In a nutshell, Bobby Berosini was a world-renowned animal trainer and entertainer, whose popular act was featured for many years on the Las Vegas Strip. Then, secret footage filmed backstage showed the performer apparently physically abusing the animals in his act on a consistent basis. The video was screened to millions by "Entertainment Tonight" and overnight all hell broke loose, ending at least one, if not two careers, not to mention having far wider consequences.
That's the potted version. The full story is far longer and more convoluted, and whatever the truth is behind all the allegations and counter-recriminations may never truly be known, or may be too subjective to judge, particularly after the passage of time and the intervening shifts in sensibilities that may have occurred. This column is not the place for political controversy, nor to judge things out of context, but the current writer will simply go as far as declaring a personal feeling that no human entertainment should ever come at the cost of knowingly inflicting physical cruelty or emotional distress on any animal and that if that's the only way to achieve a particular form of "entertainment," then perhaps we should be looking elsewhere for our fun.
As to the story in question, all we can do is relate events, as we've subsequently read about them, and allow our readers to make up their own minds.
In the writing of this article, we are much indebted to a 2010 feature in Vegas Seven magazine, which we'd encourage interested parties to read in full. In the meantime, here's what we've managed to piece together from this, and other sources.
Bobby Berosini was born Bohumil Berousek and emigrated to the U.S. from what was then still Czechoslovakia in 1964. Born into a circus family, he joined his father in the family animal-act business, later going on to found his own act featuring chimpanzees and orangutans. Some of the animals Berosini trained had showbiz careers in their own right, including Clyde, Clint Eastwood's orangutan sidekick in Every Which Way but Loose.
In the late '60s and 1970s public, and even scientific awareness about animal cruelty and exploitation was not what it is today, and acts that might now be considered in bad taste or worse were totally socially acceptable, while few show-goers probably even paused to think about what might be going on behind the scenes. The Strip was awash with animal acts, from the big cat magic shows, to smaller acts with birds and other animals, and Berosini and his lovable apes landed residencies first at Circus Circus, and then the Stardust.
It was while the act was housed at Circus Circus that rumblings of unpleasant goings on started to surface. As you can read in the Seven article, in 1972 an employee of the property began noticing what she considered to be disturbing sounds coming from the trailer in the parking lot where the act prepared for the show, when she would walk by on her lunch hour. At this juncture, Berosini was still performing with his father. "I just listened and I knew the animals were getting beat up. I was so upset by it I didn't know what to do. I think I went inside and vomited, actually," recalled Linda Faso in a subsequent interview.
This was before the days of PETA or PAWS (Performing Animal Welfare Society), and when Faso raised her concerns with casino management, she was informed that the animals belonged to Berosini and that it was essentially his prerogative how he treated them. The act was popular with audiences and the trainer was just doing what he had to do to get them to perform, she was "reasssured." There were no laws against beating up on circus animals back then, apparently.
Fast forward 17 years and Berosini's act was now performing at the Stardust, as part of the Lido de Paris production. One of the dancers in the show was a dancer named Ottavio Gesmundo, who'd also grown up in and around the circus, including working with chimps. His uncle had taught him that it was necessary to show dominance to the primates, but that there was a fine line between this and abusing them.
As the story goes, one night during the show, Gesmundo happened to look down from a vantage point to which the audience was not privy, and claims he saw Berosini punching an orangutan before they went on stage. The dancer at first reported what he witnessed to casino management, but met with the same brick wall that Faso had. So, armed with a new Super 8 camera, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
When Gesmundo told his co-workers about what he'd seen, many were similarly shocked and helped him film backstage undercover. By this point, PETA had been in existence for almost a decade, and after a week's worth of filming, the dancer sent them his footage. You can find it on YouTube and it's pretty disturbing. But first he transferred it onto a VHS tape, evidently to remove recognizable shots of topless dancers backstage, and so on. This later opened Gesmundo up to accusations that he'd edited the film to make it look worse than it really was.
PETA and PAWS both received the tape in July 1989. The former sent an investigator to Las Vegas to start building a case against the animal trainer, while the founder of PAWS, an ex-Hollywood animal trainer, sent her copy to to a producer friend at "Entertainment Tonight." The piece went national on July 27 and nothing was ever the same again.
As soon as the show aired, protestors, including Linda Faso, started picketing Berosini's show, screening the footage of the recorded incidents on a TV outside the showroom. The performer was swift to react, filing lawsuits against Gesmundo, PETA, PAWS, performers in the show who claimed to have witnessed his abusive behavior, and local animal rights activists, among others. He claimed $10 million in damages for invasion of privacy, defamation, and conspiracy.
An inspector for the USDA issued a statement saying he found no signs of abuse, while friends and defenders of Berosini continue to maintain that he wound up being the victim of a rabid witch hunt that had little to do with his animals, and much more to do with making money.
The lawsuits continue to rumble on to this day, and Berosini has already paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars. His act was effectively destroyed by the negative publicity and he and his attorneys received multiple death threats and threats against the animals, which the performer claims eventually forced him and his wife out the country. The last anyone heard, the couple were living quietly in South America with the remainder of their animals.
As to the truth in this whole saga, again, we figure it probably lies somewhere in-between the two sides. Where inspectors on one side saw animals forced into a dependent relationship with a svengali-type abuser, those opposing saw bonds of mutual affection. Some who knew Berosini personally maintain that he really got the raw end of the deal in all this and was wrongly maligned by outsiders who simply didn't understand how much he cared for his animals and was simply using the only effective training methods. Again, does that make them acceptable?
As an aside, Gesmundo, who was the primary source for the Seven piece referenced above, also received death threats and says he found his stage career truncated in Las Vegas for his part in basically bringing down a fellow performer. The last we heard, he was working as a yoga instructor.
Dancer Greg Stokes, who helped Gesmundo expose Berosini's methods, perhaps sums up the whole story the best in the article in Seven. "Berosini did what he was raised to do. There was no other way to train these animals, but that era was ending. Las Vegas was the Wild Wild West of showbiz. Perhaps that’s what had to happen to be where we are now. It’s a good thing. Wild animals belong in the wild. We’ll look back 100 years from now and say 'wow.'"
