Whose paw prints and hoofprints should be in the forecourt of Grauman’s?
Flanked by the descendants of Lassie and Rin Tin Tin, Uggie poses for camera in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese
I was surprised to learn (hat/tip, Mark) that Uggie, the Jack Russell who made such an impression in The Artist, is the first animal star to leave impressions of his paws in the concrete forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese. (He did so the same day that the Oscar-winning film is out on DVD. What a coincidence.)
Uggie enjoyed a photo op with the descendants of those canine stars Rin Tin Tin and Lassie whose paw prints certainly deserve to be enshrined at Grauman’s. As should those of Asta, who made eight Thin Man movies and pretty much upstaged Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth. As should the hoof prints of the pig who played Babe (there were actually 48 of them, a trainer told me, each wore a pig toupee) and the paws of one of the seven Labradors who impersonated Marley in Marley and Me and the paws of the Siamese who was Pyewacket in Bell, Book and Candle. And, of course, the hoof prints of Trigger.
Am I leaving out an important animal star?
Cujo! (Kidding.)
The snakes in “Snakes On a Plane”,”Indiania Jones and the Temple of Doom”,All the amimals in Dr. Dolittle ( both versions) Marley in Marley and Me Toto in the Wizard of Oz and the Wiz ,Who can forget Ben?I don’t know any rats that have a hit song named after them.Do you? What about all those birds in Hitchcock’s “The Birds”.How about all the bats in all thos horror films? What about Flicka.Silver, Simba,Nayla and the whole crew from the “Lion King”? In fact any animal that had to star in a Disney film! These animales were good old American made.Uggie was French and didn’t speak to us Americans!
How could I have forgotten Toto?
When you mentioned paw prints, my first thought was Harry Cohn.
In lieu of him, how about Cheetah from the Tarzan movies? Or Clyde from Clint’s two simian-friendly flicks? The fly from the movie(s) of the same name?
I forgot all the rats that abondon ship in the “Titantic”,the rats that climbed up the walls “Daylight”,and the monkeys in “Outbreak” What about those horses in Ben-Hur? The dog Samantha bought in Sex In The City 2? now there’s raw talent! The elephant in “Water for Elephants” OMG! We forgot about the MGM lion!
How about Francis (of Talking Mule fame) and Mister Ed (the talking…oh, you know).
National Velvet!