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Animal acts once popular amusements in Wildwood
Russ Strittmatter, board member
Over the years, Wildwood has presented all kinds of entertainment to tourists, from rides to oddities, live shows to motor sports, and beyond. Always competing with Atlantic City’s famous Diving Horse, Wildwood once gave it a go with animal acts of its own.
Today you will be hard-pressed to find much entertainment featuring animals besides an aquarium or two, or going home with a hermit crab, due to an ordinance enacted after a tragic death.
Here are some of the Wildwoods’ strange animal acts.
Oh my
Lions, tigers, monkeys, elephants, and bears! The circus used to come to town every year. A big tent was put up just before the bridge leading into the city, where today stands a decaying amusement park.
Many remember riding an elephant or going down the gorilla slide at Family Fun Park. But why was the circus not actually on the island? Keep reading to find out.
Alligator wrestling
In the 1930s, members of a Seminole tribe in the Florida Everglades presented an alligator-wrestling show at the Casino Arcade at 25th Avenue and the Boardwalk near Ricci’s Pizza Shop.
The first alligator show was held at Ocean and Schellenger Avenues in Wildwood. In 1932, general admission was 25 cents for adults and 15 cents for children. Starting that May, shows ran daily from 10 am to 12 pm.
The general public was, in fact, not doing the wrestling. They were in the audience while the Seminole Tribe members wrestled the large reptiles.
Tuffy the Lion
Around that same time, a showman named Joseph Dobish, noticing the popularity of animal acts, decided to bring one to the motordome at Casino Arcade in the form of a 300-pound lion named Tuffy.
Tuffy would ride the sidecar in a stuntman’s motorcycle in the motordome’s Wall of Death, a steep-sided wooden arena considered a thrill act.
Dobish tried to keep Tuffy happy by providing him with a mate, but it wasn’t enough for the 7-year-old big cat. In October 1938, Tuffy escaped from his cage when a worker opened it to feed him.
The escape stirred a panic in Wildwood according to the New York Times. People were told to stay indoors and shut their windows.
Meanwhile, a 37-year-old auctioneer, Thomas Saito, was getting into his car at Oak and the Boardwalk when he was attacked. Tuffy grabbed him by the neck and dragged him under the boardwalk while Saito’s son watched. Later the boy would recount that he was too afraid to scream for fear of being noticed by the lion.
Neither Saito nor Tuffy would survive the encounter. After the auctioneer’s mauling, police located the big cat under the boardwalk and shot him to death.
Dobish was charged with manslaughter and a new ordinance was passed in the city banning “dangerous animals” from Wildwood. This included lions and tigers but not snakes and elephants, hence why no circus featuring big cats has since set up their big top in the city.
Other animal acts
Other notable animal characters were Zip the chimp, pigs on a sliding board, and a pickpocketing capuchin monkey at the Italian Festival.
When Wildwood Crest had a boardwalk, there was an insectarium. Today, on the Wildwood Boardwalk, a shark and snake show thrills aquarium guests, a show permitted by the aforementioned city ordinance from a century ago.
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