The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

Comic Adventures in a Wild Animal Studio B( ny insisted on his taking the job of assistant director, said it would do him good and she didn't want any coward for a husband. Besides that jobs was scarcer'n goose teeth. He would either take the job or forget the Lohengrin music. Then too, if he was on the lot with her she could watch that he didn't get into bad company over at the bar-room. That was one place he was not going to visit, if she had her way. He took the job. The first day the new troupe went to work they was using the third cage for a shot of the pumas with Madame Ottowa. One of the kitty-cats got ambitious and crawled along the top of the cage and in the shade of the fake trees until it was right above where Joe was standing. Kitty puma forgot herself and thumped her tail so hard against the wire netting that it caused Joe to look up at her just as she was ready to make the leap. Joe had just got hisself a new suit, one with the stripes running up and down. And he was proud of that suit. He looked at kitty. He thought of that new suit. He wondered if it would shrink if wet. Then kitty crouched a bit lower to the top rail. Joe did a back flip and into the six-foot tank of water that was planted in front of the camera house just as the puma hit the border of that concrete bath tub. And cats big or small don't like water. He dived under the partition and came up right into our cage. His suit did shrink. JUST as he was getting his breath back who should wander by the cage but the insurance man, out to collect Joe's monthly payment. We had an old lion in the cage, Numi, who was too lazy to even chase a darky, and lions would rather have a taste of brunet meat than anything else. The wiseheimer insurance man hollers into Joe, "If I catch you in any more cages with animals, your policy is cancelled." Gee, if he had been there two minutes sooner when Joe took his Saturday night bath ahead of time what would he have said? Well, I got Joe into my dressing room. I loaned him some of the trainer's clothes and got one of the boys to hustle him a drink of Hootch. It was darn cold and then he needed something for his nerves. Who should come tearing into my room just as Joe downed a big hooker but Betty. I tried to explain, but she just wouldn't listen; she had heard Big Leo, the lion, was greedily licking the grease paint off the back of Joe's neck. Joe, who was playing the role of the preacher, kept on reading the Bible like an exhorter at a camp meeting. He didn't know what else to do. 94 the commotion and thought Joe had been drinking when he went into the cage. Well, after I had got her director and about half of the staff to quell the riot that she started she decides to give Joe one more chance. One more drink and out he went from her life, like a railroad man's lantern when you have to use it. THE next day Joe had to arrange for a wedding in the lion's cage. Just a cute idea that hadn't been done but about twenty times. But the scenario writer had never seen one of those scenes shot and here was a good chance to have that lack taken care of. I had got the street car company to haul out about 2,000 orphans to see the big show and the old man, generous like, gave them the show free. He only saved about $1,000 that way. But do you suppose he would give them peanuts and pop corn, not on your life. The old bartender across the street came through though like a trouper. He made the brewery salesman stand the gaff for the ice cream. They shot the scenes of the crowd in the morning and then had lunch. The light was just right in the cage about two o'clock. Joe had hired a ham actor by the name of Watson to play the preacher. Gay, who now runs the lion farm out at El Monte, was the groom. Madame Ottowa was the bride. They were going to use three lions in the scene. Each lion was to be on a pedestal, the pedestals arranged like the points of a triangle. The cage was a half -circled affair with quarter inch bars about four inches apart. It was probably thirty feet across in its widest part, just big enough so the trainers outside the cage couldn't reach any of those brutes with the rods that they use around the cages. The three cats they was going to use had never been together before in their lives. That was a nice situation for what happened afterwards. They was each from a separate bunch of animals. And those animal trainers are more temperamental about their i^---'