A Bully & His Betters

The face-licking meekness of a lion named Duke who fell in love with two tigresses named Venus and Ruth almost spoiled Clyde Beatty's act but did not change the rule. Lions hate tigers. Tigers hate lions. On such feline passions rest the success and troubles of Clyde Beatty, 28, most famed U. S. animal trainer.

When Trainer Beatty goes back to Chillicothe, Ohio with the circus everybody in town turns out to see him perform except his mother. She thinks his act should be "cuter and less exciting." When Beatty ran away from Chillicothe at 15 to join the circus he found oldtime one- species, one-sex animal acts already too tame to make the public pulsate. People wanted fights. Sure way to start fights was to make the "big cage" a welter of hatred and jealousy by mixing species and sexes. Beatty kept on mixing and adding until by 1930 famed circus Press Agent Dexter Fellows could advertise "Forty (40) Magnificent, Monstrous, Menacing Man-Eaters Miraculously Mingled."

Cleveland's big, bare Public Auditorium, scene of the Al Sirat Grotto circus, was empty except for circus attendants one morning last week when Beatty brought his cats in for rehearsal. Five old lions and four old tigers padded through the timber runway into the steel-barred arena, leaped up on their pedestals. Sammy, a big, smart, well-behaved lion of five years, perched just above the runway. Then six of the new beasts came scampering in. Third in line was a winsome young lioness named Bessie.

Not even Trainer Beatty knew what feline lust led Sammy to loose a great "AaaOOf," as he plunged down on Bessie's head. "Come out!" screamed his eight assistants to Beatty. He flicked a whip at the cageful of pedestaled lions & tigers, took the chance of turning his back on them, jumped into the fight. Bang! Bang! Crack! His blank gun, whip and chair were useless. Assistants trained a suffocating fire-hose stream on the fighters. Sammy had his great jaws deep in Bessie's throat. Trainer Beatty grabbed a piece of iron pipe, wrapped his fingers in Sammy's mane, whacked him again & again over the head. After ten minutes Sammy let go. Bessie rolled over dead.

Clyde Beatty cannot afford to let one of his animals get the idea that it is tough, that it can bully other performers. At that night's circus performance Sammy charged him, knocked him down. Next morning Trainer Beatty rounded up four brothers, Leo, Brutus, Nero Jr., King, oldest and toughest lions in his troupe. He drove them into the arena, prodded them to fury. Then he sent Sammy in. Sammy, still feeling tough, made a pass at Leo. The brothers closed in. That night Sammy, licking a dozen bites and scratches, was the meekest animal in the act.

Cleveland's outraged Animal Protective League announced it would watch for cruelty in future Beatty performances.

Trainer Beatty thanked his stars that the other lions & tigers had not mixed in with Sammy and Bessie. Fights have cost him 16 tigers, two lions. Lions usually gang up on a tiger, which always fights alone. Animal men like to speculate on how an evenly-matched lion and tiger would make out in single combat. Trainer Beatty would bet on the lion.

Unlike Clyde Beatty, Nature never mixes lions and tigers. There are no tigers in Africa, very few lions in Asia.

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