To convince everyone that Lou is as a great wild animal trainer, Bud dresses up in a lion costume so that it will appear that Lou is fearless while in close proximity to a lion. The charade goes awry, however, and Lou ends up locking himself inside the big cage with a real lion. Believing that it is only Bud, Lou’s casual indifference to his situation astounds his onlookers. |
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Africa Screams #14
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3 comments:
This lion can be spotted in many pix of Beatty's act during this period. He never seems to be noticing what's going on around him. Maybe he was a safest lion to be putting in with strangers.
I hope some of our trainers will comment on this.
Ole Whitey,
I too have noticed the same lion in many Beatty act pictures. Lions tend to be more distinctive then other felines, such as tigers. This particular lion is as distinctive as Jacob's Sheeba, actually. I just assumed given the old school American trainers only worked with "jungle bred killers," regardless of how many pictures we can find of them holding bottle babies like European trainers, that it was simply straight out of darkest Africa savage, blood thirsty, man killer look.
Wade Burck
This is Simba, the one we discussed here long ago, who made it to 27. George Scott told me in 1964 that Simba then was going on 24, making him born circa 1940, and around age 9 here. When I first knew him, as Whitey suggests, was in his own world, going blind, and well into senility.
Going by what George said, Simba was 27 when he was among the 20 sold by Jungleland to Lion Country Safari, in Florida, in 1967. Benny Bennett and Tony Gentry drove them over in our old Keystone trailer, pulled by the ancient Rio. Bennett said the Lion Country boys darted all 20 and dragged them off the truck into a pile. He said he hoped that old Simba mercifully never woke up.
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