The world of the circus has long been populated by intrepid performers, and among them the 10 lion tamers stand out as the most audacious. These daring individuals courted danger daily, coaxing ferocious cats to obey their commands while thrilling audiences worldwide.
10 Isaac Van Amburgh
Regarded as the most celebrated and influential lion tamer of his era, Isaac Van Amburgh entered the world in 1811 to American parents of Dutch heritage. At the age of 19, he started as a cage‑cleaner at New York’s Zoological Institute. His charisma quickly attracted the attention of high‑profile figures such as Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington. The queen became an avid admirer, attending his London performances seven times within six weeks and even lingering after shows to watch him feed his cats.
Queen Victoria commissioned Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, the renowned English painter, to create a portrait (shown above) of Van Amburgh amid his animals during a London performance. The artwork was displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts. Van Amburgh’s routine saw him stride into the cage dressed as a Roman gladiator, deliberately provoking the lions and tigers to elicit maximum ferocity before subduing them with a crowbar.
His death‑defying stunts included smearing his hand with blood and placing it in a lion’s mouth, and he was the first man to rest his head within a lion’s jaw. When the Duke of Wellington inquired whether he ever felt fear, Van Amburgh replied that he would retire the moment his pupils stopped fearing him. He suffered a fatal heart attack on November 29, 1865, at age 54 in his Philadelphia home.
9 Irina Bugrimova
Born in Ukraine on March 13, 1910, Irina Bugrimova was a ballet dancer and skating champion before joining the circus as a teenager. Initially an acrobat and motorcyclist, she soon grew weary of those roles and shifted to lion‑taming acts that incorporated her motorcycle. In an early performance, a lion raced ahead of her bike in apparent terror while another leapt onto the seat’s back to accompany her.
Bugrimova earned the distinction of being the Soviet Union’s first female lion tamer and pioneered the “lion swing.” She would swing with a lion, and after both fell, she would feed the animal a piece of meat directly from her mouth. Over four decades she trained roughly 70 lions, as well as tigers and even a liger. Her favorite companion was Caesar, a lion she worked with for 23 years; Caesar once saved her from an aggressive counterpart.
Her glittering career ended abruptly in 1971 when a lion named Nero attacked her, severely injuring her leg. Remarkably, she completed the show despite the wound. Throughout her career she claimed never to have struck any animal in anger, even when faced with attempts to maim her. After retiring, she became a prominent leader within Russia’s animal‑protection movement.
8 Gunther Gebel‑Williams
Gunther Gebel was born on September 12, 1934, in Germany. At 13 he first entered the circus when his mother took a sewing job with Circus Williams and brought him along as an usher. When she vanished soon after, the circus community cared for him. In gratitude, he added “Williams” to his surname to honor Harry Williams, the owner who had taken him under his wing.
Self‑taught in animal training, Gebel soon began performing. He moved to the United States in 1968 after Irvin Feld, owner of Ringling Brothers, purchased Circus Williams expressly to bring him to American audiences. His acts captivated crowds; he performed over 12,000 times in the U.S., including 1,191 shows at Madison Square Garden alone.
His repertoire featured lions riding trembling horses, elephants strolling calmly through traffic, and leopards leaping through flaming hoops. Gebel considered himself a trainer rather than a tamer, communicating with his animals through voice and offering meat rewards when they pleased him. He endured numerous attacks; his face bore so many scars that speaking in cold weather could be painful.
His favorite feline was a 34‑kilogram (75‑lb) panther named Kenny. After Kenny’s death, he attempted to bond with a 68‑kilogram (150‑lb) panther called Zorro, who later bit him in the neck, necessitating hospitalization. Gebel noted that, in his five‑decade career, house cats proved the most challenging because they tend to act on their own whims.
7 Bill Stephens
Originating from a modest background as a welder, Bill Stephens dreamed of worldwide fame as a lion tamer. In his early twenties he acquired three lions and began touring with some of Ireland’s largest circus families, performing under the moniker “Jungle Capers” alongside his wife. His daring acts included feeding the beasts from his own mouth and placing his head between their jaws.
Stephens’ moment of fame arrived unexpectedly on a November afternoon in 1951 when one of his lionesses escaped into the quiet streets of Dublin, terrifying passersby and nearly mauling a young petroleum attendant. Stephens wrestled the animal away, pleading with police not to kill her while coaxing her back to the cage. The lioness turned on him, forcing the police to shoot, yet Stephens escaped with only a wounded shoulder.
Newspaper stories—some embellished—spread his legend, turning him into an international sensation. Seeking greater renown, he pursued bigger American contracts and escalated the danger of his performances. He obtained a notorious lion named Pasha from Dublin Zoo, intending to showcase him during a visit from an American circus scout. Unfortunately, Pasha failed to recognize Stephens’s scent after he changed into a new suit, attacked, and killed him.
6 Yvonne Berman
Katherine Yvonne Yzermann, later known as Yvonne Berman, was born in the Netherlands on August 22, 1929. As a teenager she fell for a local boy, Adriaan Berman, and married him in 1950 against her parents’ wishes. The marriage soon dissolved as her fascination with animal training grew, prompting her to enroll at the Eric Klant Animal Training Centre.
After completing her studies, Berman joined Circus Mikkenie, the premier Dutch circus, presenting lions. She later performed at Cirque Medrano in Paris, Circus Knie in Switzerland, and Circus Williams in Germany. Her British debut came in 1956 with Tom Arnold’s Circus.
In 1961, circus proprietor Cyril Mills invited her to showcase his innovative “Mills‑type cage,” a lightweight, tightly locked enclosure offering audiences an unobstructed view of the animals. The cage debuted during the Bertram Mills Circus winter season at Olympia, and the following day newspapers featured photos of Berman with her lions under the headline “Beauty and the Beasts.” At Germany’s Carl Althoff circus she dazzled audiences by presenting six tigers and three lions together, and later at Franz Althoff Three‑Ring Circus she displayed lions, tigers, leopards, black panthers, a polar bear, and a Himalayan bear all in the ring. She retired from performing in 1972 to become chief cashier of the circus’s booking office, a role she held for 15 years before fully retiring to Rijswijk in 1988.
5 Angel Cristo
Born into a celebrated circus family in 1944, Angel Cristo’s mother, Margareta Dordi, was a famed contortionist known as “Little Carolina,” while his father, Greek trapeze artist Christophol Cristo Papadopulos, performed across Europe. Cristo grew up amid the big top, almost debuting as a cat tamer at 17 when he stood in for an absent performer during rehearsal, only for heavy winds to collapse the tent and cancel the show.
His official debut arrived on his 22nd birthday, and his career surged in the early 1970s after he acquired a modest circus named Circo Ruso. Cristo’s training style was notably aggressive: he wielded a whip, shouted at his cats, and employed intimidation tactics. His acts often featured lions walking on parallel tightropes and felines riding horseback.
Cristo’s harsh methods limited his opportunities outside Spain, and his personal life was marred by drug addiction, bouts of depression, and legal troubles, including convictions for child labor that resulted in hefty fines. In 1990 he was attacked by three lions and a tiger. His final performance came in 2010, presenting three elephants for Circo Americano‑Faggioni in Madrid. He died shortly thereafter of cardiac arrest on May 4, 2010, at a Madrid hospital and was interred at the Cementerio de la Almudena.
4 Carl Hagenbeck
Carl Hagenbeck entered the world on June 10, 1844, the son of fishmonger Claus Gottfried Carl Hagenbeck, who also dealt in exotic animals and ran a modest zoological garden. Following his father’s footsteps, young Carl became an exotic‑animal trader, supplying zoos and circuses. He assumed control of his father’s menagerie in 1866 and emerged as a leading dealer by the early 1870s.
As the animal‑trade market waned, Hagenbeck shifted to producing circus shows, featuring a diverse cast of performers and a menagerie of beasts. In 1887 he began advocating against inhumane animal treatment, famously staging an 1889 act where three lions pulled him around a cage in a chariot to demonstrate cruelty’s futility. He emphasized that animals possess intelligence and can be guided through friendship rather than force.
Hagenbeck eventually sold his shows to Benjamin Wallace, who renamed them the Hagenbeck‑Wallace Circus in 1906. The following year he opened a zoological garden that would become a prototype for modern open‑air zoos. He met his end on April 14, 1913, after a boomslang snake bite in Hamburg.
3 Mabel Stark
Often hailed as one of the most renowned tamers to ever grace the ring, Mabel Stark—born Mary Haynie around 1889—kept her early life shrouded in mystery. At 17 she trained as a nurse in Kentucky, supplemented her income as a carnival dancer, and spent free time at Al G. Barnes’s menagerie.
Barnes founded a circus in 1911 and invited Stark to join. Initially assigned to horse‑riding duties, Stark yearned to work with tigers. She approached Louis Roth, the head animal trainer, and apprenticed under him. While Roth preferred lions, Stark’s passion lay with tigers. He taught her a reward‑based training method, contrasting the era’s prevalent beat‑down tactics. Her debut featured two lions and two tigers; over time she performed with as many as 18 tigers in a single show.
Stark rescued a rejected tiger cub named Rajah, forging a signature act that catapulted her fame. She would wrestle Rajah in the ring, leading audiences to believe she was being mauled until the performance’s climax. Later she revealed that during the act Rajah would relieve himself sexually; to hide this, she adopted a white uniform to conceal the tiger’s semen. Stark endured numerous attacks, once requiring 378 stitches after a brutal tiger assault. In later life she fell into depression after losing her job at age 79, and the death of an escaped tiger pushed her over the edge. She took her own life by overdosing on barbiturates. In her 1938 autobiography Hold That Tiger, she wrote she would rather die at a tiger’s paws than any other way.
2 Martini Maccomo
Famously dubbed the “African Lion King,” Martini Maccomo’s early years remain obscure. Some historians place his birth in Angola around 1835‑36; others claim he was a Liverpool‑born sailor. He rose to fame after showman William Manders secured his services in the early 1850s, making him a headline attraction for British audiences.
Maccomo’s spectacles involved chasing up to 20 raging lions and tigers around the ring, brandishing a whip and firing a gun to heighten their aggression. He would then corner the beasts and play with them. In 1886 he was handed a ferocious Bengal tiger that attacked and bit another circus tiger shortly after arrival. When Maccomo entered the cage, the Bengal lunged at him; he fired at it, but the tiger recovered, knocked him to the ground, and prepared to tear him apart. He was saved by a beloved circus tiger that intervened and attacked the Bengal.
Maccomo survived further dangerous encounters, including an attack by a lion named Wallace. His success inspired many black entertainers to pursue animal‑training careers. He died of rheumatic fever at a Sunderland hotel on January 11, 1871.
1 Clyde Beatty
Clyde Beatty entered the world on June 10, 1903, the eldest of nine children born to Margaret Beatty in Bainbridge, Ohio. At 18 he fell in love with the circus, joining Howe’s Great London and Van Amburgh’s Wild Animal Circus as a cage attendant, where he learned the taming trade from mentors like Peter Taylor.
By 1923 Beatty was working with groups of wild cats, hyenas, and bears. From 1925 to 1935 he performed with the Hagenbeck‑Wallace Circus. His hallmark was a massive mixed‑species act, reportedly the largest ever, featuring up to 40 lions and tigers in a single cage. He pioneered the use of a chair as a taming tool, entering the cage armed with a whip, a gun, and a chair; the chair’s four legs confused and distracted the lions, allowing him to control them.
Beatty continued performing with various circuses until 1945, when he amalgamated several shows to create the largest traveling tent production in the United States at that time. He also appeared in movies and television from the 1930s through the 1960s. He lived into his sixties, passing away from a heart attack.