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A typical Feld circus unit is a major logistical production that travels in its own 45-car train, costs $600,000 a week to operate and employs some 140 performers, 120 stagehands and 90 animals. Each show has its own star attraction. Feld's biggest has been wild-animal trainer Gebel-Williams, 55, who is on a two-year farewell tour after a career of more than 11,000 performances and 500 stitches from mishaps with sharp-clawed cats. Gebel- Williams changed the nature of animal training by developing close bonds with his animals, which range from Bengal tigers to Lipizzaner stallions. Nine of his elephants have been with him for 30 years. With Gebel-Williams retiring, Feld has hired a new star trainer, 29-year-old Flavio Togni of Italy, who performs with his family and a menagerie of 15 elephants, 42 stallions, a white rhinoceros, two tigers and a black panther.
Feld has become an ice-rink impresario as well. The company created an ice show under license from the Disney company in 1981 and now has five touring companies. One of the shows, which stars Mickey Mouse, features 60 skaters (average age: 21), who perform scenes from such cartoons as Steamboat Willie and Fantasia. The skaters need 245 costumes, which contain "enough spandex to cover a football field," the promoters say.
The latest Feld spectacular is the Siegfried & Roy magic show. Staged in the $25 million theater of the new Mirage Hotel, the show features the illusionists in an epic, space-age story populated by a cast of 70 performers. Among the two dozen animals in the show are Siegfried & Roy's rare white tigers, which the performers have bred with the help of the Cincinnati Zoo.
The man behind all this bombast is a buttoned-down, short (5 ft. 5 in.) dervish of an executive who travels 500,000 miles a year and writes all his business down on yellow legal pads so that he can keep track of the hundreds of decisions he makes each day. "You don't do this if you don't love it," he says. "The pressure is a killer." His family complains that he is never home for dinner, but his three daughters enjoy the fringe benefits of attending rehearsals and meeting the clowns.
Feld's biggest concern is keeping his shows fresh in an age when young people have a high and still rising threshold for amazement. His search for new talent and incredible feats is never-ending, but that's the way he likes it. Says Feld: "Nobody in the world has a job like this." Spoken like P.T. Barnum!