I'm not sure where to begin with this, as it's a bit of a departure from the usual Friday fare. Well, as my old-school editor used to say, "How about at the beginning?" He was a real wit, wasn't he?
With the coming and going of the World Series, and the inevitable defeat of the Cleveland Indians, a number of baseball and baseball-themed movies were being shown on television. The usual ones were there, such as "Bull Durham" [which is actually a good film], "Field of Dreams" [that guy, again], "A League of Their Own" [zzzzzzz], "The Natural" [not bad, although the protagonist should have died in the end], "Major League" [a terrible movie, but it's about the Indians so I have to like it or get thrown out of the Cleveland Club], etc.
There are two baseball films that never seem to make it to the schedule, though, and I suspect that's because they're old and in black-and-white and young people are micro-aggressed by the absence of color. Both star Ray Milland, which may be another reason as he's hardly a recognized actor these days.
In the first, "It Happens Every Spring" [1949], Milland plays a college chemistry professor who is a baseball fanatic. While mixing mysterious chemicals in his lab, a stray baseball flies through the window and smashes the beakers. The resulting compound, which cannot be duplicated, repels wood. Milland soaks a baseball glove in it, thus causing baseballs to flee from wooden bats, and uses it to become the greatest pitcher in the major leagues. Naturally. There's some drama with gamblers, gangsters, and kidnapping, of course, but it all resolves into a happy ending.
The second, which I argue is the greatest baseball movie ever made, concerns a wealthy owner of a hapless, Brooklyn team who, upon his death, bequeaths the team to his feline, a former alley cat and absolute terror of whom even guard dogs are afraid. The cat is named Rhubarb, the slang term for a bench-clearing baseball brawl, and in the eponymous movie, Rhubarb is placed under the legal care of the team's publicist, again played by Ray Milland. There's some drama with gamblers, gangsters, and kidnapping, of course, but it all resolves into a happy ending. [Yeah, I said it twice.]
So, my wife and I watched it the other night on a streaming service, finding it perfectly enjoyable, not as painfully corny as one might expect, and with something for the whole family, grandchildren included, to enjoy. It also caused us to reflect on one of our own cats, who was of the same coloration and so notoriously bi-polar as to be cantankerous one moment and companionable the next. The neighborhood dogs were afraid of him and he used to go and eat the neighbor's cat food right off of their porch while their cat hid inside. In fact, there was a time when I almost re-named him Rhubarb.
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| Rhubarb meets his team. Notice the young actor in center screen enjoying his first movie role. He would live long and prosper. |
This made me curious about the cat who played the title character as he was not only photogenic, but was in almost every scene either calmly sitting among the actors [!] or engaged in doing his own stunts, including racing across the Brooklyn Bridge. [Well, an artificial version of Brooklyn and Manhattan, but that's the movies.] That's when I discovered the remarkable world of animal wranglers and their considerable contribution to the creation of fine cinema.
Rhubarb was portrayed by a cat named Orangey. It was his debut role, but by no means his last, especially as he won a Patsy Award for the "Picture Animal Top Star of the Year, 1951". [That's where the acronym "Patsy" is from.] He was so strongly associated with his premier role in cinema that for many years he was listed in film credits as Rhubarb, rather than by his
Because of this initial success, and the fact that he could be, for a cat, rather patient with the demands of film and television production, he would appear in seminal films and TV series for the next seventeen years. Orangey played Minerva, Eve Arden's cat on "Our Miss Brooks", the cat that terrifies and stalks the protagonist in "The Incredible Shrinking Man", Rose Marie's cat, Mr. Henderson, on "The Dick Van Dyke Show", and various others on "The Beverly Hillbillies", "Mission Impossible", and as the Catwoman's pet on "Batman".
Orangey, now famous enough in the industry to be billed by his
All in all, it was an enviable career, and one that was enjoyed without the usual humiliation and misconduct that characterizes an actor's life in Hollywood. However, it would not have been possible if Orangey had not been the discovery and ward of Frank Inn, Hollywood's greatest animal trainer. His story, too, is one of accomplishment.
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| Inn with his best-known client |
It was a very long recovery, with Inn's mobility severely limited. A friend gave him a dog named Jeep to stave off depression and Inn would train the dog to do what companion dogs and other animals now do for their stewards: Jeep would learn to fetch Inn his newspaper and his keys and open and close the icebox door.
Eventually, he returned to work and while cleaning the set of the movie that would eventually become "The Thin Man" with William Powell and Myrna Loy, he noticed the animal trainer having difficulty with the dog, named "Asta" in the film, whose scenes were of some importance to the plot. When he showed the animal trainer what he could do with Jeep, he was hired as the trainer's assistant. If the viewer has ever been amused by the antics of Asta or his "wife and kids" in The Thin Man series of movies, it is to Inn's credit
While originally in the employ of Rudd Weatherwax, the trained animal expert who introduced the cinematic world to "Lassie", Inn started his own business in the early 1950's with Orangey as his first, major client. We've seen what happened with that fruitful union. So successful was Inn with the Patsy-winning cat that he would spend the remainder of his life training a variety of animals for movies and television.
A partial list of only the most famous of Inn's clients would include not only Orangey in all of his appearances, but also Cleo, the basset hound who served as the narrator of TV's "The People's Choice". [As voiced by Ann Southern, I recall from childhood that Cleo got all of the good lines. In fact, the show was almost cancelled during its first season until the writers hit on the idea of a dog narrator. From that point forward it was a hit.] Arnold the pig on "Green Acres" [another scene-stealer], Tramp the dog on "My Three Sons", the chimps on "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp" [don't ask], and virtually all of Ellie May Clampett's critters on "The Beverly Hillbillies" [included in that collection was, you guessed it, Orangey].
Frank Inn's most successful client, however, was a stray dog of mixed heritage who became the star of a series of movies. While his street name was Higgins, he is best known to fans of children's cinema as "Benji". In all, Inn's clients won about 40 Patsy Awards.
Inn kept a vast property filled with a variety of animals, even those with no acting talent, and taught many young assistants how to, with affection, create stars from even the most discarded of pets. After his death at the age of 86 in 2002, his daughter continues the business and still provides well-cared animal actors for movies and TV.
While Frank Inn is buried in Los Angeles' famous Forest Lawn Cemetery, there is also, on his rambling estate, a place filled with cenotaphs hosting the cremains of his famous clients. Like many animal lovers, he could never quite let go of them. Someday, I would hope to make a pilgrimage to the place of Orangey's final repose, if merely as an exercise in Franciscan respect for God's creatures, or for the fact that a simple movie still amuses me, even after several viewings.