BearManor Media News — wonder bears

 https://youtu.be/zPjI1rSNRCc  An avid Charlie Chaplain fan, I learned when writing "Pallenberg Wonder Bears - From the Beginning" that Chaplin's last silent film was titled "The Circus". And so I bought the DVD to add it to my Chaplin collection. Needless to say, I invited my Wonder Bear book collaborator, Dibirma Jean Burnham and her husband over to watch it with me. Since the DVD included bonus features, after the movie was over we decided to watch the lengthy, 1928, silent newsreel footage of the movie's Los Angeles premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater -- soundless red carpet interviews and all. Well...

, by Peggy Adler and Dibirma Jean Burnham, is the true story of Emil Pallenberg (1888-1963),  considered to have been the greatest bear trainer of his time. In 1908, he became the first person to teach a bear to ride a bicycle. He also taught his bears to roller skate, dance, walk on stilts, play musical instruments and walk the tight rope. The Pallenberg’s bears appeared in major motion pictures -- and one was on Broadway for over a year. Laura was in the 1932 Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein Musical, Music in the Air, while Mischka (aka Carmichael) was featured in a movie with Jack Benny.  Yet when the Pallenbergs and their Wonder Bears weren’t performing, they all lived in our little shoreline town of Clinton, Connecticut.