My former boss from the Ledger-Gazette newspaper, Les Steinburg, drove back to the Antelope Valley with me. It wasn't the happy, elated drive home that it should have been. Something was off. The feeling was heavy and sad and I didn't know why.
The second meeting was at a wildlife habitat that is now called THE SHAMBALA PRESERVE. I'm not sure what it was called then. I can tell you that my support system grew to include my mother, who was not well and really not in a position to be able to provide support, but she was in the small group that waited for me on the road at the top of the canyon as I descended to the bottom of the canyon for my second interview. Mom was telling anyone who would listen that she feared I was going to be fed to the big cats they kept there, that it was probably a snuff film. (Maybe that was how I grew up to be such a timid person. Mom was always telling me things like that. If you research the making of the film ROAR, you will see my mom's intuition was not exactly wrong.)
With hindsight I would say that Noel Marshall would have made a better movie than ROAR if he made a movie about what he tried to do to me and how it broke my heart to walk away from a job I wanted so much to accept. ROAR, as in, "I am woman hear me not really roar." So many of us don't "ROAR". We don't want to be permanently bonded in society's memory to a sexual predator. I didn't want to be known as the girl who accused Noel Marshall of linking his sexual needs to a job. Most of us emit a low warning GROWL and walk away. It hurts to hold that wounded roar inside. A lot of women are beginning to unload that weight.
That day at the bottom of the canyon, Noel Marshall made clear what I suspected he wanted. I looked at a film clip. We talked about the film. We talked about his needs. We walked among the cages of big cats. At one point I was close to making my mother's irrational fears come true. I reached out to pet one of the cats on the head. I wasn't thinking. I was just completely sad. It was like I was reaching for a kitty cat or a teddy bear.
Mr Noel Marshall and I were on "cool terms" by that time. He understood that I was not going to leap into his arms and I understood that it cost me the job. We settled that. We were walking towards the house where Tippi Hedren was standing.
Noel Marshall flipped out when I petted the cat.
"You are afraid of SEX but you're not afraid of getting torn apart!" Noel Marshall was beside himself, angry at me for turning down the job. I had zero experience with big cats. With hindsight, my worry wart mom was actually on to something. ROAR was not a snuff film, but a lot of people got hurt by the cats in the making of this film and some of the real footage of people being hurt was used in the film.
I didn't expect to see Tippi Hedren and when I did I was too sad to say much. I remember telling her she was beautiful. She was stunning. I don't know if she suspected her husband was hitting on the job applicants. Hitchcock put her through hell. I didn't want any part of what Noel Marshall had in mind. I walked away.
I walked back to the top of the canyon and announced that I didn't get the job. My mom was happy that I wasn't going to be eaten by lions in a snuff film and went back to Florida. I got a warehouse job at Paramount Studios and immediately found myself being stalked by an anonymous sexual predator who seemed to know everything about me but I never found out who he was. Mr. Mystery man.
~ to be continued ~
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