Profile of Mabel Stark on Famous Like Me

Mabel Stark (real name Mary Haynie) was the worlds premier tiger trainer of the 1920s, specializing in highly sexualized circus acts. She wore white to hide the tiger's semen during mating rituals and foreplay which the audience took to be vicious attacks. An incident in 1926 where she was badly mauled by tigers is speculated by some to have been an unsuccessful suicide attempt. She died of suicide in 1968.

Born in Kentucky, a single child, Stark led an isolated and difficult childhood including corporal punishment from her mother. At the age of 13, both her parents died leaving her an orphan. She spent the rest of her youth with an aunt in Louisville, Kentucky; at the age of 18 she ran away to become a nurse, but ended up working as a stripper at the Great Parker Carnival instead. taking the name Mary Aganosticus and later Mabel Stark.

When the manager of the Carnival's menagerie left to form his own circus, he invited Stark, who had shown an interest in the animals, to join him. She was originally slated to teach a troupe of performing goats - but failing that went on to replace the recently-killed cat-trainer Marguerite Haupt.

Choosing to work with the more difficult breed of tigers, rather than the more docile lions, it has been surmised that the solitary Stark preferred the company of one of the few solitary creatures in nature. There she met her new companion Rajah who would become her trademark tamed tiger.

She would later reveal in her writing that when she appeared to be tussling with Rajah, it was actually Rajah trying to copulate with her - which was her reason from changing from an all-black leather ensemble to an all-white bodysuit, to hide the resultant semen.

She was approached by, and joined the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, though in 1925 they announced they were discarding the large cat portion of their travelling circus and terminated her employment, instead introducing Clyde Beatty as their stand-in tamer for the occasional act. The following year, working for a much smaller circus, Stark was mauled by unfed tigers - an event some claimed was an attempt at suicide on her part since she'd previously displayed her desire to die at the claws of tigers; she spent the next two years in hospital recovering from the event.

Her final job was as a menagerie-trainer with JungleLand in Thousand Oaks, California - but in 1968 the park was sold to a new owner who disliked Stark and promptly fired her. Three months later she killed herself.

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