She was a Broadway musical star, swathed in fur, eating a steak a day.
But Gretchen Wyler's worldview changed in the late 1960s after a visit to a local dog pound near her country home in Warwick, N.Y. That chance encounter provided the inspiration for what would be the actress' second-greatest passion: animal rights activism.
Within a few years of that visit, Wyler shed five furs -- a mink coat, mink stole, chinchilla cape, full-length silver fox and a nutria-lined coat -- and started a more humane animal shelter in Warwick. (The shelter animals got the furs to use as bedding.)
Eventually, she became a vegan and a board member of several animal rights groups. In the last few years she has transformed a leadership role in the Hollywood office of the Humane Society of the United States into a high-profile spot and become something of an irritant to the Los Angeles Zoo.
"I don't think anyone should have a right to see a wild animal up close," says Wyler, who extols the virtues of housing captive elephants on preserves, rather than in zoo enclosures. She lambastes zoo Director John Lewis for his recent comment on the difficulty of viewing elephants in a very large space. "Oh, my God, this is not about people, it's about animals!" she says.
It seems as if nothing can dim her energy. Not age (Wyler is 74), not a recurrence of breast cancer and drug therapy. She plans to retire in June as vice president of the Hollywood office of the Humane Society, but tonight she'll preside -- as she always has -- over the Genesis Awards, a ceremony she started to spotlight animal rights issues.
Over a vegan dinner at the Beverly Hilton for the 20th annual event, celebrity presenters including Ed Begley Jr., Zooey Deschanel, Jorja Fox, Lauren Holly, Amy Smart and Tori Spelling are scheduled to hand out 20 brass plaques to honor TV shows and movies, documentaries, news programs, and newspapers and magazines. The show will be taped to air May 6 on Animal Planet.
She insists that the ceremony is unlike the self-congratulatory award shows that crop up at this time of the year in Hollywood.
"We're about an issue, not about craft," she says. "Two million people are going to see this and hear about 20 issues."
Wyler is one of a group of high-profile Hollywood actresses of \o7un \f7\o7certain age \f7who, as they grew too old for the entertainment industry's notions of what is bankable, became animal welfare advocates. The list includes Doris Day, Brigitte Bardot, Betty White and Tippi Hedren.
