Palm Springs history: Kitty’s caper creates chaos at Ranch Club party

Dressed in a Tarzan-style leopard suit for the party, Jim Maynard was quite a sight. Maynard was extra-large. So large, in fact, that for the entirety of his adult life he was known as Big Jim Maynard. His stature is variously reported as about 6-foot, 6-inches tall and some 300 pounds of solid muscle.

Maynard was a policeman and a true mountain man, a formidable man – a big cat by all accounts. He’d chosen the leopard costume for the lavish party at Trav Rogers’ Ranch Club without knowing that there were other big cats invited too – real cats, actual lions.

Trucked in from Thousand Oaks to perform at New York insurance executive Stewart Hopps’ extravagant birthday party for his wife in 1951, the circus animals were part of the show. A huge circus “big top” had been erected and 300 guests were invited with the condition that they attend in colorful costumes.

The only thing bigger than Maynard at the party that night was Martha, a 400-pound lioness. The paper reported, “Maynard said he walked by Martha in her cage in his leopard suit. ‘I didn’t know that lions didn’t like leopards. So when I walked by the cage it was like waving a red flag in front of a bull – she wanted me.”

But Maynard was no stranger to big cats and big adventures.

In 1947 he cornered and captured a wildcat that attacked a 14-year-old girl at a southside hotel. Thought to have been rabid, the cat wasn’t the first Maynard had subdued. He became famous in the retelling of the story in a CBS national broadcast.

An April 1949 newspaper article featured Maynard again. “Big Jim Maynard again was the better man in a tussle with a wildcat. Maynard scorns the use of man-made weapons in encounters with wildcats. He chased this one and caught it by the hind legs. Not so long ago he broke into the news with another bare-handed victory over an untame pussy. Once he astounded a ring of spectators who stood well back, while he reached into a trash can, where a wildcat was believed lurking …and came up with a wriggling squirrel.”

Unusual happenings were commonplace in Palm Springs. The Hopps party was already plenty unusual with 300 guests and an imported real-life circus. Everyone seemed to take it in stride. Maynard recalled, “Stu was feeding everybody martinis in a milkshake glass and he had the lion trainer all juiced up.”

With her trainer thus distracted, Martha decided to skip the show and escaped from her cage take a walk. A loose lion was pretty unusual. As word spread of her escape, attendees had to decide to continue with their celebration or participate in a very unusual party game. “So the combination of a loose lion, a tipsy trainer and scared spectators added up to bedlam.”

Some of the bedazzled and emboldened guests grabbed chairs and set out in an oddly attired safari to track down Martha. The rest of the guests barricaded themselves inside the big tent in safety. Rudolf Hernandez, a Ranch Club employee, adroitly moved an elephant to the door of the tent to keep people in, and the cat out.

Police Chief Gus Kettmann, done up in red and yellow as a maharaja, pulled out his pistol. Maynard, half-naked in his leopard-skin garb, climbed atop a truck armed with his shotgun to surveil the surroundings.

Intrepid photographer Gail Thompson, armed only with his camera, followed the path of the lion into the darkness. “He found Martha near the big tent and got his picture. But the lion, startled by the flash bulb ran the other way.”

Martha settled down next to the main stable building where the chair-wielding, party safari cornered her. The trainer had suddenly sobered up and pleaded with Maynard and Kettmann not to shoot as he coaxed Martha back into captivity.

With Martha safely back in her cage, the show went on to the delight of all, but the circus show was hardly as exciting as the preceding commotion.

Thompson recalled that when the lioness was on her walkabout, a woman who was arriving late to the party reported that the cat had leaped over the hood of her car. Sam Baio, the cook, had a glimpse of Martha sauntering by and figured she was a “big dog” and tossed her a piece of meat.

“Because Hollywood film figures such as Sonja Henie, William Powell, Gordon MacRae, Mervyn LeRoy and Harry Joe Brown were among Hopps’ guests, the story and Thompson’s photos received national attention. The Los Angeles Times ran a picture of the lion and her captors on the front page….” The Desert Sun’s headline read, “Kitty’s Caper Creates Chaos at Quiet Ranch Club Party.”

Thompson said the 1951 Hopps party excitement was truly memorable and managed to top the previous year’s get-together in which guests "got into a free-for-all coleslaw fight” sparked by some spiked punch.

Tracy Conrad is president of the Palm Springs Historical Society. The Thanks for the Memories column appears Sundays in The Desert Sun. Write to her at pshstracy@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Springs history: Kitty’s caper creates chaos at Ranch Club party