Paula Tracey (Cheryl Miller), an adventurous and fearless girl, is the daughter of veterinarian Dr. Marsh Tracey (Marshall Thompson). Dr. Tracey is the director of East Africa's animal hospital and nature preserve. He fights to protect all African wildlife, while studying and caring for injured animals and endangered species. Paula and her father find Clarence, a wild African lion who is cross-eyed which makes hunting in the wild impossible, and they adopt him as a new member of their wildlife preserve. Clarence later saves the day when Julie Harper (Betsy Drake) and her research gorillas are threatened by animal poachers.
The Clarence Cross-Eyed Lion HD
She may sound like Dian Fossey, portrayed by Sigourey Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist, but Fossey did not begin her work with gorillas until 1966 (also personally threatened by poachers). Clarence was cross-eyed in real life and lived at Africa USA near Los Angeles. He was so tame that he would purr when his back was rubbed. Ivan Tors had previously made the movie Flipper (1963 film), which also became a TV series. Betsy Drake had retired from acting 6 years previous, but agreed to play this one role before returning to retirement. Marshall Thompson was bitten for real during the scene in which he rescues a woman from a leopard; they left the scene in as filmed. No relation to the 1962 John Wayne film Hatari, also set in Africa but not a comedy.
The movie was a mixture of safaris, animals and adventure with some humour. A particular technique used during the film was showing the world from the view of the cross eyed lion. Authentic film footage of gorillas, shot in their natural habitat, adds to the realism.
At the start of the film, Dr Marsh Tracy, head of an animal behaviour research centre, travels to East Africa with his daughter Paula. While there, Dr Tracy captures a lion whose crossed eyes have made it impossible to hunt for food.
Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion was only a modest success in cinemas, but the lion and his adopted family found a more welcome home on the small screen. The film served as the basis for the popular CBS television series, Daktari, which ran from 1966 to 1969.
Paula Tracey (Cheryl Miller), an adventurous and fearless girl, is the daughter of veterinarian Dr. Marsh Tracey (Marshall Thompson). Dr. Tracey is the director of East Africa's animal hospital and nature preserve. He fights to protect all African wildlife, while studying and caring for injured animals and endangered species. Paula and her father find Clarence, a wild African lion whose crossed-eyes make hunting in the wild impossible, and they adopt him as a new member of their wildlife preserve. Clarence later saves the day when Julie Harper (Betsy Drake) and her research monkeys are threatened by animal poachers.
Everybody praised the valor and magnanimity of Sir Launcelot; and as for me, I was perfectly amazed, that one man, all by himself, should have been able to beat down and capture such battalions of practiced fighters. I said as much to Clarence; but this mocking featherhead only said:
After this music, the priest who stood behind the royal table said a noble long grace in ostensible Latin. Then the battalion of waiters broke away from their posts, and darted, rushed, flew, fetched and carried, and the mighty feeding began; no words anywhere, but absorbing attention to business. The rows of chops opened and shut in vast unison, and the sound of it was like to the muffled burr of subterranean machinery.
One morning I was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip, and had climbed the ridge which bordered the northern extremity of the valley, when I came upon an artificial opening in the face of a low precipice, and recognized it by its location as a hermitage which had often been pointed out to me from a distance as the den of a hermit of high renown for dirt and austerity. I knew he had lately been offered a situation in the Great Sahara, where lions and sandflies made the hermit-life peculiarly attractive and difficult, and had gone to Africa to take possession, so I thought I would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreed with its reputation.
Sleep? It was impossible. It would naturally have been impossible in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing that made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of, was my racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole size of what might have happened yonder in the slave-quarters in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine. 2ff7e9595c
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