Al G. Barnes and His Monkeyville: The Circus That (Briefly) Became a City

"Here’s Cal Worthington and his dog Spot!" Anyone who grew up in the American Southwest in the 1960s and ’70s (or ’80s and ’90s) undoubtedly remembers the late night TV commercials featuring consummate car salesman/entertainer Cal Worthington and his menagerie of sidekicks who were anything but dogs. Dressed in western wear and cowboy hat, Cal paraded around his car lots leading wild or exotic animals around on leashes – or riding them – lions, tigers, elephants, whales – often against a backdrop of circus tents or wagons. A catchy song with several verses – and versions – cemented the master showman’s place in car circus history.

Yet long before Cal Worthington was even a tiny tot, another ambitious showman was making the scene in Southern California – an actual circus man named Al G. Barnes. Around 1910 Barnes had been invited to Venice, California, by a fellow entrepreneur, Abbott Kinney, who had tried to recreate the cultural ambience of Venice, Italy, by engaging Chautauqua assemblies of speakers and entertainers – only to discover that his beach visitors preferred the less cerebral amusements of thrill rides, foreign or foreign-sounding exhibits, and freak shows.

Al G. Barnes and his entourage set up their base camp – and new winter home – near the Venice Lagoon in a large circus tent alongside several smaller ones. The area was located in South Venice, south of the rail line that is today Venice Boulevard, and east of the surviving canals. As the circus grew, it needed more space – not only to expand, but also to buffer itself from disapproving neighbors. Venice residents had been complaining about the noise of braying elephants and roaring lions and in 1919 accused the circus of importing the Spanish flu. So in 1920 Al Barnes pulled up stakes and relocated to a ranch located between Venice and Culver City. He called it "Barnes City." Others called it "Monkeyville."

By 1923 the Barnes Circus Zoo, located at the corner of Washington Boulevard and McLaughlin Avenue, had been added. It comprised about four thousand animals, including Sally the orangutan, Tusko the giant elephant, Mary the giraffe, a host of Russian grizzlies, elk, ostriches, reindeer, llamas, sea lions, and Peccary hogs from South America. While the circus was on the road, the zoo was always open – with the animals that were deemed too old or too wild to perform. During the winter months, the circus was at home in Barnes City, where the non-circus residents (living on land Barnes had sold them) again complained of the noise – in addition to the activities of the circus employees such as buying liquor from local bootleggers.

Local opposition led to a series of annexations and that briefly made Barnes City an actual, independent municipality. In 1925, with the support of Barnes’ disgruntled neighbors, Culver City annexed the part of Barnes City where the zoo was located. To guard against further annexations and avoid municipal regulation, Barnes sought and won incorporation for Barnes City on Feb. 13, 1926. Nearby residents challenged the incorporation vote, however, and 14 months later, on April 11, 1927, the remainder of Barnes City was officially consolidated within the city of Los Angeles.

As his property now lay within the municipal boundaries of  Culver City and Los Angeles, Barnes was subject to more regulation, and so in 1927 he bought a tract of land between Baldwin Park and El Monte in the San Gabriel Valley and moved his circus there. Two years later he sold his circus for $1 million to an eastern syndicate, the American Circus Corporation, although it continued operating under the name Al G. Barnes Circus, even after Ringling Brothers bought the American Circus Corporation.

And so for that brief but eventful decade in Los Angeles history, a town named for a circus manager literally put the “roar” into the Roaring Twenties. These days, the former boundaries of Barnes City encompass parts of Culver City and the Los Angeles neighborhood of Mar Vista.

We may never know whether or not a young Cal Worthington was influenced by Al Barnes and his unbridled showmanship in the early decades of the 20th century – or if cars and wild animals were just a part of the Southern California landscape with its boom and bust of lion farms, alligator farms, ostrich farms, Lion Country Safari, Jungleland, and Marineland. We may not have an answer, but we do have a series of photographs taken by Dick Whittington in 1926 for the prominent advertising agency Dan Miner. They depict a lone Chevrolet accompanied by different animals – a camel, a bear, etc.,  one at a time – ostensibly on Barnes Zoo property. Other than the title and date of the photograph, the photographer’s name, and “Dan Miner,” there is little descriptive information to explain what is being promoted. Is it the Chevrolet? The Circus? Browse through the photographs below – now part of the USC Libraries’ large “Dick” Whittington Photography Collection, 1924- 1987 – and see if you can draw your own conclusion.

This story originally appeared in the fall 2016 issue of the Society of California Archivists Newsletter under the title, “Al G. Barnes: A Man, A City, A Circus.”