Many years ago, when I was in, active in the profession, there was a gentleman named Marvin Jones who was registrar at the San Diego Zoo. And Marvin was a fount of information and very knowledgeable, knew everybody in the business in Europe and in the United States. And a… Read More
And I thought about it and through some friends, and I, in 1982, I had done an interview with Marlin Perkins, former director of Lincoln Park Zoo, and serendipitously, ’cause he was at the zoo and I wanted to get the history of Lincoln Park Zoo from him directly, which… Read More
You directed and produced the film “Sinbad Had Surgery”. Read More
Can you speak about that whole effort and how the valuable documentation was even initiated?… Read More
My name is Mark Rosenthal, Mark Allan Rosenthal. I was born in Chicago, Illinois, January 3rd, 1946. And presently, I hold the title of Curator Emeritus at Lincoln Park Zoo. Read More
Before we start with the interview, can you give us some background of the Zoo & Aquarium Video Archive project and how it started?… Read More
I enjoyed it thoroughly. Sorry about my voice here the last part, but it’s been fun. I relived some stuff and it keeps me excited about our chosen love in life. Read More
But I was not a camera hound or a mic hound. I spread it out all over the place on that. You carried something in your wallets when you were director. Read More
Can you tell me what that was and do you still carry it?… Read More
I left that for Jeff Ettling on my desk. I used to pull it out every once in a while when the board had aggravated me or if something come up, I’d read this. And it was about dreaming bigger dreams than one would expect because those that dream small… Read More
Oh, I had one of the best ones you could ever have at one point with a local reporter. Her daughter volunteered at the zoo, so the daughter knew sometimes before I did about something. I’d get a call from her mother, but the mother was nice enough that she… Read More
And I got to the point that I saved myself for the major important ones when you needed to have a critical thing. And the example would be, we had just finished raising the money and got the matching money for the tiger exhibit. And the incident in San Francisco… Read More
How high are your walls?… Read More
And you know, we were saying right what was in the standards, 16 feet. So we knew it was important that I get on and how we were gonna address it. And you know, we upped it six inches. It was real easy in the design thing to move the… Read More
I personally think it’s essential. And I made a point with my staff to, you know, I gave them copies of Conway’s paper, how to display a bull frog. I lent out my copies of “Man and Animal in the Zoo,” Hediger’s book, quite a few times. I really believe… Read More
And yeah, it upsets me, but I learned. I consider Hediger’s two books the Bibles, “Zoo Biology” and “Man and Animal in the Zoo.” It’s two of the books that I kept and I owe a lot to my zoo career. I’ll never forget that. There’s no such thing as… Read More
Did you have a good relationship with the press and how do you nurture that relationship?… Read More
Oh, he did. The greatest story of all time was appropriations. The guy from the, I heard this indirectly, started with the director of National History Museum who took down a volcano demonstration for this wing on volcanoes or something. And he said my dad didn’t play fair. And my… Read More
And yeah, she was a very attractive lady and my dad, when he got questioned about it said, you know, it was one of those things that dad said until you run the zoo, your responsibility is to take advantage of everything you can. You don’t make your own luck. Read More
How important for the future of zoos is it to keep this link with the past?… Read More