THIS is the harrowing tale of a famed 5-ton star elephant that was executed for mistakenly killing his animal trainer in a shock rampage on set.
Charlie was sentenced to death after he “accidentally” attacked his handler – the only human he regularly tolerated.
The Indian elephant almost killed his beloved trainer Curley Stecker while they were filming the genie-of-the-lamp movie The Brass Bottle, as 300 watched on in horror.
Charlie went completely bezerk at Universal City Zoo on April 24, 1923 during a parade sequence and tried to kneel on Curley to crush him to death.
But a nearby stagehand heroically stabbed Charlie with a pitchfork and Curley’s brother Carl, another animal trainer, fended off the maimed Elephant.
Despite the courageous save, Curley was left with major bruising, rib fractures, cuts and a concussion.
He believed the tragic attack was down to a case of mistaken identity with Charlie thinking Curley was his brother Carl, who he wasn’t fond of.
Curley claimed this was down to him choosing formal business attire over his usual animal trainer gear, making him hard to recognise for the elephant.
He said: “Charlie started picking up rocks with his trunk and throwing them at the horses. I told him to stop. He paid no attention. I jumped at him with a sharp command—and he did the rest.
“He thought I, in my business clothes, was my brother, and my brother 50 ft away in the clothes familiar to Charlie was ‘the master'”.
While Curley was fighting for his life in hospital, he insisted Charlie shouldn’t be culled.
But it was decided that Charlie was to be slaughtered and various methods were contemplated.
It’s believed he was either subjected to a brutal gunshot or garroted by tightened steel cables.
Curley died the following year after suffering a deadly bout of leukaemia but his death certificate attributed the animal attack as a contributing factor.
Charlie’s skeleton is thought to have been donated to the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History.
He’s believed to have killed a total of five people, with appearances in over 180 films and said to have been over 150 years old, with no record of his birth.
The ill-fated circus elephant was once known as Prince Rajah, and found hauling teakwood in Calcutta, India, before he was transported to the US in the early 1900s.
It was at California’s Universal City Zoo that Charlie took up a drastically different profession as a Hollywood silent-era performer.
In 1908, the animal star was struck by lightning and left blinded in his left eye.
