Bill Ballantine (illustrator)

Bill Ballantine (1910–1999) was an American writer and illustrator of circus subjects, as well as a professional clown. A prolific writer, Ballantine contributed circus and travel essays to major magazines. His many stories of circus life appeared in Collier's, Holiday, Harper’s Bazaar, Saturday Evening Post, True, Saga, and Seventeen. Ballantine also authored ten books, including Wild Tigers and Tame Fleas, Horses and Their Bosses, and Clown Alley, which chronicles his years as dean of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. Over his long career as a writer/illustrator, he published nearly 100 articles on circus and travel and regularly illustrated True magazine's backpage feature “Strange but True” with his graceful and warmly humorous pen-and-ink line drawings. Born in 1910 in Millvale, Pennsylvania, Ballantine was introduced to circuses by his father, a member of the Mystic Shrine and once mayor of their home town. Mixing sawdust and grease paint with the sparkling tarnish of the music hall next door to his childhood home, Ballantine developed a lifelong hunger for show business. After graduating from high school, Ballantine found work in a sign shop, painting posters for local movie houses, and after several years, began attending the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, beginning his long career as an artist/illustrator and later writer. Through the years, he worked for a succession of employers, including the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Associated Press, PM, Punch and during World War II, the Office of War Information for which he designed and drew pro-democracy leaflets that the U.S. government air-dropped over the European continent. Ballantine also accepted freelance illustration and writing assignments that often provided him the opportunity to hitch rides with circus caravans. He traveled with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus during the 1946 season and then, finally, in 1947, he decided to bid a temporary farewell to the workaday world of publishing and run away to the circus.