2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Bear With Me' Review: An Omnibus of the Ursine
A world bereft of an academic appraisal of celebrity bears would somehow seem deficient, so a growl of appreciation is due Daniel Horowitz, whose 'Bear With Me' tells us tons about Teddy, Smokey, Pooh, Paddington and even the dreadful Berenstains.
Mr. Horowitz, a professor emeritus of American studies at Smith College and a prolific author, tells us early on that bears appear in the Bible maybe 14 times while lions, sheep and goats get hundreds of mentions. But as the years passed bears came on strong, inspiring Michael Bond's Paddington Bear, A.A. Milne's Pooh and William Faulkner's Old Ben. Bears also caught the eye of guys who knew how to make the truly big bucks, including stuffed-animal entrepreneurs, P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney.
Bear superstars get plenty of ink. The ubiquitous Teddy, for instance, was created out of a marriage of mercy and capitalist enthusiasm. The story began when Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear during a 1902 Mississippi hunt (his guide was a former slave named Holt Collier, who had been a Confederate scout). T.R. blasted plenty of animals but killing this bear, which Collier had subdued and tied to a tree, would have been more an execution than a legitimate act of killing for sport.
The press initially mauled the president for his refusal to dispatch the animal (it appears Collier might have later done the deed with a knife) but in the wilds of Brooklyn, N.Y., a Jewish immigrant couple saw an opportunity and created a stuffed 'Teddy's Bear' they displayed in their candy-store window. Roosevelt reportedly approved their request to use his name to market the stuffed bears (other manufacturers soon followed suit) and the rest is history.
