Willy Lenz
Circus artiste who toured the world with his boxing chimps
WILLY LENZ, who has died aged 89, was a circus performer who started out working with bears but went on to develop a unique act – boxing chimpanzees.
He was born on April 23 1929 in Holland into a middle-class family, one of nine children. There was no circus tradition in the family, but at the end of the Second World War he joined the country’s leading travelling show, the Circus Strassberger, as a groom for William Wilke’s bear act. In the early 1950s he took over the act, calling it the “Lenz Bears Revue”.
While working at the noted Carre Circus in Amsterdam he was joined by his younger brother, Rudi; and it was at this time that he met and married Jannetje (known as Ann), who was working in an aerial cradle act. They went on to have two sons.
Lenz was planning to leave Circus Strassberger and strike out with his own bear act. But then Cyril Mills, managing director of the Bertram Mills Circus, offered him the chance to go to Britain and take over his chimpanzees, which had been led by Amletto Sciplini until the Italian’s salary demands went unmet.
Willy and Rudi took over in 1954, and two years later introduced their cod boxing match. Lenz chose two of his troupe to be the fighters, Pepe and Bill – the latter known as “the Professor” for his intelligence. When he “knocked” Pepe to the floor, Bill would blow a raspberry down at his victim, and when the ringmaster came over and asked him what he thought of his opponent, Bill would blow another raspberry.
In 1957 the Lenz brothers and their charges played a season at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, then toured the country with the Polack Bros Circus.
Returning to Britain, Lenz presented his boxing chimps at the Blackpool Tower Circus for the 1958 summer season; the publicity material had been put together for the forthcoming winter season at Olympia in London when tuberculosis killed all but two of his animals.
Willy and Ann returned to Holland, where he went into partnership with his sister for a short time running a sports goods factory, while Rudi remained in Britain with a new group of chimpanzees.
Willy returned to the circus in 1961 with his compatriot Toni Boltini, then worked for several years with the Circus Sarrasani in Germany. He trained his chimps to perform a variety of skills such as trampoline acrobatics, bar work, slack rope routines and cycling – as well as to form a Tyroleanstyle orchestra.
Rudi, meanwhile, moved back to the US, to the centre ring of the three-ring Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, with whom he ended his career before retiring to Florida.
During the 1960s Willy appeared several times at the Kelvin Hall Circus in Glasgow, as well as at Blackpool Tower. His final appearance in Britain was with Billy Smart in 1969, and he then returned to the US, working, like Rudi, with the Ringling/barnum show. Back in Europe he also toured with the Swiss National Circus.
Willy Lenz went back to North America, buying a farm in Canada and a storybook-theme park in Minnesota. He later moved to Oregon, and then to South Carolina, where he bred llamas and eventually settled for good after a spell in North Carolina.
Ann survives him with one of their sons; their other son died in 2010. Lenz’s star boxer, Bill, died in 2006 at the age of 60.
Willy Lenz, born April 23 1929, died November 28 2018