Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Mabel Stark #5


We were on the West Coast with Rudy Bros. Circus and would lay off at the Jungle Compound, I will never forget the first time I ever saw he place. I was walking all around the when I came across this small lady practicing a small group of very large tigers.
Now you must remember this was well before Baumann, Gunther and Baudy. All she had was a fan rake and was fussing at them like a Grade School teacher I once had.
I was completely fascinated, her control was exquisite. Up until that point all I had seen were fighting acts that when their acts were completed and the chute door opened, a mad scamble ensued as they headed for the door, aided by a galop from the band.
In this case then the door opened and only one tiger reacted, he slightly turned his head that direction, the school teacher went "Tut!....Tut!....Tut! and his eyes went right back to her, they then exited in an orderly fashion one at a time.
I went back to the area where we kept our elephants and told my folks "I just saw the damndest thing, they got this little old lady working these tigers and it was unbelievable!" My dad asked "Buckles, how old are you?" I said 17, and he said "And you never heard of Mabel Stark?" Of course I had but I hadn't made the connection.

Posted by Buckles at 5/09/2006 06:31:00 AM

12 comments:

Bob Cline said...

OK Buckles, so you didn't know you were watching a legend. Mr. Ellsworth Brown didn't know he was sitting with a legend at the club Saturday night either.
Bob

10 May, 2006 06:44
Anonymous said...

Hey Buckles, I once saw a bit where the trainer (Larry Records) said to the elephant (lying on it's side)"Give me your ear" and the ear flapped up to him. Another bit was when Tarzan (Zebini) said to the lion "give me your tail" and the lion lifted his tail. Those two little things always had me scratching my head as to how they were taught. An accident maybe? I once had a horse pick up a whip that was lying in the ring and bring it to me, all by himself, without training. I was floored, but could never get him to repeat it. What do you think about tricks coming about by accident?

11 May, 2006 19:46
Buckles said...

I'm sure more trainers then we will ever know got a trick as a gift and never admitted it.
I had several occasions when I would start on something and the elephant would mistakenly volunteer something I liked better.
I remember my dad had "Lydia" dance on a tub and blow on the harmonica with her trunk while "Anna May" beat on a drum. When he got "Sadie" he wanted her to also dance on a tub and ring a school bell. The final result was, she did what she was asked but added twisting her head in a circular motion while doing this.
My Dad called it a "monkey dance".

12 May, 2006 10:15
Anonymous said...

I have seen more than one little elephant attempt a hind leg stand when first being trained to sit up on a tub. Of course elephants have been photographed in the wild standing up, but I would not be surprised if the first hind leg stand performance started that way.
Don Bloomer

12 May, 2006 13:08
Anonymous said...

I wonder who first discovered that a sea lion can balance a ball on its nose. Now, there's a mystery for the ages.

12 May, 2006 18:53
Anonymous said...

The person generally credited with being the first to teach a sea lion to balance a ball on its nose was Joseph Woodward around 1900. Woodward and his family were pinniped trainers from England that appeared mainly in vaudeville. How he discovered that a sea lion could balance an object I don't know. My guess is he saw an animal playing with a ball and balancing it my accident. For marine mammal trainers getting a behavior under control is called "capturing" the behavior. When the sea lion associates getting fish with doing a trick, you've got it. When Woodward saw the sea lion balance the ball he reinforce the behavior with a fish. The sea lion learned that balancing the ball would be positively reinforced. Everyone's happy.

If you look a old posters around 1900 and later you'll see sea lions balancing all kinds of objects. Before that sea lion acts had animals blow horns, catch hats, and go down slides.

Long answer to a short question.

12 May, 2006 19:45
Anonymous said...

Had a dog pee on a hurdle in the same spot every show. It got such a big response that I didn't bother to stop him doing it. Much bigger response than the backflips which took 4 months to train. But, boy did my carpet stink after a month or so of that.

13 May, 2006 09:45
Anonymous said...

Kim Baer has the last costume Mabel wore, much like this one with the cape.

13 May, 2006 12:51
Anonymous said...

Mabel's theory about this fan rake was that it looked to the tigers like claws bigger than theirs. I felt there was something to this, since when she picked it up, her cats behaved.

Mabel gave me her last pole, buggy whip, for which I used to roll poppers, and the rake. I wound up donating these to Col. WW Naramore at the Sarasota Circus Hall of Fame, through the ambassadorship of E. Lee Steury. I immediately regretted it, and not long after, the Hall closed and went to Peru. The last time I saw any of that collection, in 1995, it was rotting away in trucks, the victim of a lack of funds.

13 May, 2006 13:39
Anonymous said...

That is very sad, that history is rotting away because of a lack of funding. Seems that funds should be available to a historical society group for saving artifacts. It seems like AR groups can get all kinds of funding from the public and corporations, so why can't Circus Museums?

13 May, 2006 15:15
Anonymous said...

The circus will never lower its self to lie and cheat to rob the public of their money. Bite your tougue. Better to die a noble death then do what animal wrong people do to their fellow humans, let alone the animals they kill.

13 May, 2006 17:13
Anonymous said...

For my bio of her, I researching Mabel's foreign tours. This is not the background you would see in Compound shots. These appear to be road cages behind her, and with her full uniform and younger appearance, this may be her Japanese tour of 1954 (when Eddie Trees died) to 1957. The deal was, she would teach Japanese performers to work the act, then leave the tigers there. I have a shot of Frank Phillips assisting Mabel with this jump, and Eddie working the outside.

14 May, 2006 13:00

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