GREETINGS FROM MOUSE (Mickey) COUNTRY, FLORIDA

Thank you very much. Show business has been a part of my life and I am very grateful for that experience. All that feels as if it were in  another life time.

No, nobody guessed that I was a Porpoise (Dolphin) trainer. I later appeared on the New, What's line, as an Alligator wrestler, and brought a 7 footer to the studio to demonstrate. He got loose from the handler, crashed thru a giant projection screen, and the rukus  back stage could be heard throughout the studio and audience while I was being interviewed on camera.

During the sixties & seventies,  I made appearances as a personality,or with animals,  on  probably fifty or more TV shows. To Tell the Truth, Capt. Kangaroo (13) times, Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin (3) times,  Mike Douglas (3) times, Sonny FoX, Pixann, Let's take a trip, to name a few. Later, I was signed  to portrait Johnny Weismueller, in his life story,  and to be the next Tarzan, except for a dispute over gift & souviner items by the family of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I met many, and  actually worked with, and became friends with some of the famous  Singers, entertainers, celebrities and movie stars of that period, including Grace Kelly, before she became Princess Grace on Monaco.

It was quite a dramatic change of lifestyle for an uneducated Hillbilly bumpkin from the Kentucky woods, who ran around bare footed a lot because I couldn't find shoes for my size 16 feet.

I  feel very fortunate, and blessed to have been allowed to participate in many different  lifestyle adventures during this lifetime, and survive.  Dell

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
 

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THats Great..I worked in film for 11 years until it slowed down in Toronto.
I have about 30 signed 8X10s of actors I worked with and liked..

DEan

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When you come from poverty and don't know anything else, there aren't many choices of  what you can do and  life is pretty much  governed by circumstances. I quit school when turned 13. Being very shy and unable to relate with people didn't help, so my friends were always nature and animals which I could love and relate to.

Without going into detail, before the Army drafted me, I was being groomed to become the next heavyweight boxing champion with my public debut planned for the Ed Sullivan show in January 1954. One of my sponsers was Sammy Snead, the golfer.

Near the end of my Army term I got married. After Discharge I went to work at a stables with my first love, horses, and following the race tracks. The stable forman was a drunkard and was fired. I asked for the job.They asked me if I could drive a tractor-trailer, and I said yes, and got the job. If they had asked me if I had ever driven a tractor-trailer, I would have to had said no. I had no experience with big rigs, whatsoever

Anyway, they required me to Winter the horses on their farm in Silver Creek, Nebraska. When my wife and I  arrived there and experienced the freezing wind blowing across a lonesome  pararie, I didn't see much future. 

We had almost enough money for gas to make it to Florida, and the front wheel bearings wore out and the front wheels literally dropped off the car when we arrived.  After 6 months of hardship, I contacted Sammy Snead,  and asked for help. He was an investor in the new Miami Sequarium, that was to be opened soon, and he arranged for me to get a job there in 1956 for $1 an hour. That's where I became acquainted with Porpoise(dolphins) and Marine life. I  became a protege of Adolph Frohn, the first trainer of porpoise at Marine Studios, St Augustine, Fl.

I was later hired to create the shows for a new inland multi-million dollar Marine attraction in Philadelpha, Pa, called Aquarama. Several of my staff went on to become aquatic annimal trainers of other marine attractions that were opening around the world. I went on my own, performing aquatic animal shows and exhibits across the country under the  company name,  Universal Animal Attractions, featured Dell's Dolphins, and the Flipper II show, and served as a consultant, supplied trained animals to other attractions, movies, and TV shows.

I was contracted to go to  Buena Park, California to create the greatest acquatic show in the world for the Japanese Deer park, then owned by Alan Parkinson. With Power and Greed, the man took everything my wife and I had worked for and left us stranded and inpoverished.

I'm still governed by circumstance, but it has been a fantastic learning experience that I would not trade. I figure the only thing I might possible be able to take with me when die will be my knowledge. And I love learning.  Dell

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DELL & CROCODILE

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you kinda look like Steve Irwin The Crocodile hunter

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