Olga Celeste

Olga Celeste (April 9, 1888 – August 31, 1969) trained leopards and pumas for performance in circuses, vaudeville and film. She starred in very early animal films for Selig Polyscope, and was said (perhaps hyperbolically) to have handled animals for 1,000 films, including the leopard in the Katharine Hepburn film Bringing Up Baby.[1][2] For most of her career she was associated with the Selig Zoo in Los Angeles.

Olga Celeste
Woman in safari outfit with four adult leopards sitting on blocks
Olga Celeste, the Leopard Queen (Wild Animal Actors, 1935)
Born
Olga Cecilia Knutson

(1888-04-09)April 9, 1888
Sweden
DiedAugust 31, 1969(1969-08-31) (aged 81)
California
Occupation(s)Animal trainer, actress

Biography

Olga Celeste was born in Sweden; her father was a horse trainer.[2] According to the Los Angeles Times she ran away at 11 to join a Swedish circus,[3] but eventually returned home. Another report said that she ran away to train horses and after several days her parents found her living in barn and sleeping in a manger.[4] Per a 2020 Swedish-language profile of Olga Celeste, "As a 16-year-old, she had left her parents' home outside Lund in Skåne, at night, to take the Amerikabåt and make her dreams come true. Olga was the youngest of seven siblings and the only naughty one. Her older sisters and brothers were all well-behaved and disappeared through life and into their coffins without anyone taking much notice of them."[5] One 16-year-old Olga Cecelia Knutson of Lund, Skåne Län departed Mälmo for Chicago on April 15, 1904.[6] She took the ship SS Cretic from Liverpool to Boston, arriving April 30; her contact in the U.S. was her sister Edith Knutson of Chicago.[6][7][8][lower-alpha 1] According to the never-authoritative Frank Buck, Princess Celeste ran away at age 14 or 15 to join a circus operating in Chicago's Riverside Park.[10][lower-alpha 2]

Her start in show business supposedly came in 1904 when she lived with her older sister in Chicago.[2] She was hired by Big Otto Breitkreutz and was taught how to run a dog and pony show.[2] According to other accounts she was game to work with horses when the regular trainer was injured and that launched her career. Big Otto's operation was acquired by film producer William Selig and she continued on as a "lion tamer" for that outfit.[12] Around 1908[13] she appeared opposite Charles B. Murphy in a 500 ft (150 m) motion picture short called The Lion's Bride. It was reportedly premiered in Riverview Park and caused a sensation.[14] Murphy and Olga Celeste were married around 1910 but later divorced; the couple had no children.[2][15] She was occasionally credited as Olga Celeste Murphy during the teens.[16][lower-alpha 3] Olga Celeste also starred in Selig's 1909 The Leopard Queen (directed by Francis Boggs),[17] and worked as a stunt double for Kathlyn Williams in Selig's groundbreaking serial The Adventures of Kathlyn.[18]

Mlle. Olga Celeste and Her Trained Leopards to appear at the Jefferson County Fair in Fairfield, Iowa, August 12–13, 1920

At Selig Zoo, Olga Celeste hosted leopard tea parties on Sundays.[2] Apparently Olga Celeste "called her leopards her babies and adored them precisely because, as she said, they were 'the most treacherous' of animals. Frequently dressed to resemble her leopards, Olga serves as an access point to another world if only because her animals have turned her into something 'other' even outside the realm of fiction."[19] In 1923 Mlle. Celeste took her leopard act to Aloha Park in Hawaii.[10] She also did stints with John Robinson Circus, Al G. Barnes Circus and Ringling Brothers.[2]

In the time of the 1930 census, Olga Celeste was living in a rental near Lincoln Park, Los Angeles. She reported her age at first marriage as 14. She reported that she had first come to the United States in 1907 and was now a naturalized citizen.[20] Following the success of a hit 1933 Clyde Beatty picture, she was hired to appear as one of the trainers in Taming the Jungle.[21] In 1938 she was the leopard trainer for Bringing Up Baby.[22] When Zoopark shut down in 1940 she was the last original employee of what had once been Selig's Wild Animal Farm, and she borrowed money (including, reportedly, from friends like boxer Jack Dempsey and Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller)[5] to buy five leopards and three lions that she did not want sold to strangers.[2] The last of these cats died in 1954.[5]

After she retired, Olga Celeste lived out her days in Burbank.[2] She died in 1969 and was buried on September 8 in the same grave as life partner[5] Emma Bell Clifford at Evergreen Park Memorial Cemetery.[23] She was survived by nieces and nephews in the American Midwest and Sweden.[24] Olga Celeste rarely, if ever, used her legal last name Knutson.[2] She went by a number of stage names including Princess Olga, Princess Celeste, Princess Cecilia, Madame Olga, Mademoiselle Celeste, et al. She was also known as the Leopard Lady.[25]

See also

Notes
  1. Twenty years later, when boarding a ship for Hawaii, Olga Celeste Knutson stated that she had been naturalized a citizen at the Cook County Courthouse on April 15, 1904, suggesting that her claim of being a legally naturalized citizen was fabulism.[9]
  2. Big Otto operated in Riverview Park.[11]
  3. Murphy was also an animal trainer, actor and stuntman; he served as the head of the Universal City Zoo in the late 1920s and was killed in a production accident in 1942.

References
  1. Boone, Andrew R. (1932). "From Jungle to Screen: How Wild Beasts are made into Talkie Stars". Film-Lovers' Annual. Covent Garden, London: Dean and Son Ltd. pp. 35–37. Retrieved 2023-02-17 – via Lantern (Media History Digital Library).
  2. Sutherland, Henry (September 4, 1969). "Services Set Monday for Olga Celeste: OLGA CELESTE". Los Angeles Times. p. 2-c1. ProQuest 156299655 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. O'Leary, Dorothy (March 24, 1946). "LEOPARD LADY: (A 60-SECOND CLOSE-UP)". This Week Magazine. Los Angeles Times. Vol. XLV. p. 2. ProQuest 165640594 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. "Leaves Hubby for Cage: Six Months of Matrimony with Red-Haired Man Entirely Too Strenuous". Osceola Polk County Democrat. Osceola, Nebraska. February 5, 1920. p. 4 – via NewspaperArchive.com.
  5. Jemn, Andreas (July 14, 2020). "Olga djurtämjaren" [Olga the animal tamer]. Öden & Äventyr (in Swedish). Retrieved 2023-02-17. Som 16-åring hade hon lämnat föräldrahemmet utanför Lund i Skåne, om natten, för att ta Amerikabåten och förverkliga sina drömmar. Olga var yngst av sju syskon och den enda vanartiga. Hennes äldre systrar och bröder var alla skötsamma och försvann genom livet och ner i kistan utan att någon lade någon större notis om dem.
  6. "Sweden, Emigration Registers, 1869-1948". Ancestry.com. 2018.
  7. "Swedish Emigration Records, 1783-1951". Ancestry.com. 2007.
  8. "Massachusetts, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1820-1963". Ancestry.com. 2006.
  9. "California, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959". Ancestry.com. 2008.
  10. Christeson, Frances Mary; Christeson, Helen Mae (1935). Wild animal actors. Introduction by Frank Buck, decorated by Kay Little. Chicago: Albert Whitman & Co. pp. intro (Riverside Park), 78 (Aloha Park). LCCN 35008712. OCLC 4709092. OL 6320228M – via Internet Archive.
  11. Reynolds, Chang (November–December 1983). "The Al G. Barnes' Big Four-Ring Wild Animal Circus". Season of 1918. Bandwagon. Circus Historical Society. 27 (6): 23 – via Internet Archive.
  12. "Olga Celeste and a leopard, California Zoological Gardens, Los Angeles, 1936". UCLA Library Digital Collections. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
  13. "Lion's Bride 19XX". Silent Era: Progressive Silent Film List. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
  14. Conshohocken Recorder Newspaper Archives September 21, 1937 Page 8
  15. "Charles Bernard Murphy, 1917-1918", United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 (database with images), December 24, 2021 – via FamilySearch.org
  16. Osceola Polk County Democrat05 Feb 1920, Osceola, Nebraska, USA
  17. Erish, Andrew A. (March 1, 2012). Col. William N. Selig, the Man Who Invented Hollywood. University of Texas Press. pp. 106–107. ISBN 978-0-292-74269-7.
  18. "Motion picture news (Jan-Feb 1919) - Lantern". lantern.mediahist.org. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
  19. Haenni, Sabine (2016), Lawrence, Michael; Lury, Karen (eds.), "Animal Empire: Thrill and Legitimation at William Selig's Zoo and Jungle Pictures", The Zoo and Screen Media, New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, pp. 87–110, doi:10.1057/978-1-137-53561-0_5, ISBN 978-1-137-54342-4, retrieved 2023-02-17
  20. "Olga K Celeste, Los Angeles", United States Census, 1930 (database with images), retrieved 2023-02-17 – via FamilySearch.org
  21. Circus Historical Society (November 1, 1989). Bandwagon Vol 33 No 6 (1989).
  22. Kitchen, In The Vintage (January 28, 2016). "olga celeste". In the Vintage Kitchen: Where History Comes To Eat. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
  23. "Olga Celeste or Murphy, 1969", California, Los Angeles, Evergreen Memorial Park Cemetery, Deceased Card File Index, 1877-1989, August 21, 2019 – via FamilySearch.org
  24. "The Los Angeles Times 04 Sep 1969, page 52". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2023-02-18.
  25. "Motography (Apr-Jun 1916) - Lantern". lantern.mediahist.org. Retrieved 2023-02-17.

Further reading
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