By Dominique Jando

From 1968 to 2001, Gunther Gebel-Williams was, in the United States, the most celebrated circus
performer of his generation—a true media star whose only
equivalents in the twentieth century had been Alfredo Codona and Lilian
Leitzel . An extremely talented and charismatic performer, he was also, for
circus enthusiasts and circus professionals around the world, one of the
greatest animal trainers of the second half of the twentieth century.

Born into Show Business Günther Gebel (1934-2001) was born in the German
town of Schweidnitz in Lower Silesia (today Swidnica, in Poland) on September
12, 1934. His father, Max Gebel, was a scenic carpenter and his mother,
Elfriede, a theater seamstress. If young Gebel was born into show business,
it was by no means the glamorous side of it; in fact, he would keep a
lifelong dislike of the theater world—the world into which he was
born. His father was a stern authoritarian and a heavy drinker, a bad
combination if any: Max Gebel was a violent man, not averse to beating his
children (Gunther had an elder sister, Rita, born in 1928) or his wife when
he returned home after a round of the local bars.

Needless to say, Gunther’s early childhood was far from happy, and the advent of World War II would
further tear apart his already dysfunctional Gebel family. Max Gebel was
drafted into the Wehrmacht and sent to the Russian front. As the conflict
went on, Elfriede had an increasingly hard time finding jobs; she eventually
landed in Zwickau, Saxony, but her life didn’t improve.

At the end of the war, Max, who had been discharged from a disbanded Wehrmacht, was lucky to
find a job as technical manager in a small theater in Wanne-Eickel, near
Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr region. Elfriede, who was still jobless, sent young
Gunther to his care. But Gunther didn’t feel—and indeed
was not—welcome in his father’s home, and he soon returned to his
mother, now in Cologne, and still looking for some steady work. The year was
1947. German circuses were hitting the road again, and one of the first to do
so, Circus Williams , had established a permanent wooden construction in
Cologne. Elfriede took Gunther to a matinee performance: To Gunther, it was
an epiphany! As fate had it, on their way out, they saw a sign announcing
that Circus Williams was looking for a seamstress: Elfriede took the job, and
Gunther Gebel, age thirteen, entered the world of Circus
Williams—where he would spend the next two decades of his life.

Harry and Carola Williams Circus Williams had been created right after the
end of the war, in 1946, by the German-born British equestrian Harry Williams
(1902-1951), and his wife, Carola , née Althoff (1903-1987). Harry
Williams held a British passport, and the Althoffs—Carola and her
brothers, Franz (1908-1987) and Adolf (1913-1998)—had shown an
exemplary attitude during the war (from the Allies’ perspective), hiding
notably many Jews, performers or not, within their family’s
traveling circus; the post-war Occupation authorities had had no problem
delivering Harry and Carola Williams a permit to operate a circus again.
Gunther Gebel at Circus Williams, 1952 Yet, circus life didn’t suit
Elfriede Gebel, and after a few weeks, she decided to call it quits, but left
Gunther in the care of the Williamses as an apprentice with a five-year
contract. Whatever young Gunther might have felt at first—so far,
his family life had been no bliss anyway—he soon found in Harry and
Carola Williams caring surrogate parents, and he would become in time a true
member of their family, which already included son Alfons and daughter
Jeanette , and Holdy Barley , Carola’s son from a first marriage
with Harry Barley .

Circus Williams was to become one of Germany’s
preeminent circuses; in the immediate post-war period—a golden era
for European circuses—it boosted a collection of eighty horses and
its well-stocked menagerie included a group of five elephants. Harry Williams
was an excellent and respected all-around equestrian; he had been a good
acrobat on horseback, and was a fine liberty trainer and high school rider.
One of his specialties was a spectacular Roman chariot race that he performed
at breakneck speed at the end of the show. The first thing Gunther learned
with his tutor was how to take care of the horses. Circus Williams also
employed at the time two young performers who would make their mark in the
circus world as outstanding cat trainers (and, for the second, as a circus
director as well): Charly Baumann and Gerd Siemoneit . Both had started their
career there as jockeys, and Gunther would soon follow in their footsteps.
Circus Williams also traveled with an important menagerie, and Gunther began
to develop an interest in big cats—as he did, actually, with all
the animals in the circus: his job was to take care of them. He began to feel
at home in his new life, which, in spite of its itinerant style, brought him
the stability and comfort of mind he had longed for.

For the 1950-51 Christmas season, the Williamses were hired by Tom Arnold for his annual
circus production at the Harringay Arena in London. But it was to be a
fateful engagement: On December 22, 1950, Harry was violently ejected from
his chariot during his signature Roman race; he died of his injuries three
weeks later, on January 10, 1951. It was evidently a tragedy for the extended
Williams family, but Gunther reacted to the terrible accident as the true
professional he already was: Right after the performance, he quietly walked
the horses around the ring as Harry had taught him to do after every show,
whatever the circumstances. Apprenticeship Carola Williams found herself
alone at the helm of Circus Williams. For the 1951 season, she leased her
circus to her first husband, Harry Barley, and she sent Gunther to her
brother, Franz Althoff. Circus Franz Althoff was, along with Circus Krone ,
Germany’s largest circus; Franz had a herd of thirteen elephants,
which he presented as one group in the vast hippodrome of his giant big top,
elegantly directing them from the center of the arena with the sound of his
voice and the tip of his chambrière, the same he used for his
liberty acts. Gunther began learning elephant training with Franz Althoff,
whose singular style he would adopt in his own elephant acts. Carola resumed
her management of Circus Williams the following season, and she began to give
Gunther more responsibilities. (Her children, Alfons and Jeanette, were
getting a “normal” education, and were not traveling with
the circus at the time.) Carola’s younger brother, Adolf, whose own
circus had gone bankrupt, also came to help her; he would manage the
enterprise conjointly with Carola until 1956. Adolf, who was a very good
elephant trainer, continued Gunther’s education in that chapter.
When Adolf eventually left Circus Williams, Gunther took over its growing
herd of elephants. He would soon be noted as an outstanding elephant trainer,
especially when he added to his act a teeterboard sequence, in which he was
propelled by one elephant onto the back of another, while still directing his
charges himself. Gunther also completed his equestrian education with Adolf
Athoff, who trained him as a “Jockey”, teaching him
notably to jump from the ground onto a galloping horse, holding a light sulky
in his hands!

Gunther began to work as a jockey with the Enders
brothers, excellent equestrian acrobats who will remain with Circus Williams
for many years. The jockey act was relatively dangerous, however, and Carola
asked Gunther to stop performing the jump with the sulky. (It would
eventually become Jacob Enders’s trademark.) In 1955, Circus
Williams hired a young Dutch cat trainer, Tini Berman , known to the business
as “Miss Yvonne,” who presented a group of lions from Circus Knie
trained by Ladislav Ira. Gunther fell head over heels for her, and his
interest for big cats grew exponentially. To his delight, he was eventually
asked to replace her in the big cage for one performance: This was his first
experience working with cats in the ring, and he liked it. Yet the experience
didn’t do anything to bring him closer to his paramour: Tini was
happily married. By the time Adolf Althoff left Circus Williams in 1956,
Gunther had practically completed his circus education. At twenty-two, he now
helped his surrogate mother, Carola, in the day-to-day management of the
circus. He would continue to learn animal training by watching Circus
Williams’s very capable trainers, notably its Master Equestrian,
Fred Petoletti (the son of the legendary Circus Sarrasani ‘s illustrious
Master Equestrian), who had trained the pride of Circus Williams’s stables,
its beautiful group of twenty-four Lipizzaner horses, which he presented
together in one ring in a superb liberty display—an act that
Gunther and Jeanette would later take over. But cats now fascinated Gunther,
and working with them was his next goal. He eventually conceived an act with
a young tiger he trusted, Bengali , paired with a young African elephant, Kongo
. The act, which quickly became a sensation, made its debut at the Spanischer
National Circus —a title Circus Williams adopted for a joint
venture with Spanish impresarios Manuel Feijóo and Arturo Castilla
from 1962 to 1966. Gunther’s tiger and elephant act would later
include a second elephant, and then two more tigers.

Enter Gunther Gebel-Williams Gunther, Bengali, and Kongo By then, Carola’s
children had graduated from school, Alfons with a diploma in hotel and
restaurant management, and Jeanette with a commerce diploma. Nonetheless,
they both returned to the circus; Jeanette became an elegant high school
rider, and Alfons specialized in the presentation of liberty acts. But
tragedy struck again, when Alfons was killed in a car accident in 1960.

For a long time now, Carola Williams had considered Gunther her second son; he
entered the family quite officially in 1961, when he married Jeanette. From
then on, he would be officially known as Gunther Gebel-Williams. In the
winter of 1960-1961, the young couple performed at the Cirque d’Hiver in
Paris, where Circus Williams had contracted its animal acts. The lineup
included the twenty-four Lipizzaner horses and a mixed group of horses,
camels, and zebras presented by Fred Petoletti; Yvonne Berman and her lions;
Gunther and Jeanette in their high school act; and Gunther presenting his
group of eleven elephants, with its teeterboard finale. They obtained a great
success with the Parisian press and circus aficionados. Gunther and Jeanette
would return to the Parisian circus in the winter of 1965-66, where Gunther
presented the group of Lipizzaner horses, as well as Bengali and his two
partners, Kongo and Thaila , and his herd of 11 elephants.

In this program,
which was particularly rich in star acts, the legendary tiger trainer Gilbert
Houcke shared the bill with Gunther. Houcke had entered his new
“Pirate” period (following his “Tarzan” period), and had
staged a groundbreaking act, in which the cage was free of requisits, beside
eight low stools distributed around its perimeter to mark the place of his
tigers. Houcke presented his tigers like a liberty act, chambrière
in hand, and using only the natural movements of his charges. A particularly
striking image was that of the eight tigers marching abreast in a perfect
line around the cage, like the arm of a clock whose axle would have been
their trainer. Gunther was indeed familiar with the work of Gilbert Houcke,
who had been a major circus star in Europe since the 1950s, and had worked
extensively in Germany. But he had now the opportunity to observe his work
closely for a full month. Houcke had a great elegance in the ring, and a
quiet and soft manner with his tigers. Although he had an extraordinary
charisma as a performer, he always gave the spotlight to his feline partners,
leaving an impression of connivance between him and them. His acts always had
nice little touches of humor, too, and every now and then, the tigers looked
as if they made fun of their trainer. There is no doubt that Gilbert Houcke
was a major influence in Gunther’s subsequent style as a cat
trainer. In 1968, Gunther purchased a group of eight tigers, with which he
put together an act in the elegant style popularized by Houcke (and Charly
Baumann after him)—a style that would remain prevalent in Europe.

But European circuses were entering a period of crisis; in the burgeoning age
of television, they had a hard time finding a new voice. The lucrative
post-war period was over, and running a major circus had become a very
complex and expansive proposition indeed, whose financial rewards were
quickly shrinking.

Gunther in America: Circus Super Star By 1967, John
Ringling North , the owner of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey ,
had lost interest in his circus. On November 11, 1967, he sold it, lock,
stock, and barrel, to a syndicate formed by arena promoters Irvin and Israel
Feld, and the flamboyant Texan businessman and sports personality, Roy
Hofheinz. The Felds, who were in charge of the new operation, decided to
launch a second unit of The Greatest Show On Earth , for which they wanted to
create a new star. Gunther Gebel-Williams, whose reputation had grown
considerably in Europe, was an ideal candidate: Beside his obvious talent, he
had large animal acts, notably elephants, which could form the animal basis
of their new unit. Irvin Feld flew to Europe, and got the star on the
condition that the rest of his circus would come with him. It allegedly cost
Feld two million dollars for a four-year renewable contract.

On November 2, 1968, Gunther set sail to the New World on the Atlantic Saga , with seventeen
elephants (his, and few more purchased in Europe by Irvin Feld), nine tigers,
thirty-eight horses, and a few assorted animals. On the ship, too, was a
large number of Gunther’s personnel, plus Jeanette, whom he had
divorced the previous year, his new wife, Sigrid (née Neubauer), a
former model from Berlin, and his step daughter, Tina. They landed in New
York on November 15.

The Felds put in motion a publicity machine that would
have made P.T. Barnum proud. Irvin transformed Gunther into a well shaven (in
Europe, Gunther sported a goatee), bleached-blond Siegfried in spangled
costumes, designed by the flamboyant Ringling costumier, Don Foote.
Gunther’s talent and charisma, and his sheer joy of performing, did
the rest. Gunther was rather short in stature, but in the ring, his well-proportioned
features and muscular build made him appear much taller. Gunther
Gebel-Williams was on his way to becoming an American show business
super-star. Although his work in the ring would lose some of its precision in
America (notably in the horse department), it became more spectacular, a
style dictated by the large arenas where Gunther would perform for more than
three decades. His remarkable ability to adapt to and connect with his new
audience was not his lesser talent. He would also incessantly improve on his
acts, and create new ones; Gunther Gebel-Williams was a workaholic who
enjoyed what he did—but this would later have consequences on his
health.

His tiger act would grow with time, reaching seventeen animals at its
peak. Although Gunther, now performing two or three shows a day, had less
time to prepare new acts than he had had at Circus Williams, he would found
the time to put together a superb small feline act for the 1977
season—after three years of preparation. The group included fifteen
leopards, two cougars, and two black panthers. Such an act had not been seen
since Alfred Court , and it would be remembered as one of the greatest small
feline acts of all times. It was also Gunther’s favorite act.

In 1973 already, the Anerican Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA), had named Gunther
Gebel-Williams “Artist of the Year.” Gunther made numerous
appearances on television, and even starred in his own show, a CBS-TV special
titled Lord Of The Ring , with Tony Curtis in 1977. He was also the subject
of another television special, the NBC-TV production of My Father, The Circus
King (1981), a portrait of Gunther as seen by his son, Mark Oliver Gebel .

In time, Gunther Gebel-Williams became vice-president in charge of animals for
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. He was now a wealthy man, but the
hard work had taken its tool. Gunther began to have health problems, and he
decided that it was time for him to retire from performing. The 1989-1990 production
of The Greatest Show On Earth marked Gunther’s widely advertised
Farewell Tour. He gave what was heralded as the last of his 11,697
performances in the United States on November 18, 1990. The number, of
course, doesn’t include his years performing with Circus Williams.
Gunther returned to the ring, however: Once to replace his successor in the
cage, Tyrone Taylor, then for a series of performances in ten U.S. cities in
1994, followed by a CBS-TV special, The Return Of Gunther Gebel-Williams .
His last public appearance occurred September 27, 1998 at Grand Rapids,
Michigan, where he replaced his son, Mark Oliver, in the big cage, to allow
the latter to be present at the birth of his own son.

After his official retirement in 1990, Gunther had written his autobiography (with Toni
Reinhold), Untamed , which was published the following year. In 1996, Gunther
had to undergo heart surgery. Then, in July 2000, he had another surgical
intervention, this time to remove a brain tumor, followed by sessions of
chemotherapy. But the cancer did not remit; Gunther Gebel-Williams died in
his home, in Venice, Florida, on July 19, 2001.

Gunther Gebel-Williams had become an American citizen in 1976. He and his wife Sigrid had two children,
Mark Oliver , born in 1971, and Tina, Sigrid’s daughter, born in
Berlin in 1962. Both became circus performers and animal trainers.
Mark-Oliver, who succeeded his father in the big cage, left the circus in
2004; Tina married the acrobat Eddie DelMoral. On December 5, 2005, a statue
of Gunther Gebel-Williams in full circus regalia was unveiled in Rollins W.
Coakley Railroad Park, in his hometown of Venice, Florida.