Gloria Swanson Insisted on Being Pawed by a Lion, Like a Badass

In 1919, the legendary actress Gloria Swanson was not yet legendary — she was just a young woman who recklessly insisted that Cecil B. DeMille not cut a scene from Male and Female that called for a real claws-and-teeth, carrion-breath lion draping its paws across Swanson’s back.

Swanson wanted to do the scene because of she’d been fascinated with her grandmother’s copy of the painting “The Lion’s Bride,” and, based on childhood nostalgia, was eager to let a male lion make biscuits on her back. The “fuzzy lion,” Swanson explains, went on to “almost kill someone” two weeks after DeMille shot her scene, which just goes to show you that even the cuddliest of cuddly creatures the animal kingdom has to offer are little more than homicidal maniacs. Except marmosets. Marmosets seem really nice.