The San Diego Zoo Safari Park, originally named the San Diego Wild Animal Park until 2010, is an 1,800 acre zoo in the San Pasqual Valley area of San Diego, California, near Escondido. It is one of the largest tourist attractions in San Diego County. The park houses a large array of wild and endangered animals including species from the continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, and Australia. This includes the largest collection of hoofed mammals in the world. The park is in a semi-arid environment, and one of its most notable features is the Africa Tram, which explores the expansive African exhibits. These free-range enclosures house such animals as antelopes, giraffes, buffalo, cranes, and rhinoceros. The park is also noted for its California condor breeding program.
William Nicholas Selig was a vaudeville performer and pioneer of the American motion picture industry. His stage billing as Colonel Selig would be used for the rest of his career, even as he moved into film production.
The Selig Polyscope Company was an American motion picture company that was founded in 1896 by William Selig in Chicago, Illinois. The company produced hundreds of early, widely distributed commercial moving pictures, including the first films starring Tom Mix, Harold Lloyd, Colleen Moore, and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Selig Polyscope also established Southern California's first permanent movie studio, in the historic Edendale district of Los Angeles.
The Santa Ana Zoo at Prentice Park in Santa Ana, California, is a 20-acre (8.1 ha) zoo focusing on the animals and plants of Central and South America. The Santa Ana Zoo hosts more than 270,000 people annually. The zoo opened in 1952 and is owned and operated by the City of Santa Ana. Joseph Prentice donated land for the zoo with the stipulation that the city must keep at least 50 monkeys at all times. The zoo maintains an extensive primate collection with over a dozen species from around the world.
Gay's Lion Farm was a public selective breeding facility and tourist attraction just west of the south-east junction of Peck Road and Valley Boulevard in El Monte, California. It operated from 1925 through 1942, when it was closed temporarily due to wartime meat shortages. It never reopened.
Al G. Barnes Circus was an American circus run by Alpheus George Barnes Stonehouse that operated from 1898 to 1938.
Jungleland USA was a private zoo, animal training facility, and animal theme park in Thousand Oaks, California, United States, on the current site of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. At its peak the facility encompassed 170 acres (69 ha).
Griffith Park Zoo, referred to today as the Old Los Angeles Zoo, was a city-owned zoo in Los Angeles, California that opened in 1912 and closed in 1966 with the opening of the new Los Angeles Zoo. The abandoned site of the Griffith Park Zoo, complete with the ruins of animal enclosures, is now a picnic area featuring multiple hiking trails in Griffith Park.
Joe Martin was a captive orangutan who appeared in at least 50 American films of the silent era, including approximately 20 comedy shorts, several serials, two Tarzan movies, Rex Ingram's melodrama Black Orchid and its remake Trifling Women, the Max Linder feature comedy Seven Years Bad Luck, and the Irving Thalberg-produced Merry-Go-Round.
Universal City Zoo was a private animal collection in southern California that provided animals for silent-era Universal Pictures adventure films, circus pictures, and animal comedies, and to "serve as a point of interest" for tourists visiting Universal City. The animals were also leased to other studios. The zoo was closed in 1930, after cinema's transition to synchronized sound complicated the existing systems for using trained animals onscreen.
Harry Burns was a vaudeville performer, boxing referee, actor, assistant director, animal-picture director and producer, and Hollywood magazine publisher. Burns was married to the actress Dorothy Vernon; the silent-film slapstick comedy star Bobby Vernon was his stepson.
Joe Martin Turns 'Em Loose is a two-reel black-and-white silent comedy film released by Universal Pictures on September 15, 1915. It is not found in the Library of Congress' film preservation database and as such, is believed to be a lost film. The film was regarded by contemporary reviewers as a remarkable for its integration of plot, animal performance and stuntwork. The film’s animals were the trained tigers of Paul Bourgeois paired with the menagerie of the recently established Universal City Zoo, under the leadership of Rex De Rosselli. Bourgeois was the director and scenarist.
Algernon Maltby "Curley" Stecker was an early Hollywood animal trainer, Universal City Zoo superintendent, animal-film producer, and occasional actor-stuntman.
Charlie, sometimes Charley or Old Charlie, was an elephant who lived at the Universal City Zoo in Universal City, California, United States, from approximately 1914 to 1923 and appeared in scores of silent-era films. He was executed in approximately August 1923 for his attack on trainer Curley Stecker.
William S. Campbell was a film director, scenarist and producer of Hollywood's silent and early talkies era, recognized for his skill in working with children and animals.
Otto F. Breitkreutz, universally known as Big Otto, was an American circus man and film producer during the early 20th century. He was called Big Otto because he weighed somewhere between 350–480 lb (160–220 kg) and was "big in heart and policy."
Olga Celeste trained leopards and pumas for performance in circuses, vaudeville and film. She starred in very early animal films for Selig Polyscope, and was said to have handled animals for 1,000 films, including the leopard in the Katharine Hepburn film Bringing Up Baby. For most of her career she was associated with the Selig Zoo in Los Angeles.
The Feather Hill Zoo or Feather Hill Ranch Zoo was a U.S. private animal collection in Montecito, California owned by Christian R. Holmes from 1924 to 1930. Featherhill Ranch was located on East Valley Road "astride Romero Creek." Originally a poultry operation, the ranch rapidly established a large collection of birds and animals to attract customers to the site.