Universal City Zoo
Videos
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.
"Animal cages at Universal City" (Scientific American, 1915)
Universal City animal shipment 1913; note logos for IMP (Independent Moving Pictures, Carl Laemmle's first operation) and 101 Bison.
Universal City and the Los Angeles River, undated postcard
"Training Animal Actors for the Pictures" featuring Curley Stecker, his daughter (with lion cubs), and Joe Martin (1920)
Joe Martin (orangutan)
Videos
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.
Joe Martin at Universal City Zoo, 1919
Current range of the three orangutan species
Joe Martin during his first year with the Barnes Circus
Universal Pictures executive Isadore Bernstein with an unidentified orangutan, c. 1916