Presented by Castle Films as part of the company’s “Adventure Parade”, “Clyde Beatty’s Animal Thrills” show Clyde Beatty’s Circus in South Florida. This tourist attraction opened in 1939 when animal trainer and circus manager Clyde Beatty bought out the McKillop-Hutton Lion Farm, which had opened in 1936 in a former rock quarry and served as a breeding farm for zoos and circuses rather than as a public tourist attraction. It was located in Fort Lauderdale at Northeast 10th Street near Federal Highway. Beatty turned it into a winter home for his circus and a tourist attraction, Clyde Beatty’s Jungle Zoo, and opened in December of 1939. Beatty’s zoo operated until 1945, a victim of tightening zoning regulations brought on by complaints from the neighbors as city development began to overtake the site. Beatty took the show back on the road.
Clyde Beatty (June 10, 1903 – July 19, 1965) joined the circus as a cage cleaner as a teen and became famous as a lion tamer and animal trainer. He also became a circus impresario who owned his own show, which later merged with the Cole Bros. Circus to form the Clyde Beatty–Cole Bros. Circus.
Scenes include trained elephants performing in front of a packed crowd (1:00) — the female performer is likely Beatty’s wife Harriet Evans who worked as an aerliest — scenes of baby and young lions in training (2:00), as well as a full on big cat show in a cage. At 2:23 a Bengal tiger is shown, one of many at the zoo. At 2:36 Clyde Beatty is seen walking into the cage with a chair and a revolver, and a whip. At 5:30, a famous trick with a Bengal tiger is shown, with the cat rolling over and growling — a trick that took 3 years for Beatty to master. The show ends with lions and tigers “striking a pose”.
Beatty was very famous for his “fighting act” as shown in the film, in which he entered a cage with wild animals with a whip and a pistol strapped to his side. The act was designed to showcase his courage and mastery of wild beasts, including lions, tigers, cougars, 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 as many as 40 lions and tigers of both sexes, and Beatty had his own rail car in the 35-car circus train.
There have been suggestions that Beatty was the first lion tamer to use a chair in his act, but in an autobiographical book he disclaimed credit for this practice: “It was in use when I was a cage boy and had been used long before.”
Clyde Beatty’s zoo did have a second act. Around 1958 Beatty’s circus entered a deal to bring their winter quarters to Deleon Springs, and possibly to buy the attraction, which was then operated as a privately owned business. That deal appears to have fallen through, however. Then, in early 1960, Beatty leased, with an option to buy, Aquafair, a small tourist attraction located off US 1 and 185th Street in North Miami. Aquafair was owned by George A. Hamid, himself a circus impresario and owner of the Atlantic City Steel Pier, where Beatty had appeared years before with his animal act.
Beatty renovated and reopened Aquafair, once again using the familiar name Clyde Beatty’s Jungleland, for the 1960 season. It was not particularly successful, however, and Beatty sold out after just one year. Beatty continued to perform his circus act until he was struck down, not by a jungle cat, but by cancer in the mid 1960’s. He died on July 19, 1965.
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