Putting lions in the picture

IT’S believed the lion that roars at the start of Metro Goldwyn Meyer films was born in Dublin Zoo.

But is this true, and, if so, how did a Dublin lion make it to Hollywood? Historian Catherine de Courcy examines the strange claim in a piece entitled Dublin Zoo and the MGM Lion, which appears in the current edition of Zoo Matters.

There must have been more than one MGM lion. The role, like that of Tarzan and James Bond, would have been played by various ‘actors’ over the years. The first feline star was filmed in the early 1920s, in black and white. With developments in film technology, new ‘takes’ would have been needed.