Tippi: A Memoir

by Tippi Hedren

  In less time than it took to say it, Cherries grabbed Jan’s head in her mouth and ripped off his scalp from the nape of his neck to his hairline, all in one piece, literally peeling his head.

  I saw it happen and screamed . . . which is exactly what the scene we were shooting called for me to do, so for several awful seconds everyone thought I was acting. No one caught on until I finally started yelling, at the top of my lungs, “Jan is hurt! Jan is hurt!”

  A frantic race to the emergency room and a hundred and twenty stitches later, Jan’s scalp was reattached. We were all so relieved and so heartsick.

  His assistant had just started that day. When we got the news that Jan was miraculously going to be okay, he turned to me, still deeply shaken, and said, “Tippi, look, I have to quit. Take my day’s pay and buy that poor son of a bitch some flowers.”

  Jan was obviously in the same grip of Roar fever that had infected Noel and me years earlier and wouldn’t let go—to our absolute amazement, that tough, brave, determined man was back on the job three weeks later, despite his wife Monique’s understandable reluctance to let him anywhere near the set again. He knew he was capturing some unprecedented footage of big cats, and he wasn’t about to give up.

  Unfortunately, the rest of the crew didn’t share the obsession. They’d seen Noel injured the first week of filming. They’d seen the ferocious fight between Casey and Tongaru. They’d seen Jan scalped and rushed off to what was becoming known as the “Noel Marshall Roar Wing” at the Palmdale Hospital. One of them said to me, “Am I scared? You’re damned right I’m scared.”

  They held a meeting and resigned en masse.

  Christmas arrived. We’d completed twenty-six days of filming, and cameras weren’t rolling again until March, when winter would be over with and our East Africa set in the canyon would be lush and green again instead of brown and bare. We celebrated the holiday in our Levitt mobile home by the river, with our choir of big cats caroling us as the sun rose.

  I was pouring myself a cup of coffee one morning when Noel quietly announced, “Melanie’s coming back to work.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. She and I had talked many times since she left Roar in October, and she hadn’t mentioned a word about it. She’d made three movies since then—The Star Maker with Rock Hudson, She’s in the Army Now, where she met her future husband Steven Bauer, and The Garden, a low-budget Israeli film.

  But unbeknownst to me, Noel had called and talked to her about coming back, and she agreed.

  I instantly picked up the phone. I was thrilled, but nothing had significantly changed on the set. We’d learned a little more about handling the cats during filming since we started, but there were still plenty of risks for everyone involved. On one hand, I’d silently hoped she’d come back, because I missed her terribly. On the other hand, while I would have rushed a machine-gun nest to protect her, there was nothing predictable about the cats other than their unpredictability, and I wouldn’t have asked her in a million years.

  “Are you sure?” I asked her, my voice trembling a little.

  “I’m sure,” she said. She was emphatic and absolute as always. I was so happy and so apprehensive.

  We started filming again, and Melanie was most certainly back. She’d bought a small house in Malibu Beach by then and made the two-and-a-half-hour commute to Soledad Canyon every day. She was great fun to have around, with her amazing sense of humor and her uncanny talent for doing impressions, including an especially hilarious one of Marlon Brando, and she and our reassembled crew got along beautifully.

  Patsy Nedd had done a wonderful job of replacing Melanie, but her scenes had to be reshot when Melanie stepped back in.

  It was worth every dime, having nothing to do with Patsy and everything to do with the family being together again.

  Now if we could all just get through this movie in one piece before we ran out of money.

  Animals, being animals, couldn’t be less concerned about schedules and tight budgets. We knew that from the beginning, of course, but isn’t it interesting what a huge difference there can be between knowing something and actually dealing with it when it happens?

  There was a “simple” scene that involved Nikki and Gregory, two Siberian tigers with the attention spans of a couple of gnats, riding in the backseat of a cut-down 1937 Chevrolet driven by Noel and Mativo. That shouldn’t take long, right? But between getting the tigers accustomed to the Chevy, teaching them to sit in the backseat and reassuring them that there was nothing threatening about the engine starting and the Chevy moving so they’d stop leaping out of the car, we spent seven weeks—seven weeks—filming it.

  One of the key scenes in Roar involved Togar, with his reputation for ferocity, chasing the family around the second-story balcony that wrapped all the way around the African house. I remember suggesting to Noel that we use one of the more docile lions instead, but no, “That scene needs Togar,” he insisted.

  Togar was going to be on the loose for a while, so special precautions were taken to make sure he didn’t get bored and either head downstairs to destroy the first floor or come blasting out of the house and run away. The fence crew wrapped chain link all the way around the balconies, and wire mesh was installed across the upper stairwell. An elevator was rigged to lift Togar, in his cage, to the second floor, and wait for his cue.

  Cameras were ready. The handlers were alerted. Togar was in his cage in the elevator, poised to come charging out, fiercely bellowing in a homicidal rage. Melanie, John, Jerry, and I were in position, braced to shriek with terror at the sight of him and run for our lives.

  “Roll film.”

  The cage was thrown open.

  Togar stepped out of the elevator without a peep, let alone a bellow, looked around, yawned, strolled over to a corner, and sprawled out for a nap in the sun.

  Togar was demoted to “extra” status for other scenes and replaced by the reliably ferocious Tongaru, who came through for us, after many, many hours of waiting, regrouping, and wrangling the scene’s new star.

  And then there was the sequence for which Jan de Bont had sacrificed his scalp months earlier, the sequence in which the lions would chase us around the lake until, frantic, we came across an old rowboat, at that point our only possible means of escape. “And the family rows around the lake,” the Roar script said—one sentence that took months, off and on, to film.

  Big cats are born with the love of the chase. When an animal, four-legged or two-legged, runs, big cats are guaranteed to run after them and show off their expertise at open-field tackling. So the chase scenes went beautifully, as did the scene in which Melanie, John, and I leaped into the rowboat and pushed off, John sitting with his back to the bow and Melanie and I facing forward. Once we were out on the lake, no matter where the bow was aimed, the lions followed us along the shore, waiting for us to come back, disembark, and run so we could do that fun chase thing again.

  The idea of the scene was that we were so terrified and paddling so frantically that none of us noticed that instead of escaping, we were actually running aground. The moment the boat touched land, we would find ourselves surrounded by a large welcoming party of big, hungry cats and shove off again.

  We ran aground.

  The lions gathered around us.

  We screamed and proceeded to shove off again.

  But one of the lions had a better idea. Instead of letting us head out onto the lake again, he reached out his huge paw and, the instant the boat started to reverse its way off shore, gripped the bow and pulled us right back to dry land so we could run and play some more.

  The camera was filming while, for fourteen takes in a row, we ran aground in that rowboat into the midst of a waiting circle of cats, screamed in terror, shoved off, and got dragged onshore again by a lion with a mind of his own and no respect whatsoever for the cost of fourteen failed attempts to shoot a scene.

  That lion, by the way, was—who else?—Tongaru.

  Through it all, we we
re anxiously awaiting word from EMI about the possibility of future financing. We’d sent them some footage that we thought was spectacular, and it wasn’t easy to keep filming, mostly on credit, while holding our collective breath. The silence from across the pond was deafening.

  More cubs kept arriving, too, which was joyful and overwhelming at the same time. I couldn’t possibly help raise them all while coproducing and acting in this very complicated movie. Alice, the infamous worst mother in the canyon, rejected four more of her surviving cubs, and they had to be bottle-fed. The rest of the cubs, in addition to needing constant love and close proximity to humans, needed careful watching as well, for such danger signs as listlessness, dullness in their eyes, loss of appetite, and fever, and I just plain couldn’t do it. So through the grace of God, I managed to find surrogates who rose above and beyond the call of duty.

  Leo Lobsenz, director of the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal, named in honor of Elsa of Born Free fame, was one of our heroes. He not only stepped in as a substitute father for several of the cubs but also took them to Elsa fundraising events, to Los Angeles area schools, and to the Braille Institute, where blind children had the time of their lives petting the cubs and playing with them.

  Actor Gardner McKay, who’d owned his share of lions, raised many of the cubs.

  Pat Breshears, mother of John’s girlfriend Lin, became an expert in the care and feeding of cubs and also supervised a half-dozen other human moms.

  One of them, an artist named Penny Bishonden, became the cubs’ best friend, and eventually an expert trainer and vet tech in Soledad Canyon. Penny had wonderful instincts about her “foster children’s” need for play and the joy of discovery. One day, for example, she placed a skateboard on her angled driveway. Within moments a cub, with no coaching whatsoever, walked over to the skateboard, sniffed it, mounted it, and began riding it. I was enchanted by that and determined to use it.

  In an early version of the Roar script, there was a scene on the African house veranda in which the big cats demolish the newly arrived family’s luggage, ripping the bags to pieces and scattering clothing everywhere. Needless to say, that was an easy one. All we had to do was turn them loose with that luggage and let them be themselves, and sure enough, they destroyed it perfectly and had a great time doing it.

  There was a skateboard among the family’s possessions. I excitedly suggested that we simply place it among the luggage and let one of the cats discover it.

  Noel said no. Skateboards, he said, were “out of style,” and it would make the scene look dated.

  I know, right?

  So just before we shut down production for the winter, I privately asked Jan and the crew to come in for a few hours while Noel was occupied elsewhere. Cameras were set up, decimated luggage and clothing were scattered around on the veranda, and the cats were let in. They milled around, they sniffed everything, they batted the debris around, while we waited, and waited . . . and finally, it was our lion cub Lena to the rescue. She closely examined the skateboard, put her paw on it, and felt it move, and off she went for a few minutes of skateboard play that was as much fun for us as it was for her. Even Noel “Skateboards Are Out of Style” Marshall had to admit it was irresistible, and that scene ended up in the final cut of Roar.

  A scene that was supposed to be funny that still makes me cringe was the result of Noel’s bright idea to get inspiration from some of the old silent-movie Mack Sennett comedies while he was writing the script. A sequence he enthusiastically borrowed involved an actor falling down, a shelf above him collapsing, and everything on the shelf raining down on him and knocking him out. Ha-ha.

  In Noel’s interpretation, I’d be the hapless victim of the collapsing kitchen shelf in the African house, with a jar of honey being one of the items crashing down on my head. But according to Noel, the jar of honey would tip over and pour honey on my head instead, and one of the big cats would stroll over and lick it off as it dripped down my face.

  The day came to shoot the scene. I got into position beneath a shelf filled with lightweight prop bottles and jars and the glass honey jar. The direction was given to “Roll film,” several big cats were let loose around me like a gang of goofballs, and the shelf collapsed on cue. The props bounced harmlessly off my head, and then here came the honey jar, which, instead of tipping over on the rigged shelf and pouring honey all over me as it was supposed to do, stayed upright and came plummeting down and bonked me on the top of my head, raising a bump that lasted for days.

  I was livid at Noel and at the inexperienced propman, who admitted that they “hadn’t had a chance” ahead of time to make sure the shelf and the honey jar were rigged properly. In other words, I thought, they forgot, which, as far as I was concerned, was as lame an excuse as the scene itself.

  The bump on my head went away, I reunited with my sense of humor and my determination, and a few days later we tried it again. This time everything worked perfectly—the shelf collapsed, props bounced off of me, the honey jar tipped over on the shelf, and honey began dripping down my head and face while five or six leopards and cougars leaped around the room, bouncing off the walls.

  As luck would have it, the first one to notice me was Pepper, a stocky black lightning-fast leopard with what I’ll politely call an edgy personality. I sat on the floor with my eyes tightly closed and held perfectly still while I felt his claws on my right thigh, followed by his sandpaper tongue licking honey off my cheek. I couldn’t let myself breathe, nor could I let myself think, even for a moment, “What the hell am I doing?!” The handlers were about eight feet away, but what possible good could they have done if Pepper had suddenly decided to simply open his jaws and clamp his teeth around my face?

  I remember how deathly quiet the set was that morning.

  I remember the smell of Pepper’s breath and the feel of his rough tongue.

  I remember wanting desperately to jump up and escape but knowing my life depended on my not moving a muscle.

  I remember Noel quietly saying, “Cut,” opening my eyes, and finding the huge, cold hazel eyes of that black leopard staring back at me, less than four inches away.

  And I remember being helped to my feet once the cats had been removed and realizing, whether anyone else did or not, that we’d just shot one of the most dangerous scenes in the movie, and for the rest of the day I silently seethed at Noel for asking it of me.

  In the end, though, there was no way around it—I was the one who said yes.

  Finally it was Timbo’s scripted turn in front of the camera, time for his first written scene.

  He’d already improvised a scene that we’d managed to capture on film. Jan had long since become accustomed to photographing anything the animals did, which was often more inventive than anything Noel had planned for them. So Timbo had actually made his film debut when he came across a metal camper shell a workman had temporarily removed and placed on the ground near the elephant barn. Something about that camper shell either attracted Timbo or enraged him, and he promptly ripped it to pieces, folded it, and flattened the remains. It made for some dramatic footage and a very chagrined workman, who couldn’t imagine how he was going to believably describe this to his insurance company.

  We’d already had to warn everyone never to park near Timbo’s territory. He seemed to resent vehicles of any size, and he’d already sat on two hoods, totaling them and the cars they belonged to. If he could get to the smaller cars, he would overturn and demolish them. If he couldn’t, he also happened to have some expertise at rock throwing, so not even distant windshields were completely safe.

  Timbo’s major scripted scene was a big one. Once the family had escaped from the cats in their rowboat (despite Tongaru’s improvised best efforts to keep us on dry land), they would paddle their way into a cove, only to find themselves confronted by an elephant. To their horror, the elephant would overturn the boat, dumping all of us into the lake, pick me out of the water and drop me back in again, and then destroy the boat. Very dram
atic, and even though Timbo was a novice, we were sure we had exactly the right elephant for the job. He’d been with us for five years, and he and I had become great pals by then.

  Unfortunately, as we discovered during what we loosely called rehearsals, Timbo didn’t have the slightest interest in destroying the rowboat. It took us a while to figure out that, based on his unfortunate encounter with the camper shell, he might be more inclined to destroy a metal boat than a wooden one. Off went the propman to buy several metal boats, which we aged a little for authenticity, and we were ready to roll film.

  With a whole lot of practice, I’d finally learned how to be properly picked up by a trained elephant, thanks to Tim Cooney.

  “All you do when he comes toward you,” he said while coaching Timbo and me, making it sound so simple, “is quickly cross your right leg over your left one. Otherwise, his trunk will go between your legs and you’ll end up hanging in midair in a very, uh, awkward position.”

  I knew my right leg from my left one, so how hard could this be? “Okay, let’s try it,” I announced, full of false bravado.

  Timbo came toward me. I “quickly” crossed my right leg over my left one, but apparently not quickly enough, because I ended up in that exact, uh, awkward position.

  I started yelling at Timbo to let me down, prompting a half-dozen crew members to come running. Their reward was the sight of me hanging desperately on to an elephant with his trunk between my legs.

  It took a whole lot of rehearsing, but Timbo and I finally mastered “the lift” enough times in a row that I assured Noel we were ready for our close-up. So, with the film rolling, here came the family into the cove in our metal rowboat. Timbo overturned the rowboat and dumped us into the water, then picked me up as I screamed and flailed . . . and refused to drop me back into the water. Instead, take after take, he lifted me up, ran onshore, and dropped me into the sand.