California Years
After parting ways with Brookfield Zoo, Wiley moved to California, where she became a snake trainer and reptile consultant for Hollywood films such as Moon Over Burma, The Jungle Book, and the Tarzan series. She also operated a reptile zoo in Cypress, California, where she charged 25 cents for visitors to see her large, personal collection.
On July 20, 1948, Wiley invited journalist Daniel P. Mannix to photograph her collection. While she was posing with a venomous Indian cobra she had just acquired, the snake suddenly bit her middle finger, and she requested to be taken to a hospital. Unfortunately, her only vial of cobra antivenom (from the Haffkine Institute) was accidentally broken and the hospital only had antivenom serums for North American snakes. Wiley was pronounced dead less than two hours after being bitten. Although family and friends tried to preserve her collection, it was ultimately auctioned off, and the snake that killed Wiley was subsequently displayed at an Arizona roadside attraction.
Shortly before she died, Wiley's life story was adapted for a comic book (True Stories #58, 1947). In 2006, the city of Long Beach opened Grace Park, which is named after Wiley.
Read more about this topic: Grace Olive Wiley
Famous quotes containing the words california and/or years:
“I can’t earn my own living. I could never make anything turn into money. It’s like making fires. A careful assortment of paper, shavings, faggots and kindling nicely tipped with pitch will never light for me. I have never been present when a cigarette butt, extinct, thrown into a damp and isolated spot, started a conflagration in the California woods.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“In the end we beat them with Levi 501 jeans. Seventy-two years of Communist indoctrination and propaganda was drowned out by a three-ounce Sony Walkman. A huge totalitarian system ... has been brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes.... Now they’re lunch, and we’re number one on the planet.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)