Death and legacy īass died of a heart attack on November 20, 1934, at the age of 75. Bass also has exhibits in the American Saddlebred Museum in Mexico, and the American Royal Museum in Kansas City. For his contributions to the state of Missouri, Bass was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians in 1999, becoming the twentieth person so honored. He invented a curb bit called the Tom Bass bit, which was designed to give the rider control without causing pain to the horse, but never patented it. He was credited with making Mexico, Missouri the "Saddle Horse Capital of the World." īesides Rex McDonald and other Saddlebreds, Bass trained the notable high school horse Belle Beach, who could bow, curtsy and dance. In 1917, it was estimated that over one million people had seen him perform with his horses. Bass later moved back to Mexico, Missouri, and continued training horses. In 1893, Bass showed horses at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and won respect for his riding ability, besides winning the World Championship on the Saddlebred mare Miss Rex. He was the first African-American to exhibit a horse at the American Royal. In 1892, Bass and his wife moved to Kansas City, Missouri to open a livery stable and eventually helped start the American Royal Horse Show, one of the three jewels of the Saddlebred Triple Crown. Celebrity guests to his farm included William Jennings Bryan, President William McKinley, and circus magnate P.T. He also started the Tom Bass Riding Club. He trained horses for notable people including Anheuser-Busch executives Adolphus and August Busch, Buffalo Bill Cody, Will Rogers, and President Theodore Roosevelt. He was reputed to have said, "Horses are like humans." Bass trained the influential five-gaited Saddlebred stallion Rex McDonald. Career A modern version of the Tom Bass bit designīass quickly developed a reputation for gentle training methods and drew a clientele came from a wide area. In 1882, Bass married a schoolteacher, Angie Jewell. Some time thereafter, he began a horse training operation. Īt age 20 he moved to Mexico, Missouri, where it is thought he learned the basics of the horse business from a horse buyer named Joseph A. The Bass Plantation raised and trained horses prior to the Civil War and it is believed that Tom Bass had considerable exposure to horses as a boy. He was raised by his maternal grandparents, Presley and Eliza Grey. His mother, Cornelia Gray, was a slave, and his father, William Bass, was the son of the plantation owner, Eli Bass. Bass trained the influential Saddlebred stallion Rex McDonald, as well as horses owned by Buffalo Bill Cody, Theodore Roosevelt, and Will Rogers.īass was born into slavery on January 5, 1859, on the Hayden plantation in Boone County, Missouri. Bass was born into slavery, but became one of the most popular horse trainers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the movies, I was responsible for a large crew and exotic humans like Rex Harrison, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Elizabeth Taylor, and Pee Wee Herman,” he said, as quoted by Deadline.Tom Bass (Janu– November 4, 1934) was an American Saddlebred horse trainer. “In the circus, the trainer is in a steel cage with his group of predators. lion in ‘Narnia’ are replacing live animal actors.”ĭuring his years in show business, Wells distinguished his role as an animal trainer from that of a circus trainer. “Digitally created cheesy wolves in the ‘Twilight Saga’ and ridiculous C.G.I. “What I have done with real animals future generations will only read about,” he wrote. In his memoir, Animal Trainers Are Nearly Human, he described himself as “an endangered species, a living fossil, a walking dinosaur” in an extraordinary and rapidly changing Hollywood. Read also: New Hungarian commemorative coins worth EUR 7-75. His work has helped several films win Oscars. Wells’ animal training company has also trained the monkey in the Indiana Jones films and the talking pug in Men in Black. In 1994, he trained camels for The Jungle Book and, four years later, the primates of Babe: Pig in the City, Deadline writes.
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