Tippi: A Memoir

by Tippi Hedren

  We shot Foxfire Light in Branson, Missouri, and as often happens when you least expect it, fate stepped in and changed my life again.

  I’d made some lovely new friends in Branson, and one of them lost a close family member just as we finished shooting the movie. I stayed for the funeral and the wake, which was actually a series of amazing parties celebrating the family member’s life.

  Picture this scene accompanied by Rossano Brazzi singing “Some Enchanted Evening”: On the third day of these celebrations I walked into a room full of people in cocktail wear, and there stood a tall, impossibly handsome man in his early fifties. Our eyes met, and he immediately approached me and introduced himself.

  His name was Luis Barrenechea. The gorgeous offspring of a Basque father and a French mother. Seventeen days older than I was. Divorced. Smart. Wonderful sense of humor. Charming. Romantic. Attentive. A Korean War veteran. Wealthy and successful from decades in the steel fabrication industry. I mentioned “gorgeous,” right? Used to be a drinker. “Used to be” worked for me. Or, to put it another way, if I’d made a list of everything I was looking for in a man, even though I wasn’t looking for one at all, Luis Barrenechea had every single quality on the list.

  We never left each other’s side at that party.

  After several spellbinding hours, he glanced at his watch and said, “I’m going back to Los Angeles,” then turned to me and asked, “Are you coming with me?”

  “Yes,” I answered without a second thought.

  We were in love and inseparable from that moment on.

  It was thrilling.

  His daughter and I were alone in the car one day, on our way to do some shopping several months into Luis’s and my relationship, when out of nowhere she said, “Don’t marry my dad.”

  I didn’t ask her why. I didn’t ask her what she meant. I just chose to pretend she hadn’t said a thing and quickly changed the subject. I guess we don’t hear what we don’t want to hear.

  Luis and I were married on February 15, 1985. It was a small, lovely wedding. Melanie was my matron of honor.

  We had a beautiful house in Arcadia, a few miles northeast of Los Angeles, and a fantastic party house built around a pool, formerly owned by William Holden, in Palm Springs. I loved both those houses, but Shambala was still my home, and we spent three or four nights a week there, without a single complaint from Luis. He quickly fell under the spell of the animals and couldn’t have been more supportive of my passionate dedication to them.

  He was just as supportive of my desire to work, and I had the best time doing guest-starring roles in TV movies and series and a few feature films. I did one episode of The Bold and the Beautiful and have been addicted to it ever since. Melanie and I even got to work together a couple of times, once on a movie called Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton and once on, of all things, an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a reprise of Hitchcock’s hit series in the 1950s and early 1960s. Hitchcock had passed away by then, and I wondered if he was spinning in his grave knowing I was working again, especially on something that bore his name.

  Luis was every bit as supportive of my deep love for my family. He couldn’t have been more gracious when my mom came to stay with us for a while, and he cheered me on when I insisted on taking a trip to Texas for one of the most important events of my life.

  Melanie and Steven Bauer had divorced in 1987, and thirteen years after their brief first marriage, she and Don Johnson reconciled. On October 4, 1989, in Austin, Texas, Melanie gave birth to their exquisite daughter, Dakota. She asked me if I could come, as if there’s a force on this earth that could have stopped me. It meant the world to me to be there, and it speaks volumes about the inclusiveness Melanie inspires that both Melanie and Steven’s four-year-old son Alexander and Don and Patti D’Arbanville’s seven-year-old son Jesse were in Austin as well to meet their new baby sister.

  For several years I woke up every morning so peacefully, ecstatically content. I was happily married to a man who was everything I’d ever wanted in a husband and partner. We had a large group of fun, stimulating, lovely friends and a busy social life. My awesome daughter had given me two precious grandchildren. My mom, at her own insistence, had moved to a nursing home, where she was happy and fairly healthy and even had a boyfriend. I had my beloved animals and staff at Shambala, and the Roar Foundation was off and running. My acting career was picking up steam again. I almost had more blessings than I could count.

  But sometimes I can’t even believe how naive I can be. I thought I was marrying a sober man. It honestly never occurred to me that “used to be a drinker” meant “might be a drinker again someday if I feel like it.”

  I didn’t even ask, “Why?” when Luis’s daughter said, “Please don’t marry my dad.”

  Luis and I had been married for eight years when he started drinking again. There was nothing subtle about it. I’ve never seen a human being change so quickly and so dramatically. When he was sober, he was the most wonderful man I’d ever met. When he was drunk, he was a cruel, vicious monster. He never raised a hand to me in anger, it was all verbal, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

  I walked out on him several times.

  I didn’t just send him to rehab three times, I went with him to rehab three times to be supportive, because I really, really wanted him to beat that demon in him so I could go on living with the man I married and loved so much.

  The demon won.

  Luis and I had a terrible fight one night in our house in Arcadia. It ended when he passed out drunk on the floor.

  I stepped over him, went home to Shambala, and after nine years of marriage, filed for divorce.

  “I’m not going to do that anymore.”

  Sixteen

  I took a lot of long walks through the compounds when I left Luis and settled back in to Shambala full-time. The animals always helped me reset my compass to true north. They still do.

  Maybe, I decided, I’m not good at marriage.

  Or maybe I’m just not good at picking the right man to marry.

  I certainly didn’t get married three times because I felt less than whole without a man in my life. I’m already whole, all by myself. I’m enough. It’s no one’s job but mine to fulfill me. I’m content being alone. I always have been, and I always will be. So enough marriages for me. I was done. Luis made his choice to start drinking again and let alcohol turn him into someone I couldn’t and wouldn’t live with. I made my choice to help as best I could and, in the end, refuse to live with an abuser. We were both entitled to make our choices, move on and let it go.

  I’m not one to harbor old hurts and resentments. If nothing else, as a friend of mine once said, it’s terrible for the complexion. Clinging to anger, being rigid and vengeful and unforgiving, shows up on the face, and it’s not a good look. Aging takes enough of a toll without piling on sags and wrinkles because of past wrongs I can’t go back and change. I’ve had some tightening done around my neck and jawline, with a little scar behind each ear, but I’m not about to subject myself to a facelift at the age of eighty-six, especially when we’ve all seen how badly those can turn out. So, if for no other reason than sheer vanity . . .

  Thank you again, Peter, for Melanie.

  Thank you again, Noel, for Shambala.

  Thank you again, Luis, for eight of the best years of my life. Eight out of nine is better than none.

  Besides, I was too busy and had too many blessings to sit around feeling sorry for myself.

  The acting jobs kept right on coming, with appearances in a lot more TV series episodes, TV movies, and feature films.

  Mom passed away on October 31, 1994, at the age of ninety-five—devastating for Patty and me, of course, but we were so happy for her. She died with the greatest peace, and she lived every moment of her life until the very end. She played the piano every single day at her nursing home in Las Vegas to keep her fingers limber, refusing to let her arthritis limit her, and she’d taken up oil painting in h
er seventies. (Daddy good-naturedly took up complaining about the price of frames when she first started.) She loved painting landscapes and castles, and she won a few blue ribbons at art shows. I have several of her paintings, and pictures everywhere of that infectious smile of hers. She’s with me every day.

  Melanie and her new husband Antonio Banderas presented me with my third grandchild, my darling Stella.

  And, in the meantime, the population of Shambala continued to grow.

  We gladly took in two of Michael Jackson’s tigers from Neverland Ranch—Thriller and Sabu. I was really disappointed that he didn’t call, not once, to check on them, nor did he ever send a dime for their food and upkeep.

  We acquired a very special liger (lion father, tiger mother) named Patrick. He came from a horrible roadside zoo in Illinois, where he’d been badly abused, and we moved him into the compound right next to my house. I’ll never forget the day he arrived. I opened the gate to his new home, and he stared in at it for a long time as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Then he jumped up in the air and joyfully ran the full length of it, just because he could. It became our daily tradition that I would go out and sit beside him, with the fence between us, and just talk to him, about life and love and my promise to make up for every bad day he ever had. At some point he would look at me with his big, beautiful, playful eyes as if he were saying, “Let’s run!” and he’d run the length of his large compound with me running right alongside him, chain link between us. Within a few weeks he learned the sound of my car, and I’d arrive home to find him eagerly waiting for me at the corner of the fencing. There was a very special connection between Patrick and me, that’s one thing I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt.

  Then one late afternoon Patrick was being given his medication, with his huge roast beef dinner waiting for him nearby. I happened to glance over to see that his roast was being swarmed by what looked like dozens of yellow jackets, so thick that I couldn’t even see the meat beneath them. “Oh, no you don’t,” I thought, “that’s my Paddy’s dinner, not yours,” and I marched over to reach through the chain link and brush them away.

  Patrick, in the meantime, was watching me with his usual adoration . . . until I apparently got too close to his food. Suddenly his expression changed from adoration to rage. The most blood-curdling sounds came out of him as he charged at me like a locomotive and leaped up on the fence. He was fully prepared to rip me to shreds, and I jumped back in the nick of time.

  What absolutely amazed me was that even after the decades I had spent working and living with wild animals, even after Ozzie Bristow’s comment about Dandylion all those years ago, “He loves me, but he could also kill me,” my feelings were hurt. My Paddy, my close, dear friend, my great pal, my buddy—how could he?

  After about five minutes I slapped myself and came to my senses. What was I thinking? It wasn’t personal! I should have known that as well as anyone! It’s not that wild animals in captivity can’t be trusted. They can be trusted—to be wild animals, to have countless centuries of genetic instincts in their DNA. We humans who expect anything more of them—or more accurately, anything less—are arrogant, naive, and downright stupid . . . all of which I’d been, all the way back to letting a full-grown lion named Neil have free rein of my Knobhill house and close proximity to my daughter, trainer or no trainer just a few short feet away.

  I started thinking a lot about the fact that our government was allowing apex predators at the top of the food chain, some of the most dangerous animals in the world, to be bred and sold as pets and/or as an offbeat way to make money. I knew it was wrong, I knew it was obscene, and I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t take action and try my damnedest to do something about it.

  I coauthored a bill with one of our zoological veterinarians, and we made a four-minute video—four minutes, we were told, was as long as we could expect any politician to give us their undivided attention. I took the bill to my congressman, Buck McKeon, in Washington and gave him a quick synopsis of our concerns. He didn’t seem too enthusiastic until he watched the video. Then he turned to me, looked me in the eye, and said, “I’ll do it.”

  The Captive Wildlife Safety Act became a law in 2003. Of course, laws are only as effective as the people who enforce them, but it’s made a difference, and I’m proud of that.

  The more I researched, though, the more I realized that while the Captive Wildlife Safety Act was a valuable law, it didn’t go far enough.

  There was a horrifying, highly publicized tragedy in Ohio in which a man with seventy-some wild animals threw open the gates to their cages one day, let them out, and then committed suicide. In the terrible resulting chaos, the police came in and killed all the animals.

  A four-year-old boy in Texas lost his arm to his uncle’s “pet” tiger.

  A ten-year-old boy went with his father to visit a friend who had a collection of lions and tigers. The friend enjoyed bringing out a lion or tiger to be photographed with visitors. Tigers happen to be very interested in children, so the instant the friend opened the gate, the tiger blasted out of its cage and headed straight for the little boy. The friend raced to help the child and, in the process, left the gate open. The lion came charging through the gate as well, and both the lion and the tiger attacked the ten-year-old. The boy survived, but he’ll spend the rest of his life as a quadriplegic.

  An eleven-year-old girl went into a tiger’s cage, under her stepfather’s supervision, to groom the tiger. The instant the stepfather closed the cage gate behind her, the tiger jumped on her, sank its teeth into her neck, and killed her. Her heartbroken biological father was on the news, sobbing, “Why aren’t there laws against this?!”

  Why indeed?

  Not one of those horror stories should have happened, and not one of them is the animals’ fault.

  And yes, obviously, there but for the grace of God go I.

  So, armed with all these facts and more, I coauthored another bill, the Big Cat Public Safety Protection Act, the original intention of which was to stop the private possession and breeding of big cats.

  As I write this, in 2016, the bill is still languishing in Congress, years after I took it to Congressman Buck McKeon.

  They haven’t heard the last of me yet.

  We don’t discriminate at Shambala. You don’t have to be a big cat or an elephant to melt our hearts and find a home here.

  A man from nearby Acton called one day to ask for help. A feral cat had given birth to a litter of six kittens in his garage. He’d caught the cat and had her spayed, but he couldn’t begin to care for all those kittens.

  “They’re about eight weeks old,” he told me. “I was wondering if you could help me find homes for them.”

  “Absolutely. Bring them over,” I assured him. Between the staff and our visitors, there’s no shortage of animal lovers at Shambala.

  Wouldn’t you think I’d know myself better than that by now? I took one look at those six incredible little kitten faces meowing up at me saying, “Hi, Mom!” and thought, “God help anyone who tries to take these babies away from me.”

  There were five males and one female, and I decided this was a perfect opportunity to pay homage to various costars and loved ones. In no time at all I was sharing my home and my bed with Rod Taylor, Sean Connery, Marlon Brando, John Saxon, Antonio Banderas, and Melanie Griffith. As soon as they were old enough, I had them spayed and neutered, and I have to say, it felt like a luxury to watch six kittens play without doing the thousands of dollars worth of damage, as even one lion or tiger cub is capable of. Their favorite things to do were wrestle, pounce on each other and my head, cuddle, and last but certainly not least, sit in the windowsills and tease the big cats living closest to the house, which I had to teach them very early on was not a good idea.

  A few years later a very handsome adult male cat came strolling into the house, looking around as if he were trying to decide whether or not to buy the place. To this day I have no idea where he ca
me from, but he’s been in charge here ever since. I deviated from the tradition of naming him after costars and loved ones and named him Johnny Depp. Antonio and Dakota have worked with him. I haven’t, nor have I ever even met him. I’m just a fan. He and I were both at an event recently, but somehow I couldn’t quite work up the nerve to walk over, introduce myself, and say, “I named my cat after you.” On one hand, he might have taken it as the compliment I intended. On the other more likely hand, he might have thought “Yikes!” and suddenly remembered that he was late for an appointment as far away from me as possible.

  And then there was my smart, funny, adorable potbellied pig Winston Churchill, in honor of Churchill’s quote, “I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” Winston shared a little house adjacent to mine with my beautiful serval Ariel, and they were great friends.

  This should go without saying, but in case it doesn’t—none of the adopted domestic animals are ever, ever allowed to wander freely around Shambala. No good could possibly come from that.

  It’s a source of some fascination to visitors here that the property is also home to a large number of very loud, very entitled ravens. They’re not at Shambala because they happened to see The Birds and thought it would be funny to gather at my house. They’re at Shambala because we serve meat to the big cats, and ravens happen to love meat. In fact, they’re very aggressive about dive-bombing the meat in the big cats’ compounds at mealtime, and yes, an occasional raven has lost its life to a huge swatting paw in the process. I hate to see it, but I have to admit, some part of me always wishes I could ask them, “What did you think was going to happen?”