Mabel Stark & Rajah
Posted By thecircusblog on May 24, 2015
I believe this photo was taken on the Hagenbeck & Wallace Circus. Most likely in the mid 1940’s ?…………. Roger you might be able to help out on this photo.
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thecircusblog
My name is Ivan M. Henry and I am the 4th generation of a circus/show business dynasty. I hope you enjoy the blog.Comments
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Mabel poses with Beauty, on RBB in 1923. When she departed the Barnes show to join Ringling in ’22, Mr. Barnes refused to sell her wrestling tiger, Rajah. Beauty was the sister to Boston, and the two of them were widely photographed in action with Mabel. In one shot, a young Boston is in mid-air, attacking Mabel with a fang grip to her neck, with Beauty circling on the ground. As they grew, Beauty became among Mabel’s wrestlers, and the publicists continued the name of Rajah–who had become famous on Barnes.
Hagenbeck-Wallace went out for the last time in 1938, under Howard Y. Bary. Very shortly after a run at the old Washington & Hill lot, in Los Angeles, the show succumbed to the horrific business conditions of that season, and folded. Most of the equipment went to Louis Goebel at his well-established animal compound, in Thousand Oaks. Upon my arrival there in 1965, I used to prowl through the last of those wagons before Goebel began donating them to Baraboo. There was nothing in them to salvage or collect beyond some rotted folds of canvas, a few lengths of frayed rope, and half a dozen side poles.