The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir "BEAST OF BURDEN".
Available from Babylon Zoo Publishing in Q3 2025.
Rin Tin Tin pretends to answer his own fan mail.
Chapter 8 : "TRY WALKING A MILE WITH MY PAWS"
After getting everyone's souls back in the correct bodies I gave up my treasure hunting career, packed up my metaphorical bindle, and headed west to Hollywood to seek my fortune. Not the first, not the last, as I say. Seeking your fortune isn't exactly shooting fish in a barrel, of course. I needed to take the bull by the horns and find work to make ends meet. That's how I ended up behind the bar four nights a week at a dive called The Cat's Pajamas that had a reputation for being "where the real animals went". I thought this meant rowdy crowds and tough customers, and while there were those too, I learned that in this case "real animals" frequently meant real animals.
The Pajamas was an unassuming little place in the shadows of the major studio lots, and, in addition to handfuls of your average oddballs, all the animal actors--anyone who was anyone, as they say--came there to wet their beaks. In the first couple of weeks, I learned the ropes: the good and bad tippers, who gets a tab and who doesn't, but most of all to keep quiet as a mouse about what went on there. It was nothing illegal, mostly, but any gossip could be the straw that broke the camel's back for our clientele's careers.
Orangey the cat--who would go on to some acclaim with my help--spent some of their time as Minerva, their drag persona that performed at clandestine burlesque houses in the area. Morris--the 9Lives cat food spokescat, and not to be confused with Morris the alligator--were in a relationship, but no one could know about it. Rin Tin Tin--German shepherd immigrant turned bonafide movie star--had hired Jimmy the Crow--star of over a hundred films, and actually a raven--to help him respond to his mountains of fan mail, which at first I thought was a kindness, before learning he was working Jimmy like a dog, ironically, and for peanuts. I won't name names, but let's say a little bird told me that Rinty couldn't get his paws to stop shaking long enough to sign correspondence without at least a bottle of schnapps.
But it wasn't all monkey business. The lion's share of regulars were sweethearts. Terry--Toto from The Wizard of Oz--introduced himself to me on my first day to reassure me that any little people who came in and dropped his name could drink on his tab. He'd been paid three times what they were on that picture, knew that wasn't right, and was trying to pay it forward. Frances the Talking Mule did what made him famous: talking. A lot. Told me his whole story; about how he came over from Mexico and took the talkies by storm before being priced out by the competition at rival studios--like Mr. Ed, that scumbag (¹). Regardless, Francis and I became close and he invited me to a poker game with many of the aforementioned patrons and they came to like me too; I laughed easily, lost more than I won, kept the drinks flowing, and kept my mouth shut.
(¹) - My lawyers have advised me that I am to make it abundantly clear that Mr. Ed is only a scumbag in my own humble, personal opinion, and that I do not have, and I quote, "tons of dirt on him, enough to bury him deeper than a groundhog’s graveyard."
My brush with the silver screen came one day when some gopher from Paramount poked his head in saying Blake Edwards needed Orangey back on set for reshoots. Problem was, Orangey was well into their cups for the evening and in no condition to perform. Next thing I knew, I'm on the set of a big Hollywood production, hundreds of gallons of movie magic raining cats and dogs on me, soaking me to my skin. That's right, in the climactic rain scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's, any time Cat isn't in close-up? That's me.
Thus began my career standing-in and stunt-doubling for some of the most famous critters in Hollywood. I was busy as a beaver; very quickly in demand. Union rules limited the hours an animal performer could work in a given day, but as a human, they could work me like a rented mule. The Lone Ranger rode me off a bridge into a river; I pointed to that damnable well Timmy had fallen into; I shared the big screen with Johnny Weissmüller and Rex Harrison; I was riding high on the hog.
It couldn't last however. I blew out my hip which put me on the shelf for 8 months and limited what I was able to do, physically, thereafter. Worse, during my convalescence, Variety did a profile on me called "Beast of Burden" which unfortunately painted me as the leader of the pack for a wave of human actors bent on replacing animals in all films. I returned to The Pajamas as a black sheep. Most of my former poker buddies and more recently co-workers assumed I'd been a snake in the grass the whole time and they turned their backs on me.
I was heartbroken. With the benefit of hindsight, I'm ashamed to admit that instead of addressing the elephant in the room, I tucked my tail between my legs and headed back east like a bat out of Hell. I'll always think of those times, and those people, fondly, but clearly the cows had come home and that chapter of my life was finished.
Just because you may not reknow who he is doesn't change that.
Facts is facts.
This piece originally ran in the MovieJawn Summer 2025 print zine, under the title Stunt Animal.
It is all 100% true. Like, so true that you don't even need to check. Why waste your time?
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