Blondie the Lion - In late September, 1955, Blondie the lion made her debut on THE GARRY MOORE SHOW. Blondie was the house pet of Charles E. Hipp, an oil-well drilling contractor who lived at the time in Graham, Texas. His lion was scheduled for a spot on the show after staff members saw Blondie's picture in a newspaper story in The New York Herald Tribune (7/28/55). The lion had been acquired by Hipp from the Dallas Zoo as a tiny cub in 1953 and was raised as a house pet. Extremely tame, Blondie bathed in the shower, begged for scraps of food at the dinner table, played with the neighborhood dog and even allowed children to ride on her back.