Zoos in the Movies

Damn, I just realised it was actually the third and fourth series.



Hix

 

I may have glossed over it, but I don't think anyone mentioned Return to Me (2000). The Lincoln Park Zoo played a significant part in the movie as the husband was finishing up a new gorilla exhibit that he promised he would for his deceased wife.

Also, I saw people mentioned the Santa Clause scene was shot at the Toronto Zoo. I thought I heard somewhere the polar bear part was shot at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

 

Sorry, to revive an old thread, but its worth doing so I think, I'm sure there are many new movies/TV shows featuring zoos.
The second season of Netflix series Sense8 was released yesterday, and the second episode features a discussion between two characters as they sit in the Alfred-Brehm House at Berlin Tierpark. I'm 99% sure it must be here, as they sit in front of an indoor cage with a tiger, and there is clearly a tiger at right angles to this, in the open, moated exhibit. Very exciting to see, although not heavily featured.

 

Magnificent Beasts And Where To Find Them has a small segment that features Central Park Zoo in New York but I don't know how accurate it is.

 

It was Fatastic Beasts, not Magnificent. It was set in 1926, so I'm not sure how accurate it would be either. There was a macaw cage, sea lion pool, and baboon enclosures shown (and destroyed), and a lion and an ostrich that escaped. It was surrounded by brick walls and looks nothing like today's Central Park Zoo (unsure how accurate it was concerning how CPZ was in 1926).

 

This list has 34 movies with zoo scenes, many of them older black and white films. Some have screen shots of the zoo scenes and some do not. Sadly none have accompanying text stating which zoo it was (though a couple show the zoo name in the screen shot).
Zoo Scenes in Films

 

I remember visiting London Zoo in probably 1988 and seeing a film crew filming a scene on a park bench with actor John Thaw. I assumed at the time it was for Inspector Morse.



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And of course the hippo, which was the main zoo animal featured...

 

Oh yes knew I missed one.

 

There is a new film 'The Zookeeper's Wife'.
The Zookeeper's Wife (film) - Wikipedia
It is based on a true story of directors of Warsaw Zoo in Poland, Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who struggled to survive in Nazi-occupied Warsaw during WW2 and hid Jews on zoo grounds.

Judging from Wikipedia it is reasonably true to facts, but at the same time could be rather dark and sad story (as was the reality of WW2).

 

It is quite sad, but also a very good movie. The first tear jerker is the bombing of the zoo and the deaths of the animals. Then obviously the rest of the movie is sad due to the events that happen to the Jewish people.

 

I don't know where magnificent came from, of course it was Fantastic Beasts!

 

There is a mystery associated with Warsaw Zoo during WW2, of a stolen baby elephant.

In 1938, Warsaw zoo celebrated a birth of Asian Elephant, believed at the time to be only the 12th ever in Europe. The baby, named Tuzinka or Dozen, was female. During WW2 parent elephants Jas and Kasia died, but Tuzinka survived. She was exported alive by Nazi occupation troops, and presumably destined to some zoo in Germany. And it is unknown what happened to Tuzinka. She was certainly alive when she left Warsaw zoo, but did she die in some German zoo or circus during later part of the war? Or maybe she survived and lived under the different name? So far, nobody in Poland knows.

 

In the film Next Time We Love (1936), starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart and Ray Milland, there is a brief scene inside the New York Aquarium. There is a clear shot of the exterior door frame with a couple of seahorses carved into the wall (a 3-second image) and then a single scene with Stewart and Milland looking at a row of fish tanks. What makes this interesting is that the aquarium, then located in Battery Park, closed down in 1941...just 5 years after the movie was released.

 

I remember seeing a film years ago that must have been made in the 1950s (it was black and white). It was about a boy who had some obsession with unicorns. At one point he's taken to London Zoo and there's some nice footage of the zoo. Ring any bells?

 

Not many people know this, but in the movie "We Bought a Zoo" (2011) there are just a few scenes in which the Dartmoor zoo is shown...

 

You are right, I didn't know that.

 

Well I'm an idiot. I was trying to be sarcastic by saying a "few" scenes when I was referring to the whole movie. After a quick google search, I just figured out that Chlidonias is right, it was all shot in California.

Well I guess I'll trying being funny some other time, eh?