Since beginning his 21-year sentence, the \u201cTiger King\u201d star has started a cannabis brand, hawked digital art and begun work on an album tentatively titled \u201cJungle Rhapsody: A Tiger King Experience.\u201d His most recent gambit involves selling personal phone calls from his cell \u2013 \u201cWhat better Valentines gift could you ever get your loved one,\u201d he posted on Instagram in January 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n But before Joe Exotic, there was Mabel Stark. Often described as America\u2019s most famous female tiger trainer, the Tiger Queen was renowned for her pluck and charisma.<\/p>\n While researching Caxton Printers<\/a>, the publisher of Stark\u2019s autobiography, I came across unpublished archival material<\/a> about Stark\u2019s long career training animals. Like Joe Exotic, Stark had a knack for the spotlight. But even more impressively, she did it under the scrutiny of being a woman in a male-dominated world, while caring for her animals with love rather than fear. <\/p>\n From nurse to tiger trainer<\/p>\n Born Mary Ann Haynie in 1888 or 1889 \u2013 the exact year has always been a mystery \u2013 Stark grew up in Princeton, Kentucky. When she was 8 years old, she attended her first circus, where she was awed by the performances of trained animals. <\/p>\n Two decades would pass before she got a chance to try her hand at animal training.<\/p>\n Taking a vacation in California from her job as a nurse, Stark met Al Sands, manager of the Al G. Barnes Circus<\/a>. After learning of her interest in training animals, he hired her on the spot.<\/p>\n Stark started by riding horses and training goats. It would take several years before she started working with tigers. But once she did, her career took off. <\/p>\n Crowds gathered to watch the \u201cTiger Girl\u201d wrestle with big cats and wow audiences by commanding a dozen tigers at a time to follow her lead. Her wrestling act with her favorite tiger, Rajah \u2013 in which the duo would roll three or four times on the ground \u2013 became one of the best-known cat acts in the U.S<\/a>.<\/p>\n She leveraged that success to join the Ringling Circus \u2013 the largest circus in the U.S. \u2013 for twice the pay<\/a>.<\/p>\n Poster advertising Mabel Stark\u2019s act for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. As her popularity grew, Stark collaborated with screenwriter Gertrude Orr<\/a> to write her life\u2019s story. <\/p>\n \u201cHold That Tiger<\/a>\u201d hit bookstores in 1938. Caxton Printers<\/a>, a small publishing company in rural Idaho, issued the book and marketed it primarily to young readers. It proved popular, selling well enough to warrant multiple reprintings. <\/p>\n Known for giving a voice to first-time writers and authors from underrepresented groups, Caxton Printers found a niche market<\/a> for circus-related titles. It also published books about Stark\u2019s first employer, Al Barnes, as well as the Ringling Brothers and renowned lion trainer Louis Roth, who also happened to be one of Stark\u2019s ex-husbands.<\/p>\n Female power in the ring<\/p>\n Stark was acutely aware of the path she was paving. <\/p>\n \u201cI deliberately chose a field in which no other woman had specialized,\u201d she wrote<\/a> in her autobiography.<\/p>\n The conventional wisdom at the time, she added<\/a>, was that \u201ctigers were considered too dangerous for a woman to handle.\u201d <\/p>\n Stark\u2019s willingness to defy convention mattered. As circus historian Janet M. Davis noted<\/a>, \u201ccircus women\u2019s performances celebrated female power\u201d and represented \u201ca startling alternative to contemporary social norms.\u201d <\/p>\n In early-20th-century American life, women might not have been able to vote or to serve on juries in most states, but in the ring, they commanded the audience\u2019s attention riding bareback on horses, displaying strength and stamina, and performing gravity-defying acrobatic feats.<\/p>\n Stark\u2019s schedule was relentless. She performed almost daily with traveling circuses, and she continually refined her act. In 1938, she worked with both tigers and lions at the same time, a first for a female trainer. She made history again working with 12 tigers<\/a> in one cage.<\/p>\n Mabel Stark was able to work with 12 tigers in one cage. Whether it was due to the demands of her schedule or her preference for her cats, Stark\u2019s relationships with men rarely worked out.<\/p>\n Over the course of her life, Stark married four times<\/a>, three of which ended in divorce. <\/p>\n \u201cI love these big cats as a mother loves her children,\u201d she admitted to a friend<\/a>. But \u201cwith husbands I was never happy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018An animal trainer can\u2019t have nerves\u2019<\/p>\n Stark, aware of other trainers\u2019 abusive behavior toward their tigers<\/a>, took a different route. <\/p>\n \u201cKindness and patience are the biggest factors in training. \u2026 Trainers who try to beat animals into submission always get into trouble,\u201d she said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet her trade was not without danger. <\/p>\n \u201cAn animal trainer can\u2019t have nerves. I haven\u2019t had any since I gave up nursing,\u201d she said in a 1922 New York Times interview<\/a>. \u201cThey may be planting violets on me tomorrow, but while I have my health and strength, I\u2019d rather take care of 10 tigers than a sick person.\u201d <\/p>\n Stark had several serious accidents. Perhaps the worst was in 1928: After a circus train arrived late, Stark started her act without realizing her tigers hadn\u2019t been fed for 24 hours. Two famished tigers attacked Stark after she fell in mud.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I lay there, helpless,\u201d she wrote<\/a>, \u201cI wondered into how many pieces I would be torn, and how long it would take for the other tigers, growling and snarling restlessly on their seats, to finish me.\u201d She suffered multiple broken bones, nearly lost her leg and required 300 stitches.<\/p>\n Mabel Stark recovers in a Los Angeles hospital after her left arm was bitten by a tiger in 1935. Another incident took place in 1950, when a tiger mauled her<\/a> as she reached for its cub. Doctors initially thought they would have to amputate her arm but managed to save it.<\/p>\n Despite these close calls with her tigers, Stark maintained<\/a> that \u201cI am not afraid. I like the challenge of their roaring defiance.\u201d<\/p>\n The stark reality<\/p>\n Stark toured with circuses until the late 1940s, when she was hired by Jungleland<\/a>, a zoo located outside of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Save for the three-and-a-half years she lived in Japan<\/a> touring with her wild cat act, she spent the last 20 years of her career at Jungleland. <\/p>\n Mabel Stark poses with one of her tigers in 1957, when she was employed as a trainer at Jungleland in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Stark never stopped drawing crowds to her show, nor did she shy away from the spotlight. She even appeared on the game show<\/a> \u201cWhat\u2019s My Line?\u201d in 1961 as a contestant whose profession the panel had to guess.<\/p>\n \u201cEach year has left scars on my body, but it has also brought a full measure of happiness,\u201d she recalled<\/a>.![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/file-20260227-57-hk8aqm.jpg\")
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\n Parkinson Library & Research Center, Circus World<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/file-20260227-71-57xn9b.jpg\")
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\n Cinema Libre Studios<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Woman](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/file-20260227-57-glebzo.jpg\")
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\n AP Photo\/LMM<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Black-and-white](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/file-20260227-57-873wjv.jpg\")
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\n Larry Paulson, Valley Times Collection\/Los Angeles Public Library<\/a><\/p>\n
\nStark worked at Jungleland until she was fired<\/a> in 1967 after the park\u2019s insurance company stopped covering her. Being away from her tigers devastated her, and she died by suicide<\/a> just months later on April 20, 1968, at her home in Thousand Oaks. <\/p>\n