A lion known as P-45 has executed scores of household creatures—and pulled in energetic fans/italianska.
It was sprinkling and dim, late fall, on the old Rickards Movie Ranch, high in the Santa Monica Mountains, in rustic, red-state western Malibu. Faded skulls were attached to the outside mass of a phase set cantina; rusting wagon wheels inclined at points. A hand-painted sign declared an "Open Hanging, 5PM." Inside the cantina—the shooting area of TV Westerns and Gravy Train ads and Playboy spreads—a mystery meeting was under way lion.