London Circus (1951) - Performing Elephants, Motorbike Bears and Clowns

London Circus, 1951, the Bertram Mills Christmas show at London Olympia, filmed by British Pathe. Watch the full video here:

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/cir...

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Included in this extract of the Circus show are performing elephants, horses jumping through paper sheets, a motorbiking bear, monkeys on a tightrope and a slapstick clown show. Not to mention great archive footage of kids in the crowd enjoying themselves in the Christmas holidays! In the British Pathe free online film archive at http://www.britishpathe.com there are plenty more great vintage circus videos, take a look!

• Category

  Comedy

[mediumawlful]

That bear on the bike needs to go through a drive-through.

[britishpathe]

Now that would be scary!

[thestuffz]

now THAT is a real circus!!

[britishpathe]

It sure is!

[BSEmadcow .]

A bear on a motor bike? Haters gonna hate!

[britishpathe]

Ha!

[bbmrox]

I don't know why you'd dislike the video though, the channel is just documenting historical events. It's not like they're condoning animal abuse.

[Michelle Polakovs]

Funny you would think those bears didn't know they could jump off that bike at any time and ripe the trainers throat out if they were so abused.

[Michelle Polakovs]

Great clip traveling circus were instrumental in educating the other wise ignorant masses that the world was a big place with exotic animals and other cultures besides ones own. Like motion pictures they were an escape from the realities of war torn Europe and poverty in America. Today people throw their children in front of television sets with their violent video games.

[Michelle Polakovs]

Those Clowns were my Grandfather Coco and my Dad Coco Junior. I was raised in the circus life and I saw no abuse. I feel sorry for the African Elephants that starve to death in nature because of mans encroachment and the herds of elephants that are shot from Helicopters to keep their population down so others might eat.

[rainingdewdrops]

i hate animal abuse with a passion but that is pretty astonishing what the animals could do

[blooburry14]

why does this have negative likes?? it's true, this is animal abuse .-.

[whereeveritgoes]

I would pay $200 to watch this show!

[marine20996]

:40 In soviet Russia....

[Charlie Bean]

good old days.

[TarquinnBlackwood1]

Why is everybody making it so difficult? I just placed a few comments on this, I just don't like how circus animals are treated, and that's the reason why I disliked it, I don't hate the channel.

[TarquinnBlackwood1]

You are missing the point here, I just said "I disliked this video because animal abuse..." I don't want to prevent people from watching it, I'm not trying to make people to listen to any cause, and finally, I don't think those elephants and the other animals enjoyed doing that, and I don't think they kind of got an agreement with the circus to do that. Just to make my point clear, I just don't like what's behind the circus animals