The Mickey Mouse Club Circus was a real circus in Disneyland starting in November 1955. And while the extravaganza boasted the Mouseketeers from the Mickey Mouse Club television show and breathtaking acts such as “Professor Keller’s Fantastic Felines,” the Big Top was no match for the exciting Magic Kingdom and closed just two months after its premiere. For nearly seven months, starting on this day in 1956, the fantastic felines became the “mane” attraction as Keller’s Jungle Killers. Ever since he was a young boy, Professor George Keller had a fascination with cats. When he was nine years old, he and his brother organized a neighborhood circus with about 50 children and alley cats painted and trimmed to look like lions and tigers. As Professor Keller grew up, so did the types of cats he worked with, and his act, featuring real lions, tigers, and leopards—all under his complete command—proved to be the cat’s meow at circuses around the world.
