This is a history of the various lions and logos that have appearing at the opening of MGM movies. My friend Paul Harris had this video on his fine blog and he remarked…
Watching this reminded me of the story of the MGM Grand Casino/Hotel in Las Vegas, which once used a giant lion's mouth as its entrance. Unfortunately, the company didn't understand that superstitious Asian gamblers — who made up a large portion of its player base — considered walking into the cat's mouth to be very bad luck, so they stayed away in droves. It cost MGM millions before it realized its mistake, and millions more to rebuild the doorway so that customers entered near the lion, not through its mouth.
What Paul reports is true but I have my own, other Leo/Las Vegas memory. I'll tell you about in a moment. First, here's the video…
The hotel that is now Bally's used to the the MGM Grand. This was before they sold it and built the new MGM Grand. Back then, it featured a lavish production show called "Hallelujah Hollywood," which later morphed into "Jubilee!" At one point near the opening of the first show — and I think this carried over for a time into the second — they tried to replicate live this famous movie opening.
They had an actual, live lion and they had a big image of the rest of the screen and there was a hole in it for the lion's head to appear. I have no idea how they managed to get him to roar on cue but I have a feeling the Humane Association would not have or did not approve.
The lion was on some sort of platform with the rest of the image in front of him. At the precise moment, the spotlight hit it and while the lion did roar at the right moment, he managed to get turned around so you were staring at his rear end and tail. You also didn't hear the roar well since he was not facing the microphone. I saw the show two times about a year apart and this happened both times.
Later on, I met a dancer in the show and mentioned it to her. She said, "Yeah, Leo shows his ass in that show even more than I do."