Dolly Castle: The Petite Lion Tamer Who Was Larger-than-Life

Dolly Castle lived the kind of life that sounds more like a circus story than a biography.

She was a singer, actress, lion tamer, elephant trainer, dog trainer, and radio personality. She survived repeated attacks by wild animals, several marriages, the death of a young son, and decades of traveling across the United States.

Even her birth year is uncertain. Census records give different years—including 1887, 1891, 1893, and 1895—while her obituary gives 1886. What is clear is that Dolly was already making newspaper headlines as a teenager.

A “Bad Girl” in Cincinnati

In June 1897, a young Dolly Muth ran away from home in Cincinnati, Ohio. Using the name Dolly Schmidt, she dressed in boys’ clothing and wandered the city until she was apprehended.

A judge ordered her to return home to her mother. Dolly complied—but apparently not for long. She left home again and was later arrested for loitering.

By November, newspapers had given her a reputation as Loth Street’s “Bad Girl.”

When a married man named C.E. Burge was arrested for stealing a valise, Dolly appeared and secured his release on bond. The chief of police was not pleased to see her involved. He brought Dolly and her mother before him, initially intending to lock the girl up. Dolly promised to reform and return home.

Over a year later, the Muth family was in the news again when Dolly’s older sister, May, who was known in the circus world as May Pfieffenberger or May Castle, shot herself twice with suicidal intent. May survived.

The circus would soon become Dolly’s world, too.

From Singer to Lion Tamer

In August 1901, Dolly Castle burst onto the entertainment scene in Illinois. She was touring with Achille Philion as a singer with his Grau Opera Company.

Within weeks, Dolly was involved in a bizarre scheme involving an attempt to marry a midget. Then, in late August, Philion assaulted her in front of the dancing girls’ tent. He was eventually fined $10 for the assault and for using bad language toward Dolly.

But Dolly continued performing.

In January 1902, she made national headlines for a much more tragic reason.

Her three-year-old son, Everett—or Edward—was placed alone on a train in Fort Worth bound for Cincinnati, where Dolly’s mother and sister lived. Dolly boarded the same train and sat beside another mother and her young daughter.

According to newspaper reports, Dolly began talking with them. When the train whistle sounded, she suddenly ran for the exit and jumped from the train without taking her son with her.

A note had been placed in the little boy’s pocket giving the address of Dolly’s mother and sister.

Dolly’s mother defended her daughter’s decision, explaining that Dolly was busy working and unable to care for her son. She said Dolly had sent him to relatives so that she could earn a living.

Two years later, tragedy struck again. In September 1904, Dolly’s four-year-old son Everett/Edward was killed after being run over by a wagon in Indianapolis.

Dolly continued working.

“I Prefer to Be a Chorus Girl”

By 1905, Dolly had moved from opera into the world of the circus.

She joined the Carl Hagenbeck Circus Menagerie and Trained Animal Show, where she was billed as a lion tamer.

The job was dangerous—and Dolly knew it.

In one Kansas City newspaper, she was quoted as saying that she would much rather be a chorus girl earning $22 a week and keeping all her limbs than return to lion taming for $100 a month and repeatedly becoming “a pincushion for a lion’s claw.”

Despite those misgivings, Dolly kept returning to the animals.

In 1906, she was wintering in Omaha, Nebraska, with Al G. Barnes’ Circus, again performing with lions.

That year she obtained a marriage license with Daniel Lund of Oakland, California. Dolly reportedly wanted the wedding ceremony to take place inside a lion’s den.

Lund refused. The marriage never happened.

A few months later, Dolly tried again. This time, she wanted to marry Wallace Martin of Omaha inside a lion’s cage. Martin was willing to enter the cage, but newspapers reported that no marriage license was ever produced.

Dolly’s love of spectacle clearly extended beyond the circus ring.

The Lions Nearly Killed Her

By 1907, Dolly had accumulated scars on her hands and arms from working with lions.

Then came a terrifying series of attacks. On March 1, she was reportedly injured by a lion.

Ten days later, her scalp was lacerated. On March 21, another lion attacked her, biting her arm and breaking it in two places.

Newspapers across the country followed the story. Headlines announced that Dolly had been fatally injured and that death was expected. One particularly sensational headline declared:

“Lion Chews a Woman.”

The story continued appearing in newspapers for weeks.

By May 2, The Wichita Eagle reported that Dolly’s mutilated arm would have to be amputated.

Yet Dolly survived. It is hard to read the numerous newspaper reports of Dolly being injured without thinking that some of the reporting was a promotional stunt. Often, the sensational headlines and reports would appear in the town newspaper where the circus and Dolly would next be performing.

By September, newspapers reported that she had quit lion taming.

She didn’t stay away from the circus world for long.

Marriage, Motherhood and More Tragedy

In October 1907, Dolly was reported to be married to Charles Wishart. The relationship apparently ended badly. Wishart was sentenced to 60 days on a chain gang for assaulting Dolly.

On January 18, 1908, Dolly married Clay C. Pratt in Fremont, Nebraska. Pratt had followed a girls’ chorus group called “The District Leader” from town to town throughout Nebraska.

Dolly continued performing—even on her wedding night.

When asked about her new husband, she reportedly remarked, “I really don’t know what I’m going to do with a husband.”

On August 26, 1908, Dolly and Clay suffered another tragedy when a stillborn daughter was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. The baby was buried in an unmarked grave at Salt Lake City Cemetery.

By 1910, Dolly was living in Harrison County, Iowa, with Clay and his brother Herbert. The brothers were listed as proprietors of a moving picture show.

In August 1912, Dolly gave birth to another son, Jack Daniel Castle.

Back to the Circus

In 1913, Al G. Barnes brought Dolly back to the circus as a lion tamer. That summer she toured the West Coast, traveling from Washington to California.

By 1914, she was performing with Wortham Shows.

While appearing at a fairground in Kankakee, Indiana, Dolly suffered another serious animal attack. She approached a puma after the performance when the animal suddenly sprang at her.

The puma tore off part of her ear with its teeth and badly lacerated her shoulder and arm.

Still, Dolly continued.

The following year she was performing with Wilson & Taylor’s trained animal circus. In 1916, she apparently spent less time with animal acts, and that October she gave birth to a son, Wesley Harlan Castle.

Then Dolly found a new challenge.

The “Military Elephants”

In 1917, Dolly began training elephants. These weren’t simply circus elephants. They were promoted as “military elephants.”

The shows began in Detroit and traveled westward through Montana and Washington. Later that year, Dolly and her elephants were being advertised as a “New York sensation.”

In May 1917, an Alameda, California newspaper reported that Dolly wanted the U.S. military to consider using elephants in its armies.

Dolly volunteered to train them. She claimed she had watched Hindu elephant trainers while growing up around her British army officer father’s military headquarters. Whether the military took her proposal seriously is unclear, but Dolly certainly had no shortage of confidence in her unusual idea.

After touring with elephants for about a year, she returned to working with leopards and pumas. Newspapers described her as so skilled with the animals that she could “fondle them as kittens.”

In August 1918, Dolly married Samuel Carroll in Flint, Michigan.

Meanwhile, Clay Pratt filed for divorce in January 1919. He claimed that Dolly had been a splendid wife until September 15, 1918, when she refused to live with him. He said he continued sending her money, but she would not return home.

The divorce was granted in Tacoma, Washington, with Dolly allowed to keep the two children from the marriage.

A Life on the Road

Dolly continued touring.

In 1920, she traveled to San Antonio for Fiesta Week and was working as a tiger trainer.

That year’s census found her living in Chicago, Illinois, where she was listed as a 29-year-old animal trainer. Both of her sons were living with her.

In 1921, she was working with lions in New Orleans.

The following year found her in New York as a lion tamer before she returned to Hagenbeck’s circus. One newspaper claimed that Dolly had taught a lion to ride a horse—or perhaps, more accurately, had taught the horse to tolerate a lion riding on its back.

Newspapers frequently described Dolly as beautiful and petite. One particularly extravagant account claimed that her wardrobe cost more than a million dollars.

By 1923, she was touring with John Robinson’s circus. That year, Dolly also found herself involved in another criminal complaint. She accused a man named Joseph Dickman of stealing her vanity bag and suitcase, leading to his arrest in Iowa.

Her personal life remained just as unconventional.

In March 1924, while wintering in Dothan, Alabama, with the Rubin and Cherry Shows, Dolly sent an unusual request to a Nebraska sheriff. She asked him to go to an address in Omaha and send her two sons to Alabama.

Her request came with one particularly strange instruction: the boys, then 11 and 14, were to be delivered to her “c.o.d.”—cash on delivery.

Whether the boys were actually delivered is not documented in the newspaper reports.

That May, Dolly was mauled by a lion again while presenting eight lions in the ring. Newspapers reported that she was badly scratched.

From Lions to Radio

In 1926, Dolly was touring with a circus in North Carolina. She advertised herself as having been born on a circus train in the state.

In September of that year, she married William J. Roys of Youngstown, Ohio. Both were reportedly connected with Sparks’ Circus.

By the late 1920s, Dolly’s career was reaching beyond the circus tent. From 1927 through 1929, she appeared on radio programs based in New York, where she talked about training wild animals.

In February 1930, Dolly was named a saint of the P.T. Barnum Tent, Circus Saints and Sinners Club.

Around this time, she added another animal to her repertoire: the alligator. By 1935, Dolly was touring several states as a dog trainer.

Florida and the Final Years

By 1936, Dolly had settled in Florida.

There she married Hamar D. Morris, her final husband.

Dolly continued training dogs and entertaining both children and adults. After decades of working with some of the world’s most dangerous animals, dogs must have seemed comparatively tame.

In 1956, The Miami Herald interviewed Dolly. During the interview, she claimed that she had once earned $1,200 a week as a lion tamer with Ringling Circus.

Whether every detail of Dolly’s stories can be independently verified is difficult to determine. Newspaper accounts from the era often exaggerated circus performers and their exploits. Even Dolly’s birth year changes from one record to another.

But there is no question that she spent much of her life in the entertainment world and that she repeatedly placed herself in situations few people would have willingly faced.

Dolly Castle Morrison died in September 1964.

She had traveled across the United States, performed with lions, tigers, leopards, pumas, elephants, alligators and dogs, appeared on radio, survived devastating animal attacks, and continually reinvented herself.

Her life was complicated, sometimes tragic, and often bizarre.

But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Dolly Castle is that after nearly every setback, she got back in the ring.

And the circus went on.