Mark Twain Smith Dies at 83; Trained Movie, Circus Animals

Mark Twain Smith of Burbank, who began training horses for footsore cotton farmers as a youth and became a circus and movie animal trainer, died of pneumonia Thursday at St. Joseph Medical Center. He was 83.

Smith trained horses for cowboy stars from Bob Steel to Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, said his son, Richard.

“Dad could train horses to do anything--skip rope or fire a gun,” Richard Smith said. “He broke reindeer and a hippo and a rhino for the circus.”

Mark Twain Smith was born in Waco, Tex., one of 13 children. His family came to California by horse-drawn wagon and Model-T Ford and grew cotton near Needles.

‘Tired of Walking Home’

“He learned to train animals by teaching old horses for farmers,” his son said. “The farmers there would go to check their irrigation ditches, and they’d get off the horse and the horse would run off and go home. He started training horses not to run away because the farmers got tired of walking home in their rubber boots.”

In 1928, Mark Twain Smith joined the Al G. Barnes Circus, his son said, and in the 1930s worked for cereal mogul W. K. Kellogg, who had a ranch near Pomona where he raised Arabian horses and put on shows.

He trained horses and handled other livestock for movies from “Girl of the Golden West” in 1930 to “Gone With the Wind” to “Jumbo,” a 1962 circus film, according to his son. “Sometimes he’d be in one of those old pictures, the guy who said, ‘They went that-a-way’ or something, but mostly he was in the background, training the horses,” Richard Smith said.

Training Stable

For the past 41 years he lived with his family in Burbank, operating a horse boarding and training stable in an equestrian neighborhood near the Pickwick Drive-In Theater. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the family gave horse shows at Knotts Berry Farm, Richard Smith said.

The family continues to operate the stables. “He was active at the stables to the end and he kept riding up to the last,” Richard Smith said.

Mark Twain Smith is also survived by his widow, Judy, and stepsons, Harold Farren and John Elliott.

The funeral is tentatively scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday at North Church of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills.