Hollywood’s world-famous Hungarian animal trainer dies

Géza Hubert fled Hungary after the suppression of the 1956 revolution. He worked on such major productions as Doctor Dolittle, Far From Africa, Indiana Jones and Babe.

Hubert G. Wells, a Hungarian-born film industry animal trainer, has died at the age of 88, Deadline reports. Wells’ death was announced on Facebook last 29 December by a colleague and student. The Hollywood professional passed away on 25 December in his home in Thousand Oaks, California. He lived 88 years.

Hubert Géza Wells was born in 1934 in Gyugy, Somogy county, rtl.hu reports. He learned the basics of filmmaking in István Homoki Nagy’s film Cimborák. Then, he continued his career as a film animal trainer in the West: he emigrated to the United States in 1956 after the revolution was crushed in Hungary. He initially worked with animals on the East Coast and then moved to California in the early 1960s. There, he was employed as a trainer at Jungleland USA animal theme park and zoo.

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In 1967, he got his first big Hollywood break: he joined the cast of the hit film Doctor Dolittle. The film starred over 1200 live animals. Hubert Géza Wells’ animals have appeared in more than 150 films, TV programmes and commercials, sometimes with him as a stuntman. He had tamed lions, tigers, leopards, elephants, monkeys, guinea pigs, dogs and wolves, according to rtl.hu.

By the middle of the 1970s, Wells was the go-to animal trainer for such action series as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman and Manimal. His feature film credits include Born Free (1974), Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Out of Africa (both 1985) and The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986).

In 1994, he trained camels for The Jungle Book and, four years later, the primates of Babe: Pig in the City, Deadline writes. Wells’ animal training company has also trained the monkey in the Indiana Jones films and the talking pug in Men in Black. His work has helped several films win Oscars.

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In his memoir, Animal Trainers Are Nearly Human, he described himself as “an endangered species, a living fossil, a walking dinosaur” in an extraordinary and rapidly changing Hollywood. “What I have done with real animals future generations will only read about,” he wrote. “Digitally created cheesy wolves in the ‘Twilight Saga’ and ridiculous C.G.I. lion in ‘Narnia’ are replacing live animal actors.”

During his years in show business, Wells distinguished his role as an animal trainer from that of a circus trainer. “In the circus, the trainer is in a steel cage with his group of predators. In the movies, I was responsible for a large crew and exotic humans like Rex Harrison, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Elizabeth Taylor, and Pee Wee Herman,” he said, as quoted by Deadline.