..Circus World Museum..Harry Thomas..

....Pat White....

....The Hawthorn Tigers....

....Vincent Von Duke....

....David McMillan....

....1983....

Alexander Lacey with his amazing performance of taming lions and tigers at the Circus Charles Knie's show in Stuttgart (Cannstadter Wasen) on November 4th, 2008

Australia Zoo..Tiger Photos..

Get up close and personal with one of our gorgeous Sumatran or Bengal Tigers during our tiger photo session. You will think you are in Southeast Asia with the authentic looking surroundings that create an amazing backdrop for your photographic package. You will get the chance to see one of these critically endangered animals up close and give it a pat while our professional photographer captures the moment.





Package DetailsTiming and Days:
Tiger Photo Sessions are held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Tiger Photo Sessions are conducted from 10:15am - 10:30am. Prebooked participants must meet at Australia Zoo Information and Tour Desk no later than 9:45am.
If available, daily session must be booked by 9.30am.
Package Includes:
Entry into Australia Zoo.
A professional Australia Zoo Photographer to capture the moment.
8 x colour photos (up to 10x12).
Price and Guest Limit:
$500 per Tiger Photo Session.
Groups may have up to four (4) participants. The same price will apply if the number of participants is less.
Minimum age of participants is 15 years.
Access to Australia Zoo:
Tiger Photo Sessions are held at 10:15am. Guests need to enter Australia Zoo through the Group Bookings booth at Admissions and meet at the Tour Desk at 9.45am to complete the booking.
Bookings:
Bookings should be made in advance through the Information and Tour Desk at Australia Zoo on (07) 5436 2002 or email via our contact form
If available, bookings can be made on the day before 9.30am.
A non-refundable deposit of $100 is required to make a booking.
Please Note:
The Tiger Photo Session may be cancelled if the weather is bad. The encounter will be rescheduled for later that day or the next available date.

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Terms and Conditions
Big Cat Encounters are available to participants who are 15 years of age and above only.
Closed in shoes must be worn at all times and either long shorts or pants may be worn during the encounter.
Clothing should be fitted (not overly baggy) and neutral in colour. No bright colours or loud clothing.
All participants must agree to follow all instructions given by the handlers at all times.
As these walks primarily form part of the Big Cats exercise, it will not be a formal session. That is, whenever the Big Cat stops – everyone stops. This time will then be utilised for photo opportunities.
Final numbers must be confirmed 1 day prior to the encounter date.
Participants must be fit and healthy and able to walk without assistance.
Participants must have full motor skill capacity and have no limps, wheelchairs or walking aides.
It is essential for the safety of our guests that all participants must be able to squat/kneel down and stand back up quickly without assistance. (This is due to the possibility of cats rolling over in toward the guests.)
Participants may be asked to cease the encounter at any time for whatever reason at the handler’s discretion.
Please ensure that your hands are clean prior to beginning the encounter.
No personal items or food are permitted during the encounter with the exception of still cameras.
Please remember that Big Cats are predatory animals and are quite capable of exercising their natural instincts.
Do not under any circumstances attempt to pick up or roughly handle the Big Cat.
The Big Cat can be patted on the back only; please do not touch their heads, faces or any other body parts.
Australia Zoo does not take any responsibility for any injuries that are received, including scratches and bites. First Aid will be called if required.
An Australia Zoo photographer will be present during the walk to capture the action. All photos included in the package will be available for collection from the Fuji Photography lab.
The Big Cat Encounter will be cancelled if weather is bad. The encounter will be rescheduled for later that day or the next available date.

Cat Man

Monday, Mar. 29, 1937....Time Magazine....

Padding about uncertainly in the tumbled sawdust of the big cage, the last three or four lions responded to a cue from outside the bars, wheeled and sped toward the runway leading to their own cages. The crowd that packed Manhattan's cavernous Hippodrome one night last week was up in its seats, streaming toward the exits past the array of jabbering freaks in the lobby. And ducking into the wings with the last salvo of applause still drumming in his ears a small man, in a shirt and breeches that had once been spotless white, shouldered through a clutter of clowns, girls, circus hands and hangers-on, scurried up a spiral staircase to his dressing-room. He was streaked and spattered with muck from head to foot. Sweat trickled down his nose and cheeks, dripped from his chin. As he collapsed into a chair while an attendant pulled off the dusty boots, Clyde Beatty, the most celebrated trainer of lions and tigers in the world and part owner of the newest and most extraordinary U. S. circus, honestly sighed: "It's good to sit down!"

Clyde Beatty was thankful that he had got through the trying first day of a new season without a scratch for himself or a catfight among his 40 surly charges. To show business, however, the first day's two performances of the Cole Bros.-Clyde Beatty Circus marked a more important accomplishment, one which old John Ringling, last of the seven brothers, vowed he would never see but which he did not see only because he died last December. John Ringling was accustomed to open his season every year in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden with no rival in sight. His show had done so ever since 1909, three years after the Ringling and Barnum & Bailey outfits joined forces. With Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey still in Florida winter quarters last week, this tradition was shattered when Cole Bros.-Clyde Beatty moved into the Hippodrome, became the first important tent show in a generation to challenge "The Greatest Show on Earth" not only by playing New York, hitherto practically a Ringling monopoly, but playing it before Ringling got there, and playing it under a "permanent top" (a building as distinguished from a tent).

Colossus. The last circus that tried to slide into Manhattan under the Ringling shadow was Sells-Floto. "Mr. John" stifled this competition in a characteristic fashion.

He bought up not only Sells-Floto but the other four circuses—Hagenbeck-Wallace, John Robinson, Sparks, Al G. Barnes— grouped with Sells-Floto in American Circus Corp. The property comprised 150 railroad cars, 2,000 animals, 4,500 people.

That was in the annus mirabilis 1929.

Independent— One ultimate effect of Depression on the circus business was that John Ringling eventually lost control of his shows. Unable to meet interest on a $1,700,000 loan, he was forced to turn over most of his assets to New York bankers. Another important result of Depression was to disgust Clyde Beatty, who had built his cat act into the world's most sensational one-man spectacle during the lean years, with the miserably disproportionate $100 a week salary his friends whisper he was getting from Ringling in 1934. Since there was no other circus to offer him more, Clyde Beatty decided to have his own circus. The 1935 season found Ringling without its standout attraction and it found Clyde Beatty starting an independent 200-town tour of his own. He had made some money from book royalties (The Big Cage), more in Hollywood from two motion pictures (The Big Cage, The Lost Jungle). So he and two other Ringling malcontents—Jess Adkins, long-time manager of Hagenbeck-Wallace, and Zack Terrell, longtime manager of Sells-Floto—had pooled their resources, scraped up a half-dozen backers and built a circus around Beatty's hair-raising cat act. The Cole Bros, name, an old and respected one in the circus world but dormant since the last Cole brother died in 1904, had been bought from the Toronto heirs of the family. For two years the new show toured the Midwest, fared well, stayed out of Manhattan.

Good times were returning. Last year the show was reported to have made $250,000 (of which Beatty received $40,000) and to have cut seriously into revived Ring-lings' business.

The Show— Except for a few great flash acts like Beatty, Con Colleano on the high wire or Ringlings' late great Aerialist Lillian Leitzel, one circus, at least to adults, is pretty much like another. One after another last week in the Hippodrome, which the musicomedy-circus Jumbo remodeled so that it ideally accommodates a condensed circus, 29 Cole Bros. -Beatty "displays" followed in fairly rapid, fairly unimpressive, succession, led off by "a magnificent and kaleidoscopic inaugural pageant participated in by hundreds of men, women, horses, elephants, yaks and beasts of the forest and jungle." Shiny seals balanced spinning balls on their moist noses, snapped up gobs of fish, barked lugubriously, played unrecognizable tunes by blowing into horns through their nostrils. One of the Picchiannis landed expertly in a chair after a triple somer sault from a teeterboard. Trainer Jorgen M. Christiansen put a troop of 24 fawn Colored horses through a series of maneuvers. "The Great Gretonas," like Ringlings' daring Wallendas, rode bicycles on a high-wire 45 ft. above the ring.

No. 29— With the 29th and last "display," the Cole Bros.-Clyde Beatty Circus stepped up into another class altogether A rising curtain disclosed a steel cage, 32 ft. in diameter, with a web of netting guarding the top. The lights were lowered a sound like thunder rumbled and syn thetic lightning glimmered. A big, heavy maned lion loped from the runway into the cage, slithered along an upward-sloping row of pedestals until he was crouched on the highest one. Two tigers came in and took their places beside him. Ten or twelve more beasts entered. While some of these were still milling around on the cage floor, Clyde Beatty, holding a blank-loaded pistol and a steel-bolted chair in his left hand and a whip in his right jumped into the cage, slapped the gate shut behind, pranced, crouched, cracked his whip. A lion made a tentative lunge at him. The pistol barked, the chair legs blocked the thrust of the paw, and the beast took his place. More cats ran in—a batch of lions, a batch of tigers, a batch of lions—keeping their heads and shoulders low to avoid cuffs from the others. Crack, Crack! Crack ! The whiplash exploded like a bunch of firecrackers until all the animals were pedestaled—25 lions and lionesses, 15 tigers and tigresses. A tiger with ominously writhing tail left its post, slunk toward the small figure in white. Beatty put his head down almost to the sawdust, pretended to be staring the animal into submission. Actually he was giving invisible "cues." The tiger bellied down, backed slowly away.

Darting, posing, shooting, the trainer made a bevy of his charges change pedestals. He fought off a lion that seemed to have pinned him against the bars. Every now and then a lion took a swipe at a tiger—or vice versa. Then the whiplash flicked over. The trainer swaggered up to a pedestaled tiger, thrust the chair at its open jaws. The animal knocked the chair aside. Soon the same tiger was obediently rolling itself along on top of a large cylinder. The trainer next made a lion sit up with its paws upraised like a begging dog's. Finally he made a tiger whirl round .& round like an animal obsessed. When he had cued most of the 40 beasts from their pedestals and driven them out the runway, came the great climax to the act.

Beatty made a dash for the gate. One of the remaining lions streaked after him, crashed against the gate just as Beatty, slipping outside, shut it in his face.

Tooth & Claw— The Beatty cat act is so thoroughly dramatized and "hoked up" to get the last tingling thrill from the most distant customer, that the skeptical are likely to be unaware of the act's real dangers. The lunges, feints and sham attacks of his beasts help make it a magnificent feat of showmanship, but they are not what Beatty worries about. Lions hate tigers and tigers hate lions, and in this atmosphere of hate the unexpected is always on the verge of happening. Beatty started mixing lions and tigers of both sexes in 1926 after a wise old "cat man" told him the old one-species, one-sex acts would not much longer satisfy a surfeited public. In 1928 his act contained 32 assorted cats, an unprecedented number. When he moved up to Ringlings' main how two years later he added eight more.

In such company Beatty cannot hope to prevent fights, is satisfied if he breaks them up without a killing or serious injury. He has had his arm chewed by a tigress, lis nose and forehead ripped open by a leopard, but his worst experience came after a big lion named Nero knocked him down and bit his leg. Jungle fever and gangrene set in and Beatty spent ten weeks in bed, almost died.

Altogether Beatty has lost 18 tigers, two lions in fights. Replacements cost him $500 or more and he values cats which have been through his step-by-step training course at $5,000 up. First step is to familiarize a "freshman" with the barred arena, make him understand thoroughly that Beatty is the Boss. He may spend weeks persuading the animal to go right or left after entering the cage, more weeks to elect and mount a pedestal. "Advanced trickology" is a matter of subtle, wordless cues, endlessly repeated. Lions and tigers cannot be instructed by pushing them around. Courage and showmanship avail a trainer little if he has not the almost telepathic knack of making his beasts understand what he wants.

Beatty strongly prefers jungle-born to cage-born cats. Three-quarters of this year's troupe were captured in the wilds. His reason for this preference is that animals familiar to man from birth are spoiled. As his good friend and collaborator Edward Anthony paraphrased his feelings in The Big Cage: "Cubs born in captivity simply do not have a chance. Their cuteness is their undoing. . . . Our civilization places too high a valuation on the cute and the cunning. There is nothing more characterless than a spoiled lion or tiger cub. . . ."

Clyde Raymond Beatty (pronounced Baity) is 31, 5 ft. 5½in. tall, weighs 145 lb., has enormously muscular forearms. He was born in Ohio and speaks pure Chillicothe (a tiger is a "tagger"). As soon as he finished high school he started training domestic animals in his backyard, got his professional start with a bear act. Soon he was mixing bears, lions and leopards. He never smokes or drinks hard liquor, sometimes quaffs beer. His only recreation is golf. His cats are fed—not by him—once a day, 18 to 20 lb. of prime beef after the afternoon performance. His own big meal of the day he consumes after the night show.

He has a small daughter by his first marriage. His second wife is a blue-eyed onetime circus aerialist named Harriet Evans, whom he persuaded to quit because he was afraid she would fall.

Away from the barred arena, Clyde Beatty is mild, friendly, unostentatious, likable. But he is a showman and he is on top. After the first two performances last week, convinced that New Yorkers are too blase to wait patiently for his act through the other 28 "displays," he conferred with his partners, had his act spotted immediately after the intermission. "After all," the world's greatest cat man blandly observed, "most of 'em must come here to see my act. It was just too long for 'em to set there."

The Circus is in town today / But the family circus industry is shrinking, along with the U.S. economy

A pink poodle demonstrates its skills on a scooter as the Jordan World Circus sets up Friday at the Golden Spike Arena in Ogden.




By Charles Trentelman
Standard-Examiner staff
Saturday,Jan 29,2009


OGDEN -- Actually, yes, some people do still run away to join the circus.

It's not easy, because there aren't that many circuses left. The ones remaining are run, and staffed, mostly by people whose parents and grandparents -- and even ancestors back six generations -- were in the circus, too.

It's very much a family thing, but Lana Steeples managed to break in.

It was 21 years ago, she said. The circus came to her small town in Newfoundland, Canada. With it was Ari Steeples, the bear trainer, and that was that.

"Two weeks later, I left in a van to drive 5,400 miles from Newfoundland to Alaska," she said Friday morning as she hefted bear-act equipment out of their semi-trailer behind the Golden Spike Arena.

"And my mother just stopped crying a week ago," this last said with a grin.

Life has been a circus ever since.

Lana said she did marry Ari, "but you know they say 20 years of marriage in the circus is like 40 years anywhere else, because you're always together."

The couple, their two children and their two bears all travel in a semi-trailer with the Jordan World Circus, which opened Friday night in Ogden and has shows again today at 3 p.m. and7 p.m. at the Weber County Fairgrounds.

The circus also is scheduled Feb. 6 and 7 at the Davis County Fairgrounds Arena.

On Friday morning, circus workers were busy setting up.

The bears were still sleeping, but the pink and blue poodles were happily frisking around while Steeples fussed over one of the three elephants' sore foot.

Roustabouts were laying out the three rings. Giselle, who does a single-trapeze act, was hanging her equipment from roof beams. Workers were using a hoist to assemble a big steel ball in which three guys on motorcycles would later roar around, defying death.

"We've got a little of everything," Steeples said. "Lion, tigers, bears, high wire, hula hoop dancing, the giant Wheel of Destiny."

As circuses go, Jordan World Circus is relatively new.

DeLisa Jordan, who manages the business end from Las Vegas, said her father, John Jordan, bought out a partner in another circus 23 years ago.

Her father has since died, so now she and her brother, Jody, run it.

Circus life is never a sure thing, she said.

With the economy tanking worldwide, circus employees have no idea how the year will be. All they can do is hit the road and hope for the best. They're just a week into the season now.

Jordan isn't a circus with tents. It plays in stadiums and arenas, in big cities and small. It plays all over the U.S. and Canada. The circus has two groups of performers, one that plays the East Coast, one the West.

Circus life is no way to get rich.

Most performers in the Jordan World Circus are on contract, Steeples said, which means the circus pays them to bring their act along.

Ari Steeples, like the others, gets a lump sum upfront. From that, he pays all his costs: gas, food, vet bills, laundry, the works.

What's left is his.

"If I take home $40,000 for the year, I'm doing well," he said.

That sort of arrangement can be hard.

Vincent Von Duke, from Sarasota, Fla., has five big cats in the show: male and female lions, a Siberian tiger, a Bengal tiger and a white Bengal tiger.

He's a sixth-generation circus performer.

Costs to stay on the road are what's the worst, he said. "Last year was horrible," with diesel costing $5 a gallon. It cost another $250 a day to feed his cats.

"And what's tough, every state has permits. In some, you have to have permits just to drive through," and if he has to pay out $700 just to go into California, he said, it makes him think twice.

"It's a dying art," he said. "And it's a shame, because everything's getting expensive."

He admits he even has some thoughts of hanging it up. He's got a palm tree farm down in Florida to fall back on and ponders opening up a combination bed-and-breakfast and wild-animal park.

For the Steeples family, no such thoughts occur. The circus has always been their life and seems destined to remain so.

Ari is the ringmaster, while Lana runs the bear act. Their youngest child baby-sits for others in the circus.

And their son, Angelo?

"He's doing his first act this year," Ari said. "He's 12 years old, and he does a sword-balancing act," an act he debuted in Tooele just two days ago.

"He's earning a living, traveling around the country and going to school," Ari said.

Leave the circus? "What else would we do?"

....Ladies of the Steel Arena....

....Vicenta Pages....



Struppi Hanneford


Mable Stark


Ursula Botcher





Yvonne Berman


Harriet Beatty

Jeanette Rix

Pat White


Jacqueline Zerbini


Lillie Kristensen


Kathleen Marcan


Kay Rosaire


Trudy Wilson Strong

Sarah Houck


Tammy Wallenda


Susan Lacy

....Diving Tiger....

Tiger Caught Safely After Escape From Sanctuary

The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 21, 2008

WEST PALM BEACH - A Bengal tiger that escaped from its cage at a sanctuary was tranquilized and captured Wednesday morning, authorities said.

The adult tiger was last seen by caretakers at McCarthy's Wildlife Sanctuary about 11 p.m. Tuesday, said Gabriella Ferraro, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Authorities had warned residents in the area Wednesday morning to remain indoors while they searched for the cat. Three schools also were put on lockdown.

Ferraro said the tiger was captured about 11 a.m. Wednesday on the sanctuary grounds. It was tranquilized and put back in its cage.

A lion also escaped its cage at the sanctuary sometime overnight but was quickly captured, authorities said.

A person who answered the telephone Wednesday at the sanctuary said they wouldn't talk and hung up.

The facility is located about 20 miles northwest of West Palm Beach. It houses about 90 animals, including one lion, six tigers, five cougars and five leopards.

Tiger Caught Safely After Escape From Sanctuary

The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 21, 2008

WEST PALM BEACH - A Bengal tiger that escaped from its cage at a sanctuary was tranquilized and captured Wednesday morning, authorities said.

The adult tiger was last seen by caretakers at McCarthy's Wildlife Sanctuary about 11 p.m. Tuesday, said Gabriella Ferraro, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Authorities had warned residents in the area Wednesday morning to remain indoors while they searched for the cat. Three schools also were put on lockdown.

Ferraro said the tiger was captured about 11 a.m. Wednesday on the sanctuary grounds. It was tranquilized and put back in its cage.

A lion also escaped its cage at the sanctuary sometime overnight but was quickly captured, authorities said.

A person who answered the telephone Wednesday at the sanctuary said they wouldn't talk and hung up.

The facility is located about 20 miles northwest of West Palm Beach. It houses about 90 animals, including one lion, six tigers, five cougars and five leopards.

Sarah Houcke....

If you go to the Google Translator on the right and put it on English,then you can read the interview,sorry I couldn't get it to copy the english version....
Sarah Houcke porte un nom de très haute souche circassienne : son arrière grand-mère était Marcelle Rancy ; son grand-oncle Gilbert fut unanimement reconnu comme l'un des deux plus grands éducateurs de fauves du 20ème siècle ; quant à son père Sacha, il a un tel contact avec les animaux qu'en 1995, on pouvait le voir chevauchant… une girafe au Cirque Knie, en Suisse !! Une ascendance prestigieuse…pour cette jeune femme hors du commun.



Sarah, vous sentez-vous héritière de cette famille prestigieuse ?

Oui, tout à fait. Il me faut être au niveau de mes devanciers, et croyez moi, ce n'est pas simple ! C'est une exigence personnelle permanente, je ne relâche jamais la pression. Parfois je m'interroge, j'ai peur de ne pas être assez talentueuse. Mais enfin, quand mes parents me disent que je fais leur fierté, ça me rassure. J'ai une sœur, Karine, qui est encore aux Etats-Unis actuellement ; nous sommes donc deux filles, mais notre père nous dit souvent : "vous en faites plus que des garçons" !



C'est la première fois qu'on vous voit au Cirque d'Hiver Bouglione…et en France ?

Effectivement, c'est mon premier engagement au Cirque d'Hiver, et je n'ai travaillé qu'une fois en France auparavant, au Cirque Educatif de Hugues Hotier1. Mais je suis française par mon père (j'ai la double nationalité), et je me sens française. Je viens souvent à Paris2.



On vous a vue en Europe chez Knie, Fliegenpliz, Roncalli, et aux Etats-Unis chez Ringling bros & Barnum & Bailey. Alors, que représente pour vous ce passage au Cirque d'Hiver Bouglione ?

Travailler ici est un rêve pour tous les artistes du monde, car le lieu est mythique : il y a eu tant de gloires sur cette piste ! Mais pour moi, cela a un sens particulier, puisque mon grand-oncle Gilbert Houcke a foulé cette même piste avec ses tigres. Je mets mes pas dans les siens. C'est une sensation très forte, une fierté et un honneur, vraiment ! Et puis, objectivement, le Cirque d'Hiver est magnifique, et les conditions de travail y sont exceptionnelles : lumière, musique, gentillesse ambiante … tout y est ultra-professionnel, rien ne manque ; je ne me sens pas le droit à l'erreur...quel défi...



Comment s'est passé le relais entre vous et H.L. Suppmeier, qui présentait ces mêmes tigres jusqu'en janvier ?

Je n'avais jamais travaillé avec ces tigres, dont je savais pourtant qu'ils sont très stables de caractère. Chez Ringling, je travaillais avec des fauves de Jossip Marcan qui réagissent de façon très différente, plus vive. Arrivée au Cirque d'Hiver, j'appréhendais ce qui se passerait. Mais tout s'est parfaitement déroulé, la mise en place a été presque immédiate. C'est fauves sont faciles à vivre !



Quel est votre premier souvenir de cirque, et qu'est-ce qui, depuis, vous a le plus marqué ?

Je ne sais plus quel âge je pouvais avoir, mais mes premières images de cirque, c'était chez les Knie, en Suisse, où mon grand-père a travaillé 35 ans. Les Knie sont ma seconde famille. Freddy Knie Sr m'a beaucoup appris sur les chevaux et leur dressage. J'ai beaucoup aimé participer à l'aventure Fliegenpilz, et travailler chez Roncalli. Mais la vraie étape dans ma vie reste mon arrivée aux Etats-Unis, chez Ringling. J'y ai été propulsé en tête d'affiche, j'y suis devenue une vedette, au point que j'ai figuré parmi les 50 personnes les plus populaires des Etats-Unis, aux côtés de stars mondiales du cinéma ou de la chanson. Ca fait tout drôle !!



Ce qui vous permettrait aisément de faire autre chose, de changer de vie...

Oui, mais non ! J'adore la vie au cirque. J'ai travaillé dans une agence de voyages, mais le cirque a été le plus fort. Il m'attire. Il me magnétise. J'aime paraître en piste, le contact du public, mais j'aime aussi l'intimité du cirque, sa simplicité, le côté familial des relations humaines…et je ne peux pas me passer des animaux. J'aime tout du cirque !



On vous a vue présenter des chevaux, des éléphants, des tigres...

et des zèbres, des chameaux, des lions de mer et même des dauphins avec lesquels je nageais au ConnyLand des Gasser, à Lipperswil en Suisse.



Quels sont vos favoris et pourquoi ?

Très clairement, les tigres et les chevaux, parce que je me sens en confiance. Je sais exactement à quoi je peux arriver avec eux : je le sens, et cela m'indique les limites à ne pas dépasser ; alors que, par exemple, j'ai plus de mal avec les éléphants : ce sont de gros animaux, lourds, inertiels, dont l'éducation et la présentation nécessitent moins de finesse ; avec eux, la relation me semble moins individuelle.



Comment voyez-vous votre avenir, et l'avenir de la profession ?

au cirque, de toute façon. J'aimerais avoir un jour mon propre groupe de tigres. Mais ça pose des difficultés : je me sens forte, indépendante, mais seule sur la route avec des animaux, ce n'est pas évident. Et puis, il me faudrait trouver des quartiers d'hiver, des lieux de répétition, etc. Alors je caresse cet espoir, mais je vis au jour le jour, prenant les choses comme elles viennent. On verra !
Concernant l'avenir de la profession, même s'il est difficile de faire des pronostics, je trouve que la situation s'est plutôt stabilisée ces derniers temps, après une période d'attaques à répétition contre les animaux au cirque. Si donc les choses pouvaient en rester là, ce serait bien. Mais il faut toujours et encore faire la chasse… aux mauvais dresseurs, car se sont eux qui nous causent le plus de tort.



Et si tout était possible ?

Ah ! Si tout était possible… j'offrirais un cirque à mon père !




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1C'était en 1997 ; Sarah y présentait des animaux du cirque Fliegenpilz, à savoir :
une liberté avec 6 chevaux arabes
une revue exotique avec 2 watussis, 1 guanaco, 1 bœuf des hauts plateaux, 1 zébu, 1 chameau et, au final, 6 zèbres.

2Hugues Hotier, le fondateur du Cirque Educatif, rapporte à ce propos que les zèbres étaient assez indisciplinés ; Sarah avait du mal à les maîtriser. Pendant son séjour, elle a reçu la visite de son père Sacha, venu passer un week-end à Reims. Il se tenait dans un vomitoire et... les zèbres étaient remarquablement dociles. Peut-être avait-il fait une répétition avec eux un soir ? Toujours est-il qu'après son départ l'indiscipline est revenue...

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Merci à Sarah Houcke pour sa disponibilité, à l'administration du Cirque d'Hiver Bouglione, ainsi qu'à Hugues Hotier pour les précisions qu'il a apportées à cette interview.



Source : Julien Motte




Fabien Arpin-Pont - Actualités, galeries
Sébastien Bernard - Collections, agenda
François Dehurtevent - Actualités, galeries
Fabien Lacroix - Graphisme, programmation
Merci à toutes les personnes qui nous soutiennent et à celles qui nous envoient leurs documents et/ou informations.
---------

....Pat Anthony....

...Hamid 1964...







The wild stories of a lion tamer
By BILL PARKS
HAYWARD — Lion tamer Pat Anthony
rolled up his left sleeve and quietly, thoughtfully
described his worst mauling.
It was during the winter of 1970 in Redding.
Pa., and Anthony had 18 big lions and tigers in
a cage on stage.
"it was too many animals for such a small
cage." he said. "The female lion was in heat.
She and her mate both dove on me in seconds.
They almost tore my arm off."
Anthony said he knocked the male off him
and struggled free of the female. There was a
hospital across the street, and he walked to it
in zero-degree weather.
The hospital transferred him to Chicago,
where the show was headed.
"They handed me a form to sign and I asked
what it was. They said it was a consent form
to have my arm amputated. They said I would
die from the gangrene, but I wouldn't sign.
"Then a young doctor said he wanted to try
something that had a chance in a thousand of
working. I said go ahead."
Anthony said the doctor cut the partially
healed wounds open and set up a series of
tubes to drain out the poison.
"I woke up three days later." he said.
A few days later he started sneaking out of
the hospital at night to put on his animal show
with one arm in a cast.
"They caught me on the third night."
Anthony said with an impish grin.
Anthony will be a featured performer when
Circus Vargas opens tomorrow night at the
Hayward City Center, 22292 Foothill Blvd.. for
a five-day run.
Between 1948 and 1953. Anthony appeared in
a variety of films as an animal handler and as
a stand-in for stars in mauling scenes.
He recaptured an escaped tiger in "The
Greatest Show On Earth." wrestled a wild
hyena as a stand-in for Gregory Peck in "The
Snows of Kilimanjaro." and wrestled a mountain-
lion in "River of No Return" as a standin
for Robert Mitchum.
He was in a variety.of other films, including
the Jungle Jim series as a stand-in for Johnny
Weissmuller and as a double for Victor Mature
in "Samson and Delilah."
Inspired by Clyde Beatty as a child in Ohio.
Anthony got his start in both films and animal
training at World Jungle Compound at
Thousand Oaks.
In 1954 he started circus work and has been
at it ever since.
Anthony is a robust man with curly dark
hair and a tough, steady gaze. As you might
expect, he has lots of good stories. Like the
time the tigers got loose in Memphis.
"I was working with 13 female tigers and
they all got into a fight and broke the steel
cage open." he said, with a little laugh. "Two
got out and I chased them around the building.
We caught one in the cloakroom and one in the
hallway.
"Everybody was all excited. It-was like
being in another world. I collapsed for a month
after that one."
Anthony has been with Circus Vargas for
three or four years, and plans to expand his
act to 17 animals next year.
He says he has an 18-month-old Siberian
tiger named Lasky that weighs 700 pounds, is
13 feet long, and is still growing. He says he is
• training it to balance on a big ball. He says the
training has been steady but slowed somewhat
because the tiger has torn apart two of the big
balls so far.
"What the public doesn't realize is that what
they see in the ring takes years of work." he
said. "It takes a constant repetition of the
same little trick for weeks or months."
Anthony draws a distinction between his
"wild animal act" and what he calls the
"European acts" which have animals that
have been raised as pets by the trainers.
"My animals aren't pets: they aren't pampered,"
Anthony said. "I get them when
they're 18 months or 2 years old. Any John Doe
can raise a pet lion and play with it.
But to take a full-grown animal and teach it
tricks takes a little knowhow."
He says his type of animal act is a "dying
art." and he has advised his five sons to go
into other lines of work.
"My 13-year-old boy is nuts about animals,
and is always hanging around the cats when I
go home to Florida." Anthony said. "I may
give him a lion to play with, but he'll never
make a future out of it."
Anthony. 53. has worked over, 20 years with
lions and tigers, and from his observations has
decided that lions are not "the king of beasts."
For one thing, they snore.
"Lions have a reputation, partly because
they run in packs." ne said. "But tigers are
loners. In a head-to-head battle, I'd bet on the
tiger. The lion has an advantage with that
mane, so you get a mouthful of hair before you
reach his neck, but the tiger is swift and can
think. The lion has a one-track mind."
Anthony says he likes working a tent circus
better than the indoor ones.
"There's a certain atmosphere." he said.
"You don't have all the restrictions on the
animals that you have in a building. It's
something that the kids may not see again.
There aren't many tent shows left."
He says his act is unasual because he mixes
both lions and tigers and males and females in
the same tricks. He says the lions and tigers
don't like each other, and the male lions are
unpredictable when the females are around.
He carries two pistols loaded with blanks
when he's in the cage.
"They're not afraid of me." he said "You
can only push them so far. You have to have
your eyes revolving around all the time
because there's always one waiting to nail you
from behind.
"They can tell just by looking if you're
afraid. Then they've got your number."

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