I've read one book by this author before, Zamba, which is about one of his most famous animal stars, a lion. When I saw this book covers generally his entire time of working with real wild animals for Hollywood, I thought it was interesting so I gave it a read.
Helfer, a famous animal trainer, tells us about his years of working with wild animals for the movie industry. He highlights specific experiences and animals and projects, and explains to us his (at the time rather new) method of affection training, because back then most animals, especially dangerous wild ones, were trained using fear and punishment.
I have kind of the same thing to say about this book as I did about Zamba, though I think I like this one more because it's about a lot of Helfer's animals, and not just one. My main point of this review is just: I think this is a genuinely interesting topic to read about, but I also very much do not agree with using (or rather, exploiting) animals in this way. This is also obviously because this is a product of its time, of course. Helfer's career mainly took place in the 60s-70s (at least the part in this book does), and of course nowadays we mostly use CGI or sometimes practical effect stand-ins for real animals. Which doesn't mean that wild animals are no longer used in movies, but it's no longer as widely done as it was back then.
I can go on this rant forever and forever, but you get the gist. These animals don't live in natural circumstances (or trying to replicate natural circumstances), are forced to do tricks and acts for these movies that may be unsafe, interact with people which can lead to danger for both animal and person, etc. So from a moral standpoint obviously I'm no fan of this, but as someone who has watched quite a few 50s-90s movies that did use wild animals in movies quite a bit I was always curious how the training was done.
As for the book itself, yeah, it is interesting, despite my moral qualms with the author's using of the animals (oh, and did I mention he partakes in blackface as well?). I was genuinely fascinated in how Helfer pioneered "affection training" (at least for wild animals in Hollywood) and how he developed his bonds and trained his various animals, from bears to lions to other big cats to elephants, etc.
The book is written in an enticing writing voice and I did learn a lot about the topic (which is why I read this in the first place), but obviously if you want to read a book about wild animals being treated like they should, yeah, you should look elsewhere. I'll admit that, with Helfer training the animals without punishments, the treatment of them in this book is far not as bad as it could've been and was the standard back then, but this is also just not how animals should be kept, at a large ranch where they're made to do tricks just for movies. They're basically glorified exotic pets that happen to start in movies from time to time, and if you know me you know I don't approve of exotic pets.
So yeah, fascinating read, but not great, either. Any stars I do give this is because it did genuinely hold my interest and teach me things, but I morally obviously do not agree with Helfer. I'm glad things have changed and in modern times we don't need wild animals to act in movies anymore.
Rating: 3/5
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