Pat Anthony--One of America's Greatest Wild Animal Trainer's

For any of the young European cage act fans who we are pleased to have contributing to this blog how have never heard of this man, his name was Anthony Patrick Vitanza who's stage name was Pat Anthony. He was one of Americas greatest wild animal trainers, and in my opinion was only overshadowed by Clyde Beatty. Pat learned how to train cat's because of what was called the GI Bill. After the war, all American soldiers were given a choice of what they wanted for a job and where they wanted to go to school and the American Government paid for it. Pat wanted to be an animal trainer, and the Government paid for him to go to JungleLand, which was a large zoo/animal training compound in Thousand Oaks California. They trained animals for movies and circus's at Jungle Land and some of America's best animal trainers/animal handlers of that generation worked there.
Pat was a very good friend of mine, who I first met when I was a groom taking care of the animals. He was the only Animal Trainer besides Tony Smaha who treated me with respect and kindness and didn't call me a shit shovler. I have a whip lash that Pat gave me in 1975 before I even knew how to use a whip. He made them himself and they were flat and not round like a normal whip lash. I still have it today and have never used it. I was very proud to have Pat come to the Ringling show as my guest the first year I we opened in Venice. Imagine if you can the thrill and excitement of having Pat Anthony, Gunther Gebel Williams, Charley Bauman, Axel Gautier and Daniel Suskow all watching you on one night!!!!!!!!!

Pat had a lion and tiger barrel roll, a tiger rolling a ball, a lioness named Rita that did a roll over so fast and furious she went from her stomach straight to her stomach without without touching her side. He had some of the best bouncing/ charging lions you would ever see. Mama, the lioness would charge from the left and knock the chair out of his hand and Big Boy a male lion would charge him from the opposite or right side, and he would fight two lions, a male and a female together. He had special pedestals built and the animals stretched instead of sitting like you see in most cage acts. You can see them in the pictures above. His tigers were male tigers and the tiger on the ball above's name was Billy.
If you are interested in a few more pictures of Pat go to Ivan Henry's blog www.thecircusblog.com look around and you will find more wonderful Pat Anthony stuff.