So my story essentially is I wanted to work at the zoo and I would see summer helpers at the zoo and I would go, “How do you get that job?” Well, Chicago’s a very political city at the time, probably still is. And I would, we would always talk… Read More
We should get together for dinner.” And that was it. He hangs up the phone. And he says to me, “Why you still here?” And I went, “What do you mean?” He says, “You got the job.” He had been talking to his friend, William McFetridge, who was the chairman… Read More
What’s the beginning for Mark Rosenthal?… Read More
Well, the beginning for Mark Rosenthal is I, my family lived across the street from Lincoln Park Zoo on Commonwealth Avenue. And my mother, this is in the 40s, and my mother, like many mothers at the time would go to the zoo with their kid. It was the entertainment. Read More
Well, he would come home with giant bags of peanuts. We would go to the zoo. And we would, you know, I was the envy of all these kids. “How did you get all those peanuts?” Right. And we would go and I would feed the ducks at the zoo… Read More
Well, let me say this about filming. At Lincoln Park Zoo, I think I had a sense of wanting to document what was going on at the zoo. I wasn’t the photographer, but there was this medium of videotaping and it was reel-to-eel at the time. And we had a… Read More
We were able to get editors at the time that you had to really have a lot of equipment. It wasn’t like today. So we were able to pull this together. And I just felt at the time, I enjoyed the medium and I wanted to make sure that things… Read More
But let’s switch back a little bit. Read More
Go back, and what was your childhood like and what were animals in your life at that time?… Read More
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