Los Angeles Times file photo

Emmett Kelly, right, in an undated photo, with a mystery guest. The picture was apparently a publicity photo for the Jan. 21, 1962, television program "Project 20," which featured the Clyde Beatty Circus.

By Keith Thursby
Times Staff Writer

It was an unlikely sports story—a clown announcing the end of
his connection with the Dodgers.

Emmett Kelly said the Dodgers had failed to renew his
contract for the 1958 season. Kelly, a longtime performer with Ringling
Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, was no mere clown act. He had performed
on Broadway and in movies and had taken off the 1956 season to serve as the
Dodgers’ mascot in Brooklyn. (You can still find Dodger pennants from that era
with Kelly’s portrait.)

The Associated Press story noted that Kelly’s "glum face had
been a source of laughter to millions of children."

Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times

Emmett Kelly cleans his plate–in this case home plate–during a Dodgers-Braves game on April 15, 1962, for Senior Citizens Day at Dodger Stadium. 

He blamed the Dodgers’ selection of the Coliseum for the
decision. He said the team’s first home in Los Angeles was "too big for one
clown."

The story said Kelly was
returning to his first love, the circus. He died in 1979.

Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times

Emmett Kelly jokes with an umpire at Wrigley Field in a photo published June 30, 1957. [No, it wasn’t "photoshopped." The print was so big that I had to scan it in two sections and paste it together.–lrh]

Los Angeles Times file photo

Emmett Kelly, possibly in Vero Beach, Fla., in a photo dated June 27, 1957.