Word: gebel
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...time when the masculine hero is joining other endangered species, Hoagland looks to the circus, "the last place left where somebody can teeter on the brink of death and the crowd won't yell 'Jump!'" He finds his hero in Gunther Gebel-Williams, an animal trainer with an instinctive ability to orchestrate big cats into tawny fugues. To Hoagland, Gebel-Williams seems "to live in a state of direct gaiety." Unlike Clyde Beatty, for example, he does not conquer his animals crudely but controls them with a lover's touch...
Like many circusmen, Gebel-Williams grew up under the big top. Adopted by the owners of Germany's Circus Williams, he became general manager and star of the company in 1951. He married his stepsister, Jeannette Williams, divorced her and remarried in 1967. His skill with tigers extends to his handling of women: both the ex and the current wife work in his act, one in the center ring, the other in a side one. "They're both happy now," he says. "But I have to walk very carefully between them...
...Real King. After the young animals have learned to trust him, Gebel-Williams teaches them to leap by dangling meat on the end of a stick. A fine leap earns a bravo, a poor one stern-voiced disapproval. (In performances, lazy tigers get a swift kick on their bottoms, good ones may be rewarded with an embrace and a kiss.) "The greatest danger," says Gebel-Williams, "is that they will kill each other." When a fight starts, he wades in and breaks it up with a blow to the snout...
...climax of Gebel-Williams' act comes when his favorite Bengal tiger leaps onto the back of an elephant. The trainer follows, scrambling up the elephant, straddling the tiger and saluting the audience like a manic, peroxided Tarzan. It took two years for him to teach elephant and tiger to cooperate. He had them sleep close together. Later, he took them for walks. Even now, the elephant wears thick padding on his neck during the stunt: Gebel-Williams has been unable to squelch the tiger's instinct to gnaw a hole into the neck of his "victim...
...Gebel-Williams puts more faith in tigers than elephants, which are, he says, more unpredictable..Lions? He sneers at them and does not use them. He says: "The lion is not the king of the jungle. He makes a big show but runs away. The tiger is the real king. When a tiger attacks, he means...