Moose, The dog that played Eddie on Frasier passed away recently on June 22, 2006.
He was 16 years old. That is 112 years old in dog years. He was born in Florida in 1990 and began his acting career on Frasier in 1992.
I know that he gave me plenty of laughs and was always my favorite animal actor as many people know that I had used him as my MSN Messenger Avatar (photo) for quite some time.
Kalon Reeves
___________________________________________________
Biography for Moose (III)
Mini biography
Moose was the youngest of a litter of 4, yet was also the biggest, hence his name. Hyper and destructive as a pup, he eventually found his way to Birds & Animals Unlimited, where he got his job playing Eddie on Frasier.
IMDb mini-biography by
Trivia
Moose's son, Enzo the Dog, is also in show-business. They shared the part of Skip in the movie My Dog Skip (2000).
Received more fan mail than any of the other 'Frasier' cast members.
Article on Moose from October 2000.
Hot Dog
IS MOOSE, WHO PLAYS EDDIE ON FRASIER
THE BEST ACTOR IN HOLLYWOOD TODAY?
By E. Jean Carroll
Photography by Andrea Artz
"He is Laurence Olivier in a hair shirt."
-- David Hyde Pierce
NOBODY'S PET: Moose was a wild puppy who once started a fire. The only ribbon he ever won (above) was for coming in third -- in a three-dog race.
THEY ARE REHEARSING THE MUFFIN SCENE FOR THE PREMIERE EPISODE OF FRASIER'S eighth season. Daphne (Jane Leeves) makes the muffin; Frasier (Kelsey Grammar) inquires into the muffin's properties; Martin (John Mahoney) masticates the muffin; and Eddie (Moose) -- the master, the genius, the star, whose world-famous range as an actor has made Frasier the most sophisticated television show of all time -- sits in the armchair and stares at the muffin. He stares at it with such electrifying, passionate intensity that if the scene ran any longer, dogs watching at home would have to trot out to the backyard for a cigarette.
Standing just off-camera, behind Moose's chain is his beautiful French companion, Mathilde DeCagny. She wears a bag of treats around her waist. It is rumored that he sleeps with her from time to time, she bends and whispers in Moose's ear. Twice she swoops down and kisses him on his fanny.
When the director calls for the next scene, the rest of the cast rapidly disperses, chatting and laughing. Grammar walks to the piano, seats himself and begins a sonata. Moose, however, like Jim Carrey making the Andy Kaufman movie, remains completely in character.
LIKE OTHER GREAT figures before him, he was born in a barn. Tag, a celebrated and brilliant beauty, gave birth to him on December 24,1990, in Weirsdale, Florida. He was the fourth and last puppy of the litter, the largest, so he was named Moose.
He was difficult, if you please, from the age of 8 weeks.
After annihilating the house of his first owners, Connie and Sam Thise, Moose was given to a blacksmith. At the blacksmith's, he managed to turn the horses loose, start a fire and run off the family's beloved cat, all in less than 64 hours. He was returned to the Thises, who bred dogs to hunt in competitions. ("Like I was going to spend my life doing that," says Moose in his hilarious autobiography, My Life as a Dog, written with Brian Hargrove and out this Christmas in a special edition) Here is a partial list of what the future star did to celebrate his return home:
Destroyed the couch.
Severely gnawed the legs of the dining room table.
Ate the telephone wires.
Vomited on the stereo speakers.
Urinated on Sam Thise's favorite chair.
Terrorized Tommy, the Thises' horse, by jumping up, biting his tail and swinging back and forth on it.
Dug a hole through the wall of the upstairs bathroom.
We'll pass over in silence his antics with the neighborhood cats.
IN THE BLOOD: Moose's son Enzo, with costar Frankie Muniz, in the film My Dog Skip.
Just minutes before the Thise family went mad, fate intervened. A trainer by the name of Cathy Morrison, who worked for Birds and Animals Unlimited, a talent agency for animals, happened to stop in the veterinarian office where Connie Thise worked. By a stroke of luck, Moose was there too. One glance at the irresistibly charming little rascal and Morrison fell under his spell.
She trained him in Orlando, Florida, where she worked with the Animal Actors Showcase at Universal Studios, then sent him to Los Angeles to audition for Frasier.
Technically, Birds and Animals Unlimited still owns Moose. But he lives with the firm's number-one trainer, the shapely Mathilde DeCagny, in Santa Monica, California.
"He needed to have some kind of job," says DeCagny; who is well-known for finding dogs at pounds and turning them into actors, "something to keep him stimulated in his mind. He has so much energy, so much charisma!"
"Who has more charisma?" I ask "Kelsey Grammar or Moose?"
DeCagny smiles. She speaks like Catherine Deneuve and has the slightly bucked overbite of Rosanna Arquette -- an inhumanly sexy combination. "Kelsey is just the greatest actor," she says.
"But who is the better actor? Kelsey Grammar or Moose?"
DeCagny looks down at Moose, who is scratching both ears at the same time and snorting with the sound of a tractor exhaust. "This guy just has a personality that you can't compete with," she says.
YOU CAN'T BE A STAR WITHOUT A SCRAPBOOK
|
|
HIS MOTHER: Tag, in the fall of 1998
YOUNG MOOSE: As a puppy, 1991
LIKE FATHER: With his sone Enzo (right)
HIS WOMAN: With Mathilde DeCagny
MOOSE MOVED IN WITH DECAGNY after the Frasier audition. "The truth is, the producers were having a terrible time casting the role of Eddie," she says. "They had seen nearly every dog in L.A. Then Moose flew in from Florida, trotted out with a group of seven other dogs, they went down the line, stopped at him and said, 'That's it.'"
He began leading the life of a star -- riding horseback with DeCagny, running by the sea (Jane Leeves has given him the keys to her beach house), flying first class, appearing at charity events and thrilling tour groups on the Paramount lot by permitting himself to be fondled amid the bulbs and bushes of Lucille Ball Park. But he has never stopped being Moose.
"One day. I'd given him a bath and put him in the yard to dry," says DeCagny. "I have a pepper tree, and Moose managed to actually climb up this tree, get on the roof of the dog kennel, jump down into the neighbor's yard and get out!"
Moose enjoys hearing this story so much, he rolls on top of his own head and grins up at DeCagny in his celebrated Kelsey Grammar imitation. It's a perfect impression in every way, except that Moose possesses no teeth, having chewed them off on plaster, rubber, wood, marble, vinyl, masonite, beaverboard, slate and cat dolls.
By the time DeCagny discovered his escape from her yard, he'd been gone a good hour or so. "And I went calling 'Moose! Moose! Moose! Moose! Moose!' No Moose. My heart was beating really, really hard. But I said to myself 'Now, let's see. I'm Moose. I'm free. What am I gonna do?' So first I went around the neighborhood looking for cats or another dog to beat up on. I mean, Moose is going to go look for trouble. For something he can fight, kill and eat."
Moose, like every other leading man in Hollywood, is genuinely moved by the tales of his own machismo, so much so that he has hoisted up his left haunch and surrendered himself to an ecstatic, eyes-rolled-up-in-his-head session of ball-licking.
"But nothing!" says DeCagny. "I couldn't find him. So I went down by the beach. Nothing. I went back up around the house. My heart was beating so fast. I took my car, and my husband took his car, and we drove around. And nothing! I telephoned friends and had some fliers made up. I went to the shelter. I went everywhere. I picked up the fliers and started pinning them up. The fliers said LOST! BROWN AND WHITE JACK RUSSELL. REWARD."
(Speaking of rewards, despite interviews with the wealthy actor's inner circle, I could not discover how much money Moose makes per episode. When I threw out a frustrated guess of $25,000 per show, DeCagny snorted and said "It's probably more like $2,500.")
"So there's a pet store that we go to, and it's also a grooming place," says DeCagny. "I went there to give them a flier, and I walk in and say to the lady, 'I lost Moose!' And she goes 'Oh, my God! You did, really?' And I say, 'Yes.' And she says, 'Well, hang on one second' And meanwhile, there are people in the store, and they're buying stuff toys and this and that. And a moment later, the lady comes out with Moose, with soap suds on his head from getting a bath!
"Those people had picked him up, in the street, and he had rolled in dogs---, the stinker. They were going to take him home. And when I told them who he was, they went 'My God! You gotta be kidding!' And this one" DeCagny points to the toothless but totally unabashed little thespian - "acted like he'd never seen me before!"
Just like Sir John Gielgud in Hamlet. "He was looking like 'what are you doing here? I thought I got rid of you!' And I'm in tears, of course. And the people are kind of in tears. And the lady is in tears. She didn't know it was Moose. He didn't have his collar on because I had just given him a bath."
"And I burst into tears," says Moose in his book, 'because I got suds in my eyes."
SMART PET TRICKS: "He's thinking all the time," says his trainer. "It's scary for me."
MOOSE'S PICTURE IS BEING TAKEN ON the Frasier set. While lights are being adjusted, DeCagny notices that she has left the star's toys in his trailer. She hands me the leash, which is clipped to Moose's leather collar, and, after instructing me to remain with him on the set, she delivers three caveats:
"Don't let him eat anything!" she says. "Don't go into the trash! And nothing off the floor!"
"Don't worry!" I say. "Go on! Ta-ta!" I smile as she walks away. She halts and looks back doubtfully.
"Go on!" I say again. I glance down at Moose and shrug. He weighs all of what -24 pounds? He's smarter than I am, but I'm bigger.
The very instant DeCagny disappears around the corner, my arm is yanked almost out of its socket, and my body is dragged across Frasier's living room, through his kitchen, around the coffeehouse set and straight into the trash cans at a speed of maybe 15 miles an hour. Moose manages to knock down one of the cans - a big 55-gallon job - with such force, the contents nearly fly out the back door.
"Come to Mama," I say, bending aver and swooping him up in my arms.
"Is he giving you any trouble?" asks a female voice behind me. I whirl around.
Mimi the Eager Publicist.
"If I kidnapped Moose," I say, smiling, "how much would Paramount pay to get him back?"
Mimi sags sideways. This is the kind of question no publicist wants to deal with, but she gamely mumbles
something about "millions."
"Would they pay more for Moose than for Kelsey?"
"Oh!" She almost chokes. "I don't..."
"We all know Moose is worth more than Pen Gilpin," I say. "That's a given. But what about Kelsey?"
She doesn't answer.
SHARING A SCENE: With costar John Mahoney
DIDN'T YOU PHOTOGRAPH KELSEY Grammar this weekend for In Style?" I ask Art Streiber. He is down on all fours, crawling around on the cold cement, setting up a shot of Moose.
"I photographed him, yeah," says Streiber.
"Which was more difficult, Moose or Kelsey?"
Streiber stops what he is doing. Moose, who is lying on his
back with all four paws in the air, turns, looks at Streiber and lets out a low, comical howl.
"This is more difficult," says Streiber.
"Why?"
"Because we're asking the dog to do really difficult things. Hold positions. And with a human, I want him to move, interact, gesticulate. The dog I wanted to hold a pose. And he's trained better than any dog I've ever seen, but it's still hard."
As a matter of fact, the photo session is startling. From the first moment Moose walks out and takes his mark, he delivers an extraordinary performance - mugging, rolling, pawing, smiling, jumping, etc., etc. Now, of course, Moose is DeCagny's stooge. After all, she can control him with a series of hand signals. And nobody expects any actor to invent things on his own. But still. The sheer force of Moose's personality, his outrageous exuberance, his undeniable cheek (DeCagny had to train him to endure being petted) and his gorgeous sadness (the charisma everyone talks about comes from an unmistakable look of longing in his eyes), all these things add up to an audacity that just blows people away.
"He's supersmart," DeCagny says. "It's scary for me because I don't know what to expect. I have many dogs that perform in movies. And we are in harmony. But with Moose, it's not that there isn't any harmony. It's just that he's constantly keeping me guessing. So I have to keep him guessing."
She suggests that people who are training their pets at home should "not necessarily go with treats all the time. What you can do is try to switch -- one time you have a treat, two times you don't have a treat. One time you go to a toy, one time you've got nothing."
"You have no trouble with men, do you, Mathilde?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "No. Never had."
"You know why?" I say.
She smiles. She is so French, her corn-flower-blue bra matches her cornflower-blue T-shirt.
"Because," I say, "you understand how to train the bastards!"
"It's psychology," she allows. "Yes," I say. "You offer treats and praise."
"And I cook," she says and gives me a beat of her lashes.
M00SE EXITS THE PARAMOUNT lot riding shotgun in DeCagny's big blue van. His pretty friend Tulsa (a whippet mix DeCagny rescued from a pound and is now training to be an actor) is with him.
They are headed home, where Moose will run about in the garden to his heart's content. But first they must stop at a pet store and buy two pooperscoopers. Both Tulsa and Moose caper up and down the aisles, sampling lamb-links and playing with toys. When it comes time to pay, DeCagny is chatting with the cashier, and by God if the best-trained dog in America doesn't lift his leg and pee on a column.
Tulsa steps back and eyes the puddle in happy astonishment.
My own joy on the occasion is immense. I have been struggling for years to train my dogs merely to sit on command -- and here is Moose, the coolest, smartest dog of his generation, urinating on a pole in a pet store! It gives me such hope! (And I'm sure Moose feels good about it, too.) By the way, if you want a small dog for your apartment, DeCagny advises, get a bulldog -- a toy poodle, a dachshund or, better yet, a mutt from the pound. She says if you are thinking of getting a Jack Russell, don't.
US Magazine, October 23, 2000
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments with foul language will be removed.