Actress Gloria Swanson (1899-1983), in Cecil B. DeMille’s film, “Male and Female,” 1919.
Fearing for Swanson’s safety, DeMille canceled this scene at the last minute. Despite his efforts to withdraw it from the film, Swanson later reflected on filming this scene in an interview for the 1980 documentary, “Hollywood:”
“I said: ‘Mr. DeMille, you can’t do this to me. I want to do that scene - the lion’s bride scene…you don’t understand. When I was little girl, in my grandmother’s house, she has this painting - a replica of a painting called “The Lion’s Bride.” And here it was, a bride, with a lion on her back. She had gone to say goodbye to this cub she raised, and the lion killed her.’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Well alright, come on…’
So down into this thing we go, and Mr. DeMille with a gun, revolver in his hand, no one else but the two trainers. And they bring out this fuzzy lion, and they claimed he’s a nice lion. Only two weeks after we had done this scene, did he almost kill someone. Any rate, we didn’t know that then.
Mr. DeMille, of course, he’s back before the camera…and I look up, and there’s my father in uniform - he had come back from the war - looking at his one and only, with his eyes popping out of his head; what’s going to happen if something happens? And [he’s] looking at DeMille with his gun, and at that, they said, ‘Ready. Camera.’
Now to make the lion roar, the two trainers are flashing him with their whips, and he’s roaring. Now let me tell you the sensation: when you can’t look at danger and your eyes are closed, and here he is with his paws, weight on my bare back, because I’m bare to the waist. His hot breath, my, if I had any fuzz on my body at all it was standing right smack up. My heart, I don’t know what it was doing. Then when he roared it was like thousands of vibrators all over you.
It was the most awesome, dangerous, fascinating - and I suppose danger is alway this way. I don’t know. But it was something I shall never forget. And then to go to the opening of the picture and have somebody sit behind me and say, ‘I wonder which one is stuffed…’”