Yeah, I had training on television. And I was very comfortable in being Marlin sidekick. Marlin, by the way, I wanna back up a little bit. One of my sister-in-laws was very stewed and she had been watching through the 50s. She had watched Zoo Parade. Marlin’s show. Marlin was… Read More
And of course he had that look that was recognizable. His rather astute white hair, et cetera. She said to me, when I got back from Africa, she said, “Jim, you really ought to get tied “in with Marlin Perkins.” I hadn’t thought about that much before that, but she… Read More
And I had to be very careful that the eagle couldn’t reach out off my arm and grab me in the stomach even though it was perfectly relaxed when it was with me. They do have an aggressive, competitive attitude. I don’t try to judge an animal. I judge it… Read More
So anyway, I had the line always down on the ground and I would walk over it. So if anything happened, I had access to it immediately. Well, the eagle was starting to fly down to me. There was an associated press photographer over here, taking photographs, and the eagle… Read More
So I didn’t know which one the eagle was going after, but it was in a beeline, (laughs) hopefully that, well, I thought it was a poodle. I glimpsed at the… I dove for the line, but I looked at the Associated Press photographer. And he had a look of… Read More
And he wanted… They wanted me to fly the eagle, the harpy, which was wild caught. It was an adult and they wanted to do the story. The first show for Wild Kingdom was named “Attack and Defense”, which is even then television, you know, like the dramatic part of… Read More
So I didn’t wanna take a chance, now I got to explain to you an eagle can’t look down at his leg. There’s set of (indistinct) around the leg, but the eagle does know he’s attached to anything. They had no idea of that, so that light line, nylon line… Read More
So they said to me, would I take this line off the eagle and let it fly free?… Read More
I’d trained this eagle by the way, in the Amazon. And I had taken it on lecture tours and things like that, but it relied on me. I was the object that was feeding it. And I could get into the whole philosophy of trapping and training. When you train… Read More
It looked like a Bonnie and Clyde car. They’re very, very wonderful car. They’re kind of the used to be the Paris police car with a V on the front, and Charles de Gaulle would run around in them. And I loved that car. It was front-wheel drive. And so… Read More
I used to lecture with these all over. So I think Marlin had second thoughts when he saw me with this old French automobile full of animals. I had to take a hose and sort of wash it out after that trip. I remember that cause the animals had done… Read More
Well, it wasn’t a Mutual Omaha in those days, for Wild Kingdom. And I actually got in on the ground floor helped design the name and the program and the format. There were about three or four of us that started World Kingdom. Well, he calls you on the phone,… Read More
I was funded to go down and study the harpy eagle by a wonderful woman who had a lot of resources. They had a plantation at Albany, Georgia, and I was dating their daughter. And the idea is she put up $3,000 for me to go to the Amazon and… Read More
So I came back to Albany, Georgia, and it was a time when it was either put up or shut up. So I remember (chuckles) going over there and we actually, her name was Tuli. I can use that name and we broke up ’cause she never thought I’d ever… Read More
So your first experience with Marlin was when he came down to Florida?… Read More
That was the first experience. That was your first meeting with you. Like two or three years later he called me after I came back from The Today Show, he had seen me on The Today Show ’cause he and Sir Edmund Hillary were in Chicago and I was in… Read More
And I got a call from Marlin and said, would I come to Chicago and do the pilot film for a Mutual Omaha?… Read More
What’s the next step for Marlin Perkins?… Read More
Well, the first thing he did was to, he tried to go to the Amazon and do a live show in the Amazon with Ross Allen. In those days, the equipment was so big and so heavy. They had to have like seven or eight porters to carry the camera… Read More
So they came back and they found out that, (chuckles) the real truth about the Yeti was there was no such thing. There was a skullcap they thought it was from, it was rumored that it was from the Yeti. It turned out to be the skull of a goat-antelope… Read More