by Tippi Hedren
He lucked out in two ways—we decided not to press charges, and he never had the misfortune to cross paths with me again, or any of the rest of us who loved Ivan and Natasha and couldn’t bear to imagine what they’d been through so that some drunken idiot could spend a few hours getting a little extra attention at their expense.
Days later, with all the animals safe, sound and back where they belonged, we gathered in the canyon to greet Noel’s latest acquisition from the Okanagan preserve, not another addition to the pride of lions or a new member of the tiger family, but Noel’s idea of what filmmakers call “atmosphere.”
Enter Timbo, a massive ten-thousand-pound African bull elephant.
Between the cubs and the adults, about twenty-five cats were living in Soledad Canyon when Timbo arrived. The minute he walked down the ramp of the trailer truck I wanted to be his close friend. This amazing colossus had been captured in Africa when he was six months old and taken to the Frankfurt Zoo. From there it was on to New York, where he was acquired by the Canadian animal park who sold him to us. He’d never performed in circuses, but he knew a few tricks that he was always happy to show off.
Timbo’s new home was a barn that had been constructed at the west end of the property. He could walk along the riverbank beyond it for several miles beyond the barn for exercise and then return for his daily bath in the pond. Steve Martin, who’d never worked with elephants before and wanted the experience, took on the job of training him, a particularly important job since, when a pachyderm becomes accustomed to the voice of its trainer, it will ignore any and all commands from anyone else.
Timbo fascinated me, but he made me nervous, too. Steve knew very little about elephants in general and Timbo in particular, and I knew even less. About a month after he arrived, I rode him up the riverbank for a couple of miles. He became curious about this “thing” on his back and reached backward with his trunk to investigate, which resulted in the very odd sensation of having moist elephant “nostrils” examining my face.
To solve that problem I started riding closer to his shoulders than to his ears, doing the splits on top of him with my knees bent. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, so I kept adjusting my position on subsequent outings and finally learned to ride him lying down, or standing up and balancing myself while we trundled along by the river.
It was clear from the beginning that Timbo loved human contact, and it was our pleasure to make sure he had it. We all pampered him and saw to it that his love of sweets and a case or two of beer were satisfied. I visited him often, whether I was planning to ride him or not, and always brought him carrots and apples, partly just because I wanted to spend time with him and partly because, for all I knew, he and I might be doing scenes together in a movie whose progress slowly but surely seemed to be moving forward.
One day I stopped by for a quick hello on my way to somewhere else and hadn’t brought any of Timbo’s usual treats. He was a little indignant about that, reaching out his trunk to see if maybe I had carrots or apples or sweets hidden on me and going through my pockets. The only thing he found that seemed to interest him was a pack of Clorets gum, and I aimed to please—if he thought he might like Clorets, he was more than welcome to give them a try. I put several of them in my hand and held them out to him.
He quickly swept them up with his trunk, put them in his mouth, and began to chew. It was instant euphoria. His cheeks puffed in and out, his eyes slowly closed, and he started making little contentment noises, clearly wondering where I’d been hiding this food of the gods for all this time. I’d never seen anything send him into such rapture before, and I never visited him again without a generous supply of Clorets on hand—a whole lot easier to lug to his barn than bushels of apples and carrots, too, so it worked out perfectly for both of us.
Construction had begun on the two-story “African house,” the house the movie’s scientist and his family would share with a collection of somewhere around fifty big cats. Fourteen telephone poles were sunk into the ground to make it sturdy enough to support their movement throughout the stairway and half-dozen rooms where we’d film the interiors, and Liberato and his crew tackled building that mega-substantial movie set as if they’d built a thousand of them before.
We had compounds full of animals, and the primary set was under way, but the “park” itself was still looking pretty sparse. The only other buildings were Timbo’s barn, Steve Martin’s house trailer, and a few other sheds for storing tools and food. So Noel began planting cottonwoods and Mozambique-looking shrubs. Sod was being put down in large specific areas, and there were plans to dam the pond and turn it into a lake. With every passing day our acreage was looking less and less like Soledad Canyon and more and more like Africa.
Once the transformation was under way, I started to visualize not just our film set but a very special studio we could rent out for animal features and TV movies, complete with soundstages, editing rooms, a commissary, and apartments for cast members who didn’t want to make the relatively long commute from Los Angeles every day.
So many dreams, so little money. But we’d deal with that later, and how could we feel anything less than optimistic, with The Exorcist continuing to be such a record-breaking success?
In fact, the first cub born in our compounds, the offspring of Togar and Alice, was immediately named Billy, in honor of William Peter Blatty, whose movie was going to make our own movie dreams come true.
Billy was precious and appeared to be in good health, so it was inexplicable when, five days after his birth, Alice abandoned him, jumping to the roof of her house, sprawling out on her belly, and refusing to even acknowledge her newborn’s presence. A lioness will often reject her cub or even destroy it if she thinks something is wrong with it or if she’s unable to feed it. Billy seemed to be perfectly healthy, so we decided that either she couldn’t produce the milk he needed or that she just plain wanted nothing to do with him for reasons we’d never understand.
Whatever caused this rejection, that poor baby began crying loudly for his mother, high-pitched cries that echoed through the canyon and broke our hearts, his eyes still closed and his little spotted head jerking around in search of her warmth.
Liberato and I stood watching them—Billy helpless and lost, Alice on her roof staring apathetically off into the distance as if she were thinking, “Baby? What baby? I don’t know nuthin’ about no baby.”
“We have to help that cub,” he said.
“You’re damned right we do,” I told him, and I knew we needed to do it soon. If Billy kept up those ear-shattering, squawling, pleading shrieks, Alice might get tired of it and hurt him.
So early that afternoon, with Liberato watching from just outside the chain link, I eased into Alice’s compound, keeping my eyes on her every second, swept Billy into my arms, and backed slowly out through the high gate, knowing her maternal instincts might kick in at any moment and she could come roaring toward me to retrieve her cub. Instead, not once, not even when I picked up and walked away with the only baby she’d ever had, did she so much as glance in my direction.
As soon as I could, I began trying to bottle-feed him, but he refused the nipple and kept screaming. In a panic, I drove him to Dr. Marty Dinnes, who had no more luck giving the little lion a bottle than I’d had. Finally he said, “He’ll have to be tube-fed.”
I’d never been anywhere near a five-day-old cub before, let alone tube-fed one. I watched every detail of everything Marty did, fighting back my squeamishness, and I shuddered at Marty’s instruction: “Be very careful not to hit his windpipe when you insert the tube. Even a few drops of fluid in his windpipe will cause him to come down with pneumonia in less than an hour, and there’s no way to treat it.”
Marty inserted the prepared tube into that tiny body, making it look easy, and within moments he’d fed Billy two or three ounces of formula. Squeamish? Too bad. Nervous? Get over it. If that’s what I needed to do to save this cub’s life, that’s exactly what I’d do. I could at
least give him a better chance than he’d been given by his own mother.
I took the spotted-head, petal-eared handful of fur back to Knobhill and got to work. I began feeding him every two hours, around the clock, setting an alarm during the night. My hand shook every time I stuck that tube down Billy’s throat, terrified of getting fluid in his windpipe. Flying a DC-3 was a walk in the park compared to this, and acting and soundstages and photo shoots seemed like some imaginary past in someone else’s life.
Finally, after three anxious, sleepless days, I tried offering him a bottle again, fitted with a preemie nipple, and he started nursing, happy and content. The relief was overwhelming. He’d lie belly-down on my lap, his head toward my knees while I held the bottle horizontally and found his little mouth with the nipple and, with my other hand, make sure to touch his side so he’d feel he was being snuggled while he was feeding. At night he’d sleep on my pillow or cuddle up close beside me, making that “aa-aow”/“Where are you?” sound even though I was right there, needing constant reassurance thanks to Alice abandoning him.
Two days after accepting the bottle, Billy opened his beautiful blue eyes to start checking out this world he’d been born into. A week or so later, when he was able to focus, I was the first human imprinted in his brain. As soon as he could track with his eyes, he’d seek out my thumb to suck as a substitute nipple, licking it with a little tongue that was already rough, on its way to being as coarse as a rasp when he became an adult.
At the ripe old age of three weeks, Billy had gained three pounds and was getting steadier on his paws by the day. He was adorably affectionate, standing up to put his paws on my leg so he could closely supervise while I prepared his bottle, and he was very playful. When I’d offer him his bottle, for example, he’d bat it away four or five times and then suddenly grab it with both paws and hungrily empty it in the blink of an eye. When he finished his bottle on my lap, I’d put him over my shoulder and burp him, after which he’d fall sound asleep.
It was perfectly natural, then, that a point came when, as far as Billy was concerned, I was his mom. Unlike our other cubs, who were always happy to see me but much more attached to each other and whatever they happened to be playing with or destroying at the moment, he needed to be with me all the time. He’d follow me from room to room, and when I’d sit down he’d jump up into my lap and softly rub his face against mine, the affectionate way lions greet and mark each other as “theirs.” For a couple of months, when I had to leave the house, I took him with me in a square picnic basket I transformed into a portable baby lion bed. He became my sidekick everywhere I went, from meetings to interviews to visits with friends to the supermarket—even one day to a luncheon at a very exclusive restaurant.
The maître d’, impeccable as always in his tuxedo, gave me his usual friendly greeting. Then, nodding toward my picnic basket and purely making conversation, he asked, “What have you got there, Miss Hedren?”
“A lion,” I said, and he laughed and escorted me to my table.
As I left, I stopped to thank him and say good-bye and, with a smile, I opened the lid of the basket just far enough for him to see the sleeping cub inside. He was as enchanted as he was surprised, and I enjoyed knowing that I’d given him a great story to tell his family and friends over dinner that night.
In some ways Billy was a very typical little lion, rambunctious and destructive, stalking and pouncing on pillows, plants, Jerry’s tennis shoes, tablecloths, bedspreads. Everything in his Knobhill world was a potential toy as far as he was concerned, and nothing was off-limits. I couldn’t ignore the inevitable fact that someday he’d be a full-grown five-hundred-pound adult, so I started teaching him the meaning of inconvenient words like “No!” and “Leave it!” Neither of us particularly enjoyed introducing boundaries into that sweet boy’s life, but a woman and her lion had to do what a woman and her lion had to do.
That, of course, included making Billy aware that there were more creatures on this earth than just two-legged humans—his own kind existed here, too. He was about three months old when I started driving him to Soledad Canyon for playdates with the other cubs, praying every mile of the way that they’d accept him. To my relief, he and Igor, another new tiger cub, instantly became great pals. They playfully pounced on each other, growling and snarling with mock ferocity as they rolled around together until they wore themselves out and curled up for a nap. It became a joyful errand to deliver Billy to his daily romp with Igor and drive him, or sometimes both of them, back to Knobhill several hours later. He quickly learned to love those playdates and the car ride there and back, and the instant he heard me pick up my keys in the morning he’d race to the front door, ready and eager for the adventure.
Finally, when he was nine months old, almost four feet long and weighing about a hundred pounds, it was time for him to graduate from Knobhill and go to the canyon to live. I talked to him all the way there, tears streaming down my face, assuring him in “Mommy talk” that he was going to be so happy in his new home and so well taken care of, and that we wouldn’t even have to miss each other because I’d be coming to visit him every single day.
Billy settled in with Igor, lion cubs Cookie and Needra, and six other young cats. I watched him and Igor joyfully reunite, and stayed to make sure he and the other cubs got peacefully acquainted. Then I drove home alone, in tears again, not one bit ashamed of the maternal instincts that were spilling out of me for that little lion I’d been so close to since he was five days old. I knew it wasn’t good-bye, it was just “see you tomorrow,” but the Knobhill house seemed very empty when I got home.
In the meantime, Noel had been hard at work on the film script. We’d changed the title out of necessity—Lions, Lions, and More Lions no longer really fit, and Lions, Lions, and More Lions . . . and Some Tigers . . . and an Elephant . . . and Who Knows What Else? didn’t really roll off the tongue.
We were now calling it Roar, and not a day went by when we weren’t excitedly talking about it and planning for it and celebrating the continued overwhelming success of The Exorcist. Noel’s share of the projected profits were going to allow us to make one hell of a movie, and we were so grateful, both for ourselves and for this growing population of wild animals who were depending on us to take care of them.
Then the bottom dropped out, thanks to news we could never have imagined, news so unthinkable it took days for it to even sink in.
There would be no Exorcist money coming our way.
Not one dime. Not ever.
PHOTO SECTION
Playing nurse in my yard as a child. (Courtesy of the author)
Me and my first canine pal, Corky, at home in Minnesota. (Courtesy of the author)
The first Peter in my life, my beloved cat. (Courtesy of the author)
In my cap and gown after graduating from Huntington Park High School! One goal completed! (Courtesy of the author)
Love you, mom. (Courtesy of author)
We didn’t realize it at the time, but Peter and I were so young to be getting married at nineteen and twenty-two. (Courtesy of the author)
Two of my early modeling photos. (Courtesy of Wynn Hammer)
I was absolutely stunned when Hitchcock asked me to play the role of Melanie Daniels in The Birds. (Courtesy of NBCUniversal)
Here I am promoting The Birds all over the world! (Courtesy of NBCUniversal)
My dad could not stop smiling when he and my mom visited the set of The Birds. (Courtesy of NBCUniversal)
I am so glad Melanie had my parents while I was shooting The Birds and Marnie. I felt sorry being away from her. (Courtesy of NBCUniversal)
Like Rod Taylor in The Birds, Sean Connery was a wonderful dream-come-true to work with in Marnie. (Courtesy of NBCUniversal)
When my friend Johnny Grant asked if I would be willing to go visit servicemen in Vietnam, my answer wasn’t just yes. It was yes, I’d be honored. (Courtesy of the author)
The Vietnamese refugees I helped integrate were some o
f the bravest, kindest women I have ever met. I soon discovered they loved my nails, and asked my manicurist Dusty to come teach them. (Courtesy of the author)
My charity work led me around the world and brought me great pleasure. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
Noelle was special to us from the beginning. Unlike other cubs, she loved to be cuddled. (Courtesy of the author)
We loved watching Noelle grow up into a big and beautiful tigon. One minute after this shot, she had me on the floor. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
Who let the cat in? (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
The one thing about Roar we never discussed was the possibility of scrapping the whole thing. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
We decided we needed to make a spectacular promo for Roar in which I would escape from our house, but trip on a fallen log over our lake. Here I am two seconds before Cherries charged at me. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
Friends who knew me well weren’t too surprised when I asked if I could stop by with my cheetah. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
This little cub, Anton, went on to mate with our beloved tigon, Noelle. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
This massive, ten-thousand-pound African bull elephant, Timbo, was Noel’s idea of what filmmakers call “atmosphere.” (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
I knew I couldn’t live with myself unless I took action to prevent some of the harmful breeding-for-profit practices happening in the U.S. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)