Thursday, August 19, 1937
bale Carnegie
5-Minute Biographies
Author of "How to Win Friends
and Influence People XlljK
CLYDE BEATTY
Stick His Head in a Lion's Mouth?
Not Without a Gas-Mask
Clyde Beatty has one .of the
most dangerous jobs in the world.
He looks into the jaws of death,
not once, but twice a day. The
life insurance companies realize
• that he may ripped to pieces at
ferny time by savage claws; so they
refuse to gamble on his life. a He
is the only performer in the" cir
cus who can't get an insurance
policy.
He told me he had sometimes
thought of quitting the lion and
tiger business; but he says that if
he had to punch a time clock in a
facory or some similar job it
would kill him. And if he's got to
die, he'd rather be GORED to
death than BORED to death.
Clyde Beatty has spent half his
thrilling and exciting lifetime—
fifteen years of it—under the big
top. As a kid back in Chillicothe,
Ohio, he was crazy about the cir
cus.
One exciting day the Barnum
and Bailey circus came to town.
A laundryman stuck up a poster
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in his window. A glamorous pic
ture in yellow and purple and red,
showing a heroic lion trainer
bravely cracking his whip over a
cageful of roaring snarling cats
from Africa. Beatty rushed inside
and begged the owner of the laun
dry to give him the poster, after
the circus left town. The laundry
man said "Yes, I'll give it to you
if you'll run errands for me for a
week." He agreed to this.
This twelve-year-old kid already
had some roaring, snapping,
snarling friends of his own. Or at
least, he made believe they were.
He had five dogs which he had
trained to sit up and beg, roll over
and walk around on their hind
legs. And every so often he would
stick up his circus poster and put
on a wild animal act for the kids
in the neighborhood.
Then one summer when the big
caravan chugged out of town,
Clyde Beatty was aboard, his
heart palpitating with excitement.
For three days, his desperate par-
THE ELKIN TRIBUNE. ELKIN. NORTH CAROLINA
ents, searched frantically. * His
mother spent nights of weeping
before a letter came saying he
had a job of cleaning out the
cages with the circus. He was on
ly fifteen and he was getting five
dollars and a chance to live in
Paradise.
In the ten years' time, this
youngster from Qhillicothe, Ohio,
had outstripped every lion-tamer
in history. He put on an act so
daring, so foolhardy, that even
circus men said it couldn't be
done. And then when they saw
him actually do it, they said he
was a lunatic and that his life
wasn't worth a plugged nickel.
He put forty snarling, spitting
lions and tigers into the same cage
crackekd his whip and made them
do their stuff. Forty lions and tig
ers bristling with hate and snarl
ing with rage. No wonder the act
created a. sensation even among
circus people, for lions and tigers
are mortal enemies they fight
on sight. And more than on one
occasion Beatty found himself in
a cage of fighting, roaring,, mur
derous jungle cats.
Yet strangely enough, Clyde
Beatty says that lions and tigers
are not the most dangerous ani
mals to control. He's tried them
all—lions and tigers, leopards,
bears, hyenas, and elephants. And
he found that the most dangerous
beast of all is the polar bear. And
he says that the hardest trick of
all is to make a tiger ride on an
elephant's back, in fact, he him
self was nearly killed by an ele
phant one day, just because he
had been to the tiger's cage and
the elephan£ caught the hated
scent of the tiger.
You've heard, haven't you that
animal trainers control their ani
mals by looking them straight in
the eye? Clyde Beatty told me
that that is a lot of nonsense. The
average lion wouldn't give two
hoots even if Mae West looked him
in the eye. He says the only rea
son he watches his animals is to
find out what they're up to and
what they're going'to do next.
Beatty says no trainer has ever
actually stuck his head in a lion's
mouth. It just looks that way. He
says: "I've known some pretty
reckless animal trainers, but I've
never heard of one crazy enough
to stick his head into the mouth
of a lion." Besides lions have hali
tosis so bad that even their best
friends would have to wear gas
masks.
There's another popular idea—
that lion-trainers use red-hot
pokers to control enraged animals.
But Beatty says that if you want
to commit suicide, just enter the
cage of a lion or tiger that has
been burned with a red-hot poker.
His harmless weapons are a kit
chen chair, a whip and a revolv
er filled with blank cartridges.
Clyde Beatty says he's tried
working with tame animals —ani-
mals born in captivity, and he
prefers wild ones any time. Tame
animals are just like spoiled chil
dren they've been pampered
and petted until they refuse to do
anythihg. The question he has
been asked most often is this: can
a lion lick a tiger, or will the tig
er lick the lion? Frankly, he does
n't know. He's been in the big
cage dozens of times with lions
and tigers fighting all around him
but the lions always gang up and
tigers fight alone. When one lion
starts fighting all the lions in
sight come to his aid—especially
if the lions are brothers. Lions are
just like boys—they can't see a
scrap without mixing up in it. But
a tiger has no race consciousness
—he will sit up on his pedestal
\nd actually yawn while some oth
er tiger is being killed.
One of the most amusing stunts
Clyde Beatty does in the Big Cage
is to make a bear turn a complete
somersault—the only trick of its
kind in the world. He discovered
it by accident. Beatty was in the
cage one day when the bear came
tearing at him, teeth bared, claws
tense, and murder in his eye. This
bear was out to kill, and his on
slaught was so sudden, so fierce,
that Beatty did the first thing
that came to his mind. He hauled
off and smashed the bear on the
nose, and as nothing else is so
painful to a bear as a poke on the
nose, and as Beatty's fist landed
the bear went over in a heap and
turned a complete somersault.
That's what give Beatty the idea.
And today all he has to do to make
the same bear turn a complete
flip-flop is to tap him gently on
the nose with his whip.
dlyde Beatty knows his wild an
mals of the jungle and plain
knows them better than any Other
man living. Yet he says his favor
ite animal is the dog.
Copyright, 1937
Comfortable
Visitor—You don't mean to tell
me that you have lived in this
out-of-the-way place for over 30
years?
Inhabitant—l 'ave.
Visitor—But, really, I cannot
see what you can find to keep
you busy.
Inhabitant?— Neither can I
that's why I like it.
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I \ I
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In the bungalow, in the cottage
And in homes of greater price,
You 11 find one thing in common —
Tempting bottles of
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