Women You Should Know — The World’s First Female Tiger Trainer, Mabel Stark
Why should you know the name Mabel Stark? Because over 100 years ago, when there were little opportunities for women, she built a world-class, world-famous career with grit, determination and love. All while standing in a cage filled with tigers.
Mabel Stark was the world’s first female tiger trainer. From poor tobacco farmers in Tennessee and Kentucky she endured poverty and abuse and betrayal all before she was an adult. I would say it turned her away from human beings.
She was on her own in 1911 when she stumbled upon the Al G. Barnes winter quarters in Venice, California. She would recall a large tiger that was licking his paws when he turned to look at her and something went into her. From that moment on she was determined to work with tigers. She would have an uncanny sense of what the animals thought and would do. She became one with the tigers she worked with.
It was notoriously difficult to rise in the circus hierarchy as an outsider. Traditionally the circus is populated with generation-long families. Mabel knew no one. In fact, she wasn’t even Mabel Stark yet, having been born Mary Haynie. With a change of name and a fearless demeanor she asked the manager of the circus to work the cats. He told her “no. No woman can work tigers.” That was all Mabel needed. Within weeks, admittedly with the help of Louis Roth, the circus’ star animal trainer, she worked up an act of tigers. Of course Mabel never did anything easy. Her act would involve 18 Sumatra tigers. The meanest of the bunch, with personalities like rattlesnakes.
It wasn’t long before the beautiful, petite blonde was an American star. She performed daily in the country’s biggest circuses, she double for actors in Hollywood. Mae West was so enamored of Mabel when Mabel did her stunt doubling in “I’m No Angel”? she said if there was anyone she would like to be it was Mabel Stark.
Mabel taught and trained her “stripes,” as she called them with finite care and patience. Slowly, gently, day after day. The kindness method had been taught to her by Roth, who also became one of her numerous husbands. But for Mabel, fiercely independent, marriage would never stick. It was cats. That’s all she cared about. She didn’t leave the chores to others, she cleaned the cages, she cut the meat, she exercised them. Many were raised and lived in her home — the pictures are unbelievable — and many cubs were bottle fed by her. A couple special tigers, her “contact cats,” meaning a tiger that tolerates the physical contact with a human, she trained to wrestle her. A daring act, with her in the vulnerable position on the ground that no man dared. Ever.
Where humans time and again betrayed her, including circus managers who took her act away, to husbands who were thieves, Mabel knew the tigers were honest. They might scratch and bite and attack her, but they never broke the soul like man. She was mauled within inches of her life several times. There was not an inch of her body left unscarred. She never blamed the tigers. As do any trainers, knowing they put themselves in the cage, in close proximity with wild animals. It is never the cat’s fault.
It was not an easy life. Mabel came up again adversity time and again. Time and again she was told she could not do something. And time and again she proved them wrong. Her career spanned was over half a century. I won’t tell you how her life ended, you’ll have to see the movie for that.
For thirty years she worked at Jungleland in Thousand Oaks. Jungleland was the pre-Disney amusement park of its era. Filled with rides, and animals you could pet, and shows. Twice a day Mabel worked her tigers for sold-out audiences.
When the going got tough for Mabel, and it did, many times, she overcame it. With a body that was battered beyond what the doctors’ feared they could repair, she willed herself back into the ring, back on a cramped circus train, back on the road, which was neither luxurious nor easy. Because that’s all she had. Her devotion to her tigers was astounding. She was responsible for their health. She knew what medicines to give them. She cooed and encouraged them during training sessions, scolding them as if they were naughty children. When asked what protection she had from the tigers, she admitted “none.” It wasn’t bravery that mattered in the steel arena. It was love. MABEL, MABEL, TIGER TRAINER, my award-winning documentary will premier during Women’s History Month in March of 2018.
