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    ‘Chimp Crazy,’ ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ and the Fault Lines of Family Life

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    The charged cultural conversation about pets and children — see “Chimp Crazy,” “childless cat ladies” and more — reveals the hidden contradictions of family life.“Monkey love is totally different than the way that you have love for your child,” Tonia Haddix, an exotic animal broker, says at the beginning of “Chimp Crazy,” the documentary HBO series investigating the world of chimpanzee ownership. “If it’s your natural born child, it’s just natural because you actually gave birth to that kid. But when you adopt a monkey, the bond is much, much deeper.”“Chimp Crazy” arrives in a summer of cultural and political obsession about the place of animals in our family lives. When JD Vance became the Republican vice-presidential nominee, his 2021 comment about “childless cat ladies” resurfaced, positioning them as adversaries of the traditional family. New York magazine published a special issue questioning the ethics of pet ownership, featuring a polarizing essay from an anonymous mother who neglected her cat once her human baby arrived. In the background of these stories, you can hear the echoes of an internet-wide argument that pits companion animals against human children, pet and tot forced into a psychic battle for adult recognition.These dynamics feel supercharged since 2020, the year when American family life — that insular institution that is expected to provide for all human care needs — became positively airtight. The coronavirus pandemic exaggerated a wider trend toward domestic isolation: pet owners spending more time with their animals, parents more time with their children, everyone less time with one another — except perhaps online, where our domestic scenes collide in a theater of grievance and stress.When a cat, a dog or certainly a chimp scampers through a family story, it knocks it off-kilter, revealing its hypocrisies and its harms. In “Chimp Crazy,” Haddix emerges as the avatar for all the contradictions of the domestic ideal of private home care: She loves her chimp “babies” with such obsession that she traps them (and herself) in a miserable diorama of family life.Haddix, a 50-something woman who describes herself as the “Dolly Parton of Chimps,” believes that God chose her to be a caretaker. She was a registered nurse before she became a live-in volunteer at a ramshackle chimp breeding facility in Missouri, where she speaks of a male chimp named Tonka as if she is his mother. Haddix also has two human children; she just loves them less, and says so on television.As she appoints herself the parent to an imprisoned wild animal, she asserts an idealized form of mothering — one she describes as selfless, unending and pure. “Chimp Crazy” is the story of just how ruinous this idea of love can be, for the woman and the ape.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alan Cumming on ‘Chimp Crazy’: ‘I Really Do Understand the Deep Love’

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      A documentary series by a director of “Tiger King” tells a wild tale about human-chimp relationships. The actor and activist landed right in the middle.In 1997, Alan Cumming appeared in the film “Buddy,” playing an animal handler hired by an eccentric socialite (Rene Russo) who maintained a menagerie in her Long Island home. One of his co-stars was Tonka, a male chimpanzee on the cusp of adolescence. Cumming felt a special bond with Tonka.“He was very gentle,” Cumming, 59, said during a recent video call. “When the other chimps would get a little overwrought, he was a calming influence, a mediator.”Soon after filming ended, Tonka retired. (Once chimps go through puberty, they are considered potentially too strong and sexually aggressive to work on camera.) In 2017, Cumming, a supporter of the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and a longtime vegan — “I thought if Mike Tyson could do it, I could do it,” he said — learned that Tonka was being held in substandard conditions at a former breeding facility in Festus, Mo.What happened next is the principal subject of the HBO series “Chimp Crazy,” which premiered on Sunday, a wild and occasionally woolly four-part documentary from Eric Goode, a director of “Tiger King.” (The three remaining episodes will air weekly.)PETA secured the release of six chimpanzees from the facility in 2021. Tonka was not among them. Eventually, PETA offered a $10,000 reward for news of Tonka’s whereabouts. Cumming matched that amount.While the twisty four episodes tell several fraught and often violent stories of chimp-human interactions, its permed, lip-plumped focus is Tonia Haddix, the owner of the Festus animals, including Tonka, and an exotic animal broker who describes herself as the “Dolly Parton of chimps.” (Given the reputation of “Tiger King” as a series that exposed animal mistreatment, Goode approached her through a proxy, a former circus clown who posed as the series’s director.) Cumming claims to feel sympathy for the women Goode turns his cameras on, even as they failed the animals in their care.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Chimp Crazy’ Is a Jaw-Dropping Look at ‘Monkey Love’

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      From a director of “Tiger King,” the four-part HBO documentary dives into the wild, salacious and dangerous world of people who have chimpanzees as pets.The four-part documentary series “Chimp Crazy,” debuting at 10 p.m. Sunday, on HBO, has plenty of chimps, and boy is it crazy. Sad and gruesome, too, and sometimes poignant and philosophical. “Monkey love,” we’re told, is a unique, radicalizing kind of love — more profound than the one between two humans. “The bond is much deeper,” says Tonia Haddix, one of the show’s central figures. “It’s just natural; it’s like your love for God.”Can she get an amen? Actually, no: Haddix, who describes herself as “the Dolly Parton of the chimps,” is an advocate for and a participant in the private chimpanzee market. She says she has a special, spectacular bond with Tonka, an adult chimp who was in several movies and whom she considers particularly docile and soulful. She insists, repeatedly, that Tonka, among others, is more of a “humanzee” — as much a person as he is a chimp. In one scene, she and Tonka watch Instagram videos of other chimpanzees, including his offspring.“Chimp Crazy” and “Tiger King” share an executive producer and director in Eric Goode, and they also share an ecstatic tabloid salaciousness. One woman breastfed a chimp baby alongside her human daughter. A man describes the chimp his mother housed as “the Tom Brady of chimpanzees,” on account of his handsomeness.Everyone in this documentary is suffering, and some of them are ridiculous. And others of them are chimps. “Chimp Crazy” is more textured than “Tiger King,” partly because of its closer attention to the plight of animals. Intertwined with Haddix’s saga are stories of other people who thought they could raise chimps and live together in unending familial bliss — until the chimps reached adolescence, at which point they attacked someone. These attacks are horrific and often fatal, though the chimp owners are rarely deterred.Haddix’s battle with the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals shapes much of the action of the documentary, and jaw-dropping details and twists are never more than a doleful recollection away. “Crazy” is both compassionate and manipulative, and the filmmakers themselves deceive some of their subjects and become major players in Haddix and Tonka’s story. (Also a player: the actor Alan Cumming, who once acted alongside Tonka and eventually offers a $10,000 reward for information leading to the animal’s whereabouts.) There’s an endless “OMG” feeling to everything here, the kind of show that puts the outrage in outrageousness. More

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      RZA of Wu-Tang Clan Has Beef With Meat

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      The rapper, producer, actor and vegan talks about the connections between meat and masculinity, animal welfare and the environment.RZA, the leader of the groundbreaking hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan, is a producer, rapper, writer, director, film scorer and actor. He is also a promoter of a meatless lifestyle.The 54-year-old creator gave up red meat in the mid-1990s, followed by chicken, fish, and eventually dairy and eggs. He has since worked with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, started a vegan clothing line and appeared in a surreal video series with other Wu-Tang members to promote White Castle’s meatless Impossible Sliders.In a recent interview, RZA, whose real name is Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, talked about why he went vegan, cultural links between masculinity and meat and how going meatless just a few days a week would help the planet. Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited and condensed for clarity.There’s increased awareness these days about the environmental harms of meat consumption, particularly beef, along with health concerns. Why did you stop eating it?For me, it was consciousness. It was just the awareness of life itself. It became almost illogical, almost unethical. Why does the animal have to die for me to live? And then learning that our digestive system really has a hard time digesting red meat. As I became more conscious, it started to make less and less and then no sense to eat a dead bird. To even eat a dead fish.What about dairy?Eggs and milk and cheese were the last things to go from my diet. There were multiple reasons. And it was tough. The animal is not dying. It’s the animals being useful. Look, I’m a New Yorker. There’s nothing like the New York slice of pizza. But I realized how much mucus was building up in my own body. And the process of the milk we are consuming is so chemically infused. Even with pasteurization, there’s still other elements of bacteria that are getting into our systems. Eggs was another tough one. But eggs are so porous, and they hit them with chemicals. And there’s mistreatment of those animals. So now you’re consuming that trauma.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At NY Dog and Cat Film Festivals, Love, Licks and Looniness

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      Collections of short films, both documentary and fiction, make their annual visit to Manhattan, followed by tours around the country and Canada.The cinematic events debuting at the Village East by Angelika this weekend won’t feature any of the acclaimed actors from the recently concluded New York Film Festival. Some of the major figures in these movies have been known to jump on their directors, fall asleep on the job, drool on camera and chew the scenery (in every sense).But that’s no surprise: They’re among the four-legged performers in the sixth annual NY Cat Film Festival and the eighth annual NY Dog Film Festival. Each offers short documentary and fictional works illustrating how people affect the lives of animals, and how animals affect the lives of people — usually in positive ways.“I try to keep them to films that are lighter and that simply uplift you,” Tracie Hotchner, the founder of both festivals, said in a video interview. And even though some of the featured dogs and cats are in difficult circumstances, the movies, she added, are “more of a celebration of the groups that rescue them.”These grass-roots film programs also benefit their subjects: Of the $18 all-inclusive ticket price for each festival, 10 percent goes to a pet-adoption nonprofit. (The Manhattan screenings will help support Muddy Paws Rescue and Meow Parlour Cats.) And fans who can’t see the programs this weekend may be able to catch them in the coming months when they tour to independent cinemas nationwide and in Canada.“BARC if You Need Help” examines a program that recruits juvenile offenders to train animals.Tula Asselanis/The Latham Foundation“These are not, you know, Hollywood-style movies,” said Hotchner, an author, radio host and podcaster based in Vermont. They’re “like the poetry of films.”Some are clearly light verse. The 102-minute feline festival, at noon on Saturday, includes “The Cat Duet,” by Lorelei De Armas and Julian Wood, 12-year-olds from Detroit who filmed themselves singing “Duetto buffo di due gatti,” a comic song often attributed to Rossini. (The only lyric is “Meow.”) The 110-minute dog festival, at noon on Sunday, features Nepal Arslan’s “47 Seconds,” his haiku-like response to discovering decades-old footage of a couple with a dog eerily resembling his own.“Silent Paws,” by the global initiative Mutual Rescue, even incorporates a real poem: a work of the same title by Gabriel Spera, which scrolls by during an elegy to lost feline companions.Neither festival, however, has a shortage of serious documentaries. Michelle Williams’s “Bear the Courthouse Canine” explores the pivotal role that a gentle Labrador retriever plays for the Contra Costa County, Calif., district attorney. Trained to lie under the witness stand during trials, Bear comforts traumatized victims who are testifying, especially children.The dogs in “BARC if You Need Help” work on the other side of the criminal justice system. Produced by the Latham Foundation for the Promotion of Humane Education, this film examines Building Adolescent Responsibility and Compassion, a program in Michigan that recruits juvenile offenders to train animals — frequently pit bulls that have troubled histories, too.“It’s like a mirror for them,” Tula Asselanis, the documentary’s director, said of the teenage participants. And the film suggests that “redemption is a powerful possibility, just through using the human-animal bond.”But what struck Hotchner most about the festivals’ submissions this year was how much they tried to capture the inner lives of animals.With cats, “it’s like, you know, ‘E.T.,’” she said. “So this alien comes into your life, and they’re so beautiful and so lovely. But what makes them tick?”The filmmakers’ speculations are often comic, as in “Insomnia,” by Kim Best, who provides subtitles detailing a cat’s ruminations on this most unlikely of feline problems: “Embarrassingly, I considered sleeping with a dog.”A scene from “Ranger: Canine Alpinist,” about dogs aiding climbers on Mount Hood.Joe DanielOther films that venture inside the minds of their subjects include Ned Thanhouser’s docudrama “Ranger: Canine Alpinist,” which relies on voice-over to relate the perspective of a dog who assisted human climbers on Mount Hood in Oregon almost a century ago. In the fictional “Set Adrift,” the British director Jennifer Sheridan uses only her furry actor’s expressiveness to convey a dog’s grief. Peta Hitchens’s Australian documentary “Filming Dogs” investigates a psychological question: Do pets like her own really enjoy performing for movies and television?Intriguingly, Juhi Sharma’s comedy “Purrrfect Intervention” features no animals — until the credits. Kisha Peart, who produced and wrote it, stars as a New Yorker so cat-obsessed that her friends arrange treatment for her.“Obviously, I’m a cat lady,” Peart said, adding that she turned her own pet’s camera shyness into a visual joke. Her character, she said, is “this crazy cat lady, but where are her cats?”Live animals won’t attend the screenings, either, but they will be at parties on the eve of each festival. These celebrations, which require separate tickets, will feature mingling with the filmmakers and authors of books about pets. One of Hotchner’s contacts even arranged for a visiting celebrity at the pooch festivities: Bastian the Talking Terrier, whose YouTube channel has almost two million subscribers.“I don’t know any famous dogs,” said Hotchner, who owns two Weimaraners. “But he said yes.”NY Cat Film FestivalSaturday at the Village East by Angelika, Manhattan; catfilmfestival.com.NY Dog Film FestivalSunday at the Village East by Angelika, Manhattan; dogfilmfestival.com. More

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      in Television

      Bob Barker, Betty White and Their Fight Over Billy the Elephant

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      Barker and White were known for supporting animal welfare but took opposite sides in a debate about the best home for an elephant.Bob Barker and Betty White were American television fixtures for decades who were united in their support of animal welfare causes but were divided about what they thought was best for an elephant named Billy.The tension between them, about a planned renovation of the Los Angeles Zoo’s elephant exhibit, became fodder for celebrity and gossip outlets. Barker, who died on Saturday, had opposed the renovation and wanted the one elephant left at the zoo at the time, Billy, to be moved to a sanctuary. White, who was deeply involved with the zoo, supported the renovation.In January 2009, Barker, Cher and Lily Tomlin spoke at a Los Angeles City Council meeting to oppose the renovation and Barker offered to pay $1.5 million to relocate Billy.Barker had opposed the exhibit for years, and in 2006 said that the elephants there had “lived in misery.”The zoo’s nonprofit partner, the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association, responded that the zoo was the elephant’s home and that it would give Billy and other elephants “a level of personal care and state-of-the-art veterinary services they simply won’t get anywhere else,” The Los Angeles Times reported.White had a more than five-decade relationship with the zoo and was a trustee of the Zoo Association at the time of her death in December 2021. She told The New York Times in 2011 that the zoo was her home away from home and that she could drop by outside normal visiting hours.She spoke in support of the renovation at a City Council meeting and stood by the project in a 2012 interview with the zoo’s magazine, Zoo View.“It seemed like it was never going to happen, and to almost get shut down, that close to fruition — I think it was a whole week that I didn’t sleep,” she said. “But sure enough, by persevering, we got it accomplished, and it’s beautiful on both sides of the enclosure. It’s great for the elephants, and it’s great for the people.”Representatives for Barker and White did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.Animal welfare supporters, including Bob Barker, Cher and Lily Tomlin, for years argued that Billy the elephant should be removed from the Los Angeles Zoo.Richard Vogel/Associated PressThe disagreement gave rise to a rumor of a feud between the two that was published in 2009 in The National Enquirer, which cited anonymous sources saying that Barker had threatened to not attend the Game Show Awards if White attended. Neither Barker nor White appears to have addressed the rumor in public.Barker did attend the 2009 award show, where he was honored for his work on “The Price Is Right.”White, who won the award for Favorite Celebrity Player for “Million Dollar Password,” only appeared at the show in a video tribute to Mark Goodson, who produced shows including “The Price Is Right,” “Family Feud” and “Match Game.”Four years later, White tried to make amends, The National Enquirer said, again citing an anonymous source.White visiting Billy the elephant at the Los Angeles Zoo in 2008.Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesBilly still lives at the zoo, though a Los Angeles City Council committee said in December 2022 that after 30 years, Billy should be moved to a sanctuary.Cher and Tomlin are still supporting the effort to move Billy. The zoo said that it disagreed with the effort and that it had “complete confidence in the knowledge, skills and expertise of our entire animal care team.” More

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      Bob Barker, Longtime Host of ‘The Price Is Right,’ Dies at 99

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      The winner of numerous Emmy Awards, he was almost as well known for his advocacy of animal rights as he was for his half a century as a daytime television fixture.Bob Barker, whose warmth and wit as the host of “The Price Is Right” for nearly four decades beckoned legions of giddy Americans to a stage promising luxury vacations and brand-new cars, died on Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles. He was 99.His death was announced by a spokesman, Roger Neal.Mr. Barker, who was also a longstanding and prominent advocate for animal rights, was a fixture of daytime television for half a century — first as the host of “Truth or Consequences,” from 1956 to 1974, and, most famously, starting in 1972, on “The Price Is Right,” the longest-running game show on American television.He began his 35-year stint as host of “The New Price Is Right,” as it was then known, when it made its debut on CBS as a revised and jazzed-up version of the original “The Price Is Right,” which had been on the air from 1956 to 1965. (The “New” was soon dropped from the name.) He was also host of a weekly syndicated nighttime version from 1977 until it was canceled in 1980.Mr. Barker with Janice Pennington, left, and Anitra Ford — two of the models known as Barker’s Beauties, whose main function was to display the prizes — on the set of “The Price Is Right” in 1972.CBSAlmost a decade before he retired in 2007, Mr. Barker estimated that during his tenure more than 40,000 contestants had heeded the announcer’s familiar call to “come on down!” and collected some $200 million in small and large prizes, from beach blankets to Buicks, by guessing the prices of various objects.Mr. Barker won 14 Daytime Emmy Awards as host of “The Price Is Right” and four more as executive producer (as well as a lifetime achievement Emmy in 1999). He once said that the show had lasted as long as it did because “all our games are based on prices, and everyone can identify with that.” He added, however, that he personally never knew the price of anything, and that if he were ever a contestant on such a show he would be “a total failure.”Mr. Barker was widely known for his longstanding dedication to the cause of animal rights. He quit as master of ceremonies for both the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants in 1988 because they gave fur coats as prizes. He also protested the mistreatment of animals by their trainers on the sets of various movies and television shows. He ended every installment of “The Price Is Right” by saying: “Help control the pet population. Have your pet spayed or neutered.”Almost a decade before he retired in 2007, Mr. Barker estimated that during his tenure more than 40,000 contestants had heeded the announcer’s familiar call to “come on down!” and had collected some $200 million in prizes, from beach blankets to Buicks.Photographs by Getty Images and Associated PressRobert William Barker was born on Dec. 12, 1923, in Darrington, Wash. His father, Byron, was a power line foreman who in 1929 died from complications of injuries he had received in a fall from a pole several years earlier. Shortly thereafter, his mother, Matilda (Tarleton) Barker, took a job teaching in Mission, S.D, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.“Cowboys tied up their horses at hitching rails,” Mr. Barker recalled of those years. “It was like I was growing up in the Old West.”Mr. Barker in a publicity photo from 1956, the year he began hosting “Truth or Consequences.” For two years he was seen on both that show and “The Price Is Right.”Elmer Holloway/NBCU, via Getty ImagesWhen Mr. Barker was 13, his mother married Louis Valandra, a tire salesman, and they moved to Springfield, Mo. He received a basketball scholarship to Drury College in Springfield but dropped out to enlist as a Naval Aviation cadet when World War II broke out.He was waiting for a combat assignment when the war ended, and he was discharged as a lieutenant junior grade. He returned to Drury, majored in economics and graduated summa cum laude in 1947.Even before he earned his degree, Mr. Barker had begun his first radio job, at KTTS in Springfield, where he was a disc jockey, a news writer, a sportscaster and a producer. After college he worked at WWPG in Palm Beach, Fla., and KWIK in Burbank, Calif.In 1945, he married Dorothy Jo Gideon, his high school sweetheart, who once explained the secret of their marriage this way: “I love Bob Barker. And Bob Barker loves Bob Barker.” She died in 1981, and Mr. Barker never remarried.Mr. Barker is survived by his half brother, Kent Valandra. Mr. Barker’s longtime friend Nancy Burnet, a fellow animal rights activist who had been overseeing his care — and about whom he wrote in his autobiography, “Our relationship has gone on for 25 years, off and on. Mostly on.” — is an executor of his estate.Mr. Barker with his wife, Dorothy Jo, and their dogs in 1977. He was widely known for his dedication to the cause of animal rights.CBS, via Getty ImagesMr. Barker’s big break came in 1956 when the producer Ralph Edwards heard him on KNX, a Los Angeles radio station, and asked him to audition for “Truth or Consequences,” a long-running game show (it had begun on radio in 1940) on which contestants were required to perform wild stunts. He got the job, and he and Mr. Edwards became lifelong friends.Mr. Barker was still the host of “Truth or Consequences” when he was offered “The Price Is Right” in 1972, and for two years those jobs overlapped. For a long time after that he was among the busiest people on television, with duties that also included hosting the Rose Bowl parade and the Pillsbury Bake-Off for most of the 1970s and ’80s.He occasionally showed up in movies as well, almost always as a comically exaggerated version of himself. His most memorable appearance was in the 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore,” in which he gleefully engaged in a brawl with the title character, a boorish hockey player turned golfer played by Adam Sandler.Mr. Barker occasionally showed up on the big screen, usually as a comically exaggerated version of himself. His most memorable appearance was with Adam Sandler in the 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore.”Universal PicturesTo many viewers “The Price Is Right” was, as one critic put it, among television’s last “islands of wholesomeness.” That image was challenged in 1994 when Dian Parkinson, who for almost 20 years had been a model on the show — one of the so-called Barker’s Beauties, whose main function was to display the prizes — sued Mr. Barker for sexual harassment.Ms. Parkinson, who had left the show the year before, said she had sex with Mr. Barker because she thought she would lose her job if she didn’t. In response, Mr. Barker acknowledged that he and Ms. Parkinson had had a relationship for a number of years, beginning in 1989, but insisted that it had been consensual.“She told me I had always been so strait-laced that it was time I had some hanky-panky in my life,” he said, “and she volunteered the hanky-panky.” Ms. Parkinson withdrew the suit in 1995 because, she said, she lacked both the emotional endurance and the money to pursue it.Mr. Barker announced his retirement in October 2006. “I will be 83 years old on Dec. 12,” he said at the time, “and I’ve decided to retire while I’m still young.”His final episode as host of “The Price Is Right” was taped on June 6, 2007, and shortly shown twice on June 15: first in its regular daytime slot and again in prime time.Mr. Barker’s chair sat empty after the taping of his final episode of “The Price Is Right” in June 2007.Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressAfter an extensive search, the comedian Drew Carey was chosen as Mr. Barker’s successor in July 2007. In an interview with The Times, Mr. Carey called Mr. Barker a “legend” and praised him for the “empathy” he showed contestants.“He wants them to win. You can hug him,” Mr. Carey said. “He went from being your dad and your uncle to your grandfather.”Mr. Barker returned to the show as a guest in 2009 to promote his autobiography, “Priceless Memories,” and again in 2013, to celebrate his 90th birthday, and 2015, as the unannounced guest host, an April Fool’s Day gag. He promised to come back when he turned 100.“People ask me, ‘What do you miss most about “Price is Right”?’ And I say, ‘The money,’” Mr. Barker said in a 2013 interview with Parade magazine. “But that is not altogether true. I miss the people, too.”Richard Severo, a Times reporter from 1968 to 2006, died in June. Peter Keepnews and More

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      Bob Barker Fought Animal Cruelty Through Philanthropy and Activism

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      With millions in donations and a powerful bully pulpit, Mr. Barker became one of the most prominent allies of the animal rights movement in Hollywood.Bob Barker, the longtime host of the television game show “The Price Is Right” who died on Saturday, made animal rights advocacy a hallmark both of his career in show business and his life after retirement.Over decades as the host of the longest-running game show in American television history, Mr. Barker, beginning in the 1980s, used his bully pulpit to remind millions of viewers to “help control the pet population; have your pet spayed or neutered.”In one instance in 1996, he powered through his announcement even as an excited contestant clung at his arm, unable to contain her joy at having just won $51,676, or $99,602 when adjusted for inflation.He continued that tradition for more than 20 years, until his very last show on June 15, 2007.“There are just too many cats and dogs being born,” he explained in an interview with The New York Times in 2004. “Animals are being euthanized by the millions simply because there are not enough homes for them. In the United States, there is a dog or cat euthanized every 6.5 seconds.”Mr. Barker supported a wide range of efforts to fight what activists saw as rampant animal cruelty in American society.Bob Barker, at 11 years old, with his dog Brownie, in South Dakota.Bob BarkerAs one of the most prominent allies of the movement in Hollywood, he became a strict vegetarian, stopped dyeing his hair because the products were tested on animals and quit his job as host of the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because their organizers refused to remove fur coats from the prize packages.“I am so proud of the trailblazing work Barker and I did together to expose the cruelty to animals in the entertainment industry,” Nancy Burnet, a fellow animal rights activist who had been overseeing his care, said in a statement on Saturday.Mr. Barker put $25 million into founding the DJ&T Foundation, which finances clinics that specialize in spaying and neutering. The foundation was named after Mr. Barker’s wife, Dorothy Jo, and his mother, Matilda Valandra, who was known as Tilly.Estimates show that the number of dogs and cats euthanized in shelters has been reduced to a fraction of what it was in the 1990s, at least partially attributable to “the drive to sterilize pet dogs and cats,” according to a 2018 study.Mr. Barker also donated $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society at the urging of its founder Paul Watson, who used the money to buy a ship named for Mr. Barker for use in the organization’s anti-whaling campaigns.Bob Barker donated $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to buy a ship for the group’s anti-whaling campaigns. The ship, left, was named The Bob Barker in his honor.Selase Kove-Seyram for The New York Times“He said he thought he could put the Japanese whaling fleet out of business if he had $5 million,” Mr. Barker said of Mr. Watson in an interview with The Associated Press. “I said, ‘I think you do have the skills to do that, and I have $5 million, so let’s get it on.’”Ingrid Newkirk, the president of the animal rights group PETA, said in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Barker had a “profound commitment to making the world a kinder place.”Ms. Newkirk added, “To us — and to so many animals around the world — Bob will always be a national animal rights treasure.”Mr. Barker’s efforts were born from a lifelong affinity for animals.“I always had a pack of dogs with me,” he said in 2004, recalling his upbringing in the small town of Mission on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. “There were a lot of dogs in Mission. Not many people, but a lot of dogs.”His dedication to opposing animal cruelty continued well into his retirement, as Mr. Barker continued to donate to organizations like PETA, which named its West Coast headquarters in Los Angeles for Mr. Barker after he made a $2.5 million donation in 2012 for renovations. More

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      in Movies

      Martine Colette, Who Rescued Exotic Animals, Is Dead at 79

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      Her wildlife sanctuary just outside Los Angeles was among the first of its kind and was supported by Hollywood luminaries.Martine Colette, the founder of Wildlife Waystation, a sanctuary for exotic animals that ran for 43 years just outside the Los Angeles city limits, died on Jan. 23 at a hospital at Lake Havasu, Ariz. She was 79. The cause was lung cancer, said Jerry Brown, her publicist and friend.Waystation, which Ms. Colette created in 1976 in the Angeles National Forest, was among the first sanctuaries of its kind for exotic animals that had been abused, abandoned, orphaned or injured. It would rehabilitate them and, if possible, return them to the wild.After financial difficulties and staff turmoil in recent years, Ms. Colette retired in 2019, and Waystation was closed. During the sanctuary’s existence, its website said, it rescued more than 77,000 creatures, including Siberian and Bengal tigers, lions, leopards, jaguars and camels, as well as native wildlife, including foxes and various reptiles and birds.Many of the animals were castoffs from the pet trade, traveling roadside attractions or research labs; others had been brought in from the wild. Some came from nearby Hollywood, where they had been used on the sets of movies and television shows and taken home as pets, only to become a nuisance or a danger to the homeowner.Ms. Colette helped California develop many of its rules and regulations involving exotic animals, including restrictions on bringing them in from the wild and keeping them in homes. She was designated an animal expert for the city of Los Angeles, and Waystation became a model for similar refuges throughout the world.Ms. Colette had moved to Hollywood with her husband, the first of three; all the marriages ended in divorce. (Information on survivors was not immediately available.) She built up a costume-design business there and even had bit parts in a couple of movies and in an episode of the television series “Garrison’s Gorillas.” In 1965, she rescued her first animal, a mountain lion she had seen in a five-by-five-foot cage at an animal show.Within a decade, The Los Angeles Times reported, she had accumulated a house full of beasts and a yard full of wildcats. At that point, she sold her costume-design business, moved to Little Tujunga Canyon and opened Wildlife Waystation, which, at 160 acres, was larger than most municipal zoos.The sanctuary earned an international reputation, and needy animals were sent there from around the world. Ms. Colette brought schoolchildren to Waystation and conducted outreach programs. In one of her more storied adventures, she organized and led a caravan in 1995 to help rescue 27 big cats from a ramshackle game farm in Idaho.Many luminaries in the entertainment industry were said to have supported the sanctuary, including Bruce Willis, Will Smith, Drew Barrymore, Alex Trebek, Leonard Nimoy and Betty White. On occasion, Hugh Hefner, a major backer, gave over the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles for Waystation’s annual fund-raising “safari brunch.”Ms. Colette with Hugh Hefner at a Playboy Mansion fund-raiser for the Wildlife Waystation in 2005. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images But the sanctuary had longstanding problems, including overcrowding and unsanitary and unsafe conditions. Authorities barred it from taking in any more animals in 2000 and closed it to the public; it reopened nine months later, after it had made $2 million in upgrades and reduced the animal population.Despite support from Hollywood, Waystation, which had an annual budget approaching $3 million, struggled financially, and management of the facility became increasingly difficult. Numerous staff members resigned or were fired in later years, and the sanctuary faced the constant threat of natural disasters; a major fire wreaked havoc in 2017, followed two years later by massive flooding.Ms. Colette resigned as president and chief operating officer in May 2019 and moved to Arizona few months later, the board of directors voted to close the facility for good.The California Department of Fish and Wildlife stepped in to oversee the care and relocation of more than 470 animals, including lions, tigers, wolves, owls, alligators and chimpanzees.Eighteen chimps and two hybrid wolf-dogs are awaiting placement, a spokesman for the department said by email on Wednesday. Eleven of those chimps are likely to be sent to new homes later this year, he said, while money is being raised to find homes for the remaining seven.Martine Diane Colette was born on April 30, 1942, in Shanghai. Waystation’s website said that her father was a Belgian diplomat and that she was raised in Nairobi, Kenya, where she attended boarding school. She spent much of her childhood traveling with her father throughout Africa.“It was during these formative years of witnessing the horrors of trapping camps, hunting and exploitation of animals that she recognized her life’s true calling,” the website said.Ms. Colette had a special affection for chimpanzees, having rescued many of them from research labs, and she formed close bonds with them; the Waystation website said she called them her “hairy children.”Among her last words, the website said, were these: “Soon I’ll be walking with tigers.” More