The Trainer Who Created Four-Legged Stars

Hollywood animal trainer Frank Inn with Higgins, a shelter dog known for his starring roles in the 1960s TV series Petticoat Junction and the 1974 film Benji.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: Time again for our summer road trip to the cemetery.

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WERTHEIMER: Today, a stop in the Hollywood Hills. Gene Autry, Bette Davis and Buster Keaton are a few of the names that draw tourists to Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Among the movie stars lies a man who made animals the stars.

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UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Benji, what is the matter with you? Come back this minute.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Oh, hello, Arnold.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Lassie.

WERTHEIMER: Benji, Arnold and Lassie are household names, thanks to Frank Inn. NPR's Angie Hamilton-Lowe has more.

ANGIE HAMILTON-LOWE, BYLINE: Frank Inn was a pioneer animal trainer whose own life resembled a Hollywood film. Born into a strict Quaker family from Indiana, Inn set his sights on the movie business, and in the mid-1930s, hitchhiked west to Los Angeles. He found a job as a maintenance man at MGM studios, but soon after he started working, the teenager was hit by a drunken driver. Inn's daughter, Kathleen Copson, recounts the story her father used to tell.

KATHLEEN COPSON: He had been in this accident. He was pronounced dead. They took him to the morgue. Embalming students came through, and the sentence I heard was one of the students said: How come this guy is still warm?

HAMILTON-LOWE: Turns out that he wasn't dead, and to keep him company throughout his long recovery, a friend gave Inn a puppy named Jeep. It was the first animal he trained.

JOE CAMP: And so he sat in that wheelchair and trained the dog to do things like go get his keys, go get the paper.

HAMILTON-LOWE: Joe Camp is the writer and director of "Benji," the 1974 film starring a mutt that Frank Inn trained.

CAMP: He could talk to the dog, and literally, the dog understood.

HAMILTON-LOWE: After his recovery, Inn returned to his job at MGM. He was sweeping up on the set of "The Thin Man" when he noticed a trainer who couldn't get a dog to perform. The next day, Inn brought Jeep to work with him.

CAMP: He said, I got my dog. He said, okay. You got a ball? He puts the dog down and says, go get it. Dog runs up the stairs, jumps in the bed, goes under the covers, scratches around for a little bit. And he said, I've got it here. The dog looked out, and he held it up in his hand and said, speak. And the dog barked. And the guy said, you got a job.

HAMILTON-LOWE: That chance encounter led to a career that lasted over 50 years. Inn trained thousands of animals for TV and movies, from snakes to camels to chimpanzees. He made a star out of a pig called Arnold Ziffel on "Green Acres," as well as a shelter dog named Higgins, better known as Benji. Kathleen Copson recalls her father's rare talent.

COPSON: He could get animals to do things that most people didn't believe, you know. But he - because he had a way. He had a way.

HAMILTON-LOWE: Frank Inn taught his way to a team of assistants, training a new generation of wranglers how to communicate with animals, rather than simply making them perform tricks. His connection with animals was so strong that Inn kept the cremated remains of his most beloved creatures in his home. Joe Camp remembers.

CAMP: He had stuff all over - boxes of ashes of various and sundry animals everywhere. And he always said that he wanted all of them in the casket with him when he went. Empty them out, and pour them in there.

HAMILTON-LOWE: Late in his life, Inn suffered from diabetes and obesity. At one point, he weighed over 400 pounds. Before his health declined, Copson helped her father make funeral arrangements.

COPSON: We actually had a meeting with the people from the mortuary. He was huge, of course, a big man, and he would have needed a specially designed casket for that. And then he wanted these pockets put in for the animals.

HAMILTON-LOWE: In the idyllic landscape of the Hollywood Hills, Frank Inn was laid to rest following his death in July of 2002. But Copson laments his animals aren't there with him.

COPSON: When that actually happened - and I talked to the same woman that we had made the arrangements with - she said we can no longer do that, because the laws have changed.

HAMILTON-LOWE: Many obituaries of Frank Inn claim that Benji, Arnold and the cat from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" were buried with their trainer. That, his daughter says, is just another Hollywood legend. For NPR News, I'm Angie Hamilton-Lowe.

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WERTHEIMER: This is NPR News.

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