We recently looked at a number of silent films (most filmed in California) that featured "Arabian" horses that were not really Arabians. It was not uncommon for entertainment promoters in the late 1800s to early 1900s to call a horse an "Arabian" when, at least demonstrably, it wasn't what breeders of the day would have called an Arabian.
Certainly there had been horses imported to the United States before and during that time period, but there weren't many of them scattered around, and the Arabian Horse Club registration system wasn't established until 1908-1909.
The public flame of desire to see an "Arabian" horse was doubtless fanned in 1880, when General Lewis "Lew" Wallace (1827-1905) published his novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It has been called "the most influential Christian book of the 19th century," but it also made people dream of seeing Arabian horses. (In 1881, President James Garfield appointed Wallace as US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, expressing a hope that it would inspire Wallace to write a sequel to Ben-Hur.)
Back then, calling a horse an "Arabian" often meant that it was exotic-looking, and/or that it performed in a circus, rodeo, or stage production wearing a costume. We see a couple of examples of these Faux Arabians in newspaper advertisements and photographs of circus horses in the early 1900s.
Los Angeles-area newspaper ads in 1907 and 1908 reported that the famous Sells-Floto Circus Menagerie was wintering in Venice, California. People could take the train to see a circus performance and look at the camp with all the animals.
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Los Angeles Herald, 1 March 1908.
I think they meant "menage horse act" rather than "manage."
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Throughout the year, the circus would travel the country by train, with a grueling schedule so busy the performers may not have known where they were on any given day.
Part of the Sells-Floto equine troupe back then was a horse billed as an "Arabian." He had a graceful head, and he wore a tasseled bridle like Arabians from the desert might have.
He looked not unlike an Arabian might have, until you looked at the rest of him. He had a wealth of "leopard" black spots on his white coat.
The first image I've found of him is from 1907. He isn't given a name in this promotional montage, but his spotting is obvious.
In 1912, his stage name was Omar Khayyam. His exotic costume included plumes, little flags along the top of his mane, and several tassels. The circus took out a full-page ad in the local newspaper for their performances in Wichita, Kansas.
By 1914, the leopard-spotted horse's stage name was Kiddo, sometimes spelled "Kido." He was billed as a "Pure Arabian Horse."He appears in this undated postcard image as "Kiddoo."
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| Source: eBay |
Omar Khayyam/Kiddo/Kido/Kiddoo was not the only spotted "Arabian" Sells-Floto used in the early 1900s. Now entering the Sells-Floto big top, a team of four of the twelve (or fourteen, depending on which newspaper article you look at) "Celebrated Ben Hur Arabian Horses," each with a few black spots across its hindquarters.
Sells-Floto was capitalizing on the scenes in Lew Wallace's novel Ben-Hur, mentioned above. In the book, the horses' owner, Sheik Ilderim, introduces Judah Ben-Hur to the team that pulls his chariot. Ben-Hur looks at one of the horses when it enters the Sheik's tent:
A head of exquisite turn—with large eyes, soft as a deer’s, and half hidden by the dense forelock, and small ears, sharp-pointed and sloped well forward—approached then quite to his breast, the nostrils open, and the upper lip in motion. “Who are you?” it asked, plainly as ever man spoke. Ben-Hur recognized one of the four racers he had seen on the course, and gave his open hand to the beautiful brute.
The chariot race itself was almost as thrilling in the book as it was on the big screen, first in 1925 and again in 1959:
...Above the noises of the race there was but one voice, and that was Ben-Hur’s. In the old Aramaic, as the sheik himself, he called to the Arabs,
“On, Atair! On, Rigel! What, Antares! dost thou linger now? Good horse—oho, Aldebaran! I hear them singing in the tents. I hear the children singing and the women—singing of the stars, of Atair, Antares, Rigel, Aldebaran, victory!—and the song will never end. Well done! Home to-morrow, under the black tent—home! On, Antares! The tribe is waiting for us, and the master is waiting! ’Tis done! ’tis done! Ha, ha! We have overthrown the proud. The hand that smote us is in the dust. Ours the glory! Ha, ha!—steady! The work is done—soho! Rest!”...
The people arose, and leaped upon the benches, and shouted and screamed... They had seen the transformation of the man, and themselves felt the heat and glow of his spirit, the heroic resolution, the maddening energy of action with which, by look, word, and gesture, he so suddenly inspired his Arabs. And such running! It was rather the long leaping of lions in harness; but for the lumbering chariot, it seemed the four were flying. When the Byzantine and Corinthian were halfway down the course, Ben-Hur turned the first goal.
AND THE RACE WAS WON!
The consul arose; the people shouted themselves hoarse; the editor came down from his seat, and crowned the victors....
Not content with having plain literary-Arabians-turned-flesh, however, the Sells-Floto Circus embellished their teams of chariot racers with a fanciful backstory.
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| Sells-Floto "Arabians," circa 1905-1906 |
"The Ben Hur Herd of Arabian Stallions of the Black Eagle Feather" were said to have been the property of the "Sultan of Turkey," who decreed they could only be shown in America if their "native keeper, Abdulla Ibn Achmad" remained with them -- except when the newspaper article cited their origins with the "Sultan of Morocco." And importantly, they had spots on their hindquarters, the promotional materials said, "as if some barbaric spirit had dropped upon them black eagle feathers." (Perhaps the spots were natural, or perhaps they were painted on, to add to the horses' air of mystery?)
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The "Ben Hur Arabians" were promoted as having been "exhibited at the horse show in Chicago in 1902." I'm not sure which horse show that might have been; it's possible the circus promoters were referring to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, which featured the appearance of real Arabian horses from the Middle East, counting on the public not to remember the year. (I'll put a photo of these Arabians at the end of this post.)
The Sells-Floto "Arabians" were also said to have "almost human intelligence." They were 15 1/2 hands high and weighed 1100-1250 pounds each. Press promotion for the horses was lyrical:
"It was such horses Gen. Lew Wallace had in mind when he idealized the chariot race in his novel 'Ben Hur.' Therefore they have been called the 'Ben Hur' troupe of royal Arabian horses.
"Only animals of the battle spirit were suitable as chariot horses. In these furious contests the horses put their lives at stake as well as the charioteers."
In Los Angeles in 1908, a Sells-Floto "Arabian" demonstrated the claim that he and his fellow spotted horses had "almost human intelligence." With tongue in cheek, the Los Angeles Herald newspaper reported the story of the "sixth sense" of one of the Sells-Floto "Arabian" horses, Barney. Barney revealed to a group of Shriners that the Sells-Floto horses would help them fundraise for their annual "sircus."
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| Los Angeles Herald, 15 March 1908 |
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The "Arabian" horses in MGM's 1925 big-budget classic silent film "Ben-Hur" (which predates the 1959 color version with Charlton Heston) were probably more closely related to purebred Arabians than most of the circus horses of that era. At least one was a Shagya-Arabian!
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| Still photo from the 1925 silent film "Ben-Hur" |
Here's my blog post on them:
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Many thanks to my friend, Arabian horse researcher and author Tobi Lopez Taylor, for pointing me to the story of "Kiddo." Tobi's blog is here:
The Library of Congress website neatly summarizes the history of the Sells-Floto Circus. Its roots were literally a dog-and-pony show:
History in Photos tells more:
You can get a sense of the Circus' itinerary by looking at this brochure from its 1906 season online. Pages 25, 26, and 27 include photos of the "Ben Hur Arabians."
General Lew Wallace's family home in Indiana has been preserved as a museum and history center.
You can read Ben-Hur here for free:
Here are the (real) Arabians at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair:
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| Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. |
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Thank you for sharing the article and excellent photos! I find these historical articles extremely valuable in educating today's horse lovers and tomorrow's breeders.
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