Mabel Stark was known as Mistress of the Tigers, so adept was she at training the big cats. Born in 1889 into squalor, Stark raised her station in life by learning to tame tigers; by the 1920s she was renowned in her field, travelling throughout the U.S. with the circus. In Mabel Mabel Tiger Trainer, director Leslie Zemeckis give us a peak into Stark’s fascinating world that included several marriages, fame, and multiple maulings by the tigers to which she was so devoted. Her love for the animals ran so deep, in fact that despite having “had my arms broken, my legs broken, part of a deltoid muscle torn out of my right shoulder, a plate in my head, my elbow is gone out of my right arm…no flesh on my legs,” Stark stated her only wish was “to be killed by my animals.”
See lesliezemeckis.com .
How did you come upon this topic? Was it tiger training you were looking into first or did you come across Mabel Stark and then follow her life? I have spent about 15 years researching early 20th century forms of entertainment, with a special expertise on burlesque. I came across Mabel’s story while doing research a while back. She actually worked briefly in the "cooch" show before going on to train tigers. I found it interesting on many points: she was an independent woman who took up training the tigers after being told, "no woman could train tigers." She fell in love with the animals and absolutely devoted her life to these "stripes," as she sometimes called them. Nothing got in the way of her care for them. I thought it would be a story about bravery, but ultimately it’s a story of love.