by Tippi Hedren
I love when my soon-to-be-famous granddaughter, Dakota Johnson, visits Shambala. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
Our wonderful Shambala monthly safaris are fun and a great fundraising opportunity. You won’t see any big cats in silly costumes here! (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
It’s such fun growing older with my wonderful daughter by my side. Here, she and Antonio joined me at a Roar Foundation fundraiser. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
Hitchcock stopped speaking to me directly and only referred to me as The Girl during the last few weeks of shooting Marnie. This HBO film depicted my frayed relationship with him. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
I needed help blowing out so many candles when I turned seventyfive! (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
I am so happy to receive this honor surrounded by so much love. Now I have to let people walk all over me! (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
My darling Dakota Johnson was the best thing to come out of Melanie’s marriage to Don Johnson. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
My daily meditation is a long walk through the footpaths of Shambala’s forty acres. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
The only thing that I am sure of is that Shambala is where I belong. (Courtesy of Bill Dow Photography)
Ten
It still astonishes me all these decades later.
Noel, for all his impulsiveness and slickness, was not a stupid man, so I’ll never understand how he let this happen.
The deal he made for the film rights to the book of The Exorcist was, at the time, the highest-priced film rights deal ever made in this business. He wrote up a contract between him and William Peter Blatty confirming Noel’s commission, executive producer credit, and 15 percent profit-sharing guarantee. He presented the contract to Bill Blatty, who orally agreed and initialed it in the upper right-hand corner but never signed it.
Yes, we’d pinned all our hopes for the funding of Roar on an unsigned contract. Technically, legally, Bill Blatty was claiming he didn’t owe Noel one red cent from the profits on his blockbuster movie.
Morally? Don’t get me started.
Noel immediately started looking for the best litigation attorney in the business.
I was at a party many years later and felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to find Bill Blatty standing there with a big smile on his face, greeting me with a friendly “Hi, Tippi!”
I walked away without saying a word. To my credit, I resisted the impulse to throw my wine in his face.
With not a single cent paid, we desperately needed money, not only for Roar but also for the weekly expenses of our growing population of four-legged cast members. Noel was on the phone and at meetings every day in search of backers. It became routine for me to make lunches on Knobhill and drive them out to Soledad Canyon to entertain potential investors and give them a tour of the compounds, hoping they’d be so enchanted with the animals, the African house, and what we were trying to accomplish that they’d be unable to resist reaching for their checkbooks. As anyone in this business will confirm, raising money for an independent film, let alone the million dollars we needed, is a slow, tedious roller coaster with no guarantee of success, and it can be painfully discouraging.
Fighting depression was a challenge, but I dealt with it by remembering a Christmas many, many, many years earlier, back home in Minnesota. Daddy had been through more health problems, and there was very little money for Christmas presents. My gift that year was a can of pineapple, my favorite fruit.
I know how to live broke. In fact I’m living proof that things can turn around, and that you really can be content and broke at the same time. So we kept calling and meeting and serving lunches. In the meantime, we had no business taking in more animals, but we did it anyway.
We heard through the big-cat network that a cheetah was available in San Diego. Noel and I had been fascinated by Ozzie Bristow’s cheetahs in Africa, and we couldn’t resist. The cast of Roar had already expanded beyond lions anyway, so why not write in a cheetah while we were at it? They were almost extinct in the wild by then, and it would be an honor to help one who needed a home.
His name was Pharaoh. He was an adult, probably three or four years old, a hundred and twenty pounds, larger than usual for the breed. His two owners worked all day, five days a week, so with the exception of long walks on weekends, he spent most of his time on a twenty-foot chain attached to his harness—particularly sad for the fastest land animal on earth, and one of the most elegant and dignified.
Noel retrieved the wire cutters as soon as we brought Pharaoh home to Knobhill. The instant we snipped off his harness and its padlock, he let out a loud “ohhhh” sound that was unmistakable relief. He was free from his shackles for the first time in years. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to him, but that sound brought tears to my eyes.
I took him for a tour of the house and the yard. He was especially interested in the mirror-smooth pool, walking over to peer at it very closely. A little too closely, it turned out—he promptly slipped over the edge and fell in. It was stupid, and he knew it. He was so embarrassed he wouldn’t look at me when he scrambled back out and shook himself. Dripping wet, his body was almost shockingly thin, but the black lines on his face—“tears” from his eyes to his mouth, and extensions at the corners of his eyes—were so distinct and such gorgeous facets of his natural markings that they looked as if he’d found a really great brand of waterproof eyeliner.
Our relationship was off to an awkward start, so that night, when he sprawled out on the bed, I sat down beside him for a nice talk. While I was sitting there, I decided to take a peek at the dewclaw hidden on the back of the ankle of his front leg. I started gently parting the fur covering the dewclaw and was instantly rewarded with a karate chop to the face. That dewclaw I’d planned to inspect raked across my right cheek, leaving a permanent hairline scar.
Okay. Too friendly too soon. Got it.
Pharaoh’s vast vocabulary was brand-new to me and unlike a lion’s or a tiger’s way of communicating. His “happy” sound was a distinct chirp. His “hungry” sound was a low, throaty vibration. His “stay away” warning sound, accompanied by the tensing up of his body, was a high two-pitched hum. He used that during our first few days together when I’d come too close to him while he was eating, and I’d immediately back off. But after a week or so, after we’d established that I wasn’t interested in stealing his food, he ignored me and went right on eating, and eventually I was able to feed him by hand, as long as I kept my palm perfectly flat and didn’t accidentally let a finger or two seem like part of the meal.
I was more than willing to leave his meals alone, but as it turned out, he wasn’t willing to do the same for me. The family sat down to a lovely dinner of linguine and clams one night, and Pharaoh, whose head was the same height as our dining room table, gracefully walked up and cleaned off my plate in one lightning-fast gulp. Everyone else scrambled into the kitchen holding their plates above their heads while Pharaoh and I had a useless talk about manners and about my surprise at a cheetah being even remotely interested in seafood and pasta.
The time came to introduce Pharaoh to Soledad Canyon and the other big cats who would be his neighbors one of these days. I was excited for him, knowing he’d spent most of his life with no one but humans and hoping he’d be exhilarated to discover a whole new world of friends with four legs.
Sadly, it terrified him. His eyes widened and he began trembling at the sights and sounds of the lions and tigers, and no amount of comforting and reassurance could calm him down. The poor guy couldn’t get back to Knobhill quickly enough, and Noel and I agreed that if we decided to use Pharaoh in Roar, it would have to be a scene that didn’t include any other big cats.
Pharaoh was fascinated with items around the house. He would walk over to anything from a framed photo on the coffee table to the clock on my nightstand to a napkin holder in the kitchen and study them endlessly, with a refres
hing lack of interest in destroying them. I got curious to know how he’d react in places other than home that would be free of lions and tigers.
A friend of mine owned a dress shop less than a mile away, and I called to ask if there were a lot of customers around.
“Only a few at the moment,” she said. “Why?”
“I was wondering if I could stop by with my cheetah.”
She knew me well, so this question didn’t catch her completely off guard. At least I wasn’t asking if I could bring in an adult lion or those three crazy-destructive Texas tiger cubs. I wouldn’t describe her “Sure” as enthusiastic, but it wasn’t an “Absolutely not” either, and Pharaoh and I were off to our first boutique together.
He was spectacular. Once my friend and her customers caught on that they weren’t in danger, they couldn’t take their eyes off him. He was too busy browsing to pay any attention to them. He wasn’t especially interested in the clothes; with his dignified elegance he was definitely a tuxedo man or nothing at all. The displays of hats, scarves, and costume jewelry, on the other hand, fascinated him, and he was in no hurry to leave.
Bolstered by the success of that excursion, I called my friends at California Jewelsmith in Beverly Hills, who thought Pharaoh might be an attention-getting change of pace from their usual clientele. They were right. He behaved like a perfect gentleman, customers were mesmerized by him, and he was so intrigued by the array of exquisite watches, bracelets, diamonds, emeralds, and gold chains that I almost expected him to ask to borrow my credit card.
He even lay quietly at my feet while my dear manicurist Dusty Butera tended to my nails, and it took a lot of self-restraint for her not to give his nails a quick coat or two of polish while she was at it.
This gorgeous creature definitely needed a scene or two with humans in Roar, that was for sure. And believe me, it occurred to me more than once while we were on our tour of upscale retailers to turn to the clients who were especially intrigued by him and say, “Want to invest in a movie?” I resisted the temptation, but only because I would have felt too tacky soliciting money from my friends’ customers.
It’s always been my habit after I’ve been away from home for a few hours to walk in the door, find any and all animals I’m living with, say hello, give them hugs, and ask if I missed anything while I was gone.
One late afternoon I came home, greeted Puss (Partner was staying in Soledad Canyon at the time), and started looking for Pharaoh. He was nowhere to be found—not in the house, not in the yard, not up and down Knobhill, and (thank God) not at the bottom of the pool.
There was no one to ask. Noel and the boys were out doing whatever, and it was Emily’s day off. I searched some more. Still nothing. Oh, God, not again.
In that same horrible panic I’d been through before with Casey and Bridget, I grabbed the phone and started with a call to the pound. No Pharaoh. I moved on to calls to the neighbors, one of whom said, “We saw him walking down the street about a half hour ago. We tried to call you—”
“Which way?” I cut them off, frantic.
They told me, and I grabbed Pharaoh’s lead, leaped in the car, and started driving the narrow, winding hillside streets. It was rush hour again, of course, with traffic building up on any number of the routes he might decide to explore, and there I was, trying to track down the fastest land animal on earth. He could have been miles away by now . . . or hit by a car . . . or shot. I felt as lost as he was.
After an hour of no luck I headed home again, hoping against hope that maybe he’d found his way back to Knobhill. He hadn’t.
I called the pound again. To my shock and relief, animal control had Pharaoh in custody. Someone had notified the police that there was a “wild cat” sitting in a vacant lot at a very busy intersection less than a mile from our house. Two squad cars had responded and found Pharaoh. The officers stepped cautiously out of their cars with their guns drawn and were approaching him, taking aim, when one of them said, “Look, he’s got a collar. That’s someone’s pet. Don’t shoot.”
Pharaoh’s sightseeing expedition had come within seconds of costing him his life, and I let him stay in jail overnight before I gratefully picked him up and brought him home.
Rarely did a day, or even an hour, go by when we weren’t thinking about and talking about Roar. Beyond the oppressive fact that we had no money, there were plenty of other problems to deal with.
For one thing, we still had no leading man for the central role of Hank, the Gorongosa zoologist. Even worse, there was no way around the fact that no actor in his right mind would have agreed to do it. Not even the amazingly physical Sean Connery would have or should have taken on a film involving one unrehearsed scene after another of grappling with live lions and tigers, no matter how supposedly well trained they were. Hollywood’s superb array of stunt men were out of the question, too, unless we could find one who’d be willing to live with and get to know the big cats, and have the big cats get to know him, too. This wasn’t a job for a stranger. This was a job for a man with a lot of unique skills and familiarity with the population of Soledad Canyon.
In the end, there was no way around it—this was a job for Noel. Our producer, art director, landscape architect, big-cat handler, writer, and director was going to have to add “star” to his list of credits on this movie.
The rest of the cast was already assembled, of course. I’d play Madeline, the zoologist’s wife, and John, Jerry, and Melanie would play our teenage children. Third son Joel was in his second year at UCLA by then, majoring in art. He’d be a huge help behind the scenes, with his skills in carpentry, landscaping, set design, and electronics.
We were well aware that we’d be facing a lot of criticism, from both inside and outside the industry, for putting our children in danger by having them work so closely with wild cats, and we had more than one long discussion with them about it. We assured them that if they wanted out, we’d understand completely. Making the movie would be hard enough without all the inevitable negative feedback to deal with. We made all three of them well aware of the risks, and all three of them came to the same conclusion—they knew the risks, they knew the cats and how to interact with them as safely as anyone could, and they loved the cats. As for the criticism, if it didn’t bother us, it wouldn’t bother them. “Count us in,” they said, and we promised each of them a percentage of the profits, please, God, on paper, not just initialed but signed.
The one thing about Roar we never discussed, even if we privately thought it from time to time, was the possibility of coming to our senses and scrapping the whole idea. There were countless arguments against going ahead with this movie, but there were about eighty reasons to refuse to give up—about eighty big cats and our sweet elephant Timbo—who were counting on us to feed them and love them and keep them as safe as humanly possible, and finding still more new homes for them after all so many of them had been through, sending them off to God knows where to have God knows what happen to them, was unthinkable to me.
We didn’t just want to make this movie, we had to make this movie, if not for us, for them.
What we really needed, we decided, was to make a great promo, some spectacular footage Noel could show to Paramount or Citibank or overseas investors. We didn’t have a script for anyone to read, since much of what was written was and always would be an outline that depended on plenty of lion and tiger improvising. We didn’t have a “bankable” male lead. We didn’t have risqué bedroom scenes or aliens or special effects. We didn’t even have much of a story line for the film, or any way to explain the impact of human/big-cat interaction to corporate minds.
But we could show them.
The test scene we decided on was kind of a chase by our lake in which I would be running from a herd of lions and tigers, headed for a big log that had fallen over the water. I would fall on the log, and the twenty or so big cats would either step or jump over me on their way to the other side of the lake.
We rented dual Cinera
ma cameras and handpicked the lions and tigers who’d be chasing me, including my pals Casey, Billy, Igor, Boomer, and Needra, and we assembled a group of handlers to position themselves nearby, just off camera. Noel thought a rehearsal would be a good idea, so once all the people, animals, and equipment were in place and he yelled, “Action!” I took off running.
My fall onto the log went well, and the cats were doing a perfect job of stepping and gracefully hopping over me, single file, not even seeming to notice I was there.
But then along came Cherries, one of the Texas Fruit Salad trio that had tried to destroy the Knobhill house. She was almost two years old now and weighed two hundred pounds. She slowly walked across me, and unlike the cats who’d preceded her, she looked down as if to say, “Well, well, well. Who have we here?” and started batting my head with her paw. She was getting a little aggressive, and I yelled at her, “Stop!” and “Leave it!”
For a minute or two it seemed to work. She stopped swatting me and proceeded to the end of the log. I was watching every move she made, so I saw her reach the end of the log, I saw her turn around and look back at me, and I saw her eyes narrow.
I knew I was in trouble, and I yelled at the handlers, “Stay with me, guys!” But before they could make a single move toward the log, Cherries was charging hard at me, and then she was on me. She put her front paws on my shoulders to pin me down and took the back half of my head in her mouth. I don’t have words to describe the sound echoing inside my head as her teeth scraped against my skull, but it haunted me for a long time.
In a matter of seconds Noel raced onto the log, grabbed Cherries by the scruff of her neck, and pulled her off me. As soon as she released me, I raised my head, and I can still see her face just inches from mine, her skin pulled back, her mouth wide open with some of my blood on the fur around it, her teeth glistening. I was terrified, and in such shock that I felt very little pain.