

However, Prahlad Kakkar was adamant and decided to enact the entire adv in front of him. It was to mew like a cat and once it had Strepsils it would roar as the original MGM lion would.Ī great film idea but Anil Kapoor was being his usual self.

The idea was to show the MGM lion with a sore throat, unable to roar.

In reality, he was testing the conviction which the agencies had when they presented their creatives. He would provoke the agencies till they gave up and changed the creative. The difficult Anil Kapoor was the client, and he used to grind agencies to death.Īgencies thought that he was a bully who had his way. Back to the Boots Company but a different brand – Strepsils. The images displayed directly above may be partially responsible for fostering the later rumor that one of MGM's first Leos killed its trainer and his assistants while they attempted to film him.1970’s. In fact, what the company actually did was far more interesting (and dangerous): MGM did not need to strap Leo the Lion to a table in order to get him to roar for their famous logo. 'No one had tried anything like this," she said. Merav Shamir, a veterinary neurological specialist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, diagnosed that Samson was suffering from damage to the posterior portion of his skull - a condition caused by vitamin A deficiency that has killed every other lion known to have suffered from it.Īfter a Computer Aided Tomography (Cat) scan on Samson's skull confirmed her suspicions, Dr Shamir sent an urgent message to veterinary experts around the world asking if any had performed corrective surgery. To the horror of zoo staff and visitors, the lion began staggering around his pen at the Hai-Kef zoo in Rishon Lezion, near Tel Aviv, his legs buckling beneath his weight as if he were a calf struck down by mad cow disease.
#Mgm iconic roaring movie lion replaced tv#
The TV spots for Desperate Hours and Death Warrant have the sound of Leo roaring, despite being a still picture, possibly because they replaced it from the original TV spots during each movies theatrical run. However, the above-displayed image does not capture either MGM's Leo or the filming of a company logo. This is a manipulated version of a photograph that was originally taken in 2005, when a two-year-old Barbary lion named Samson underwent a CAT (Computer Aided Tomography) scan after falling ill at an Israeli zoo:Ī young lion called Samson has become the star attraction at an Israeli zoo after his life was saved by a vet in a pioneering nine-hour brain operation. The Australian promo logo (with Leo actually roaring) has a different roar track. One suggested answer has been provided by the above-displayed photograph purportedly showing Leo strapped to a table while filming his iconic roar, a picture that has been circulating online since at least January 2015.
#Mgm iconic roaring movie lion replaced full#
Those familiar with the training and handling of exotic animals know well how difficult it can be to get a creature such a lion to roar on command, though, so one might perhaps wonder what efforts went on behind the scenes to capture a suitable take of MGM's Leo the Lion mascot in full roar. That iconic branding is familiar not only as a static logo, but also as the moving image of a roaring lion that precedes the presentation of MGM pictures. The leonine logo of the MGM film studio, originally designed for Goldwyn Pictures Corporation in 1916, is one of the Hollywood movie industry's most recognizable images. Was the Lion really strapped down to film this famous trademark clip? In October 2015, a Snopes reader emailed us about a photo supposedly showing a behind-the-scenes look into the filming of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio's promotional clip that displays at the beginning of its films and features a lion.
