World Jungle Compound
Posted By thecircusblog on May 6, 2012
Billie Richards and Trader Horne took over Jungleland in the mid 1950’s. The trainers and other performers stayed on so there was not much of a change. The changes that were made was in name recognition and in their advertisement, but mostly it was business as usual. Both men were good business men. They came up with the idea that maybe they should put together a movie about wild animals. However, in their first year the compound was foremost in their minds, making a go of it which would entail a new and better image.
Throughout the years there had been many different owner and leasers but Jungleland always went back into the hands of Louie Goebel the originator and builder of the Jungleland compound. Maybe this time Horne and Richards might pull it off.
Mr. Goebel was the head of the animal department at Universal Studio in 1923. He saw that there was a good future in wild animals. He traveled out into the country north of Los Angeles and bought raw land in Thousand Oaks, Calif. There Louie developed Goebel’s Wild Animal Farm. Now he was on the way to becoming a successful importer and exporter of wild animals: buying, selling, and leasing them. And so the movie people came to him. It was a top location for jungle movie, hence the name Jungleland came about.
Bob Cline has made an important comment. Thanks.
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thecircusblog
My name is Ivan M. Henry and I am the 4th generation of a circus/show business dynasty. I hope you enjoy the blog.Comments
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Ivan, It should be noted that the elephant figures on the building came off of the elephant tab. These were then re-created on the rebuilt elephant tab that is now at Circus World Museum.
Bob
Richards and Horne operated the place, which they re-titled World Jungle Compound, from 1946 to 1956. Sid Ruman and James Rogel, 20th Century-Fox execs, bought the place next, and named it Jungleland, thinking grandly to compete with Disneyland, which had opened far to the South, in Anaheim, in 1955. They drew up expansive concepts which were never to be, and the pair withdrew by 1960. Then came the Ruhe brothers, Heinz and Lutz, who failed miserably in just over 2 years. All their money squandered, they departed, and Goebel once again took the place back. In 1965, the death knell of the Compound was rung when yet another group turned up. Roy and Marie Kabat, backed by Marie’s father, Janelli, along with Tex and Ina Scarbrough of carny extraction, made a deal with Goebel to pay the place out. They never paid a principal payment, nor even an interest payment. Goebel foreclosed and our revered old Compound was auctioned off over October 8 and 9, 1969.