MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: All of the pigs used in the film, Babe, were later slaughtered following the completion of the filming of the movie.
There is a fascinating subset of legends that seem to be based around the notion of "You remember that sweet thing you liked? Here's something messed up that happened to someone from that show/movie!" Almost as if people get way too much of a kick out of juxtaposing the sweet with the dark. A very popular legend along this line was that Ken Osmond, Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver, later became an adult film star. Perhaps it was because Osmond got out of acting and was less of a prescence, and thus people could make up stories about him without anyone really knowing any better, since he was no longer in the public eye. While not as "put there" as the first legend, there were also many legends that said that Osmond later became Alice Cooper! I'm telling you, people are truly obsessed with the notion of revealing a dark spin on something sweet.
Sometimes, those dark stories are true, like how over forty people who appeared in the film, Philadelphia, had passed away within three years of that film's release, but that was because the film specifically sought out people who had AIDs to appear in the movie in various small roles, so that "dark" twist really wasn't dark to begin with, it was just a sweet tribute in the middle of a sad situation. That, of course, leads us to the legend at hand - did the pigs used in the movie, Babe, really all get slaughtered after the film?
JUST HOW MANY PIGS WERE THERE IN THE MOVIE, BABE?
You may or may not know this, but piglets grow up FAST. Too fast for a single pig to star in Babe, because the filming took a long time to finish due to the technology involved in getting the animals to look like they were talking (writer/producer George Miller first began negotiating the rights to the book, The Sheep-Pig, by Dick King-Smith, all the way back in 1986, but one of the delays was waiting for the filming technology to hit the point where it could achieve the effect that he was looking for for the movie) and the training each pig needed. So as a result, "Babe" was actually played by FORTY-EIGHT Large White Yorkshire pigs (although of the 48 pigs used in the filming, only 46 actually appear on screen). The noted animal trainer, Karl Lewis Miller (who did the Beethoven movies, as well as Cujo), was in charge of the animals, but the film also had to use one animantronic pig for wide shots, as Miller would always have to be close to the pigs to direct them, and obviously, in a wide shot, he would be visible, so they created a fake pig for those scenes.
The film doesn't get into whether Babe, in the movie, is a male or a female pig, but the pigs used in the filming were all female (the genetalia of male piglets are pretty darn visible, which I assume Miller found offputting for this kids movie).
WERE THE PIGS WHO PLAYED BABE LATER SLAUGHTERED?
Okay, so we now know that there 48 pigs used in the film to play Babe. So, well, what happened to them after the movie? Did they really get sold off to be slaughtered for bacon and pork?
Luckily, as it turns out, all of the pigs in the film were not only not killed, but they were specifically sent to places where they would not be killed. The Chicago Tribune covered the story back when the movie came out in 1995, and it talked to Karl Lewis Miller (can't say shorten it to "Miller" when the writer/producer was also named Miller) about it, who explained:
Karl, whose Animal Action company trains critters for movies, television and commercials (his most famous animal is Beethoven the dog), said the pigs, which were all female, were sent to farms to become mothers. A few of them were given to high school agricultural classes for study (no dissections).
"Each pig was released with a signed document that (the people getting them) understood these pigs were not meant for the table," Karl said.
Not only did all of the pigs in Babe survive, but doing the film even turned its human lead, James Cromwell, into a vegan! He explained to TakePart, : “I was doing a picture in Australia called ‘Babe,’ working with a lot of animals and animal trainers. I cared about their welfare and then, of course, you have lunch and it’s all there in front of you, and I thought, I should go the whole hog, so to speak. So I made that decision and kept that during the shooting. When I came back, I got involved with PETA, and of course, the film opened and it was very successful.”
The funny thing, of course, is that Cromwell almost didn't do the film because of how little he spoke in the movie (he counted just 16 lines of dialogue for his character, the kindly farmer who trains Babe as his sheep-pig), but he recalled a friend convinced him by telling him, “Hey, listen, man. It’s a free trip to Australia! If the movie stinks, it’s the pig’s fault. You don’t carry the picture. The pig carries the picture!” Luckily, the pig DID carry the picture, as Babe was a big hit and turned Cromwell, an acclaimed character actor then probably still best known for playing one of Archie Bunker's friends on All in the Family, into a very in-demand actor (and a Best Supporting Actor nominee for the role).
The legend is...
STATUS: False
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