TV fame missed — by a whisker

Press, 25 August 1983, Page 30

TV fame missed — by a whisker

By

Kay Bartlett

of the Associated Press through NZPA New York The cat was to meow on command. That is what the script called for. That is not what the cat, Bean by name, was in the mood to do. He just sat there in the cat bed, staring aloofly at the whirring camera. His owner coaxed. His owner gyrated. He rubbed cat food on Bean’s lips. He clicked. He held up food on a wand. Bean looked on in contempt. Bean had a bit part in a television commercial, and it seemed that he was about to lose this shot at stardom. He was whisked back into the cat carrier and the two understudies, Prince and King, got their chance. One of them would meow, but the director did not care for his looks, a garden variety grey cat was he. The other fill-in did not have much to say in the meow department either.

So Bean, a multi-coloured beauty and veteran of television commercials, was hauled back for another goround. And, like the trouper he is, he gave the biggest, loudest meow ever. Trouble was, the cameraman was not ready.

Bean refused an encore performance. He just sat there, although he produced many wide-mouthed lickings when his owner, Len Brooks, put food round his mouth.

Mr Brooks is president of the largest of several Man-hattan-based agencies that provide animals for television commercials, Broadway shows, movies, print ads, the Metropolitan Opera, private parties — anything a.*>.d everything for which an entrepreneur is willing to pay for a rent-an-animal. Mr Brooks, who helped found Dawn Animal Agency Inc. 20 years ago, knows that it is no mean feat to get a cat to just sit still in strange surroundings, much less to do so with a clapboard snapped in front of his nose, bright lights going off and on and a couple of dozen strangers wandering about.

As any cat owner can attest, many a tabby would have been long gone and hiding under a prop, perhaps not to be retrieved until the wee hours of the next morning. The world of theatrical animals is one of the more competitive small industries. Folks in New York say it is even worse in California, where most of the big cat commercials are filmed — the tigers and cougars that seem to show up most often in automobile ads. There are serious accidents in the business, but rarely. Once, a lion bit a model at a car show. Mr Brooks was on that job, but it was not his lion. He had sub-contracted the job and got another lion. The lion had been returned to his cage when one of the local television crews showed up and wanted some footage for the news. Mr Brooks obliged and the lion bit the model in the thigh, a serious injury. Mr Brooks pried apart the lion’s mouth with his hands and led him docilely back to his cage. w L?

A more typical accident: The script called for a cast of about 20 housecats, leapping, bounding, playing energetically. The secret of these kinds of commercials is to shoot a lot of footage and cleverly edit. They shot all morning and planned the easy part — the cats devouring the food — for the afternoon. “We all went out to lunch,” recounts Linda Hanrahan of All-Tame Animals. Except for a cat-loving wardrobe lady. She noted that the cats were hungry, and so they were. You do not bring sated animals along when you’re doing a dog or cat food commercial. So she fed them. When the crew came back they found 20 very happy cats engaged in post-prandial grooming. But they were able to find five cats who would eat again. These animals do not come cheaply. Two cats will cost about SUS3OO. Ditto a dog. Back-ups are always provided for domestic creatures.

As the animals go up in exotica, so do the price tags.

Mr Brooks says that one of his big cats — say, the mountain lion — would go for JUSI2OO to SUSISOO, and the tigers and the elephants for SUS2SOO a day. A camel can be rented for ?USI2OO. Rarity certainly helps when it comes to price. “If you have got the only elephant that water-skis, you can name your price,” says Bill Berloni, a newcomer in the business.

Only horses are a relative bargain

There are few superstars among the furry salesmen. There was, and is, Morris the cat. There is Sandy, star of the long-running Broadway musical, “Annie,” and soon to be spokesdog for a big dog food company. And there were the movie dogs — Benji, Rin Tin Tin, and Lassie. But most animals do not make big bucks for their owners. One reason is that animals, unlike actors, do not get residuals for television commercials.