become my father, learned what it is like to be feted as a hero.

Grandfather Konyot was an exacting parent and had decided in his own mind just what his sons were to do with their lives. He had been amused when Leopold, at the age of 10, announced his intention of becoming a circus performer, but he had ceased to be amused when the boy, in his 14th year, continued to proclaim that purpose and predicted that the day would come when he would have a circus of his own, Grandfather Konyot had now had enough of such talk, Leopold would do what his older brothers were doing, he declared. He would continue his schooling in preparation for one of the professions, such as the law, medicine, teaching, or banking. The circus? Nonsense! The very thought of it outraged him. If the vehemence with which his father expressed himself on this subject had had any effect on young Leopold, other than to strengthen his resolve, that effect was only temporary. For, in the following spring, when the Zirkus Kleber took down its tents, after a few days in Rajec, and rolled away, the boy went with it.

For five years the young runaway traveled all over Europe and the Balkans with the Zirkus Kleber, and rose from the status of a mere errand boy and stable groom to become an acrobat and an aerialist. At the age of 20, he was taken on by the larger and more important circus of the Blumenfeld Brothers, under whose tutelage he became skilled in the training and presentation of liberty horses. In his 21st year he won the heart of the proprietor’s daughter Henrietta, who became my mother.

The distress this defiant youth had brought upon his parents led to an estrangement, which hardened over the years, and, so far as father and son were concerned, was not subject to reconsideration. Grandfather Konyot was informed of Leopold’s return to Rajec as a full-fledged circus proprietor, but he was a stubborn man and could not find it within himself to forgive and forget. With my uncles it was otherwise. They went at once to the circus to greet their young brother and prevailed upon him to go to his father’s house, and when Grandfather found himself confronted with the countenance and manly presence of his youngest son, he gave way to an overwhelming emotion and with his whole heart cried out, My son!

I—My Home Was on Wagon Wheels

The Cirkus Leopold

LIKE MOST people of old circus parentage, I was born on the road. On Dec. 9, 1888, the day of my birth, our caravans were at the city of Sopron, near the Austrian frontier, in Hungary, my homeland. Of greater consequence, however, was the circumstance of being born in the circus. Circus folk of the old traditions lived, as they traveled, in wagons, and I drew my first breath in the wagon that was my parents’ home. My earliest memories are of a big round tent and wagons that were red and white, of horses and ponies, acrobats, clowns, and dancing bears, and of the Ring, sometimes referred to as the Charmed Circle, on which, as I early came to understand, the whole life of the circus converged and the efforts and ambitions of all of us were centered. In the foreground of my memories are the horses and ponies, the beat of their hoofs upon the ground, their neighing and nickering, and the feel of their coats. My boyhood recollections of the great world around us yield up a somewhat blurred panorama of varied and changing scenery, with the focus on a more immediate phenomenon, the ever demanding, ceaselessly wandering little world in which all of us, my parents, five brothers, six sisters, and I, had our being, working, learning, struggling, enjoying life, and, within its confines, achieving together the Cirkus Leopold,

Ours was typical of the comparatively small, family-owned traveling circuses of the last century from which so many of the famous artiste clans of the past have come. The Blumenfelds, my mother’s family, were such a clan. Through them we Konyots descend by way of four generations from the early 18th century bareback rider and rope-dancer Goldkette, founder of the numerous circus clans of that name and a number of off-shoots thereof. Specifically, the tradition in which we had our roots was that of bareback riding, which involved the ability to perform acrobatics on the back of a cantering or galloping horse and to jump on and off the horse or from one horse to another. For this a rigorous training was essential, and it began early. First lessons in ballet and tumbling and on the trapeze began at four or soon thereafter, and we were put on the backs of ponies at about the same age. My father, who had been an acrobat, a contortionist, and an aerialist, saw to it that we all had this early training, and my mother, distinguished in her day as a bareback rider, never ceased to stress the indispensability of ballet training as the medium through which to acquire the art of graceful presentation, which is showmanship.

When you have learned what to do with your hands and feet, she used to say, "the rest