Join us at Christina's Restaurant on September 21st
Peter Rakov remembers Kingston’s famed Seal College and its biggest star: Sharkey. Sharkey, Kingston’s celebrity seal and stage, screen and TV star of yesteryear, is showcased in local author’s new book.
Interviewed by NPR’s Joe Donahue about his book “Sharkey, When Sea Lions were Stars of Show Business (1907-58)”, our speaker, Gary Bohan, Jr. will share the compelling story of an unusually gifted, trained sea lion who shared the stage with practically every important performer of the first half of the twentieth century including: Bob Hope, Ella Fitzgerald, Abbott and Costello and the Three Stooges. He headlined with sports legends like Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson. And he appeared on nearly every pioneering variety show of early television, alongside TV icons such as Milton Berle, Imogene Coca, and Ed Sullivan. With a personality larger than life, Sharkey was the highest-paid single animal act of his day.
Author Gary Bohan Jr. hails from Kingston, New York, where Sharkey was trained and is the great-grandson of Sharkey's trainer, Mark Huling. Mr. Bohan also plays trumpet and has recorded and toured throughout North America, Europe, and Australia with the Klezmer Conservatory Band, including with Itzhak Perlman's "In the Fiddler's House" project, which resulted in a PBS documentary and two best-selling recordings.