At the beginning of the 20th century, Mabel Stark, a former nurse, became the most famous tiger trainer in the United States. Her story tells both of a woman’s rise in a male-dominated world and the constant dangers of training wild animals.
For the most alert minds of show business, there is always a new angle to exploit. Take Joe Exotic, who despite his 2020 conviction for a murder-for-hire plot and violations of the Endangered Species Act, a US law protecting endangered species, continued to make headlines.
Since the start of his 21-year sentence, the star of “Tiger King” has launched a cannabis brand, sold digital art, and started working on an album tentatively titled “Jungle Rhapsody: A Tiger King Experience.” His latest venture includes selling personal phone calls from his cell – “What better Valentine’s Day gift could you give to your loved one?” he wrote on Instagram in January 2026.
But before Joe Exotic, there was Mabel Stark. Often hailed as the most famous American tiger trainer, the “Tiger Queen” was renowned for her audacity and charisma.
Researching Caxton Printers, the publisher of Stark’s autobiography, uncovered unpublished archives dedicated to Stark’s long career in animal training. Like Joe Exotic, Stark had a flair for showmanship. But, more impressively, she managed to have a successful career in a male-dominated industry, while caring for her animals with affection rather than fear.
Born Mary Ann Haynie in 1888 or 1889 – the exact year remains a mystery – Stark grew up in Princeton, Kentucky. At the age of 8, she saw her first circus show, where animal acts fascinated her. It would be two decades before she had the chance to try animal training herself.
On vacation in California, while working as a nurse, Stark met Al Sands, the director of Al G. Barnes Circus. After learning about her interest in animal training, he hired her on the spot.
Stark started by riding horses and training goats. It took several more years before she worked with tigers. But once she started, her career took off. Crowds flocked to see the “Tiger Girl” battle big cats and dazzle audiences by commanding up to a dozen tigers at a time. Her act with her favorite tiger, Rajah, where the duo rolled on the ground three or four times, became one of the most famous big cat acts in the US. She used this success to join the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus – the largest circus in the US – for double the pay.
As her fame grew, she collaborated with writer Gertrude Orr to tell her life story. “Hold That Tiger” was published in 1938. Caxton Printers, a small rural Idaho publisher, released and marketed the book mainly to a young audience. The book was a success, selling well enough to be reprinted several times.
Known for giving voice to novice authors and writers from underrepresented groups, Caxton Printers found a niche in circus-themed books. The publisher also released works on Stark’s former employer, Al Barnes, as well as the Ringling brothers and famous lion trainer Louis Roth, whom Stark was briefly married to.
Stark was well aware of the path she was blazing. “I deliberately chose a field in which no other woman was specialized,” she wrote in her autobiography.
The conventional wisdom of the time, she added, was that “tigers were considered too dangerous for a woman to train.” Her willingness to defy these conventions counted. As circus historian Janet M. Davis noted, “women’s performances in the circus celebrated feminine power” and provided “a striking alternative to the social norms of the time.”
In early 20th-century America, women could not vote or serve on juries in most states, but in the circus ring, they captured the audience’s attention, riding bareback, displaying strength and stamina, and performing gravity-defying acrobatics.
Stark’s pace was relentless. She performed almost daily with traveling circuses and constantly perfected her act. In 1938, she worked simultaneously with tigers and lions, a first for a female trainer. She made history again by presenting an act with 12 tigers in a single cage.
Despite the demands of her schedule or her preference for her big cats, Stark’s relationships with men rarely worked out. In her lifetime, she was married four times and divorced three times.
“I love these wild cats like a mother loves her children,” she confided to a friend. But “with my husbands, I have never been happy.”
Stark, aware of other trainers’ abusive behaviors towards their tigers, chose a different path. “Kindness and patience are the most important factors in training. (…) Trainers who try to dominate animals through violence always end up in trouble,” she explained.
But her profession was not without danger.
“An animal trainer should never be nervous. I have not been nervous since I left the nursing profession,” she declared in an interview with the New York Times in 1922. “Violets may be planted on my grave tomorrow, but as long as I have health and strength, I prefer to care for ten tigers rather than one sick person.”
Stark experienced several serious accidents. Perhaps the worst occurred in 1928: after a late-arriving circus train, Stark began her act without knowing her tigers had not been fed for 24 hours. Two hungry tigers attacked her after she slipped in the mud.
“As I lay there, helpless,” she wrote, “I wondered how many pieces I would be torn to, and how long it would take the other tigers, growling and snarling nervously in their seats, to finish me off.” She suffered multiple fractures, nearly lost a leg, and required 300 stitches.
Then, in 1950, a tigress maimed her while she tried to retrieve her cub. Doctors initially thought they had to amputate her arm but ultimately managed to save it.
Despite these dangerous encounters with her tigers, Stark claimed, “I am not afraid. I love the challenge that their roaring defiance represents.”
Stark toured with circuses until the late 1940s, before being hired by Jungleland, a zoo near Los Angeles.
Except for the three and a half years she spent in Japan touring with her big cat act, she spent the last two decades of her career at this zoo.
Stark never stopped drawing crowds to her shows and never shied away from the spotlight. She even appeared on “What’s My Line?” in 1961, a TV game show where participants had to guess the guest’s profession.
“Every year has left scars on my body, but it has also brought me a full measure of happiness,” she recalled.
Stark worked at Jungleland until her dismissal in 1967 when the park’s insurer refused to cover her. Being separated from her tigers devastated her, and she ended her life a few months later on April 20, 1968, at her home in Thousand Oaks.
