F 06252, Dorice Taylor Collection, Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History
Early Sun Valley featured a wide array of animal residents including ducks, geese, many breeds of dog and perhaps most unusually, a tame family of antelope. Most well-known of these antelope was one named Annie, featured in this picture from the Community Library’s collection posing with Lucille Ball.
Annie and her three children were known for taking swims in the resort’s lake, elegantly leaping across the golf course, and following guests around as they enjoyed their stay at Sun Valley. So liked were the antelope by guests and staff alike that when landscape gardener Charlie Davidson complained that they were eating all the pansies, resort founder Averell Harriman reportedly responded that he should simply “Plant more pansies.”
Perhaps the most dramatic story surrounding the antelope is recounted by famed ski film director Warren Miller. In March of 1951, as Miller was just starting his storied film career, he was in Sun Valley to show his first film in the Sun Valley Opera House. While preparing food in the back of his truck, he recalls Annie rounding the corner, jumping into him, and subsequently cutting her shoulder badly on the bumper of his truck. For what it’s worth, Sun Valley publicist Dorice Taylor instead recalled a different antelope named Andy being hit by a car while crossing Sun Valley’s driveway.
With Annie (or Andy) now bleeding profusely, Warren Miller and his associates decided the best course of action was to bring the antelope to the Sun Valley Lodge’s third floor hospital. Dr. Moritz furiously objected to the presence of the bleeding, disheveled antelope in his surgery, but the nurse on duty gave Miller the materials and instructions to sew up the wounded antelope outside. After successfully sewing up the shoulder wound in the headlights of his truck and the freezing cold, Miller recounts the antelope struggling to its feet and staggering off into the dark.
In this photograph of Annie and Lucille Ball, the antelope’s gentle temperament towards the guests shines through, though Ball confessed afterwards that she was terrified of animals. Sun Valley’s eccentric animal residents definitely contributed a great deal to the atmosphere of the resort in its star-studded early days.
From the Dorice Taylor Collection, F 06252, Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History
