Bio say's he worked for Circus Knie, Boltini, and Renz and trained all the lions for the movie Quo Vadis in 1954(most everyone did it seems). Does anyone know anything else. These are fairly young lions in this clip. The ball roll free without a track is nice if you like prop tricks. Fairly easy behavior on a grass/dirt surface, almost impossible on a plastic ring mat in a building. The "saddle" on the lion seemed like a useless behavior.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Charles Stevens
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
The comment with the clip,tells us ,that Karel Stevens was the son of a butcher and an amateur trainer.He bought the 2 lions
in 1936 from the Rotterdam Zoo.So at the time of the clip ,they were approx. 3 years old.Later he performed as dompteur Carlo.In the film Quo Vadis he appeared as a Roman soldier or Christian slave in order to control the lions.So it could be possible ,that later he was one of the people from Erie Klant ,because I believed they were the ones ,that trained the animals for the movie.
Rob
Hi,
I put this little clip from my grandfather on youtube. He started with those two lions, but trained many animals during his life; elephants, chickens, pigs, bears etc, but mainly lions. In 1949 he trained lions and two leopards for Quo Vadis. Erie Klant got the assignment of training the animals, he hired three trainers: my grandfather, a trainer called Michon and a third one of who my father couldn't remember his name. Each had their own acts. My grandfather can be seen climbing a wall in the colosseum, than being dragged down by a lion and eaten alive.
Karsten Stevens
Karsten,
Thank you for the additional information. Jean Michon trained some of the tiger's in one of the first tiger act's I presented. It is indeed a small world.
Wade Burck
Post a Comment