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Acrobatic tricks.
Accompanying orchestra.
The Bellclair Brothers, pioneers of a certain styles of acrobatic entertainment, and who have probably been more widely copied and imitated than all the others put together, are once more to the fore with a finishing trick that is not likely to be soon duplicated - for two reasons. The first is, it won't be so easy for other acrobats to do, and the second is the apparatus used to execute it has been patented. The original success of the Bellclairs was in the long routines, instead of stopping to dry their hands after each trick. Their previous turn was accomplished in but five "routines," allowing but four breathing spaces. That was a pace many essayed but few could keep up with. Now they are doing it in three "routines" in the space of seven minutes before a red plush drop in "one," every movement musicalized by an effect operatic orchestration. Ben Bellclair's present partner is extremely heavy for a top-mounter and is a wonderfully developed physical specimen, as quick and lithe in his movements as a panther. The act is apparently finished and for an encore the plush drop separates, revealing on full stage an all-steel apparatus, very graceful in its curves, which stands on its own platform, which in turn is supported on ball-bearing rollers, making it easily possible to set the act in say two minutes. The top-mounter lays of a miniature automobile at the top of an incline 16 feet high. At a given signal he pulls a self-starting device which releases the auto, shooting down the incline with such momentum the man and auto together form a complete loop-the-loop. At the end of the loop the auto is mechanically caught while the athlete continues to fly and is caught by the understander in a high hand-to-hand stand 15 feet away, thus "looping-the-loop" to a flying hand-to-hand stand. It is Ben Bellclair's showmanship in setting himself for the "catch" that effectively "sells" the trick. The act has style and Bellclair Brothers are again in a class by themselves.
Source:
Variety, 41:5 (12/31/1915)