Courtesy of Jody
This is some great vintage footage of World Jungle Compound/Jungleland/Thousand Oaks. Featuring Mel Koontz, who achieved immortal fame, as the trainer of Jackie the MGM lion, who opens his mouth as the roars are dubbed in, that we see at the opening of each MGM movie. Note the footage of the tiger, where he limps across the compound. It looks like one of those jungle bred Sumatrans, that only the most skilled worked with back in the day. De clawing will cause that, but all young trainers of this era have been assured that "the old school" never did that, and it is a modern occurrence in the great steel arena. Not!!!! There are some interesting comments on the below link. I think it shows how the public perception/acceptance has changed, and in order to survive industry's had to change also.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
World Jungle Compound/Jungleland/Thousand Oaks
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
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15 comments:
Satan besides having the "limp" seems to have something odd about his eyes as well. I will also note that the worst acting on the video is not that of Dynamite the leopard however the 30 second hand shaking after Mr. Anthony and Mr. Koontz escape death from above,,,LOL
Casey,
I have seen glass eyes, cow eyes,
moon eyes, wall eyes, and sqallor eyes and doe eyes. If I had to guess Satan's eyes looked like ketamine eyes. Did you note the cougar at the end in the group photo being jerked into a "cute and charming" photo shoot, and attempting to bite the hand that feeds it?
Wade
Yeah I was leaning towards intoxication, you know how those movie stars have it though, always getting out of a R.U.I (roaring under the influence) LOL. The whole corny scene at the end is a classic including the cougar. My how things change...
Casey,
Lucky for you your name is not Wade Burck, or some would suggest you are being disrespectful off your roots, boy!!!!!
Wade
Wade - I don't know who sent this to you, but it wasn't me. By the way, in the video it says Jackie is the son of Leo, the MGM lion. I did notice the handling of the cougar at the end and wondered how long they all stood there before they had to separate everyone.
Jeannie
Jeannie,
My mistake. It was Jody. I will correct it. Jackie was used after his father, for a new look to the opening credits.
Wade
Truly bizarre. Probably phenobarb since film predates ketamine by a few years. Maybe it was the newsreel quality of the footage, but none of the animals looked very good.
Ben,
Old newsreel is grainy. But I have never seen it make coat's/mane's look matted and dirty. Note the picture below of the arena. Look like a world class entertainment facility, along the lines of Disneyland that we have been lead to believe? In addressing history, it illustrates why the need for change, and the great strides that have been made to advance/improve. No disrespect intended.
Wade
Roger Smith could probably give us a better idea of what condition Stark's cat were in a few years later when he was there. She managed to avoid the newsreel. (And yeah, I was using the grainy footage to alibi what appeared to be a half-assed operation.) When I was 18 or so I work for a while at a place called Gatorland in FL on A1A a couple miles from Marineland. Despite the name it wasn't really a reptile attraction. The St Augustine Alligator Farm up the road was the creepy crawly destination. Basically Gatorland was a road side zoo with cats and primates, and reptiles and birds and animal shows. Because it had been around for forty years it had a reputation for being a pretty good animal attraction. In reality most of the animals were ill housed and while not under-fed, the diets were poor quality. And a lot of the "show animals" were either declawed/defanged or drugged (the bear.) I worked in a couple places there were worse, and several that were much much better during the years I was in FL. What struck me about Gatorland was that it had a "reputation." The Jungeland footage reminded me of that. On the one hand the legit alibi is that some people didn't know any better. On the other hand it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when you feed a lot of roadkill you end up with obvious parasite problems... That what looks like a "fat" cat may be a cat will a distended gut and a whole lot of hook worms. Whenever I see matted dull coats and such I wonder about how well very basicneeds are being met.
I am not to worried about being banished for lack of respect, LOL. I did the "Hollywood" thing for awhile and found that "mean ol' circus" trainers, are already looked down upon. I found it very odd that the other 7 trainers on one movie felt that way. We were training mice and parrots which involve zero physical stimulus. And it was there that I learned cruelty is not always physical abuse. One huge difference is that a movie animal doesn't have to be "trained", a circus animal has to perform a conditioned response hundreds of times under a multitude of conditions, where as a movie animal just has to "luck" through something a few times in a very controlled environment. When I explained to some of the other trainers that what they did was much easier because they could "stack the deck" or just "muscle" the animal through things, I became rather unpopular. The biggest problem in the movie animal industry is what happens to the animal when it is no longer needed. At the one facility, I personally purchased 37 small parrots for a movie which starred a small parrot. Several months after the film wrapped I visited the compound (yes I managed to make a couple friends,,,LOL) not one was there, and no one new where they went (probably sold as pets I hope) regardless if I bought 37 tigers and used them for one season, then sold them as pets at the end of the year, I assume it would draw some suspicion. I would also note, what happens on the set, and what happens in the barn (just like in the circus) can be two completely different things.
Casey,
Good points all, but I don't know if getting rid of a couple of dozen parrots or mice, can be equated to a couple of dozen tigers, any more then getting rid of a couple of dozen horses.
Wade
Ben,
I don't know if we would get an unbiased review of what the place was really like. I'll bet you there would be alibi's such as yours, and then saber rattling if you didn't just go, "wow, that's so and so telling me, it must be fact." I knew someone very well who worked there, loved all of his mates dearly, but if were a alive today would confirm what we are seeing. He had some real tales. I think like Gatorland, some places because of longevity take on a "mystic" that was developed ions ago, and it is assumed that it is great. Years later you look, and realize it did not advance in comparison to other places, but had retained its "perception" of greatness. Historically, the Gatorlands are so important and I love them as you do, RJR does, or any other Zoo Fan. They are a part of our youth, or dreams of working with animals, but also the reality of why things needed to change and have changed and will change more.
Wade
Not sure if Caey's point speaks to production companies, or some trainers, or both. I knwo it speaks to production companies, where any animals actually purchased for a film are really props. The classic story involves the rhesus monkeys that live in the Ocala National Forest. Tour guides at Silver Springs like to say that the original monkeys "escaped" during the filming of a Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan project. But in reality whenever a project was finished at Silver Springs it was easier to turn the now "surplus" animals loose in the forest... So Florida has monkeys in Ocala, iguanas in Miami, pythons and caimans in the glades, and parrots in half the towns up and down the west coast. Some originally from movie stock, some because at some some point an idiot decided the best way to get rid of an animal was to let it go. It probably just dumb luck that we don't have tigers in the Hollywood Hills.
Ben,
That sounds like something that needed to be regulated with laws and enforcement of those laws.
Wade
Anonymous,
That was the standard for sleeping dens and it is dependent on how much time is spent in them. They no longer have chimp shows although that has no relevance. I was going to mention taking them out on a regular basis and turning them loose in the banana groves, but I didn't think it was relevant. If you think pigs in mud are happy, you should see young chimps in a banana tree. You have never heard so many grunts and groans. They did love their benches, as they were glad to get back and sleep it off. Use your assigned #, moron.
Wade
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