The Tale of Jerry the Talking Dog
- Taylor Hamby
- Jan 31, 2023
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 2, 2023
Lucius Beebe's life story is practically inseparable from--and certainly incomplete without the inclusion of--T-Bone Towser, his and Charles Clegg's beloved St. Bernard. Especially when focusing on Beebe & Clegg's life in the 1950s during their tenure as newspaper barons in Virginia City, Nevada.
However, with apologies to Mssrs. T-Bone Towser I & II, today's story focuses on a different celebrity Neva-dog.
This dog talked.
No, not figuratively. Yes, Jerry the fox terrier spoke English sentences perhaps more coherently than some C-Street stool warmers at the time.
Riley Bryan and his dog Jerry moved to Virginia City, NV on the heels of touring the United States as a traveling curiosity for the span of the 1940s decade.
During WWII, Jerry performed to hospitalized American troops to much fanfare. Jerry was featured in LIFE magazine in a two-page pictorial spread in 1946 as well as in newspapers across the country. He even had a Hollywood audition with actress-producer Bebe Daniels.
Bryan purchased Jerry as a pup from a traveling circus for $5 in 1940 while he owned a photo biz in Grundy, Virginia. It was unbeknownst to Bryan at the time Jerry was anything extraordinary.
One fateful day, a big bulldog chased after the five-month old Jerry. Bryan witnessed Jerry juke his fellow canine foe. When the pair returned home safely, Bryan told the story of the great escape to his wife.
“And then what did Jerry do?” Della Bryan asked.
“I run,” replied Jerry in doggerel English.
Mr. and Mrs. Bryan were equal in their astonishment. This was the first time Jerry had ever spoken. He would go on to learn a few more phrases, such as “hubba, hubba”, “no, no”, “I want it”, and “I love you.”
In addition to speaking English, Jerry reportedly played piano in “boogie woogie” style (or “doggie woggie”) and could also play checkers, use a typewriter and dial a telephone. Jerry and Bryan hit the road as a traveling dog show, performing for veterans hospitals, children’s charities, and State Fairs. According to the Minneapolis Star, Jerry was insured by Lloyds of London for $75,000.
Bryan and Jerry settled on the Comstock around the turn of the 1950s, right around when Beebe & Clegg did. Bryan rented a Virginia City, NV storefront from artist Zoray Andrus next door to her Welcome Grant art gallery on the south end of C Street (the town's main street). Bryan charged patrons, mostly children, a nickle to hear Jerry talk.
Jerry & Bryan’s unusual adventure began in the state of Virginia and ended in Virginia City, Nevada. In the autumn of 1951, the Virginia City News had the unfortunate task of reporting the death of Jerry the talking dog. According to the article, Jerry was hit by a hit-and-run driver.
“He leaves behind him a pink blanket, three scrapbooks full of press clippings on his career, and a legion of mourners,” reported the News.
And he also left behind Riley Bryan, heartbroken.
In the Spring of 1952, Beebe & Clegg resurrected the historic Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City from its 30-some-year slumber. The Enterprise is of course the oldest newspaper in Nevada and where Mark Twain first used his famous false name and first took a stab at being a reporter (he was a notoriously poor shot).
Beebe & Clegg hired Bryan as the part-time General Manager and sole staff member of the new Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News in 1952. He was on hand at the new-old paper’s grand launch party at the historic Territorial Enterprise building on C Street in Virginia City. He was also the caretaker of St. Mary’s in the Mountains, the resplendent 1876 Catholic cathedral in Virginia City, at the time.
By the end of 1952, Bryan was back in the headlines, this time for being a dog himself.
“Miracle in Reverse Changes Church Funds Into Thin Air; Sexton Vanishes in Bad Check Flurry,” read a headline in the Territorial Enterprise on November 28, 1952.
“Half a score of Comstockers and Virginia City institutions were left holding the bag last week with the disappearance, appropriately on a stormy winter night, of Riley Bryan, custodian of the Comstock's celebrated church of St. Mary's in the Mountains and well known C Street figure for the last two years,” reported the Enterprise. The article omits to acknowledge Bryan was also in their employ.
“Impartial in his religious affiliations, Bryan also made off with an undetermined sum of money…which had been subscribed for the restoration of St. Paul's Episcopal Church,” continued the article.
“While the money, in various sums, is beyond doubt lost to the touch artist's victims, it is believed that a substantial portion of the take remains within the Comstock as Bryan was a fanatic roulette player and had lost consistently over the past two years in local gaming rooms,” the Enterprise asserted. “As it became apparent that time was catching up with him, the church custodian disappeared amidst a meteorologic phenomenon, a Nevada blizzard augmented by a snowstorm of spurious bank drafts.”
Beebe touches on the debacle in Comstock Commotion, his 1954 book on the history of the Territorial Enterprise. He recalled that when it had dawned on them Bryan had absconded with St. Mary’s “poor box” funds, they realized they aught to check the contents of their newsroom’s petty cash supply. The amount missing? “All.”
Riley Bryan nor his absconded petty cash were ever found, according to Yvonne J. Stephens in “Seeing the Elephant”, her doctoral thesis on Lucius Beebe from 1974.
“All that Beebe and Clegg had to remind them of their loss was the telephone that Bryan had used in his talking dog act,” Stephens wrote. “After the dog's death, the telephone had been installed in the pair's private railroad car, such phones then being in short supply.”
No word on if any attempts at teaching T-Bone how to use said phone were ever made.
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