Aleksandr Nikolaievich Kornilov , circus director in Russia Born 1903-11-22 dead 1977 . Aleksandr Kornilov began his professional life as a sailor. At the end of the 1920s, he landed in Samara, the great port city on the Volga river, where he discovered the traveling menagerie of Ivan Lazarevich Filatov and later he married Masha (Maria Ivanovna Filatova, 1904-1975), Ivan Lazarevichs daughter. Working as a simple cage and stable boy, he did his apprenticeship on the job. After having acquired enough experience caring for the menagerie’s animals, he finally made his public debut as a trainer in 1929 with a Group that included brown bears, polar bears and lions. He presented also the menagerie’s single elephant in a sketch titled The Elephant at the Restaurant. In 1969, after a career that spanned forty years, Aleksandr Nikolaievich Kornilov was elevated to the title of People’s Artist of the Socialist Republic of Russia.
