Tommy Bartlett
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Thomson "Tommy" Bartlett (July 11, 1914 - September 6, 1998) was a Wisconsin showman and entertainment mogul. He most often associated with the water skiing thrill show based in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin named the Tommy Barlett's Thrill Show. The success of this and other traveling water ski shows led to Bartlett's induction into the Water Ski Hall of Fame in 1993.
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Bartlett began his career in entertainment by becoming a broadcaster at the local WISN radio station at the young age of 13. After moving to Chicago, Illinois, he became an announcer at the CBS affiliated WBBM radio station. He continued here until the outbreak of World War II, when he learned to fly and subsequently became a flight instructor for the United States Army Air Corps. In 1947 he returned to radio, hosting a show entitled Welcome Travelers.
In 1949, Bartlett went to the Chicago Railroad Fair, where he witnessed a water skiing show on the Chicago lakefront. After seeing several more such shows over the course of the fair, Bartlett decided to create and produce his own traveling water ski show. The "Tommy Bartlett Water Ski & Jumping Boat Thrill Show", as it was first called, was highly successful. In 1952, after the show toured Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, Bartlett was asked by the local Chamber of Commerce to keep the show in the city permanently. Bartlett agreed to the request, keeping one arm of the show at Wisconsin Dells for daily performances while four additional road groups continued touring in cities across the United States. The success of the shows led the United Service Organizations to request Bartlett to send the show overseas to entertain U.S. soldiers in the Far East, launching a popular branch of the tour in Asia.
Through his show, Bartlett has been credited both with popularizing water skiing from a smalltime hobby to a major sport, and with the establishment of Wisconsin Dells as a tourist mecca. Bartlett's Wisconsin Dells show offered bumper stickers for its visitors to put on their cars, thus carrying advertisements for the show and the city across the nation. In addition to his water ski show, Bartlett invested in other tourist attractions in Wisconsin Dells, building "Tommy Bartlett's Robot World", a hands on science museum, in the 1970s. The attraction is now known as the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory.
Bartlett also continued his career in broadcasting while his ski show and Wisconsin Dells ventures were ongoing. He was an announcer at the Calgary Stampede from 1966 to 1992, as well as at the 1988 Winter Olympics. Bartlett's widespread ventures in the entertainment industry led him to become very wealthy, and in 1997, Bartlett purchased one of three spare core modules for the space station Mir from a Moscow museum. The object is now the centerpiece of the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory in Wisconsin Dells, and was used as a backdrop by CNN while the network reported on Mir's re-entry to the atmosphere in 2001.
Bartlett was inducted into the Water Ski Hall of Fame in 1993 for his contributions to promoting the sport, despite having only water skied once in his life, on his seventieth birthday. In 1998, at the age of 84, Bartlett died of kidney failure. His name, however, lives on in the Tommy Bartlett Show and Tommy Bartlett Exploratory, which each continue to entertain thousands of visitors every year.
