by Tippi Hedren
I was bleeding badly, down my face and into my eyes. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, including a moment I still remember with crystal clarity that makes no more sense to me under the circumstances than it will to you: I spotted a torn-off piece of one of my long fingernails on the log a few inches away, and I hurriedly grabbed it and slipped it into my shirt pocket so that Dusty could glue it back on when I saw her at my standing appointment the following Monday.
I held a bloody towel to the back of my head while a friend rushed me to the Sherman Oaks Hospital, to a doctor who knew me and didn’t need an explanation for why and how I’d been bitten by a lion. After he examined me, he announced, “We’re going to have to shave your head.”
“Not a chance,” I snapped back. “I’m filming.”
He was a little surprised, clearly not accustomed to patients disagreeing with him. But he finally admitted that perhaps the lacerations weren’t that deep after all, so he simply cleaned me up, secured the wounds with butterfly clamps, gave me a tetanus shot, and sent me off to Knobhill with an antibiotic.
I remember insisting that we stop for ice cream on our way home. I needed a hot fudge sundae, with nuts. The shock hadn’t worn off yet, I guess, but I’m also sure the hurt little girl in me needed to be comforted.
I didn’t realize until that night how angry I was—angry at Cherries for attacking me, angry at Noel for putting me in a position to be attacked, angry at myself for agreeing to be part of this harebrained mess in the first place. I vented it at Noel.
“Today was the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me,” I quietly growled at him. “It’s never going to happen again, do you understand?”
He sighed, pretty rattled himself. “Okay, we’ll cancel the promo shoot.”
“Like hell. We’re doing the promo shoot. We have to,” I reminded him. “But not with Cherries.”
We reconvened at the lake the next day and filmed the log scene while Cherries stayed in her compound. All the cats behaved perfectly, and the footage we screened the following night was spectacular, exactly what we needed to excite investors into believing what we did—that one way or another, Roar had to be made.
Life seemed to shift into fast-forward once that promo was finished and ready for Noel to start showing it to “money men” all over the world.
We acquired Cleopatra, our first of several leopards, who became very attached to Noel during her temporary stay at Knobhill with Pharaoh and charged me one day in a jealous rage over “her man.” She lunged into my arms and bit me on the shoulder. It was just a “warning shot”—she barely broke the skin. Leopards are expert tree climbers, and from the day she moved to Soledad Canyon I never walked the grounds without looking up into the thick branches and leaves of the cottonwoods when the leopards were out of their compounds, knowing that Cleo would love nothing more than to pounce down on the slutty “other woman” in Noel’s life.
Another love triangle in the canyon took us completely by surprise. My precious Billy, the “bottle baby” I raised when his mother rejected him, began ferociously charging anyone who came near me when he and I were spending time together. From Noel to sweet, tiny Sylvie to our elephant handler Jeff, Billy was instinctively compelled to protect me from them, raising up on his hind legs, claws out, teeth bared, firing off chest-deep machine-gun growls that were unmistakable warnings to the intruders to stay away from me. Once they backed off, he’d rush straight back to pace back and forth in front of me and push me farther away from these supposed threats. It broke Billy’s heart and mine that I could never spend time with him again unless we were completely alone in his compound. How could he possibly understand that protecting me was unacceptable behavior? And when I was nowhere around, he was as sweet and friendly as ever to Noel, Sylvie, Jeff, and everyone else in the canyon.
Sophia Loren came to visit Soledad Canyon. It was wonderful to see her again, and she couldn’t wait to meet the animals. We took lots of photos as I walked her around among the compounds while we caught up with each other’s lives. Taking some pictures of Sophia and Timbo and me was a must—she and I both decided that there weren’t enough shots floating around in the press of Sophia Loren with an elephant. She set down her bag and her notebook on a rock off camera for the pictures, and when she was ready to leave she retrieved her purse but couldn’t find her notebook anywhere, until we both noticed that Timbo was chomping on something. He raised his trunk and opened his mouth, and there it was, the metal spiral and the wet little ball of paper that used to be Sophia’s calendar and the addresses and phone numbers of everyone she’d ever known. She was an incredibly good sport about it, and we agreed that at least she had a great story to tell when people said, “Of course I’ll give you my address and phone number again, but what happened to your notebook?”
Several months later I lost my beloved Pharaoh. It was impossible to figure out exactly how long he’d been ill—he instinctively knew not to appear infirm in front of the other big cats, so he’d done his best to look as if everything was fine. But finally I could see that he was beginning to shrink and that the glint in his eyes was fading. Once he’d stopped eating and drinking and the veterinarians in Los Angeles had told me his kidneys and other organs were deteriorating, I drove him to the University of California at Davis, near Sacramento, in my opinion the finest veterinary school in the country. Dr. Murray Fowler, the head of vet medicine there, did all he could, but Pharaoh died three days later. I made the long drive home with Pharaoh’s body, alone and grief-stricken.
Pharaoh was the first of our adult cats to die. There would be more, of course, and we’d lost some cubs over the years. Every death devastated me and sent me into a depression, no matter how many times I told myself that it was a natural part of this life I’d chosen. The loss of any thinking, feeling creature capable of love, wild or domestic, is a loss of a little bit of purity and perfection on this earth, a loss none of us can easily afford or take lightly.
To this day, when death comes to our animals in the canyon, we bury them here on the property, with tears and dignity. I have a special loathing for taxidermy, and for those who display “trophies” of animals they’ve killed, as if they take pride in something so obscene.
I’d just returned from a trip with Food for the Hungry in the wake of a devastating hurricane in Honduras when Noel was bitten on the hand by Hudu, one of our lions, during a training session in the African house where the lions and tigers were learning to mingle together.
We rushed him to the Sherman Oaks Hospital. The doctor on duty treated the wound and insisted that it had to be sewn up. Noel argued, explaining that we’d had some experience with this kind of thing and we’d learned that a wound from cat teeth should be left open to drain and heal. But the doctor insisted, sutured Noel’s wound, and sent him home.
By midnight he was in agony, with red lines extending from his hand all the way up the full length of his arm. By one a.m. we were at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica. The diagnosis: advanced blood poisoning. Within another twelve hours Noel was in critical condition and near death. He pulled through and wasn’t released until three weeks later, under strict orders to continue his medication for another two weeks.
From then on we avoided suture-happy doctors, kept puncture wounds open, suffered through the antibiotics, and let our bodies’ natural healing process do the rest.
We were coming closer and closer to the brink of total financial devastation as the weekly expense of housing and maintaining the animals continued to grow. But somehow, as broke as we were, we never considered giving up, and we couldn’t bring ourselves to stop welcoming new arrivals to our menagerie. Our lions, tigers, elephant, leopards, and panthers (actually leopards in black coats rather than spotted ones) were joined by a few cougars. Cougars are classified as a “game animal” in California, so captivity was the only safe place left for them, and at that point, what difference could a few more mouths to feed possibly make?
I’m sure it goes without saying that by now the thought of any animal being killed for its skin or its tusks was utterly abhorrent to me, so when I started gathering the most valuable belongings I owned to take to the pawnshop, the first to go was the fur coat Alfred Hitchcock had given me. That and my wedding ring and some other jewelry bought some food for our menagerie, but of course we’d soon need more.
We put our two rental houses in Beverly Hills on the market, along with some land we owned in Newhall, while Noel kept showing the Roar promo to anyone and everyone who’d stand still long enough to watch it.
Somehow, the more desperate we got, the more determined we got, and we were coming up with more ideas of things to sell and more ideas of potential investors when early one morning the phone rang.
It wasn’t a studio, calling to offer a generous check and the facilities to make our movie.
It wasn’t the big-cat network in need of housing for more abandoned animals.
It was Dr. Larry Ward of Food for the Hungry. They were on their way to Vietnam. The war had ended, and there were scores of “boat people” in desperate trouble.
Could I possibly come help?
All things considered, I was a bit torn for a second. Then again, I couldn’t turn them down.
“I’ll be there,” I said, and with that I started a whole new chapter of my life, long before the one I was living had ended.
Eleven
The Australian navy provided the battleship Akuna to Food for the Hungry for our tour of the South China Sea searching for Vietnamese refugees, lost and desperate, with no idea where to turn and nothing left but their decrepit boats. For six weeks we looked for those poor men, women, and children, brought them on board, and gave them food and fresh clothing and a warm place to rest for a while. Then, because of international law, we had no choice but to put them back in their boats, guide them toward safe places to land, and pray for them.
Food for the Hungry had acquired a huge abandoned tuberculosis sanitarium in Weimar, California, near Sacramento, so we were able to provide housing for many, many Vietnamese women who found their way to the United States. They weren’t welcomed in this country, as if they’d had anything at all to do with a war that decimated their homeland and their lives, and they were some of the bravest, most inspiring women I’ve ever met. They didn’t want to be a burden here, they wanted to work. They wanted to contribute. They wanted to earn our acceptance and respect.
Over a period of time we helped integrate them into the United States. We helped them learn English, get their driver’s licenses, and find American sponsors. I brought in typists and seamstresses to help them develop skills that could lead to steady jobs, and you’ve never seen a more devoted, grateful group of students, especially when most of them started expressing a common interest—they loved my nails!
In fact, they were so fascinated with my long, manicured nails that I called Dusty and asked if she’d consider making the round trip from Los Angeles to Weimar once a week to teach these women manicuring skills. She said she’d be happy to. I knew she would. So every week, here came Dusty, and she taught them everything they needed to know, with an emphasis on the paper-wrapped Juliette Manicures that were popular before acrylics came along. When they finished Dusty’s course, we rented buses to send them to beauty school in Sacramento to get their cosmetology licenses—all in English, by the way.
Out of our first group of about sixty women, twenty-five went on to get their licenses and open their own businesses. If you’ve ever wondered where the billion-dollar Vietnamese manicure/pedicure salon industry in this country got its start, now you know. Dusty and I are so proud to have been a part of it, and we’re still in touch with some of our thriving, successful graduates, many of whose children have gone on to become doctors, lawyers, and CEOs thanks to the educations their mothers were able to afford.
Several of the husbands got involved, too. They discovered when going to pick up supplies for their wives that they were having to go to four or five different shops to find everything on their lists, so they created consolidated, incredibly successful beauty supply stores that carried everything from nail files to pedicure chairs.
It was thrilling to become a part of these families’ lives. I got to know and love so many of them, and there aren’t words to express my admiration for their strength, their dignity, and their refusal to let losing everything, including their homeland, stand in their way. They went on to organize the Vietnamese-American Nail Association, with salons throughout North America, and I was honored to be presented with a Humanitarian Award in Washington, D.C., for work with the “boat people” that brought me nothing but joy and some cherished lifelong friendships. I may have planted the seed of the Vietnamese nail salon industry, and I’ll proudly take a bow for that, but it’s the hard work, dedication and skill of those amazing men and women who nourished that seed into the huge success it is today.
Kieu Chinh, hostess of the television talk show so many of us appeared on during our USO visits to Vietnam, tracked me down in Weimar one day. She was crying on the phone, and I asked what was wrong.
“I’ve contacted all these celebrities I worked with, and no one will help me get to America.”
I could hear the fear in her voice, and I wasn’t having it. “Dry your tears,” I told her. “You’ll be here tomorrow.”
Food for the Hungry made it possible to keep that promise.
She arrived with nothing, so she came to stay with me on Knobhill. She and I happened to wear the same size clothes, and I was happy to share my wardrobe with her and to find her an agent, although there were very few roles available at the time. She went on to get a job with the Catholic charities helping Vietnamese refugees, cofounded the Vietnam Children’s Fund, which built schools in her homeland, and became as popular an actress here in the United States as she was in Asia. I love and admire her so much.
I was in Sacramento when the call came from Noel. He was sobbing. I’d never heard or seen him cry before.
“Needra’s died,” he said. “You have to come home.”
I flew back to Los Angeles that day, in tears myself, to learn that our lioness Samantha had died as well, of unknown causes. We called in experts from UCLA and UC Davis, who gave us the horrible news that we’d been invaded by a virus. It had killed Samantha and Needra, and by the time it ran its course four months later, we’d lost fourteen of our lions and tigers. Because there was no way to specifically identify it, other than to note that it didn’t affect the leopards and cougars and that it was probably airborne, there was no way to vaccinate our animals against it. All we could do was pray that it never, ever happen again.
The hits just kept on coming. Around that same time, we also managed to survive a flood and a very real threat of fire in the canyon. Our elephant trainer quit, leaving Timbo depressed, with no one to take him on his regular walks. We had to make the sad decision to sell the Knobhill house, with all its amazing memories, and move into one of the three trailers we’d installed on the Soledad Canyon property. We were on a serious downhill slide, and I truly believe the only things that kept us going were our unconditional love for those animals and the occasional flickering hope that when life got that bad, it had nowhere to go but up.
Some marriages make it through crises stronger than ever. Ours wasn’t one of those marriages. We spent almost no time together, and we had little or no social life. I went to family gatherings alone and found myself preferring it that way. The relentless anxiety everywhere we turned was causing us to turn our angry frustration toward each other. I’m not sure we even realized it then, but our marriage was beginning to disintegrate.
Life started its subtle upswing one Sunday morning with a knock at the door. I answered it to find a tall, red-haired, friendly-looking young man standing there.
“Hi, Mrs. Marshall. My name is Tim Cooney, and I hear you need an elephant trainer.”
If he hadn’t been a total stranger, I would have hugged hi
m.
Tim, it turned out, had been a trainer with the circus but was burned out on all that traveling. That same day he started working for us, sitting in the barn with Timbo, talking to him, reading, feeding him, just hanging out and getting acquainted for hours and hours every day. After three weeks they began taking their exercise walks again, and the joy came back into our elephant’s eyes.
Our animals were healthy again after that virus dealt us those fourteen devastating losses, and the family began growing again, first with a couple of tigers named Panda Bear and Singh Singh and then, over the next several weeks, with ten beautiful little lion cubs. Birth felt like a promising sign, like hope, like a reminder that there really is a future.
And then, on a Monday morning, Noel called with news so incredible that I kept making him repeat it because I couldn’t believe I was hearing him correctly:
The British entertainment company EMI had committed to investing half a million dollars in Roar, and a Tokyo producer named Banjiro Uemura was putting up another half million.
I was so weak with relief and happiness that I literally fell into the chair behind me. Five years of dreaming, planning, praying, grieving, sacrificing, meetings, lunches, phone calls, and just remembering to breathe had finally paid off. What difference did some hocked jewels and a few houses make when all was said and done? We finally had the money we needed to get Roar under way, and we could start filming in about a month. All we had to do was gather a crew and rent lights, cameras, and sound equipment, and this is Hollywood—if you’ve got the bank account, anything and anyone you could possibly need to make a movie are always just a phone call and a few miles away.
Big cats, of course, have their own agendas and couldn’t care less whether or not you’re busy relearning how to exhale.