- Doree Sitterly assisted animal trainer Hubert G. Wells on the location feature film "Out of Africa." Involved in the filming with the lions, as an animal trainer, she became Meryl Streep's film double. When the company put her in wardrobe, the first assistant director said, "Sidney Pollack is sitting out on the lawn. I'm going to tell him Merl wants to speak to him." When Doree approached Pollack about ten feet away from him before he looked with a quizzical smirk on his face and said, "Wait a minute." No one had known Sitterly had studied Streep's mannerisms and could easily be her double. Pollack started having Sitterly do everything Meryl didn't want to do. Sitterly often says, "That was probably one of the highlights of my career. 'Out of Africa' is such a beautiful movie, and I'm so proud to have been a part of it".
- Doree Sitterly and Hubert Geza Wells often appear to talk of their experiences as animal trainers in Hollywood. Wells published his memoirs in 2017, "Lights, Cameras, Lions! Memoirs of a Real-Life Doctor Doolittle" with Wells and Sitterly appearing together for his book signings. Wells told, "Jungleland feels like ancient history. That magic will never return. The movies were in full bloom and it was close to Hollywood. It was the only place that really supplied animals for motion picture films. Now real estate is too expensive and CGI (computer-generated imagery) has taken over. Some of it is good and some is not so good".
- Both Doree Sitterly and Hubert G. Wells performed animal trainer duties on the Saturday morning 1970 children's television anthology series "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp." The television show starred 14 chimpanzees. Wells was quoted saying, "I never worked harder or laughed as much. The chimps did everything James Bond did." In the series, a chimp drove a car stealing the sequence. Once again, it was a bit of movie magic. The chimp was not actually driving the car, but he'd been taught to make it appear as though he was. Sitterly said, "Chimps are the smartest animals to work with. Next are dogs and pigs".
- While a student at Moorpark College's Exotic Animal Training and Management Program, Doree Sitterly (b:1955) met the Hungarian animal trainer Hubert Geza Wells (b:1934). Wells had come to America in 1957 when he was 23 years old and went on to spend 45 years as an animal trainer, working in such films as "Living Free," "The Clan of the Cave Bear," "Babe: Pig in the Sky," "Walt Disney's The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story." Wells had caught the tail end of the Hollywood animal park "Jungleland." The animal park provided a multitude of wild animals to the Hollywood motion picture film industry but closed in 1969 after more than four decades on the site where the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza is located, today. Wells worked on "Doctor Dolittle," which was filmed in part at Jungleland. Wells started up his "Animal Actors of Hollywood" in 1969 after the Jungleland park's closure. Doree Sitterly was picking up chicken, for the Moorpark College animal management program, at the famous Jungleland Animal Zoo Park barn that was located on Thousand Oaks Boulevard, in Thousand Oaks, California. The Jungleland Feed Store provided the college department's weekly supply. Eventually, Doree went to work for animal trainer Hubert G. Wells for 20 years, and for ten of them, they lived together as a couple on a 17-acre animal compound in the Santa Monica Mountains. The compound's residence/house was always full of trained wild animals. They raised lion cubs in the laundry room.
- She worked from Animal Actors of Hollywood from 1982 to 2002.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content