Clyde Beatty

Clyde Beatty, who was born on June 10, 1903 in Bainbridge, Ohio, was a big game hunter who became famous as a lion tamer and animal trainer. He was the first lion tamer to be featured in a circus. Eventually, he became a circus impresario who owned his own show. Beatty became famous for his "fighting act," in which he entered the cage with wild animals armed only with a bull-whip and a pistol strapped to his hip. The act was designed to showcase the five & a half-foot tall Beatty's courage and mastery of the wild beasts, which included lions, tigers, pumas, and hyenas, sometimes brought together all at once in a single cage in a potentially lethal combination. At the height of his fame, the act featured Beatty solo, in a cage confronting 40 snarling, roaring and caterwauling lions and tigers of both sexes. Such was Beatty's fame that he appeared in films from the 1930s through the 1950s and on television until the 1960s. His "fighting act" made him the paradigm of a lion tamer for mo