Friday, December 15, 2006

Ladies of the Steel Arena #5




MAY LESLIE KOVAR Posted by Picasa

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

May Kovar is the former Court trainer, who was out in Calif. later in trying to put together her own lion act was attacked and mauled to death during practice and I believe her young children were standing outside the cage when it happened. At the time she wasw married to elephant trainer Curly Schaffer.

Anonymous said...

Way back near the genesis of this site, Buckles ran a shot of May Kovar and we addressed her demise in Thousand Oaks. I (we, or someone) need to go back and index every photo of every day on this blog, and cross-index by subject. This since I can't recall the date of this reference.

Ms. Kovar was killed on December 20, 1949, while rehearsing a lion. He snapped her neck, killing her instantly. Her children, Michael, May, and little Sandra (about 3 then) were present. Michael and May entered to try to help. They could not, and Rudy Mueller arrived to fight the lion off and retrieve the body.

Casey McCoy Cainan said...

That is a real tragedy. Did the children stay in show biz? My wife was the announcer on Franzen when he was attacked, needless to say it has left her some what scarred on cat acts. But she watches me work even so.

Anonymous said...

To Circusman: I have no further references to Michael. I later knew May, Jr., at Jungleland, where she was only a visitor and not an employee. She married a prop guy, Lee Noblett, and they were with us just one season, on Castle, in '72. May, Jr., had no position on the show. She may have had an aerial act sometime previous to this.

Casey McCoy Cainan said...

Thank you Roger

Anonymous said...

Casey, how are those three young female tigers working out for you? I brought them to the show with Larry in Michigan. I raised them at my facility and would like to know they are working out for you.