Ben Williams was an animal trainer in the United States, notable for his presentations at the Circus Vargas, Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and for some years with the Big Apple Circus. He was once accused of murder, but the charges were dropped when it was established that the killer was an elephant.
Ben Harold Williams was born in 1953 at Fort Worth, Texas, the son of an aerialiste, Barbara Ray, and an elephant trainer, Rex Williams, who performed with Circus Vargas in the US for some years. Ben Williams had his first elephant ride at four months and the giant beasts became his childhood friends.
His parents got divorced and when he was 5 his mother was married to William “Buckles” Woodcock, whose family had been training elephants since 1853. Although academically bright, Williams determined that the circus would be his career and from the age of 6 he was performing publicly in the sawdust ring with the Woodcocks’ famous leading-lady elephant, Anna May.
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He developed a teeterboard act with Anna May propelling him through the air in a back somersault on to her back. Indeed, Anna May became so popular that she appeared on television with Williams on The Ed Sullivan Show and the Hollywood Palace Show.
Williams inherited the animal training skills of both his father and stepfather, two of the most talented elephant experts.
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He was married twice. His second wife, Darlene, was a former Ringling Brothers’ circus showgirl whom he met while working with his family at The Greatest Show on Earth (a gathering of the talents from Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey). For the 108th edition of the world’s largest circus in the late 1970s Bill Woodcock was in charge of 22 Ringling elephants, while his wife Barbara appeared alongside her son Ben, sporting a Tarzan loincloth, with their elephant Anna May and an uncaged leopard. By that time, junior members of the family — Ben’s son Shane, 7, and Bill and Barbara’s daughters Shannon, 7, and Delilah, 6 — were part of the performance.
Just as Williams had been introduced into the sawdust ring as a child, so, along with his son, his daughters Stormy Ann and Skye were also brought into the act. Stormy Ann made her debut the year she was born, 1985, when her father carried her into the ring at the Big Apple Circus in New York. By 1987 she was already a seasoned performer, working with her parents at a permanent circus at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The Woodcock-Williams elephants also worked for a while at the Ringling-owned Circus World theme park in Florida.
In 1982 the Woodcock elephants joined the Big Apple Circus and thereafter the Woodcock and Williams families were associated with that show. Ben Williams frequently presented the elephant acts they created, always new and refreshed, during the 1980s and 1990s.
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His stepfather Buckles Woodcock returned to the Ringling-Barnum show when its elephant trainer was killed in a circus train wreck.
In a bizarre episode in 1982 Williams was arrested along with another trainer and charged with the murder of a friend, Mary Herman, 30, who was found dead in Wisconsin Rapids.Her death was the result of a “crushing-type injury” and it was later established that Anna May had killed the woman with a blow from her trunk. The charges were dropped, although Williams had admitted hiding the body. His mother later commented: “He was afraid they were going to kill the elephant.”
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Williams retired from performing at the end of the 1995 season, and he and his family left the circus world. Buckles Woodcock, his wife and children continued to appear with the Big Apple Circus and with the redoubtable Anna May until 2000. The family retired to a farm in Arkansas and Anna May died in 2002, aged 59.
By his first marriage Williams had a daughter, who survives him along with his wife Darlene, and their son and two daughters.
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Ben Williams, elephant trainer and circus artiste, was born on January 18, 1953. He died of cancer on October 2, 2009, aged 56