Al Dobritch and the Shadowy Side Of the Shrine Circus

     Modern American circuses have always been places where shadows meet the light. Immersed in darkness, the audience peers out into a brightly lit arena where wild animals do tricks, where shady looking clowns do stunts and play pranks on each other, where freaks display their abnormalities for the entertainment of so-called normal people, and trapeze artists and tightrope walkers flirt with death in as elegant a way as possible. The performers are transients who come into town on trains and trucks; who knows what they might be doing in their glittery costumes while they wait in the wings. Lion tamers can get mutilated, clowns can get trampled by elephants, tightropes can snap, and trapeze artists can fall uncontrollably into the air. Always on a fine line between high talent and sleaze, people watch this for fun. They bring their children. And some say Al Dobritch was the greatest Shrine circus producer ever.

     After the Civil War, the Ancient Arabic Order Of the Nobles Of the Mystic Shrine, more often referred to as the Shriners, were formed in New York City. They were an elitist spin-off from the Freemasons. Only 32^nd degree members of the Scotch Rite or York Rite were allowed to join. Their pageants and rituals were elaborate performances where successful businessmen play-acted at being Muslims. The Shriners’ emphasis was on fun but their rowdy behavior and heavy drinking earned them a bad reputation as a boy’s club for debauchery. They established their charitable Shriner’s Hospitals for children who were victims of burns or physical disabilities as a means of correcting and managing their public image.

     As the Shriners grew in popularity and their rituals became more elaborate, funding for temple activities became increasingly more expensive so they began holding circuses to raise money for their clubs. Contrary to popular perception, the Shrine Circus was not established to support the hospitals. But the Shriners themselves never hesitated to give out tickets so sick and disabled children could see the shows for free.

     Before the 1950s, circuses were strictly traveling acts. In the warmer months of the year, tents were erected in vacant lots, freelance performers were brought in, and many of them worked for three quarters of the year moving from city to city. During the winter they were unemployed. The great innovation of the Shrine Circus was to hold engagements in indoor arenas when the climate was too cold for the big top. The Moslem Temple in Detroit built the first and most prominent auditorium for the circus. Audiences had a place to come in from the cold during the dreary months of snow and the clowns, acrobats, and animals did not have to worry about going hungry for that segment of the year.

The circus producer Eddie Stinson was given command over the Moslem Temple’s venue. Stinson was a businessman though, and he had no flair for showbusiness. He hired the acts and delegated the workloads but paid no mind to the quality of performances. 

     By 1960, Detroit’s annual Shrine Circus had grown redundant and dull and attendance went into decline. Stinson was out and the nobles began shopping around for a new producer. They settled for L.N. Fleckles from the Chicago Medinah Temple circus. Fleckles made some cosmetic changes and hired new acts. His biggest change was adding an hour-long intermission in the middle. His circus was lackluster and not much better than the Eddie Stinson productions. The highlight of 1960 was when a daredevil got shot out of a cannon while sitting in a tiny car; the car missed its target and bounced off the side of the netting and crashed at the base of the bleachers. There were no serous injuries but spectators agreed that it was the most entertaining moment of an otherwise boring day. The managers argued and grumbled amongst themselves and finally decided to continue shopping for a new producer. By 1961 they had found their man.

     Al Dobritch was born in Sofia, Bulgaria to a family of circus professionals. World War II ended and communism swept across Eastern Europe. When it reached Bulgaria, Dobritch and his Polish-German wife named Pia fled with their son Sandy to the U.S.A. By the 1950s, the Dobritch family members that stayed behind had earned the possible dubious distinction of being the most prominent circus producers behind the Iron Curtain. Meanwhile, Al Dobritch and his family tried to establish themselves as a trapeze act in the states. They proved to be mediocre performers but did manage to land a gig on the Super Circus television show. The audience fell in love with the adorable little Sandy so they hired him for a permanent part as the clown named Scampy. The role was originally intended for a midget but the one who signed a contract to perform never showed up for work. So they settled for Sandy as a replacement.

     By then, Al Dobritch had quit climbing the ladder to the trapeze and had begun climbing the ladder to management instead. The television producers took him on as a talent scout. When he made a few good connections he moved on to hiring acts for The Ed Sullivan Show then began producing his own small-time traveling circuses.

     The Shriners first got word of Dobritch because he was being sued for defamation by the increasingly unpopular L.N. Fleckles. Dobritch met with some nobles of the Shrine and agreed to produce high-quality circuses for costs significantly lower than the other available choices. Al Dobritch signed his first contract to run the 1961 Moslem Temple Shrine Circus in Detroit.

Dobritch had energy and passion for production. The size of the circus was increased by expanding it from two rings to three with two elevated stages between the rings. To the two white spotlights he added two more, one red and one blue. The sawdust in the rings was colored bright blue while the sawdust on the hippodrome track around the rings was dyed deep red. The clowns were more cheeky. The animal acts were more complex. The highwire walkers and trapeze artists did more daring and dazzling acts. The stuntmen and acrobat performances grew more dangerous. Dobritch sequenced the show so that it became more exciting as it went along, eventually reaching a climax where glitter and balloons were dropped from the ceiling into the audience at the end of the show. Low-paid employees given the task of blowing up those multitudes of balloons were disgruntled and discontented.

     The audiences went wild and attendance grew rapidly. Al Dobritch became the darling of the circus world. He also became more cocky, more abrasive, more arrogant, and eventually more difficult to work for.

     For 1962, Dobritch was brought back with a modest increase in salary. He added even more acts. Veteran lion tamer Clyde Beatty came out of retirement. There were equestrians, a man in a gorilla suit, human cannonballs and the then-dead tradition of the ringmaster in his black stovepipe hat got revived. Most significantly, the famous Wallendas, a family highwire act, was brought in. Their most famous act was the Human Pyramid, a feat where one man walked out on the tightrope with a bar on his shoulders; three men holding their own bars balanced on that bar and two men stood on those bars holding one bar between them. On top of that bar sat a woman on a chair. The man on the bottom walked out across the wire while holding them all in the air. When he reached the middle, the woman stood up on the chair and balanced there until they finished crossing to the platform on the other side. One night in January, the death-defying feat turned deadly. One of the Wallendas lost his balance and the pyramid toppled over. Two of the men fell to the ground and died of fractured skulls. Three men grabbed the wire as they fell and another two held onto the woman on the chair while the circus lackeys scrambled to get a net under the wire. She fell but landed in an awkward position and ended up paralyzed for the rest of her life. The crowd panicked but they quickly took the dead and injured bodies away on stretchers. As you might guess, safety nets thereafter became a necessity for all performances. They immediately resumed the show to distract the audience from the tragedy. When the press later asked Al Dobritch about the accident, he coldly said, “It’s terrible but the show must go on.”

     The years 1963 to 1966 saw attendance and profits rise steadily by approximately 40 or 50% annually. Al Dobritch worked contract to contract and other producers were eager to get in on Detroit’s Moslem Temple circus which had, by then, established itself as the showcase for Shrine Circuses all across the nation. Dobritch’s coarse behavior and rough manners made others feel as if they had a chance to bump him out of the way and rise on his coattails to success.

After the Wallenda’s disaster, the Shriners and Dobritch began to fight about liability and demanded part of his expenditures go to workman’s compensation insurance. Dobritch would have none of it and refused to pay but they worked out an agreement where the fraternal order would cover insurance costs if they were waived from all accidentally injury or death liability with Al Dobritch being solely responsible for anything that could go wrong.

     Shrine Circus attendance continued to grow so the number of engagements was increased throughout the month of January. Each year Dobritch’s show became better too. Tarzan Zerbini, the Lord Of the Jungle, swung into the arena on a rope and into a cage full of lions and tigers where he proceeded to make them do tricks. Walt Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Alice in Wonderland made their first circus appearances ever. Nationally famous clowns like Blinko, Oopsie, and Bozo put in appearances and the midget clown Captain Bob Lo Short entertained the crowds while dressed in a military uniform. The renowned Alfredo Landon got hired to choreograph the clowning antics and took their gags to a whole new level.

     But while Al Dobritch was ascending to his throne as king of American circus producers, his wife Pia left him. His behavior became more erratic and tempestuous. Then eyebrows were raised when he married Rusty Allen. Born in a small town in Texas, she was a gorgeous redhead and C-list actress whose most significant credits were a Walt Disney production called Jumbo, a part in an Elvis Presley movie, and a starring role in an exploitation film directed by David Friedman. The wives of the Shriners took an immediate disliking to her and when the wives do not like somebody, ordinarily the husbands do not either. The problem was that Al Dobritch had reached the age of 51 and his wife Rusty had just turned 21. As the Shriners began to give Dobritch the cold shoulder, he became more obnoxious. Finally, he tried to make amends with the brotherhood by throwing a cocktail party for them and their wives but nobody showed up. The unsympathetic fraternity gave Dobritch his walking papers and hired L.N. Fleckles to direct the 1967 Moslem Temple Shrine Circus despite the overwhelming success of Dobritch’s shows.

     Needless to say, L.N. Fleckles’ production skills had not improved at all since 1960. Shrine Circus quality began to decline and so did profits and attendance.

     By 1968, Al Dobritch had negotiated to produce a circus for a rival secret society called the Aries Grotto, a cheap and less elitist knock-off of Shriner wannbes. The advertisements billed the show as Al Dobritch’s circus with illustrations of clown wearing red fezzes. A county fairground on the outskirts of Detroit was leased for a one month run. Dobritch brought some of the best acts from his Moslem Temple Circus and even convinced Adam West to put in an appearance as Batman at the height of that television show’s popularity. But the crowds were small. The general public knew the Shrine Circus’s brand but the name “Al Dobritch” was unfamiliar; no one had ever taken any interest in the managerial staff working behind the scenes to bring them great entertainment.

     By then, Rusty Allen had left him so Al Dobritch took another job producing a circus in Los Angeles. Dobritch had great admiration for Martin Luther King and when the great Civil Rights leader got assassinated, he plunged into a dark mood. To make matters worse, the Los Angeles circus was staged near an African-American neighborhood; when the riots broke out, attendance dwindled down to almost nothing and that particular show would no longer go on.

     By the end of 1968, Al Dobritch had filed for bankruptcy and took a job as talent scout for the Circus Circus Casino in Las Vegas. That’s when things really started to get weird. First, Dobritch began seeing prostitutes. Then he got involved in an extortion scheme with a friend where they cornered several strippers and threatened to kill them if they did not cough up part of their earning in exchange for protection. One night Dobritch got arrested. He frequently got into fistfights with a man named Peter Costello. Dobritch paid his friend to help him hurt the man. The pair found Costello walking down the street with his girlfriend. Dobritch began punching her while his friend pistol whipped Costello into unconsciousness. When the two were knocked out, they put them in the trunk of Dobritch’s car. The police later showed up at his apartment and found the couple battered, bloodied, and unresponsive. They were taken to the hospital. Al Dobritch and his friend were booked on charges of assault and battery and kidnapping.

     In March of 1971, Al Dobritch entered the lobby of the Mint Hotel in Las Vegas with a woman. They registered for a room under assumed names. The bellhop who carried their luggage up to the 15^th floor later said the woman did not come with them. Twenty minutes after checking in, Dobritch’s dead body was discovered splattered all over the sidewalk. Police investigators broken down his hotel room door since it was locked from the inside. The window was open. His female companion was not in the room. There were no signs of struggle. The police ruled Al Dobritch’s death a suicide.

McConnell, John H. Shrine Circus: A History Of the Mystic Shriners Yankee Circus in Egypt. Astley and Ricketts, Detroit: 1998.