'Final Confession' details troubled life of renowned circus star

In the 1910s and '20s, Mabel Stark developed an act so original, so daring, so brave, that it puts all the stupid human tricks on today's reality shows to shame.

Here's what Stark did: She let a tiger maul her.

OK, it only looked like a tiger was mauling Stark. Still, given a tiger's unpredictable nature and powerful physique, it was an act infinitely more challenging than eating insects. In terms of how tigers were trained at the time, Stark's feat makes Siegfried and Roy's Las Vegas cat extravaganza comparable to teasing kittens with yarn.

"Back then, the cats had their claws, had not been neutered and didn't have their eyeteeth filed down," says Robert Hough, author of "The Final Confession of Mabel Stark" (Atlantic Monthly, $24). "Whereas today, all those things are true. Today, a cat trainer will likely survive an attack. Back then, a tiger could kill you quickly."

Hough's book is a fictionalized account of the life of a woman who was one of the Roaring '20s' most notable figures. To put Stark's life in perspective, it's important to remember that "The Jazz Singer," the first talking movie, wasn't released until 1927. Television did not exist, and radio was in its infancy. In many towns, especially in rural areas, the circus was the year's only opportunity to see and hear a living, breathing celebrity.

"Circus stars had the same kind of play in the media as music stars and film stars have today," Hough says, noting that Stark's fame probably was short of the superstar status of Madonna and Jennifer Lopez, but comparable to that of Cameron Diaz. "General-interest magazines commonly did profiles on circus stars in the same way that they seem to do nothing but stories on film stars today."

Hough was writing a magazine article about the lion trainers who worked on the Michael Douglas film "The Ghost and the Darkness" when he came across Stark's story in a book about famous big-cat trainers. A quote attributed to Stark about the tiger's cage being the only place where she never felt fear struck the Toronto-based writer.

"The circuses trumpeted that quote, because it seemed to indicate she was fearless," Hough says. "But I knew she was talking about the something else, which is the tendency we have to only be comfortable with our own problems. ... I knew that could be a furnace for a novel."

Hough was easily able to find information about Stark's stints under the Al G. Barnes and Ringling Brothers big tops. Her personal life was more problematic. Married five times, she had no children and few, if any, close friends when she died in 1968.

Help came from the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis. Hough found a cache of letters Stark wrote to a ghost writer, Earl Chapin May, for a biography that was never published. In addition to insight into her marriages -- one husband was an alcoholic, another a gambler who forged checks -- the author also uncovered information about the strange, quasi-sexual experience of Stark's faux tiger attack.

What audiences perceived as a vicious assault was actually her tiger, Rajah, masturbating.

"I just wouldn't have written about that on speculation," Hough says, "but I felt obliged since it really happened."

That bizarre detail aside, Hough has constructed a captivating portrait of a woman and a way of life that no longer exists. In Stark's time, small towns often would shut down when the circus arrived, with as much as 90 percent of the residents attending. Workers were recruited from hospital wards and insane asylums, and Hough speculates that Stark herself -- born Mary Haynie in a small Kentucky town sometime in the late 1880s -- left a nursing position to become a "cooch," or exotic, dancer because of a nervous breakdown.

Stark spent her last years training tigers for JungleLand, an amusement park and zoo in southern California. Although Hough writes only about one incident in "Final Confession," he estimates Mabel Stark survived 12 serious maulings during her lifetime.

But she couldn't survive when her tigers were taken away from her. Stark committed suicide April 21, 1968, finally alone.

"It's dangerous to be a tiger trainer," Hough says, "even when the tigers aren't trying to kill you."

Additional Information:

Writers Read

Robert Hough

He just read • 'Gould's Book of Fish' by Douglas Flanagan. 'It's actually the book that bested 'The Final Confession of Mabel Stark' for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first book in Canada, England and the Caribbean. It's a really far-out book.'

He just saw • 'Frida,' starring Salma Hayek. 'Everyone says this, but the best thing about it was the visual look, a lot of dreamy sequences that are lifted from Frida Kahlo's paintings.'

He's listening to • 'Happy Mondays Live.' 'I went to see the movie '24 Hour Party People,' so I was feeling nostalgic and bought a Happy Mondays album, which I listen to while riding my exercise bike.'