Big Jim

Location:
Theater:
Date:
Type:
The act was seventeen minutes long on the full stage. A trained bear roller skates on its hind legs, does a turkey trot and “grizzly” stepping to the tune of “Grizzly Bear”, plays dead, and does some comedy wrestling with some plants in the audience. The announcer (speaking in a German accent but dressed in Mexican costume) states that the bear is six years old and weighs three hundred and eighty pounds. He performs without a muzzle or strings. He then “declares he has spent his life “breaking” bears, has trained twenty-eight of them, that this one is the first ever taught to skate or do acrobatics.”
The act is most interesting and will do as a "freak comedy novelty".
Source:
Variety 28:8 (25/10/1912)