- #WHERE IN MIDTOWN DIES THE MOVIE THE ZOOKEEPERS WIFE PLAYS LICENSE#
- #WHERE IN MIDTOWN DIES THE MOVIE THE ZOOKEEPERS WIFE PLAYS TV#
"That place was a utopia of wildlife," Magill reminisces. She still lives on the family property.Īnimals were plentiful then: bobwhite quail, rabbits, bobcats, snakes galore. "The things I went through with that child and the things that he brought home," Lorraine Magill remembers. When the family moved to Florida in 1972, Magill also found solace in the land and its critters. Even among classmates a year older, he was still the tallest kid in class. As the tallest kid wherever he went, little Ron was a big target, sometimes called names like "Lurch," "Frankenstein," and, perhaps most prescient, "Magilla Gorilla." This unwanted attention made him retreat into books.
Spanish was Ron's first language, but in school in New York, he intentionally forgot it because other kids made fun of him. Ron was born in Queens in 1960, and ten years later, Guillermo packed up his wife, son, and daughter in a 1970 gray Volvo and drove them from New York to Los Angeles to Miami and back to New York - a trip on which Magill realized there's "no greater education than travel." Along the way, they purchased five acres in South Dade's Redland, because Guillermo, Ron remembers, "always had a dream of having a piece of property where he could have a grove of mangoes and avocados." Back then, there was nothing but tomato fields for miles. Magill's mother Lorraine, who is Colombian and German, grew up in New York City. Magill's father Guillermo, six-foot-three and 270 pounds, grew up in the farmlands of Santiago, Cuba, and spoke no English when he came to the States in search of opportunity. Another top pick is an incident when Magill was excavating an orangutan skull, and the corpse - which had been buried for days - farted on him.īut for a moment, Le Batard lays off the teasing to deliver his genuine admiration: "In the human portion of the animal kingdom, we don't make them better than Ron." The skull of that very same orangutan now sits in Magill's office as part of his collection of nearly 400 animal skulls.ĭan Le Batard cites that autopsy as one of his favorite stories about Magill. Pilots of the passing gliders had reported the gruesome sight of the autopsy and reported it as a crime in progress, though parts of the dead ape would eventually be used for education. Sharing tales from his home office, Magill, 55, recalls that day about ten years ago when he was mistaken for a mutilative murderer. As that chapter of his life comes to a close, Magill sat down with New Times to reflect on his storied and sometimes-absurd career. The final episode will air September 19, and it's still undecided whether he will appear one last time.
#WHERE IN MIDTOWN DIES THE MOVIE THE ZOOKEEPERS WIFE PLAYS TV#
But after 35 years at the zoo and 27 years on Sábado Gigante, Magill's gig on the Guinness World Records' longest-running show in TV history is winding down. He became a household name with stints on television (as a regular on Sábado Gigante) and radio (as a frequent guest on Dan Le Batard's ESPN show). He got his first taste of fame in the '80s while working as an alligator handler on the set of Miami Vice, then became a hero after Hurricane Andrew destroyed cages at the zoo and his animal rescues made national news. He became a world-renowned wildlife ambassador long before reality TV, Jeff Corwin, or Steve Irwin.
Ron Magill has worked at Zoo Miami since it opened in 1980. "He's a five-hour energy drink for our show," Le Batard says, "if five-hour energy drinks had terrible mustaches." tweet this
#WHERE IN MIDTOWN DIES THE MOVIE THE ZOOKEEPERS WIFE PLAYS LICENSE#
He even has the vanity license plate on his black Cadillac Escalade - "ZOO GUY" - to prove it.
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