Background

Clyde Raymond Beatty was born on June 10, 1903, near Chillicothe, Ohio, the son of James Edward Beatty, a farmer, and of Margaret Everhart.

Education

After finishing Bainbridge Elementary School in 1917, Clyde left home at age 15 to join Howe's Great London Circus, one of the dozens of circuses then flourishing under the shadow of the Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey organization.

Career

Beatty worked briefly as an acrobat and cage boy for $3 a week. Within three years he completed apprenticeship as a trainer for the wild animal acts that had become popular around the turn of the century. His first solo act was with polar bears for the Gollmar Circus in 1922; two years later he had the largest bear act in America and worked with leopards and other large cats as well. By 1926, Beatty had moved to the Hagenbeck-Wallace show, where he remained until the Great Depression. He handled lions and tigers, a combination he used for the rest of his life. He steadily built a reputation for big-cat training and showmanship despite a declining demand for wild animal acts in the late 1920's. Perhaps because of the onset of the Great Depression, the public showed a rekindled interest in such "uncivilized" cultural phenomena as the film King Kong (1933), tough-talking actors such as James Cagney, and the animal collector "Bring 'Em Back Alive" Frank Buck. Beatty exploded into prominence as part of this trend.

The costs to Beatty in raked, clawed flesh were substantial. So were the rewards. As chief attraction for the Ringling Brothers' organization, which had absorbed Hagenbeck-Wallace and most other small shows, Beatty earned $250 per week. In 1936, one year after starting his own circus, he netted $40, 000 plus additional fees from vaudeville appearances, two movies, and a book, The Big Cage (1933), written with Edward Anthony. His fans included celebrities as varied as Jack Dempsey, Ernest Hemingway, and Dale Carnegie. In 1937, Beatty appeared on the cover of Time magazine, which found social significance in his views on the virtues of wildness: "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. " Beatty's successful challenge to Ringling Brothers' monopoly prompted numerous similar ventures. Few of these had Beatty's drawing power, his contacts with zookeepers willing to sell animals cheaply in order to save on food bills, or a financial "angel" such as the Texas oilman Frank Walters, who invested heavily out of friendship and love of animals.

After difficulties in 1938 and during World War II, Beatty organized a lucrative tour of western Canada, one of the most profitable for any circus since the 1920's. He appeared in two movies and starred on a network radio program, and he issued two more books. By the early 1950's, Beatty's circus employed 500 people. It moved from city to city in fifteen railroad cars, the only large railroad circus besides Ringling Brothers then in existence. But Beatty, along with the Ringlings, faced formidable problems: deteriorating rail service, a lack of good open-air urban locations, a paucity of animals born in the wild, the desire of crowds for air conditioning. The Beatty show, traveling by motor vehicle and appearing indoors, had to close in 1956 and again in 1963, by which time Beatty himself had relinquished personal control. His eighteen-minute act--performed twice a day forty weeks a year--could still generate an occasional good season.

Even so, the end of the age of the American circus--and hence of Beatty's fame--was in sight. Beatty reigned virtually unchallenged as the foremost American handler of big cats. Over a forty-year period he trained some 2, 000 lions and tigers to pyramid, spin, roll, jump hurdles, move globes, dive through hoops, and "fight" with him and his wooden chair. He also trained, besides several bears, perhaps a hundred leopards, pumas, and jaguars; but he always preferred the mixture of lions and tigers, whose hostility to each other he used for his own protection. At one time he worked with forty of these big cats in the giant center cage. As a modern circus showman he was unrivaled, traveling a million miles and performing before 40 million people. Beatty died in Ventura, California.

Achievements

• Clyde Beatty owned his own show, which later merged with the Cole Bros. Circus to form the Clyde Beatty–Cole Bros. Circus. Over a forty-year carrier Beatty trained some 2, 000 lions and tigers, several bears, a hundred leopards, pumas, and jaguars. Beatty wrote: The Big Cage (co-author Edward Anthony, 1933); Facing the Big Cats; Jungle performers; and appeared in the following films: The Big Cage (1933); The Lost Jungle (1934); Darkest Africa (1936); Cat College (1940); Jungle Woman (1944); Here Comes the Circus (1946); Africa Screams (1949); Perils of the Jungle (1953); Ring of Fear (1954), etc.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Facing the Big Cats

    (Few who see wild animals In cages realize the vast amount...)

  • Jungle performers,

    (Wild animal training by famed trainer Clyde Beatty. Prese...)

  • The Big Cage

Personality

Short and stocky, with a gravelly voice, unpolished grammar, and rustic pronunciation, Beatty appeared to have a "primitive, almost Neanderthal" relation to his animals. Carrying a whip, a chair, and a . 38-caliber blank pistol, he presented what another trainer called "the purest version of the all-American 'fighting-act, '" an aggressive display abhorred by the gentler European school of training, but capable of producing a sensational spectacle.

Despite his "tough-guy" Great Depression image, Beatty never hunted. He disliked the idea of hurting animals or humiliating them. He studied animals closely and well, augmenting his understanding by reading Charles Darwin and T. H. Huxley. A leading zoo curator called him an "intuitive naturalist. "

Quotes from others about the person

• One of Beatty's fans declared, "After ye seen Beatty the rest of them stinks. "
  
  Hemingway once said that Beatty used his chair in the cage as a matador used his cape and that he was "smooth, graceful, forceful--like a ballet dancer. "

Connections

Beatty's first wife was Earnestine Pegg. In 1930, Beatty married Harriett Evans, a circus aerialist. They had one daughter. After the death of his second wife in 1950, Beatty married Jane Abel in 1951; they had one son.

Father:

James Edward Beatty

He was a farmer.

Mother:

Margaret (Everhart) Beatty

Sister:

Ruth B. (Beatty) Mann

Wife:

Earnestine (Pegg) Beatty

Wife:

Harriett (Evans) Beatty

Wife:

Jane (Abel) Beatty

Daughter:

Joyce (Beatty) Ferguson

Son:

Clyde Beatty Jr.

step daughter :

Albina Beatty