Before the floods last month, Los Angeles' non-profit-making Zoopark, owned by the California Zoological Society, had managed to keep itself going. But it had never built a reserve fund from admission charges, sale of animals, concessions and, most important, renting animal actors to films. Among Zoopark's characters: Jackie, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's trademark lion; Nissa and Sweetheart, leopards which stalked through Bringing Up Baby with Katharine Hepburn; Anna May, veteran jungle-film elephant; Lady, the whooping crane which danced with Shirley Temple in Captain January.
As Los Angeles' damaging flood receded and equally damaging Recession mounted,...