A Little White Tiger
Posted By thecircusblog on October 1, 2008
It was spring of 1975 on the Great London Circus. One of the tigers had a litter and the mother would not take care of the 6 cubs. I knew how….and became their surragate mother. The little one that I am holding was given to me as payment for caring for the litter. They all lived. There is more to this story which I will relay to you in person if you have any interest.
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My name is Ivan M. Henry and I am the 4th generation of a circus/show business dynasty. I hope you enjoy the blog.Comments
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You had a white tiger in 1975?
I have started to think that that pair of tigers, Raja and Sheba II, must have had more litters, which likely included white tiger cubs. Do you know anybody else who might have information to share? Thanks. Sincerely Paul PS: They probably had litters in 1973 and 1974 because I can’t think of any reason why they would not have.
Dear Sir: I was just looking for this again for a lady who is doing research into white tigers. I’m really glad I found it. I hope you are well.
Dear Sir: Here is a picture I was just looking at of your white tiger cub’s parents Raja & Sheba II.:
circusnospin.blogspot.com/2008/12/baron-Julius-von-uhl.html
In 1975 a white tiger cub would have been worth at least $40,000 because that is what Ralph S. Scott the President of the Zoological Society of Florida paid the Maharaja of Rewa for one in 1970 for the Crandon Park Zoo in Miami. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was the day I discovered your blog and saw that picture of you with a white tiger cub when there were so few of them in the United States. Thank you so much for telling me all about the 6 tiger cubs you handreared. I am pretty certain that one of them, an orange female named Obie went to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska and was bred to a male white tiger named Ranjit from the National Zoo. Maybe I mentioned that already. Thank you again. Take care.
I just had to find this again it’s so fantastic and share it with someone else. I hope you are well and enjoying life. Take care.
Dear Sir: I recently found this newspaper article online.: Behind The Big Top. It was published on Friday August 31, 1973 in a number of different newspapers. It features a picture of Baron Julius Von Uhl bottle feeding a five week old male white tiger cub, which had two orange littermates. The article mentions you also. There is another newspaper article from 1975. It features a picture of Baron Julius Von Uhl holding a 12 week old Siberian tiger cub which was born in the Spring of 1975. It’s titled Hold That Tiger.
Dear Sir: I made a mistake before. The newspaper article I referenced was not titled Hold That Tiger. That was the caption under the picture. The article was titled Cat’s Meow Is Roar To Hungarian Baron, Centralia Daily Chronicle Tuesday July 29, 1975. In this article Baron Julius Von Uhl says that he sold a white tiger for $20,000. That’s the one you are holding in the picture, named Tony, he was sold to Mr. John F. Cuneo Jr. of the Hawthorn Circus Corp. in 1975. There’s another article or two from June 28, 1976 when the same tiger parents of Tony had two more white cubs at the Baltimore County Fair. In that article Von Uhl says that the father of the white cubs, Raja, had fathered other white cubs. He said he had a white tiger cub born three years earlier which was then performing with another circus. He was again talking about the one you are holding, the little baby white tiger cub. In the 1975 article there’s a picture of Von Uhl holding a 12 week old Siberian tiger cub, he says will eventually weight 600 lbs. I am certain that tiger was a younger sister of the cub you are holding, born in 1975 on Von Uhl’s farm in Indiana. He sold that one to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. In the 1973 article Von Uhl said that white tiger cub was worth $25,000. It would have been worth at least $38,000 in 1975 when he sold it for $20,000. Your blog has given me a lot to think about. Take care. PS: That picture is beautiful.
Dear Sir: I found your little white tiger cub in the August 6, 1973 issue of The Circus Report. It says he was born in Elkhart, Indiana and he was the seventh white tiger in the country. Actually if you count infant mortalities he was white tiger Number 9 in the Western Hemisphere. In June of 1973 Baron Julius Von Uhl was with George Matthews Great London Circus. Assuming he was still with the George Matthews Circus in July the white tiger cub had to have been born on July 27 or 28, because the circus was in Prospect Illinois July 24-26 and then in Madison Wisc. July 29-30. On May 24th, 1975 Baron Julius Von Uhl had three orange tiger cubs born in Fairfield, California. He was with Polack Bros. Circus, which was in Fairfield, California on that date. I read that in 1975 you were working on the Disney Studios made for TV movie Frankenstein And The Whizz Kidds in March. John F. Cuneo Jr. bought your little white tiger cub in February of 1975 in Detroit for $20,000. He is/was Tony the Great, Wade Burck’s white tiger. In May of 1979 the Florida Game And Frshwater Fish Commission raided Baron Julius Von Uhl’s private zoo in St. Augustine FLA. 55 animals were left without food or water for ten days. These included four Bengal tigers, five leopards, nine lions, and a cougar, as well as horses, ponies, monkeys, and gerbils. The animals were all confiscated, including the parents of your little white tiger cub. Baron Julius Von Uhl (I know he wasn’t a real Baron, I just like calling him that) said that his tiger cubs were three quarters Siberian and one quarter Bengal. I think I made a mistake here before. I said that Tony would have been worth at least $40,000 in 1975, but I think it would have been more like $45,000, more than double what John F. Cuneo paid for him. Anyway take care. Sincerely Paul PS: You should talk about that movie.
Dear Ivan: I was just checking something. One of the orange tiger cubs of Baron Julius Von Uhl which had to have been born on or around July 27, 1973 in Elkhart, Indiana ,was named Chequila. Von Uhl sold him to Dick Hartman, who sold him to James Witchie of Ravenna, Ohio. He loaned Chequila to the Racine Zoo in Wisc. He fathered white tiger cubs there. He bred with their orange tiger Bonnie. She previously had a white tiger cub sired by her father Buck, who also killed the white cub. I strongly suspect that Buck was a sibling of Von Uhl’s tigers Raja and Sheba II, which would make Chequila and Bonnie something like triple first cousins, if I’m right. Chequila was killed by a tigress in Seymour TX in 1990. I had a phone conversation years ago with the daughter of James Witchie. She had her own pet white tiger at the time. Another orange tiger cub of Von Uhl’s was Obie, who must have been born on May 24, 1975 in Fairfield, California, in the Polack Bros. Circus. I guess she was rescued from the Fort Bengali Park in 1979, and must have been given to the Omaha Zoo with her parents. I don’t know what happened to the fourth tiger which was at Fort Bengali in 1979. Obie was bred to a white tiger named Ranjit who was born at the Cincinnati Zoo on June 20, 1974. His parents were orange Bengal tigers, brother and sister, named Ramana and Kesari. They were registered Bengal tigers, cubs of Mohini Rewa the white tigress. Obie had at least two sons who were white tigers, named Panghur Ban and Chester. Panghur Ban went to the zoo in Washington DC and Chester went to live in Australia, at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, the Western Plains Zoo, and the zoo in Perth. I was thinking that since Raja and Sheba Ii both carried the white gene the odds were 66% that any orange cub of theirs carried the white gene. John F. Cuneo Jr. had three tigers who were siblings of Raja and Sheba II, two males named Prince and Saber, and a female named Sheba III. He had three white tigers born from at least two of these tigers, including Bagheera and Frosty. Frosty was born in 1975 I think towards the end of February, and Bagheera in 1972. These white tigers were quadruple first cousins to Natasha. Siegfried & Roy’s white tigers were grandchildren of Wade Burck’s white tiger Tony. Before I forget Bagheera and Frosty were severely cross-eyed, and Bagheera was also deaf. I found a picture on Buckles of Dave Hoover and Pat Anthony in 1981. Dave Hoover owned the mother of Von Uhl’s tigers. She was born in 1959 and Dave Hoover sold her to the Sioux Falls Zoo in 1965, the year that Clyde Beatty died. Hoover and Beatty co-owned Susie, but they didn’t call her that. She was on loan to the Sells-Gray circus until 1965. She had 13-14 cubs at the Sioux Falls Zoo fathered by a Siberian tiger. Then he was sold to a zoo in the Netherlands. She was paired with a Bengal tiger for breeding and he killed her. Von Uhl’s tigers Raja and Sheba II were born in 1966. Siegfried & Roy bought their white tigers from the Cincinnati Zoo. They had at least 70 white tigers born there and were selling them for $60,000 each. The Cincinnati Zoo got white lions from Siegfried & Roy. The Toledo Zoo had three male white lions from Siegfried & Roy, and they got Von Uhl’s elephant Twiggy too. He planned to sell her to the Pittsburgh Zoo for $150,000. In 1976 Wade Burck had 5 white tigers, including Tony, Bagheera, Frosty, and Tony’s two sons Ika and Ari. All were cross-eyed except for Tony. So Wade Burck had 5, Von Uhl had two, the Cincinnati Zoo had two, and the Washington DC Zoo had five also; Mohini Rewa, Rewati, Ranjit, Bharat, and Priya. Cincinnati Zoo had a pair, Bhim and Sumita, both cross eyed. Rewati was cross-eyed too.
Dear Ivan: I was looking at this picture and I wonder if this lady had a Javan tiger.:
https://bucklesw.blogspot.com/2010/03/thousand-oaks-1.html
I think that might be Mabel Stark. All her tigers looked like runty little dwarf tigers, like that. One of her tigers escaped from Thousand Oaks and was shot. Then she killed herself. I found a picture of Gunther with Maharani, the younger sister of your white tiger cub.:
https://bucklesw.blogspot.com/2006/03/gunther-3.html
https://bucklesw.blogspot.com/2013/09/tiger-tiger-6.html
Maharani was another of Baron Julius Von Uhl’s white tiger cubs born at the Baltimore County Fair on June 27, 1976. There was also a white male cub and an orange male cub. He supposedly sold all three to the Ringling Circus, but I don’t know if that’s true. Nobody seems to know. According to Wade Burck Maharani died within 9 months or a year of Gunther getting her.
Dear Ivan: I was reading the newspaper article Behind The Big Top, which I wasn’t able to get a hold of before. It is from 1973 and quotes Baron Julius Von Uhl as saying that’s his third litter. I assume he means of tiger cubs and not lions or leopards. So he had the litter of tiger cubs born in 1973 including the white one, Wade Burck’s white tiger Tony the Great. He had two litters before that. Then on May 24th, 1975 he had a litter born in Fairfield, California, right near San Francisco. Ten days after that you were in Houston TX. Also in May of 1975 the Polack Bros. and George Matthews Great London (American Circus Corp.) circuses merged for two days, for a Shrine date. The same month as the tiger cubs were born. In 1975 Wade Burck was 21 and Pat Anthony made his first costume for him, for performing in. Wade also got married in 1975, but I think 21 is way too young to get married. I know that Von Uhl had tiger cubs born in 1976 and 1977, but maybe he had some in 1974 and 1978 and 1979. The newspaper article says that Baron Julius Von uhl was living in Akron, Ohio in 1973, and that he trained dogs for the police. He had 15 cats (five tigers, one white), a dog, a pet chimpanzee, and two ponies. His obituary said that he was in the Army during the Vietnam War training dogs.
Dear Ivan: There were a few more things I learned that might interest you. Looking at one of those articles it appears as though Von Uhl sold Dick Hartman his chimpanzee in 1974 for $1000, and this was part of the court case. It wasn’t just Chequila the tiger and the two lions. There was $1500 for a truck and $3000 for the animals. It says “Rd. 6 in Wayne Twp. The Wayne Twp. farm “where he keeps them.” I assume that is Von Uhl’s farm not Dick Hartman’s, but I could be wrong. The other word used in the other article may have been “maud” meaning “grey striped”. He may have said “The World’s Only Maud Siberian White Tiger.” meaning grey striped, I guess, but I can barely make it out. I read another article which said that Von Uhl’s chimpanzee put him in the hospital in a coma. Anyway so there was a truck,a tiger, two lions, and a chimp. Poor little chimp. I thought you might find that interesting since you and your father had chimps. It would be interesting if he is referring to Tony as a “Siberian white tiger”, just like you said, that Baron Julius Von Uhl’s tigers were pure-Siberian. Wade Burck had a pure-Siberian tiger named Ural, which was severely cross-eyed, Ural not Wade Burck. He said that pure-Siberian tigers in captivity tended to be really inbred and it showed. Ural was a really sad specimen, according to Wade, but in pictures he looks magnificent to me. He looks perfect. In Feb, 1975 Von Uhl was in court in Detroit with Von Uhl fighting over Tony, Wade Burck’s white tiger. It looks like Von Uhl was constantly changing his mind, selling things, and then changing his mind. Alan Gold told me that John F. Cuneo Jr. got Von Uhl drunk and that’s why he sold Tony, and then changed his mind. Maybe you knew Alan Gold, the tiger trainer. When I met him in Montreal he had just come back from Germany with his white tigers. I forget how many, but he had a bunch, maybe 17 or so of Cuneo’s Hawthorn Circus white tigers. Cuneo must have owned most of the white tigers in the world. Alan Gold’s kids spoke German to each other. Wade Burck said that Alan Gold’s wife was German and she died in a car crash. He (Alan Gold) told me he wanted to quit the circus business, move to Hawaii and teach scuba diving. I can tell you the exact date I met him because the very next day a Hawthorn Circus trainer was killed by an elephant in Hawaii. I knew another tiger trainer with a similar name, Andy Goldfarb who worked ar MarineWorld/AfricaUSA in Vallejo, California with Ron Whitfield, at Tiger Island. Andy Goldfarb later went to work at Tiger Island at Australia’s Dream World at the Gold Coast. Now he works at a zoo in Washington State with clouded leopards. Maybe I told you Cuneo donated a white tiger to Calgary Zoo. Andy Goldfarb appeared on Jack Hanna’s TV show and on Reading Rainbow on PBS. The tigers at Tiger Island came from Josip Marcan.
Dear Ivan: I hope I’m not driving you crazy with the stuff, but there’s so much interesting information about Von Uhl. I see that after the state of Florida raided Fort Bengali around May 6, 1979 that the federal government seized five lions from Von Uhl’s “headquarters” in St. Augustine FLA around Saturday June 23, 1979, a little over a month later, and turned the lions over to Robert Baudy. I don’t really understand this because there were nine lions at Fort Bengali in May which I thought were seized by the state. The four Bengal tigers of his which I thought were at Fort Bengali in May, 1979 were not the four I thought. He sent those ones to the Omaha Zoo in August of 1978, I think around August 15, he sent four tigers to Omaha Zoo, which likely carried white genes, including the parents of Tony; Radja and Sheba II. See I thought the state of Florida gave those tigers to the zoo in 1980, but Von Uhl sold them to the zoo in 1978. Von Uhl had one more white tiger in 1981 which didn’t live long, a male named Bill Atma. It probably died of feline distemper which white tigers are especially susceptible to. In 1987 Von Uhl was 48 and he married a 23 year old girl. He had his own circus later on. He moved to Jacksonville FLA after the raid on Fort Bengali. he had an orange tiger cub named Muhammad Ali with him in Hawaii in August of 1976, and his two year old son Julius. I am guessing that Muhammad Ali was also sold to Omaha Zoo in 1978 and likely carried white genes. The odds that he did would have been 66% or two out of three in favor. His orange tiger cub Obie born on May 24, 1975 in Fairfield, California, in Polack Bros. Circus was sold to the Omaha Zoo and had white cubs. They would have been worth $60,000 each. I think in 1987 Von Uhl was stranded in Canada with 14 lions. A circus left him behind. He started performing at auto dealerships and had problems with anti-circus demonstrators. He shouted at them “The circus was here before Jesus.” He claimed that he ran away and joined the Gypsy circus at age six. One of the articles said that he was Yugoslavian. When the USDA took his elephant away in 2010 he had six tigers and four lions.
Dear Ivan: Merry Christmas and Happy New year. I found out that Von Uhl had reinvented himself as an illusionist with tigers like Siegfried and Roy in 1978. Maybe this was because the Kingdoms-3 safari park in Stockbridge, Georgia closed. He was their lion tamer. Von Uhl placed an ad in The Courier-Journal Louisville Kentucky Sunday September 24, 1978 Page 135. It says “The Royal Bengal Revue. Girl Changed Into A Bengal Tiger Before Your Eyes. Help Baron Julius Von Uhl distribute tickets, the Baron at 584-4911. Featuring Baby White Tiger The Jewel Of The Maharaja.” There’s a picture of a male lion jumping through a flaming hoop and above it the word “Bengali.” There’s a picture of Von Uhl with an adult orange tiger. The “baby white tiger” must have been Maharani, the white tiger cub which Kenneth Feld, the owner of the Ringling Circus, bought for Gunther. I’m not sure if I mentioned, but there was a newspaper article from February 1975, before Von Uhl went to court which Mr. John F. Cuneo Jr. over Tony the white tiger. In that article Von Uhl was complaining about the cost of feeding his animals, and he said he had six tigers. Three of them would have been Tony and his parents, but I don’t know who the other three tigers were. He lost Takila to Richard Hartman in 1974. That was another court battle over a tiger, two in two consecutive years. Von Uhl placed this ad on September 24, 1978 after he shipped four tigers to Lee Simmons the Omaha Zoo director. Von Uhl had a lion named Gary which he said the Calgary Zoo gave him. One less mouth to feed I guess. In the late 1960s Von Uhl had three leopards, but his tigers Radja and Sheba II killed two of them. He managed to save just the one named Mary. In August 1976 Von Uhl said that he had 22 big cats on his farm. I’m guessing that eight of them were tigers and 14 lions, but I’m not sure. I saw an article which said that Clyde Beatty was still trying to get his white tiger from India in 1963. I tried to find out whether Von Uhl’s father really was a famous brain surgeon, but no luck so far finding that out. I’m going to keep looking for any information about his father.
Dear Ivan: I see that in 1985 Von Uhl founded the Arabian circus.
https://florida.intercreditreport.com/company/the-arabian-circus-ltd-a20326
https://www.bizapedia.com/fl/the-arabian-circus-ltd.html
He had a company in Chicago called The Noble Horse. I contacted him through that I think in 2008. They gave me his phone number at his Florida home. He had a riding school also, and maybe that’s what The Noble Horse was. At the time I thought maybe it was a store, but didn’t give it much thought. His address was in the elephant studbook. One of the articles quoted his little daughter as saying that she could pat all the lions, but the “tigers are kind of mean.” That article referred to the tigers as “Roger” and “Sheba”, but I’m sure they meant Radja. I don’t know if I told you this, but Radja was used for artificial insemination at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. Two tigresses were artificially inseminated from him and a fertilized egg from one was transferred to a lion, but no tiger cub resulted. Von Uhl’s obituary says that his parents were Gyula and Emila Von Uhl, but they aren’t referred to as the Baron and Baroness, and Von Uhl’s wives were never referred to as Baronesses. He must have been well off financially. He had a liger named Ligey, half lion and half tiger. So I must have spoke to him just two years before his retirement and before the USDA confiscated all his animals. One article I read said that his chimpanzee put him in the hospital in a coma. That must have been the chimp he loaned to Richard Hartman. I wonder if that chimp is still alive. Do you remember Terrell Jacobs transgendered lion named Sheba? There’s a picture of that lion on Wade Burck’s blog with Nixon. Nixon was patting him on the head after he changed from a girl to a boy. Nixon was not yet the President. A female white lion grew a mane.
Dear Ivan: I found a video of the Fort Bengali ghost zoo.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1Lc6C8R7ow
I hope that works.
Dear Ivan: You might like this. It’s a video of Baron Julius Von Uhl, of his riding school in Virginia in 2010.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXKnxWlG2-c
So this would have been 35 years after the birth of Natasha, and if she was still alive she’d be 43 years old.
Dear Ivan: There is a video here from 1970 from National Geographic. It features white tigers towards the end in India, and in the royal palace of the Maharaja of Rewa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tdPJO31ffc
In 1963 Clyde Beatty said that the Maharaja of Rewa was holding a male white tiger for him. Ralph S. Scott the attorney bought a white tiger for the Crandon Park Zoo in Miami in 1968 for $35,000 from the Maharaja of Rewa. Scott was a tiger hunter who stayed in the Palace of the Maharaja of Rewa on one of his tiger hunting trips. Scott also worked on the Al Capone case as an attorney. That reminds me it is rumored that John F. Cuneo Jr.’s father was Capone’s accountant. I asked Wade Burck whether that was true, but I don’t remember what he said. I found another video which features film footage of a white tiger in the wild taken by Jim Corbett in 1938. Andy Goldfarb the tiger trainer told me about this video and I rented it on DVD in Montreal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKaJXKlBnk
In case the link doesn’t work (assuming you want to see it) it is The Natural World -The Man Eaters of Kumaon (1986) YouTube 215,000 views 2017 04 27 by Xanthien.
Andy Goldfarb was the tiger trainer at Tiger Island at MarineWorld/AfricaUSA in Vallejo CA. I probably told you already. Ron Whitfield worked there also. There is content concerning him on Wade Burck’s blog The Circus No Spin. They had white tigers from Josip Marcan. That was back in 1989 I think.
Dear Ivan: PS: I forgot to mention that Robert Baudy had a white tiger in 1965 which he paid $15,000 for. He imported it from Thailand. It was around two years old and it died of a heart attack about two weeks after he got it. He had it at Center Hill in Florida.
Dear Ivan: I just found this from The Green Bay Press Gazette Green Bay Wisconsin Sunday May 12, 1974 Page 2, Federal Law On Transporting Animals Irks Circus Trainers. There’s a picture of Von Uhl with a litter of tiger cubs born Friday in the Veterans Memorial Arena in the Shrine Circus in Brown County. It looks like he has 4-5 tiger cubs in the picture. So that’s another litter. He had litters born in 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, and 1981. The article says that Von Uhl travelled from his home in Wooster, Ohio with eight lions and one tiger. He is with Bob Berosini the famous orang utan trainer from Nevada.
Dear Ivan: I just found this incredible picture on the internet. It’s a picture of a wild tiger in Togiak Refuge, which they posted on November 4th, 2016. This is a real live wild tiger, not an escaped zoo tiger, but a wild tiger living in North America in the United States.
https://www.africahunting.com/threads/siberian-tiger-in-alaska.36972/
I used to dream of moving to Alaska when I was living in Orange County, California.
Dear Ivan: I just found this article, White Tigers Leap On Film Of The Scotts, The Miami Herald Wednesday March 9, 1960 Page 36. Ralph and Yvonne Scott were showing a film they made of the white tigers of Rewa the previous winter in India, in the Green Room of the Surf Club, to guests including Clyde Beatty the lion and tiger tamer, and owner of Jungle Land, and Zsa Zsa Gabor. There’s a picture which looks like it’s of Yvonne holding a white tiger cub, but I can’t see it too clearly. The article says that the white tiger cubs are worth $10,000 each. On that same date a number of newspapers published articles about a tiglon in a circus in Wichita, Kansas.
Dear Ivan: I hope you don’t mind if I leave you a message like this. I was trying to find a picture I saw on the internet of a black rhino at Jungleland. I looked on the Buckles and Circus No Spin blogs, but it wasn’t there. I found it here.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/conejovalley/4494435367
It says Rhinoceros at Jungleland 1965 donated by Mary Jo Robertson. There’s a lot about Jungleland on Wade Burck’s bolg I see.