Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Lions lived with them in the apartment: what happened to the family that kept wild animals at home

 n the summer of 1970, the Berberov family took a sick lion cub home from the zoo. He grew up, stayed to live in their apartment, a few years later he played a lion in the movie "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia" and was shot by a policeman shortly before the end of filming. And then the second lion cub was presented to the family, famous throughout the USSR ...

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"Mommy, look, the dog is dying there."


The father of the family was called Lev Lvovich. He worked as an architect in Baku. With his wife and two children, Eva and Roma, he lived in a spacious 100-meter apartment in the very center of the city, on the second floor. Lev Lvovich Berberov was very fond of animals. The most different. At the Berberovs' houses lived a small dog Chap, cats, parrots, raccoon, snake and hedgehog Dimka.


Once, in the early summer of 1970, daughter Eva and Lev Lvovich's wife Nina walked in the Baku Zoo and stayed for a long time at the aviary with lions. There they saw a two-month-old cub, very small and very sick. He was lying on the ground and could not get up. “Mommy, look, the dog is dying there,” Eva Berberova said to her mother. Nina found the director of the zoo and persuaded him to give them the lion cub. It was supposed that this would be a short-term rehabilitation: they would put him on his feet and give him back to the zoo. So the lion cub settled in a large architectural apartment. They named him King. The children were delighted.

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“They covered King with heating pads, fed him with all kinds of mixtures from the nipple. At first, the lion cub's front paws did not work at all. So they took turns massaging them for days. Gradually, the lion began to walk, but the defect remained for life. If you look closely, then in "Extraordinary Adventures ..." you can see: when King runs down the street, his front paws rake like flippers.


King behaved exactly like an ordinary house cat. The only problem: this "cat" tried to lick the guest, and the lion's tongue is like sandpaper. But if he was really annoying, you could poke at him, shove him away. The lion resignedly went into a corner or climbed onto the mezzanine, where his rightful place was. "


From the memoirs of the photographer Vladimir Alekseev, a friend of the Berberov family

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King grew up. First, the big-headed, fat-footed "kitten" outstripped both children in size, then Lev Lvovich himself and his wife Nina. He ate three kilograms of meat from a small basin for breakfast. He was very friendly with the dog Chap, who, as an elder, taught him good manners: for example, King never dared to start eating before Chap himself ate. At night, the dog came to sleep between the huge lion's paws.


The children loved King - their giant "cat". They rode on it, tugged at the mustache, scratched behind a huge ear. When King wanted to be alone, he crawled onto the mezzanine.


Neighbors complained that an unbearable smell was spreading from the Berberovs' apartment.


When the journalists of Central Television learned about King, the life of the Berberovs changed forever. The whole country soon learned about the family in which a real lion lives - just like a cat: he sleeps on a folding sofa with a blue coverlet, demands breakfast in the morning, chases a ball on the floor.


In 1975, Soviet documentary filmmakers filmed a species picture of nature with King in the title role. The lion walks through the forest conventionally in the middle zone, looking around and listening with curiosity. According to the plot, he is trying to find the owners - Eve and Roma, who call him with crystal voices from somewhere outside the frame. He, a large domestic cat, explores the world of wildlife: he meets a squirrel, climbs a pine tree, touches the Caspian Sea with his paw. In the finale, the children finally find their beloved King and take him to the porch of the country house. Even sitting, the lion is larger than both of them.


Read also:


10 documentaries about animals - and the people around them


The Berberovs saved King from death. It was a kind, conflict-free animal, grateful to its owners. When they tried to return him to the zoo as a recovering teenager, he flatly refused and started a revolution. I had to leave him in the apartment.


“King adored Lev Lvovich and treated me tenderly, apparently realizing that I was a woman! Either the male's jealousy awakened in him, or there was another reason for this, but as soon as he felt his youthful age, King began to spend the night in our matrimonial bed between me and Lev Lvovich. And very often on such nights, I woke up from a roar and found my husband on the floor next to the bed. It was King who pushed his master out of bed, since he did not understand that in such a situation the third was superfluous ... "


From the memoirs of Nina Berberova

Acting career goes up


Gradually, all-Union glory came to King and his entire family. The Moscow publishing house "Planeta" released a set of photo cards "Visiting the Berberovs", where King, as it were, spoke in the first person about his life: his beloved blue veil, walks by the sea, Roma and Eve, friendship with Chap.


The Berberov family with the lion King, 1972. Photo from the personal archive of Vera Chaplina

It's charming. Amazing. A lion in an ordinary Soviet apartment. 400,000 (circulation of a set) of Soviet people looked at the photographs with pleasure: little Eva is swinging on a makeshift swing in an apartment, a lion is standing next to it on its hind legs, leaning on a car tire suspended from a rope; the evening is warm: TV, parquet, carpet on the wall, mom is sitting on the couch with a telephone receiver, a lion is lying in the center of the room, an eleven-year-old boy weaves pigtails for him from his mane; with its head on a pillow, the lion sleeps on the sofa, covered with a bedspread; the lion, standing on the sofa and bending over to the table, eats from a small basin.


“The balcony of our apartment overlooked the roof, we put a grid on it so that King could not get out into the street, and calmly let him walk around the entire living space. Sometimes, when he got bored, he came to my husband's and my bedroom, climbed onto the bed, pushed me or Lyova off it, lay down on his back with his stomach up and fell asleep with a sound sleep. In the morning I woke up with everyone, had breakfast, played with the children. They dragged him by the mustache, rode like a horse: you could do anything with him, he did not take offense at anything and never snapped. "


From the memoirs of Nina Berberova

http://villamil.org/2008/12/there-10-types-of-people-those-who-can-program-and-those-who-cant/

The documentary filmmakers were followed by feature film directors. Azerbaijani filmmakers filmed King in two films: "Girl, Boy and Lion" and "Lion Left Home". Then he starred in the two-part film "I Have a Lion" and played his famous role in the popular comedy "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia." This role was his last.


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The rights to materials from the site mel.fm belong to MEL LLC (OGRN: 1157746946686). Full or partial reproduction of materials is possible only with the written permission of the copyright holder.

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