Skin of Leo the MGM Lion

McPherson, Kansas

For years we mistakenly believed that Leo was buried under a rock in New Jersey. It turns out that that lion was named Slats, and while he was indeed an MGM lion -- the first to growl in sound motion pictures -- he wasn't Leo.

Leo was the first MGM mascot, and a star even when films were silent. He was called "the cat with nine lives" after he took a cross-country promotional tour and survived a sinking boat in the Mississippi and a plane crash in the Arizona desert. But eventually he died, and although no one knows where he's buried, his skin ended up here.

Carla Barber, the executive director of the McPherson Museum, told us how it happened. First, Leo was made into a rug. Two thousand miles away, Francis Vaniman, president of a bank in McPherson, was interested in taxidermy. One day Vaniman received a letter from a acquaintance in Hollywood, asking if the bank president would be interested in the rug. Vaniman said yes, and Leo became a prize addition to Vaniman's collection of animal skins, which he displayed on the third floor of his house.

After Vaniman died, the house became the town museum and Leo was donated along with the house. He's still on the third floor, in what's now called The African Room, sealed in a glass case. Carla told us that the museum used to display Leo spread across an old black leather examination table, but "people were pulling his hairs out."

The Museum also exhibits the world's first synthetic diamond, made in McPherson in 1926 even though General Electric claims that it invented the synthetic diamond in 1955. McPherson's diamond is so small that you have to view it through a microscope.