page_title: Frank Buck (animal collector)
section_title: Director of the San Diego Zoo
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Buck (animal collector) / Director of the San Diego Zoo
caption_attribution_description: English: Plaque at the San Diego Zoo describing "King Tut", a salmon-crested cockatoo (Cacatua moluccensis) that lived at the San Diego Zoo from 1925 to 1990 and served as the zoo's "official greeter" for 40 years. The plaque is located beneath a bronze statue of King Tut that stands inside the zoo's entrance next to the flamingo pond, in the spot where King Tut's perch was located during the bird's life. Text of the plaque: "King Tut / Salmon-crested cockatoo / Cacatua moluccensis / The official Zoo Greeter from 1925 to 1989. / He was brought from Indonesia in 1925 by Frank Buck."
context_page_description: Frank Howard Buck was an American hunter, animal collector, and author, as well as a film actor, director, and producer. Beginning in the 1910s he made many expeditions into Asia for the purpose of hunting and collecting exotic animals, bringing over 100,000 live specimens back to the United States and elsewhere for zoos and circuses and earning a reputation as an adventurer. He co-authored seven books chronicling or based on his expeditions, beginning with 1930's Bring 'Em Back Alive, which became a bestseller. Between 1932 and 1943 he starred in seven adventure films based on his exploits, most of which featured staged "fights to the death" with various wild beasts. He was also briefly a director of the San Diego Zoo, displayed wild animals at the 1933–34 Century of Progress exhibition and 1939 New York World's Fair, toured with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and co-authored an autobiography, 1941's All in a Lifetime. The Frank Buck Zoo in Buck's hometown of Gainesville, Texas is named after him.
context_section_description: In 1923 Buck was hired as the first full-time director of the San Diego Zoo, but his tenure there was brief and tumultuous. The Zoo was still in its early years, having begun as an assortment of animal displays remaining from the 1915–16 Panama–California Exposition held in Balboa Park. It had been granted a permanent site in 1921 (an area of about 140 acres in the park's northwestern quadrant) and most of its initial exhibits had been built over the following year, with a "grand opening" of the new grounds held on January 1, 1923. The Zoo was founded by the Zoological Society of San Diego and managed by its board of directors, with founding board member Frank Stephens having served as the part-time managing director without pay since its beginning. Most of the planning and development was being overseen by Society founder and president Dr. Harry M. Wegeforth, who was the driving force behind the Zoo's creation. A strong-willed, hands-on president, Wegeforth walked the Zoo grounds daily and had a singular vision for its future, with little room for opposing viewpoints. Philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, who had made several significant donations to the Zoo, suggested that it needed a full-time director and volunteered to pay such a person's salary for three years if Wegeforth could find someone suitable for the job. Wegeforth visited Dr. William Temple Hornaday, director of the New York Zoological Park, hoping Hornaday would recommend someone, but received a cold response. He was surprised, then, to receive a call from Buck saying he had been referred by Hornaday as a possible candidate for the position.
  Buck was headed to India at the time, and struck an agreement with the Zoological Society's board for him to collect some animals for the Zoo and then come to San Diego to become its director. It was strongly hoped that his acquisitions would include elephants, an animal the Society, and particularly Wegeforth, had been attempting to add to the Zoo's collection for some time. Buck found two female Asian elephants in Calcutta named "Empress" and "Queenie" that were trained to work, and bought them for the Zoo. When the elephants arrived in San Diego after a long journey by boat and freight train, Wegeforth and superintendent Harry Edwards rode them through the city streets to the Zoo. Buck himself soon arrived with the rest of the promised Asian animals, including two orangutans, a leopard cub, two gray langurs, two kangaroos, three flamingos, two lion-tailed macaques, two sarus cranes, four demoiselle cranes, assorted geese, and a 23-foot reticulated python named "Diablo" that became famous when it would not eat and had to be regularly force-fed by a team of men using a feeding tube attached to a meat grinder, a spectacle that attracted thousands of onlookers and became a paid event until the snake's death in 1928.
  Buck began his directorship of the San Diego Zoo on June 13, 1923, signed to a three-year contract at an annual salary of $4,000 (equivalent to about $55,500 in 2015). He was enthusiastic at first, telling reporters "We have the best zoo west of Chicago, and we are going to make it even bigger and better." However, Buck, a self-made, solitary, rugged, and independent-minded individual, soon clashed with the board of directors, particularly Wegeforth. Members of the board complained that Buck was unwilling to consult with them on everyday policy and frequently defied their directives; he constructed new cassowary cages of his own design in direct defiance of their orders, they said, and had bragged to board member William Raymenton about "putting one over on the board by constructing the cage without their knowledge", boasting that he would continue to build whatever cages he considered proper "with or without the consent of the board." He had also been instructed to build an enclosure for a zebu that had been allowed to wander the Zoo grounds, but apparently ignored the directive. According to Wegeforth, Buck made business deals with other zoos and animal collectors that were mismanaged or undocumented, an
caption: A plaque at the San Diego Zoo beneath a bronze statue of King Tut, the Zoo's longtime greeter, indicates that the cockatoo was brought to the United States by Buck.
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