Ridiculous CrimeThe actress Tippi Hedren and her whole family once made a certifiably ridiculous movie. A little joint called ROAR. With a cast of more than 100 untrained lions and a very loose script, it took years and millions to make. Was the set safe? Not on your life. And the biggest shame is that almost no one got to see it.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hi. Hello, Hi, I'm Elizabeth.
Hey, what's up? Clyde?
What's up? Zaren?
Yes?
Do you know it's ridiculous?
Oh my god, I do Elizabeth hit d n A.
That is so ridiculous.
Right, yeah, that's it. Roll credits.
OK, So honestly talk this is brought to you back.
Yeah. The thing I wanted to tell you about.
Is I've been This is a production of My Heart Radio.
Science is like a thing I care about, as you know, right, and I really bothered now because of how people are doing science. It's I mean, it was bad enough when it was like, oh how do I fight to get a grant like publish in Parish? Right now it's like my science is actually AI and I'm going to have an NFT And it's just like so annoying because everything's being compromised. So I want there to be real science. And the gender stuff has made it also a lot of science be corrupted now because they're trying to use stuff. So like, I just like to prove to people that you we sciences do not know fully all the stuff that everybody who doesn't know science is so certain about. If you ask the scientists, they are like, actually, we don't know that for certain up telling the people that this is. For instance, there was this story right about this woman. She had a baby with her husband. Right then, for whatever reason, she gets a DNA test and then the DNA test comes back that the father is not the father, and the mother's like, no, it has to be you. I didn't sleep with anyone. He's like, yeah, right, who is the father? Right, and so he's like they get another test, right, and then they get tested again and again. Every single time it comes up that he's not the father and it's somebody else, and he's getting pissed, right, So the family they get divorced, right, Yeah, it's bad. And then the father doesn't want to have anything to do with this child. It's not his it's evidence of his wife's cheating. Right, So he then like, you know, for whatever reason, they don't talk. Years later, another DNA test is done on this same child and they're able to get this man's you know, DNA I guess, or maybe just use an old sample, and they prove that the father is actually the uncle of so this guy's brother.
Oh.
This guy's like, I don't have her brother. I'm an only child. So the mother knows this. She knows that her up for ex has no siblings, so she's like, no, that can't be right.
Someone adopted out.
No, Elizabeth, you know you love parasitic twins, God, I do. So this guy in Utero had a twin brother that he ate or absorbed, and then it's still in his body. His DNA is floating around in his body. You can find it in different parts of his body. So apparently some of it, a lot of it settled in his testes because he made the sperm. His brother made the sperm that impregnated his wife. So he he's yeah, caimera. So you have his parasitic twin fathered his son or his child.
Wait a second, I'm trying to, like my the gears in my brain, like, are trying to.
A man's unborn twin fathered the child that caused him to get divorced. Because of DNA testing and all of our certainty that the DNA says, it's not how this works. Yeah, don't be so certain about this stuff. The DNA people, which they should probably tell you this is, it's not an exact science exactly.
Wow.
Because of things like this, did.
The couple get back together?
I did, wish I had that update for you. Are ridiculous.
Wow, that's one hundred percent ridiculous.
Yeah, make mind blowingly it really is.
Now I'm going to be like, you know what, also ridiculous, repeated maulings, repeated maulings. This is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
I know you heard that.
Let me let me preface this story with the fact that no one gets arrested or sued. I'm just kind of shocking when you hear it. There are so many crimes and OSHA violations, Okay that just never get reported naturally.
Yeah, I'm worked on I've worked on a lot of jump flights like that.
I assert that there are plenty of crimes here. But like I said, no one gets arrested, no one appears in court judge. Yeah, no, I just want to get that caveat out.
Okay, but there is a crime. Oh it's not one of my stories where like Zarah, this is a crime against nature.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, Okay, So in other News. You gotta love Tippy Hedron.
Oh hell yeah, just to change gears. Why not also loved her Alfred Hitchcock.
Well, yeah, she's an actress, model, insanely interesting woman. Yes, she's still kicking ninety four years old.
On you, Tippy. She lives up here, doesn't you?
Nor in California, No, southern California. I understand.
I don't know. I might be wrong. I don't know. I haven't doxed her, Elizabeth, I do not know.
You know what, It's okay, none of us know. Just like real scientists, we don't know exactly. She's Melanie Griffiths mom. What Yeah, I didn't know that Tod to Johnson's grandma so much.
I don't know Don Johnson's.
Former mother in law. Whoah. So she started out as a model in New York City.
Good place to do it, Big Coyote. Better than Kansas City. Yeah, it's way better.
She was successful, she was a cover girl. Good and then so she married. She's married to this guy named Peter Griffith. She marries he's an actor, not Peter Griffin. Family cartoon from family guys.
That would be difficult.
She did not marry a cartoon two dimensional love is really with a different name. Peter Griffin. This is Peter Griffin.
Thank you for clearing that for me. I was totally picturing them together. I'm like, I met here a two couple.
I ship found out about it, and I got really confused, and I walked in circles for about three hours.
That's why you were doing that?
Yeah, And then all of a sudden, I was like, oh, wait, no, he's not a cartoon. Yeah, he's a real man. You up with a real body full of blood and guts. You're on the wrong way with this, Okay, I am all right. So nineteen fifty one, Peter was seventeen and he was on a show called The Aldrich Family, not called Family Guy.
I think I've seen a title card, have you. Yeah, Like you know, like on the internet pictures where they're like this used to be a show, like that used to be a show. I don't have no idea otherwise.
Tippy was twenty one at the time. She was doing a walk on roll and Tippy was trippy. She fell, she tripped on her own foot, okay, and she fell into his arms and then they fell in love. I'm not joking, Like that's how they met.
She tripped into his arms and they fell in love right there.
And he looked at her and he was like hubba, hubba, hubba.
Arts like heart's coming out of his eyes.
Oh yeah, He's like, I am warm for your form and we will be together forever. So nineteen fifty seven they had a daughter, Melanie, later known for her work in Working Girl. Oh, Melanie Griffith, Melanie Griffith Boom, you know she award.
I love that movie Working Girl.
In the Malagro Beanfield War.
Is she rare? Yeah?
Bonfire the van I know that.
I watched that in school, like in high school. Clearly I did not watch it in that class because I had no idea she was in that, Yeah, exactly. So for some scenes some beans.
Redford's in that, Yeah, Bonfire of the Vanities. She's also the voice of Margollo and Stuart Little too. I mean that's probably where you know her best.
Probably was watching it the other day.
Yeah. So Tippy Tippy and the non cartoon guy they divorced in nineteen sixty one.
So they divorced sixty one.
Yeah, they divorced the sixty one. Tippy's holding it down as the breadwinner in the family got the talent, and Peter not a cartoon. He was a philandering drunk, so I knew it. Yeah. Still, when he passed it away in two thousand and one, Tippy went to the funeral along with four other ex wives. So that's just okay.
Now we get a lot about Peter.
I totally understand.
So he's kind of like, who's the guy from Hogan' zero Bob, Like that guy Hogan.
So after the divorce, Tippy and Melanie they moved to California.
Crane, Bob Crane, Bob Crane. There you go, they're in California.
They're in California. They moved to Sure and Oaks.
Yeah, top of the valley.
Not cheap living, no, No, And it's kind of like Beverly Hills adjacent.
Yeah sure, why not?
Yeah? And her career, Your career wasn't the same as it?
I bet not.
No, And she starts to kind of panic and she they rented like an expensive house there because she's thinking she'll maintain it. Now she's not making the money, it's not really coming in. She gets a call from her agent.
She's an older model. Yeah, well on a new town.
Yeah. Alfred Hitchcock had been watching the Today Show and he saw her in a commercial for a diet meal replacement drink called Sego se g O. Apparently it was two hundred and twenty five calories of can and you were supposed to drink for a day, so breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner. Totally no, just not a sense of that can's the dinner, so that you would eat nine thousand calories calories, Yeah, one hundred calories a day, so two twenty five per cane. Twenty five so you are only allowed to nine hundred calories, gotcha? And hitch is like, you know, that's great, but let's talk about the lady. Like, you know, so he loved her in the commercial. He's just captivated, and she's like, could please? You know. She was very convincing, apparently, like she's playing this woman who's happy and breezy while also hungry as hell.
Hitchcock's like, I have no interest in meal replacement until now.
Until now, And he's like, you know what, I want to sign her to a seven year contract. Wow, based on her slinging you know, the early version of slim fast that's nuts slim fast. That eliminates the sense ofble dinner, but.
They still had like a benz adrene in it. Yeah.
Yes, so Hitchcock. He made Tippy do a two day color screen test.
Two day wow.
Yeah, and she was a trooper. She nailed everything. She had to do stuff from like his films at had already.
Switching outfits, costumes, all that.
Yet Yeah, Hitchcock gets like obsessed.
Yeah it's bad, He.
Asked Edith Head the famous costumes, design clothes for Tippy, but not for like a movie or a TV show for Tippy because she hadn't been casting anything yet. Oh yeah, this is for like her everyday private life. Make her beautiful, but she already was, but dresser like a beautiful doll. Hitchcock taught Tippy everything that he thought she should know about the finer things, so like gustatory pleasures, food.
And one bone china.
Yeah yeah. Production designer Robert Boyle once said, quote, hitch always liked women who behaved like well bred ladies. Tippy generated that quality. So it's like the country club set, I suppose.
And he's married to Alma at this point.
So after all this to do, Hitchcock took Tippy to lunch at Chastens in la yeah probably you know, yeah, familiar.
You know that.
It was like the celebri spot in Beverly Hills, kind of right on the outskirts. Famous for its chili. I have the recipe for the chases chili. Yeah, and so.
Ou just like blowing afternoon everybody.
That's my new that's our new tradition. Chili for New Year's like Sego where it's like breakfast, lunch and dinner, just chili.
Chili.
That's the nine thousand calorie dinner anyway, Okay, Chasin's famous for chili. Like the glamour of old Hollywood. It faded away and it left us in nineteen ninety five. But at this lunch in nineteen sixty one, Hitchcock's wife Alma as you said, Lou Wasserman, head of Universe Universal, they're there at this lunch, Hitchcock gave Tippy a golden pin of three birds in flight. It had like little pearls on it.
Oh, like for like a a.
Approach, bro. Yeah, And then he asked her if she wanted the leading role in his upcoming film The Birds. Oh yeah, that was her big screen debut. Yes, and her signature is amazing, by the way, it's like just as elegant as she is, but she draws little birds.
Are kidding her signature really to this day, to this day, Wow, I got to add some animals to my signature.
I am going to do you know a bear?
Yeah, like a jaguar chasing a panther chasing a penguin.
Perfect, because I got.
Three three I need to have something at the animal.
On top of the Roman numeral pasding in order size with a side of chili. In nineteen sixty four, she married Noel Marshall.
Don't know that is it was.
He was her agent at the time. Oh interesting, and he was angling to.
Do the way to get the percentage.
Well yeah, he's angling to do more. So he wants to produce. He wants to direct, like that old mantra, I want to direct. So she did The Birds and then she did Marnie with hitch Remember she has that contract. And like I said, Hitchcock obsessed, Yeah, so obsessed. He adored her, but he was also really controlling, like.
Really obsessively controlling.
He wanted no, he wanted to know exactly when she left the set.
Like a pig alion thing.
Where yeah, where she went? Who she went? And saw and like how she spent all her time what did she eat? And he would decide, Okay, she eats this, this is who she can see, this is how she lives.
Back then in Hollywood, they were like decades deep in this type of behavior. I think it's normal, So everybody's going to.
Help them, right, But Tippy Tippy's like, I'm not into it. Good for her, So she cut ties with Hitchcock. Ice many years later, she spoke out about sexual harassment she endured for I bet, yeah, and that's.
Really the only harassment crossing the line.
Yeah, it was. It was, yeah, pretty much. That was the main reason she wanted to get away from it.
Good for her.
And so after that split though, her career wasn't so hot. And I've like wondered if he had had Yeah, but whatever, she's still getting work. It's just not at the level this before. She's just like, you know, well, let me tell you, okay. So in nineteen sixty nine, here's these are examples, she filmed two movies back to back in Africa, Satan's Harvests, Oh God, released in nineteen seventy and Miss Mister king Street's War nineteen seventy three, So here's the Satan's Harvest synopsis. When his uncle is killed in a horrible animal attack, American detective Cutter Murdoch arrives in South Africa to inherit his ranching empire. Murdoch's Johannesburg homecoming begins with an unexpected bang as the Miami based private Eye steps off the plane and a shot rings out. A man standing nearby is killed. Another uncle, Craig and his son Timothy, were passed over in the will, but in spite of this, have moved into the ranch. Cutter meets up with Marla Oakes, the daughter of an American game trapper, and once again an attempt is made on his life. Soon afterward, Cutter and his friend Bates are beaten up and left for dead at the bottom of a mind cheft. It turns out that Craig, Timothy, and an older brother Andrew, are part of an international drug smuggling outfit. Course and the ranch Cutter has inherited is used to grow marijuana that's.
Deep in the green. So this sounds like a knockoff of like the books I like to read, like I read Travis McGee books, and they're great, But this sounds like a knockoff version, like where they have like the Nick Carter to James Bonds, what.
Was the most Like someone did coke and wrote this script like it just is all over the place and this.
Is very much at the time was actually selling in like in the novel world Dan's getting made. Yeah, Satan's hard. It's like a Roger Corman style, like more international.
Well, then there's mister king Street's War.
What is that one?
Set in nineteen thirty nine, immediately prior to the onset of World War Two, an American couple, James king Street and his wife make their home and manage a wildlife preserve located between located between Italian governed Abyssinia and British Kenya. As war approaches, king Street's soul assistant is a native and his one eyed brother. What king Street and his spouse will not accommodate either the English or Italians, threatening their spread, antagonizing the commanding major of the latter group, and prepare to halt the invasion of their property.
So a defiant Cecil Roads story, but between ken and Ethiopia.
Get the drift, like, so this is what she's doing totally.
There's going to be an animal preserve or sanctuary. There's going to be a fight in Africa to preserve some land.
So she and her husband Nol, they're in Africa for a while.
Yeah, imagine they haven't animal sanctuary. Loved it.
They went on safari and Mozambia. Have you ever wanted to.
Do so far? Oh my god, I want you with a camera, but not a gun. But yes, yeah, I don't.
I just want to leave the animals alone. I don't need to go tramping through their house. I get it.
That's just yeah, I don't want to be like in one of those like ice cream trucks that they drive through where the people were like in the animals run up and drop their phone.
Not for me, Tippy and knowl. They went on safari. They saw something cool. They saw an abandoned game warden's house totally overrun by lions. They're just taking it over.
Thirty on the roofs.
Oh yeah, totally barbecuing out back. Yeah, so thirty of them. They'd been driven there by poachers and they were just like hanging out. It looked nuts, And so Noel turned to Tippy and he said.
I bet it's smelled crazy.
You know, we ought to make a movie about this, the lions, Yeah, taking over Yeah and Tippy. Tippy told Variety later on quote at the time, environmentalists were telling us that if we didn't do something right then to save the animals in the world, by the year two thousand, they'd be gone. I became concerned about this issue along with my then husband, and we decided to do a movie.
We're going to save the animals with third It's like the whole like a Judy Garland and Nicky Randy put on a.
Show exactly, We're gonna save the community Center. So back in the wilds of Sherman Oaks, Tippy and nol they had a family dinner, them and their kids, Tippy's daughter Melanie Griffith, Noel's sons Jerry and John. The couple pitched the idea of the movie to the kids. They wanted it to be a family affair, and the kids are basically adults, by the way, Like, let.
Me tell you the elevator pitch.
Yes, exactly, they're like over.
Eighteen, questioning their p's around. Yes.
So the kid like the kids at the table are down with it. They're like, yeah, their brother Joel, who was not at the dinner. He's like, count me out. I don't have anything to do with this.
But like he got your jewel or just smart kids smart.
And he got on board later for like production design in our direction, you know, they pulled him in. They needed a crew, but no one with any sense would sign on, So they wound up getting people new to town and who like needed work and were kind of misfits in the business. Yes, and then there was the cinematographer, a wild man, a tough man to work with, a yeller, a man who would go on to direct an excellent movie called Speed What yond Debont. Oh my god, he was the cinematographer.
Oh my god. Yeah, I've heard he's nuts.
Yeah. Oh yeah. So they had the cast, they had the crew, the human cast and crew. At least they needed lions.
They got their lions.
So let's take a break.
Lions. You can't just turn them loose on his set.
Oh just wait, Oh no, let's take a break. Let's listen to an obscene number of vets for days. We're going to keep the lights on basically, and when we come back, we'll talk lions.
Raw, yeah, roar.
That's the name of the movie what raw?
You were just like talking to me, give me some energy.
I was just kidding. Well, it was like a twofer, right because I was doing the hand like raw, and then I was going to climb up on the table, but then my knees hurt, so I didn't. But Ror is the name of the movie.
Is that R with an exclamation point.
It's an implied exclamation point like all caps. Yeah, it's like yeah, no, I don't know, it's any way you want it, but it's basically raw. So Noel and Tippy they needed lions and tigers and.
That for a movie called or You Met Your Bottom Dollar.
So they started talking to people in Hollywood who had lions, okay, and these trainers all told them the same thing, which is, you know, trained Hollywood, big cats are great on their own, but Tippy and Nol wanted at least thirty together, like they saw when they were on.
Yeah.
And the trainer are.
Like, you know what big, no, big, Nope, that's a pride.
Yeah it is, and you can't work with that many cats at once. So not listening to what these experts were saying, they just the couple just starts.
Buying up big cats. So they decided to make it happen.
And then you know what, they're like, you know what, we don't want trained animals anyway, Like I wanted to be realistic. I want the cats acting natural totally.
Do you think Henry Ford to give us the car.
Off? I don't want what you're selling anyway.
So they buy more lions.
They hit up zoos, animal control, animal circuses, like jerks who thought that the animals would make a good pet, but now they're thinking yeah, So they go and they pick up animals from just wherever ads in the paper and they take them to their house in Sherman Oaks, collecting multiple large jungle cats hanging out in the house Sherman Hoods.
And then and they're not trained as people, no, no.
So when they when that got too crowded and the neighbors complain and the.
Like circus cars like where they just put in.
So the lions are trashing the furniture in the house. They're in the house, they're eating the sofa. They loaded all the animals up and they took them to a compound that they bought in Solidad Canyon. It's like kind of between Palmdale and Santa Clarita in the middle of nowhere, the mountains north of La for No, California.
Exactly largely unhabited.
So you asked about like did they take a circus trolley?
Sure?
Yeah, they loaded the animals into a station wagon like I mentioned.
Like a circus train car.
But the ball took a lot of trips, like early station wagon.
Are you kidding with the word paneling?
They're like load up two by two Noah's ark, get in here in the back so solidad canyon, right. They bought land and a compound there from Steve Martin.
Okayann, not that.
Steve Steve Martin, the working wildlife animal trainer.
Oh that's the one whose career I followed exactly.
So of the compound, Tippy said, quote, are lions, tigers, elephant, leopards and panthers. Actually leopards and black coats rather than spotted ones, were joined by a few cougars. And then she also pointed out that quote their teeth are virtual peatrie dishes of bacteria, and being bitten is inevitable.
Wait where did that come in? You know, really let and being real cool and so knowing all that you haven't been.
Bitten, that knowledge was in her head swimming around and still she and Noel, her husband, bought up one hundred and fifty big cats.
Wait a minute, you just jungle fifty.
One hundred and fifty on forty acres of scrub land. Some of the lions are like five hundred pounds.
Yeah, I mean, how much is the fencing just for this?
The cost is outragious fencing.
And then you get into the meat.
They turn this compound, this ranch into the set for the movie. That's where they're going to film this New Africa. This is New Africa. And they tried to get all diddyan and done and like work together and brainstorm the plot. And Nol was going to write the script and the overall theme would be about protecting wildlife. And so they shop the idea around and no one wants to play the male lead. They're just like, this makes no sense. This is terrible.
This is a terrible van try to do anything.
With untrained, large, dangerous animals. So Nol's like, well, I guess I'll play the part. I'll do it. He's not an actor, by the way, he's an agent.
Yeah, he's an agent and a and he's.
Dabbling and producer work at this point. So for the animal cast, we're.
Talking, why didn't Griffith do it? He's the actor.
Well he's long gone, he's drunk, he's married a bunch of others.
All right, They can't bring him back into the full now.
So the New Yorker said they had quote one hundred and thirty two big cats, one elephant, three out doaded sheep, and a collection of ostriches, flamingos, maribou, storks, and black swans. Wow, yeah, okay, well they maybe they couldn't fit him in the station back. According to the Village Voice, there was quote a dangerous stipulation. None of the animals would be trained. They felt a cat should be a cat at best. The beasts would be socialized. Hedrin and the family bottle fed many of them from infancy and crossed their fingers that the four hundred and fifty pound grown cat would remember not to pounce, wrote Hendred and her memoir The Cats of Shambala, so named for the preserve that they were forced to found when their neighbors kicked the couts out of Sherman oaks. Quote. I did think that working with live lions might be preferable to live ravens, Like, I'm not sure about that.
Tips, Yeah, no, not at all, Tip, I can tell you.
And so none of them are trained. And the thing is these animals, yeah, some of them they bought his babies, but they grow super fast.
Yes. And also I mean like, okay, let's just say you are on a job site and none of your fellow co workers are trained. That would be a nightmare. Yeah, Now imagine if they would eat you.
Right, and there you'll go, there you go.
That's it.
So we've talked about the basic framework of the movie.
Yes, but what's the story Protect the Cat?
You tell me, Sarin. Okay, here's how TV guide describes it. Now. A woman brings her children to the African jungle for a visit with her long estranged husband, an eccentric scientist who has dedicated the past several years of his life to fighting for the preservation of endangered species. A snaffoo results in the family being met not by the environmentalist, however, but a pride of ferocious felions. So I'm going to expand on this. So Noel, he plays Hank, the eccentric scientists. He's so dedicated to preserving these majestic creatures that he basically lives with them, Lions, tigers, leopards, all of this at a compound that he owns in Tanzania Aka.
So this is the story. Yes, this is the story.
So he hangs out there in the movie with his friend Metivo played by an actor Callo Mativo. Sure, the wife Madeline played by Tippy She and her three young kids, Melanie, Jerry, and John played by Melanie Jerry and John your actors. They live in totally you got they just got lazy with naming the characters.
Yeah, just all right whatever, just their name.
Yeah, they you don't answer to these other names. So they live in Chicago, but they decide to visit Hank in Tanzania. That's the setup. Hank goes to pick his family up at the airport, but Mativo stops him and is like, there's a committee coming to review the research grant that you got for this place, like where you study on the animals. So they they well know they like the grant committee shows up. There's like there are all sorts of like lion fights errors. Yeah, and so the grant committee shows up. One dude named Prentice. He hates the lions. He just wants to shoot him. This is a committee about a research grant and sound. Yeah. Around this time, a fight breaks out between two lions and Hank like breaks it up, but he gets his hand, but he gets his hand chomped. In the script, well not really in the script. As Hank performs first eight on himself. The tigers attack the committee and some of them get pretty messed up.
The tigers attack commute, yeah.
And they want nothing more to do with it, so they split. So Hank and Metivo. Then they're like, Okay, that's right, I forgot We got to pick up your family. They go to the airport, but they get attacked by tigers on the way. Yeah, and so Madeline and the kids they're there. They decide to get on a bus, uh, and then they pass like ships in the night. So when they get to the house, it's just full of lions, tigers, cougars, animal attacks. Big Cat's not the Orange County ladies of a certain age who go after younger men. Those cougars, they they weren't rare. So the lions, they're just like hanging out fighting and stuff. At the house. There's a zebra carcass in front of the house. Like in the house's bonkers. The family is terrified. Hank and Mitivo. They go through all sorts of like animal attack hijinks until they finally make it back to the compound and the family they try and escape by boat. There's a lake, and so they're gonna go to the other side. Yeah, of course, an elephant rolls up and just rex shop like destroys the boat. And in the in like the making of it, apparently like they went through like three boats where they just had the there was a trainer for the elephant. He's just like you smash it up like you just do your business, and oh my god. The elephants just like in the like grabs it and string and slams it against the ground. So one of the kids in the script tries to escape on Hank's motorcycle, but the big cats come after him and he has to drive into the lake, and then the family they swim across the lake and they break into another house to stay there, but the pride from Hank's place shows up and surrounds them, but they don't hurt him and forget about us, and the family's like, well, I guess they're not one hundred crazy. Maybe they're not so bad after all. So meanwhile, the Grant committee members who want to kill some of the lions, they do so, but then they get killed by lions of course. Yeah, and so the whole family and Metivo they head back to the compound and Madeline and the kids decided to stay for a week the end. Why not, that's the plot.
If you beat the tigers and the lions and the jaguars, you should get a week of vacation.
Jaren, This was not an easy shoot. It cost a fortune before it even began.
We have Melanie Griffith, she actually exists.
I know. Food for the Cats alone was ten thousand dollars a week.
A week, yeah, in nineteen seventies dollars.
Yeah.
But then they hit a jackpot. Noel had worked on a film as a producer and it was a hit, that movie, The Exorcist.
Did They have like a lot of meat, a ton of money.
Now he's giving all this Exorcist money pouring in so they can get started, and he just redirects it to the movie. It was around this time that Tippy did something that I referenced before, remember how like she went and helped the Vietnamese refugees. Yeah, so she goes up to like this place outside in like Gold Country where they had all these refugees, and then you know, she teaches them the nails there. She brings her nail tech. Anyway, So there's Tippy, this elegant, gracious woman, about to film the gnarliest movie ever. So it September nineteen seventy six, filming begins. It was supposed to take six months and cost three million dollars.
Wow.
When all was said and done, it took five years and it cost seventeen million dollars. The budget blows up seventeen million. They couldn't abandon the project. They had to try and make some money there.
We got to recover, yeah, somehow.
So eventually Raw became known as the most dangerous film ever made, and people also called it the most expensive home movie ever made. So John said, quote, this is one of the kids. There didn't seem to be a sense of urgency to ever get it done. Dad would film a scene for a week if he thought it could be better in some way way.
So he's lucky that the kids are like done growing, because otherwise you'd have one.
Yeah, exactly. So we got one hundred and fifty big cats, like thirty tigers, ten leopards, a couple of cheetahs, a couple of jaguars. The rest are all lions. Yeah, an elephant or two some zebras. Please keep in mind that this was not a one and done shoot like a documentary multiple takes, as John said of lion fights. So the basically the movies basic Yeah, and it's just lion fights.
So they just like have like I don't know, a fire truck with cold water cannons. If they aim at the.
Cat, just call the movie lion fight.
Totally fight.
No, he's taking this like really seriously, and he's a task master. He keeps everyone on these crazy schedules. This was his magnum opus and like, to hell with safety. It's his family. But he's like whatever, it's costing him an arm and a leg sometimes literally. And so the family has to start selling stuff off.
Are they losing crew?
Like? Are people like people are quitting getting sent to hospitals you'll find out. Yeah, So they sell all the properties they have, are you kid for this Sherman everything, so that the only thing left is this compound. Tippy sells a fur coat that Hitchcock gave her. I mean, they're just selling everything. The show has to go on. Then it got really bad, got that February nineteen seventy eight, towards the end of filming, there's this flood in the canyon because like, Noel built the set on a dry creek bed in the floodplain. But then all of a sudden, rainy seasons along and in some El Nino year, right, so all hell breaks loose. Floodwaters destroy the set. Four members of the sound team had to be rescued, and then there's this tragedy. Three lions, including Robbie, who's like the star Lion and the movie. They get shot and killed by Sheriff's deputies and animal control. After they escaped the proper pretty headed to a trailer park and like the officers like, I don't know what to do, And then Noel and the family are like, you know, you couldn't use tranquilizer darts?
Are you kidding me?
Yeah? So anyway, Noel finally finished.
They're going to tell somebody how to take care of a big cat.
Yeah, They're like, you could have tranked them. They're like, yeah, they were. They were ready to rip the door off.
You could not have them here.
No, no, we can all do this. Yeah. They finished the movie. First, he tried to sell it as a serious adventure film. No takers. Then he does a little editing and he tries to pitch it for distribution as a family film. No, and then he's like, I don't know. But then he makes it a comedy. A comedy okay. It took five years from when they finish it to get a distribution deal, and it was finally released in nineteen eighty one. It only made two million at the box office. It was never released in the United States. What no, Like it came out in Germany in a hands because we wanted it didn't And it got panned like they had a thing in the beginning, like no animals were hurt, but like it's just all the correction of this film. No, it wasn't a lie, but it was like, you're not counting the humans as those animals. Oh yeah, So it gets panned. It was like it's bonkers, there's no real plot. Daily Variety called it quote a born free gone berserk. Yeah, and I tried to watch it, but it's not streaming anywhere, and it looks like I could buy a DVD, but it was like one hundred and twenty dollars and I don't care that much. And I guess like there's some of the like you know, cult film theaters, well every now and the yeah, which I think that we should host a ridiculous crime showing at a theater of RAR. Totally, so let's make that happen. But there is a documentary called Roar, The Most Dangerous Movie Ever Made. I highly recommend it. Watch that, Oh, I totally did. There are a lot of clips from the movie. They interview all sorts of people. It's great, Like, seriously, watch it's so good. Okay, oh please hold we have some ads coming in right now. When we come back, I want to walk you through the actual fighting, the footage that was so out of control and the things that made this the most dangerous movie ever made. Okay, so Roar, yeah, give it to me. Ar. That was good. The script was terrible. Good, the script was terrible.
Well they're both not that good. But anyways, the agent wrote it.
Agent wrote it and started a red flag and directed it. Yeah yeah, and produced it to agents. He stuck his fingers and everything. So the script's terrible. It was a mestering production, ragtag crew. The cast is all the director's family. Like, what made it so dangerous? Well, one hundred and fifty untrained lions, tigers, Cougar's leopards. You can guess what will happen. So before filming even started, Noel's son John went to the set at the compound forty acres in the lion, a lion named tong Garoo, pinned John down and clamped his head on his jaw for twenty five minutes. Wait what twenty five minutes?
Wow?
Yeah, Steve Martin not that Steve Martin was finally able to distract the lion. So the lion's just sitting there with the kids messing with him. Steve Martin not Steve Martin distracts the lion. John like sort of SLINKs and slithers away and jumps into the lake. Escape him.
He of course, And that's where we get that part of the plot.
Yeah, I think. So he's like, oh, that Nole's like, that's fake. So of course, like John goes to the hospital, gets fifty six stitches, fifty six.
And apparently the tigers just gumming him. Oh yeah.
The cast and the crew. They became regulars at the hospital. I bet particularly Noel. They joked like, we're gonna name this the Noel Marshall Wing, like because he was there all the time. John said of his initial mauling quote forst seven years afterward, I had to work with that full grown male lion and he tried to finish the job every time it was interrupted, and he didn't like that.
Why did that lion hate you?
I don't know. So, like you can imagine getting mauled and almost killed before the movie even starts, and your dad, who is the director, is all no big, like these things happen places everybody. Show biz, Yeah, it's show basby And before you ask, no, this was not a union shoot.
No.
So if it had been, they would have had to have two hundred and sixty trainers on set inane. Yeah, and there's no way it would make it to principal shooting.
He couldn't afford it.
So this is one hundred percent non union production. So action. Noel got bitten through the hand by a line on the first day of filming Nice. The wound was so bad and so immediately infected that doctors thought they might have to amputate his arm. Damn well, they didn't. They stitched him up, they sent him back. He got bitten ten more times on that very arm during production.
So like sticking out like a sore thumb, but it's like sticking out like a lion.
Bitthand he's just like gashes and scars and open wounds. He got mauled a lot, so much that he got blood poisoning at one point from all the maulings. Is he just smell tasty well, and that that poisoned blood. That's what the makeup artist used, like he had a makeup artist, and the guy's like, I can't replicate the actual blood here. So when you're seeing someone attacked by a lion in the movie and then bleeding, it's real. The blood's real. All his blood or whoever's getting into blood chomped on, that's their blood.
The props department for the boy.
It wasn't just John and Nole though basically everybody gets mauled at some point. The Tippy got it in the head from a lioness named Cherries. Cherries that center to the hospital. She came back with thirty eight stitches exactly, and she didn't just mix it up with lions. She got her leg crushed by an elephant.
God, she crushed, crushed like it stepped on it.
Yeah, she got she contracted gang green, she needed skin grafts at one point. Yeah, Cherri's got Tippy, but she didn't stop there. Okay, Zaren close your eyes.
Oh no, I want you to picture it.
You are an assistant to an assistant director on the set of Roar Noel Marshall and Tippy Hedron's vanity project. You are trying to break into the industry after selling Dotson's and Resita for the last few years. You are brimming with excitement. This is a huge opportunity for you. So there you are three and a half weeks into production. You're at the family compound, sitting in a chair under an old oak tree, watching the crew set up for a shoot. The director of photography, Yan Debant, has been yelling at people all morning. He basically only yells, but you're learning a lot from him. He's got an amazing eye and that's why you are now watching him argue with the rest of the crew about his plan to set up for a shot. Lyons grumble and growl in the background as Yon tries to convince everyone that the best way to film the next scene of the family being chased by the lions is for him to lie down in a trench with camo netting over him. He'd have his lens sticking out to catch the action. Tippy Hedron, you can't believe it's her and her kids. They all sit in a boat on the lake awaiting their cue. The wind picks up a bit. There's a slight splashing sound from the paddles in the boat as Melanie Griffith tries to keep it facing the shore. Noel Marshall, his wild hair and manic beard, going in every direction, shouts instructions action. The lions all run out from behind some boulders and head for the lake. On their way to attack the boat. They roar and cry out it's a great shot as they jump over Yon and splash into the water. Noel wants another pit. The lions grumble as they're led back behind the rocks. Action. The lions race by, roaring, crying out. Even as far away as you are, you can feel their thundering paws vibrating in the ground below you. They are massive. Noel stands silent for a moment. He now says it was good, but not exactly what he wanted. Places people, let's do this again. You notice that the lions are taking their time going back to their spot. The handlers get them settled. Burns squawk in the trees.
Action.
The lions take off toward the lake again, but not with the gusto of the previous takes. They grumble instead of roar, made lope instead of pounce. Just as Cherry, the lioness who took a swipe at tippy heads to the lake, Yon repositions himself in the trench. The camo netting shifts a little. You have a cat at home, pickle and sometimes when you're in bed at night, the cat is snoozing at your feet. Move those feet a bit and pickles. Predator drive kicks in. She reacts with lightning speeds and slaps at your feet. Sometimes she leaps up and pounces. Sometimes she bites her toes. Through the comforter. You see Yon move under the cover of the camo netting, and you are filled with dread because you know what's going to happen. Cherry looks down the netting with curiosity. With one swat of her giant paw. She lifts off the netting and you hear an ungodly scream out when r off the netting, she also lifted off Yonduband's scalping. Oh. He jumps out of the trench, grabbing the back of his head as blood gushes out between his fingers. You take one look at the scene and you pass out. You fall to the ground with a sud. You don't do blood. When you come to, you realize that maybe Hollywood isn't for you. Hollywood is full of insane, egotistical weirdos, and you want out back to the dots and dealership for you. So I'm.
The scalping.
Scalps so Yondubont scalped by cherries. Literally, he was rushed to the hospital, where I think they punched his customer loyalty card. He got one hundred and twenty stitches to put his scalp back on the back of his head. So the scar goes from basically one ear to the other in like this large arch over the top of his head like headphones line. It's crazy. He spent two weeks in the hospital.
Oh yeah, Now he's a member of the hairclub for men.
Yeah, and then he gets out and he went right back to the set.
I had a friend who had his head flipped open like that by a propeller of a boat. Okay, and that's some crazy surgery to have yoursel.
But Yon Debunt goes back to the set and.
He's a shower. I have to wonder if his anger helped him, you know, like he just so mad.
He saw the project through to completion. He was there the whole time. Ball but you know what, the maulings continued. Assistant director Dorn Cowper. He had his throat slashed by a lion and he lived. Noel got it again and got his legs super messed up. And that's like there's footage of that.
These big cats are like, you know, killer whales playing with seals.
Totally, but just with humans or playing with CEO's yachts. So Melanie Griffith, she got clawed in the face, did she? Yeah? She had to get fifty stitch is oh god, and see a plastic surgeon.
Oh wow.
A lot of the maulings were actually used as final cuts for the movie. Melanie's was not. John Marshall, her stepbrother, described the incident as such, quote, what happened to Melanie is she got clawed, but it was kind of embarrassing because it was only like a five month old lion maybe a little cub, jumped up from behind Melanie and he claw her above and below the eye pretty close, and their claws are sharp when they're young. We did send her to a plastic surgeon because the rule was if anybody got bites or claws in the face or anything that would show, then you go to a plastic surgeon and get it done right.
That's the rule. They had a plastic surgeon rule.
I love, Yeah, I love that they have a plastic surgeon protocol. Like you know, flip through the pages, and like I said, the mallings continued, which made it, Like you said, did people quit? That was hard to retain crew members on one day, like fifteen or eighteen guys just quick.
Yeah, I mean I don't know how.
And I was.
Probably the Yon Dubant day where everyone's like, I am so one hundred percent out of here.
Yeah I'm seeing blood scarce people, but seeing a tiger or a lion mall and you're like, okay, I gotta go back to work.
Mean, when you add it all up, the final tally sure, seventy people were injured during the making of the movie. Tippy said, quote, it's amazing no one was killed. Like, well, yeah, it's a miracle no one was killed. She also did she didn't think that seventy people got hurt. She told Variety, quote, maybe they're talking about people who hit their thumb when they were pounding on a nail. In five years, I think there were seven people that were hurt, but not seriously. When we were making the movie, there were a few instances. I was hurt, Melanie was hurt. My then husband was in the hospital so many times. They were going to name a wang after him.
There's that. Yeah.
Later, Tippy quote acknowledged that it was stupid, beyond belief to put her family at risk by allowing an animal with quote no conscious or remorse jeans to roam her.
So the movie's done.
Predatory children, your children movies done. So's the marriage for Noel Tippy.
I don't know how.
I don't know. Well, a year after finishing the movie, they divorced and the kids were like they were just staying together to get the movie done. Yeah, Tippy and Melanie Griffith, they really downplay their involvement with ror. They act like it just didn't happen.
If I ever meet Melanie Griffin, the first thing I'm talking you know, I love all your works starting.
With raw uh Tippy, Like it had an incredible impact on her. How could she became a serious animal rights activist?
She wasn't before. It was the whole point.
It just intensified it did it more so. She she still oversees and lives at the compound now eighty acres and it's called Shambala Preserve. It's populated by lions and tiger that need rescue, so they take them in. And then she has the Roar Foundation, which like you're not distancing yourself that much at Shambala Preserve. And so she's been like she's gotten so many awards and been recognized for like humanitarian and conservation awards for decades. And you look at her work with like refugees, like she's just always been very giving.
Oh yeah, I can totally see that. Now. Do you think that they like like sell the urine from the lion and the tigers is like to like help pay.
For the well, I mean, just to clarify, that's like a good like.
Preventative animals to come into gardens.
Do you want to keep which I don't know when I grew bought.
Okay, we did it and then we've put it all around. It scared everything except for the subterranean animals.
Do you think the mold has Tippy Hedrons lions?
That's what I was trying to get. Could I be thanking Tippy Hendron for the good lion pee because that stuff it could?
Did you have, Champ? Is that your ridiculous takeaway? I'd love to hear your ridiculous takeaway.
Yeah. My ridiculous takeaway is lion you're in works, and I believe that Tippy Hedron had the lion's best interest at heart, and I'm just wondering how I can support her.
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you something. If we had a screening of this movie that we sponsored, oh yeah, at a theater and the costume all the proceeds go to Shambala.
Preserve a pith hat.
That's my that's my takeaway. Thank you for asking, Sarah Burnabeth. I want to have a screening of this movie, like I'm desperate for it. I can't get over this movie. I can't either, and it's amazing and I love to get.
Some Safari shorts.
You said for the big Okay, that's the thing is the costuming in the movie. There's one scene where Noel comes out like he's been taking a nap and he gets awakened by a lion fight and like his buddy comes in. It is like, oh my god, the lines are fighting. He gets up, he's like in short short like underpants, and that's when he gets attacked lion pajamas. They're not getting attacked through clothes, they're getting attacked on like underwear. Flesh. Yeah, he gets the eye flesh. He's got like magnum p I thighs out, plump, smuggling and like, I mean it's it's almost to the point where when he's running across and they're kind of like thin fabric, like old and I want to avert my eyes, like yeah, I'm just like I'm seeing too much.
Yeah exactly, And you know if he's circumcised.
And then I'm like yeah, yes, and then I'm wondering, like is that what enrages the lion. They're like, please put some after all of this, I need to talk back.
Okay, thank you?
Oh my god, I want.
Heyzarin and Elizabeth. I was just reading my Wyoming history textbook and it was talking about the first woman Justice of the Peace in Roalming Esther Hobart mcquig, and a historian had said that she was heroic in size, masculine in mind, which made me think of you. And then it also said she was too managed to influence William H. Bright, who started women's suffrage in Wyoming. So I was thinking about all your old newspapers. I thought you'd get a kick out of it.
Oh my god, I totally did. What is up with this? Like, uh, it's ridiculous.
Yeah, every time I got a physical description there of.
A woman and too manly to influence a male suffrage, Like my head's exploding right now of like, I'm sorry, you're not woman enough to fight for your own vote?
What are those flames creeping up the side of your face?
Oh god?
Uh?
That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com award winning website. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Twitter, Instagram, blue Sky, Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and most importantly, leave a talk back on the iHeart app. You know, read something from an old newspaper reach Out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Crown Prince of Shambala Dave Cousten, starring Annalis Rutger as Judith. Research is by exhausted er doc Marissa Brown. The theme song is by freaked Out La County Animal Control officers Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Body five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are Ben Let's try that again, this time with more blood on the lion's face Bowlin and Noel sure thing, let me just untie this tourniquet, Brown, ridis Whine say it one more time. Riudiquious Crime.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
