For the sharpest minds in display industry, there’s all the time some other hustle.
Take Joe Unique, whose 2020 conviction for a murder-for-hire plot and violations of the Endangered Species Act hasn’t saved the eccentric tiger teacher out of the headlines.
Since starting his 21-year sentence, the “Tiger King” big name has began a hashish logo, hawked virtual artwork and begun paintings on an album tentatively titled “Jungle Rhapsody: A Tiger King Experience.” His most up-to-date gambit comes to promoting private telephone calls from his cellular – “What better Valentines gift could you ever get your loved one,” he posted on Instagram in January 2026.
However earlier than Joe Unique, there was once Mabel Stark. Ceaselessly described as The us’s most renowned feminine tiger teacher, the Tiger Queen was once famend for her pluck and air of secrecy.
Whilst researching Caxton Printers, the writer of Stark’s autobiography, I got here throughout unpublished archival subject material about Stark’s lengthy profession coaching animals. Like Joe Unique, Stark had a knack for the highlight. However much more impressively, she did it underneath the scrutiny of being a girl in a male-dominated international, whilst taking good care of her animals with love moderately than concern.
From nurse to tiger teacher
Born Mary Ann Haynie in 1888 or 1889 – the precise 12 months has all the time been a thriller – Stark grew up in Princeton, Kentucky. When she was once 8 years previous, she attended her first circus, the place she was once awed by means of the performances of educated animals.
20 years would go earlier than she were given an opportunity to take a look at her hand at animal coaching.
Taking a holiday in California from her task as a nurse, Stark met Al Sands, supervisor of the Al G. Barnes Circus. After finding out of her pastime in coaching animals, he employed her at the spot.
Stark began by means of using horses and coaching goats. It could take a number of years earlier than she set to work with tigers. However as soon as she did, her profession took off.
Crowds accumulated to look at the “Tiger Girl” strive against with large cats and wow audiences by means of commanding a dozen tigers at a time to observe her lead. Her wrestling act together with her favourite tiger, Rajah – wherein the duo would roll 3 or 4 occasions at the floor – become some of the best-known cat acts within the U.S.
She leveraged that good fortune to sign up for the Ringling Circus – the most important circus within the U.S. – for two times the pay.
Poster promoting Mabel Stark’s act for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Parkinson Library & Analysis Middle, Circus Global
As her recognition grew, Stark collaborated with screenwriter Gertrude Orr to write down her lifestyles’s tale.
“Hold That Tiger” hit bookstores in 1938. Caxton Printers, a small publishing corporate in rural Idaho, issued the e book and advertised it essentially to younger readers. It proved well-liked, promoting smartly sufficient to warrant a couple of reprintings.
Recognized for giving a voice to first-time writers and authors from underrepresented teams, Caxton Printers discovered a distinct segment marketplace for circus-related titles. It additionally printed books about Stark’s first employer, Al Barnes, in addition to the Ringling Brothers and famend lion teacher Louis Roth, who additionally took place to be one in every of Stark’s ex-husbands.
Feminine energy within the ring
Stark was once aware of the trail she was once paving.
“I deliberately chose a field in which no other woman had specialized,” she wrote in her autobiography.
The traditional knowledge on the time, she added, was once that “tigers were considered too dangerous for a woman to handle.”
Stark’s willingness to defy conference mattered. As circus historian Janet M. Davis famous, “circus women’s performances celebrated female power” and represented “a startling alternative to contemporary social norms.”
In early-Twentieth-century American lifestyles, ladies would possibly now not were ready to vote or to serve on juries in maximum states, however within the ring, they commanded the target market’s consideration using bareback on horses, exhibiting power and stamina, and acting gravity-defying acrobatic feats.
Stark’s time table was once relentless. She carried out nearly day by day with touring circuses, and she or he frequently delicate her act. In 1938, she labored with each tigers and lions on the similar time, a primary for a feminine teacher. She made historical past once more operating with 12 tigers in a single cage.
Mabel Stark was once ready to paintings with 12 tigers in a single cage.
Cinema Libre Studios
Whether or not it was once because of the calls for of her time table or her choice for her cats, Stark’s relationships with males hardly ever labored out.
Over the process her lifestyles, Stark married 4 occasions, 3 of which resulted in divorce.
“I love these big cats as a mother loves her children,” she admitted to a chum. However “with husbands I was never happy.”
‘An animal trainer can’t have nerves’
Stark, acutely aware of different running shoes’ abusive habits towards their tigers, took a unique course.
“Kindness and patience are the biggest factors in training. … Trainers who try to beat animals into submission always get into trouble,” she stated.
But her business was once now not with out threat.
“An animal trainer can’t have nerves. I haven’t had any since I gave up nursing,” she stated in a 1922 New York Occasions interview. “They may be planting violets on me tomorrow, but while I have my health and strength, I’d rather take care of 10 tigers than a sick person.”
Stark had a number of critical injuries. Possibly the worst was once in 1928: After a circus teach arrived overdue, Stark began her act with out figuring out her tigers hadn’t been fed for twenty-four hours. Two famished tigers attacked Stark after she fell in dust.
“As I lay there, helpless,” she wrote, “I wondered into how many pieces I would be torn, and how long it would take for the other tigers, growling and snarling restlessly on their seats, to finish me.” She suffered a couple of damaged bones, just about misplaced her leg and required 300 stitches.
Mabel Stark recovers in a Los Angeles health center after her left arm was once bitten by means of a tiger in 1935.
AP Picture/LMM
Every other incident happened in 1950, when a tiger mauled her as she reached for its cub. Docs first of all concept they must amputate her arm however controlled to put it aside.
In spite of those shut calls together with her tigers, Stark maintained that “I am not afraid. I like the challenge of their roaring defiance.”
The stark fact
Stark toured with circuses till the overdue Forties, when she was once employed by means of Jungleland, a zoo situated out of doors of Los Angeles.
Save for the three-and-a-half years she lived in Japan traveling together with her wild cat act, she spent the ultimate two decades of her profession at Jungleland.
Mabel Stark poses with one in every of her tigers in 1957, when she was once hired as a teacher at Jungleland in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Larry Paulson, Valley Occasions Assortment/Los Angeles Public Library
Stark by no means stopped drawing crowds to her display, nor did she shy clear of the highlight. She even gave the impression at the sport display “What’s My Line?” in 1961 as a contestant whose occupation the panel needed to wager.
“Each year has left scars on my body, but it has also brought a full measure of happiness,” she recalled.
Stark labored at Jungleland till she was once fired in 1967 after the park’s insurance coverage corporate stopped masking her. Being clear of her tigers devastated her, and she or he died by means of suicide simply months in a while April 20, 1968, at her house in Thousand Oaks.
The concluding paragraph of Stark’s autobiography anticipates the tip of her lifestyles:
“The chute door opens as I crack my whip and shout, ‘Let them come!’ Out slink the striped cats, snarling and roaring, leaping at each other or at me. It’s a matchless thrill, and life without it is not worth while to me.”
