Animal Stars of "The Yearling"

Out of a jungle of rain-washed pines and junipers spearing the hot blueness of the Florida sky, ran a small, tawny-haired boy. His bare feet, extending from his overalled legs, crackled against the fallen palmettos. He leaped into the air, flinging his arms toward a flock of white doves circling above him. "Okay, cut!" yelled Director Clarence Brown. The camera ceased grinding on a first take of the scene called "Jody and the Doves" in the script of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's production of The Yearling, on location near Silver Springs, Florida.

A grip man pointed to a full-grown pine dwarfing the shiny row of reflectors that stretched in a semicircle on either side of the camera. "They're holding a council on which direction is home," he explained, squinting his eyes at the doves. Released from a cage for use in the scene, they now huddled in the upper branches of the trees, unwilling to act. The director wanted another take, and the take required doves. Stand-ins, grip men, prop men, cameramen, and cast were called in. Collecting around the base of the tree, they attempted, by a mixture of pleas, commands and shinnying, to retrieve the winged actors. After fifteen minutes of this futile effort, Brown slapped his sun helmet sharply against the side of his knee.

The crew disgustedly shuffled back into position, and Ralph Stockman, M.G.M. animal trainer, substituted brown doves for the white ones cooing happily in the pine. This interlude was a sample of the many unique problems that arose in the filming of this multimillion-dollar production. Primarily an animal picture, The Yearling tells the story of the boy Jody and his pet fawn, Flag, who grow up on an "island"--native term for farm clearing-surrounded by the wildlife of the Florida scrub pine country. In addition to doves and a fawn star, actors in this film include the usual horses and dogs. Bears, pumas, buzzards, owls, raccoons, foxes, fox squirrels, redbirds, rattlesnakes and an alligator appear, making and, occasionally, breaking scenes with equal abandon.

This impressive list of wildlife would disconcert most animal trainers, especially if their problems are complicated by the Hollywood habit of last-minute demands for a fawn that can drink milk out of a pail, or a raccoon that will scale a tree at the drop of a director's hand and with cameras grinding. But Morgan, M.G.M. behind-the-scenes trainer, is not easily upset by unexpected Hollywood demands. Having served apprenticeship as a Merchant Marine sailor on ships transporting live cargo, and as Barnum and Bailey elephant trainer, he developed his own peculiar brand of animal insight that helped see the picture to completion.