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Chapter Two science versus showmanship on the silent screen science versus showmanship on the silent screen On May 20, 1923, Trailing African Wild Animals, billed as the ~rst “purely commercial animal picture . . . endorsed as really ‘natural,’” opened at New York City’s Capitol Theater, a 4,500-seat, lavish, ~rst-run picture palace built in 1919. Filmed by the famed adventurer-photographers Martin and Osa Johnson, Trailing African Wild Animals was ~nanced through the Johnsons’ personal investments, proceeds from the sale of a Midwest jewelry store owned by Martin’s father, and the patronage of wealthy members of New York City’s Explorer’s Club and the American Museum of Natural History. Trustees of the American Museum hoped that their patronage and endorsement of Martin and Osa Johnson would bring publicity to the world of natural history and the halls of the museum. But their patronage alone was no guarantee that the ~lm would reach a wide audience. By the mid-1920s, the commercial success of natural history ~lm rested largely in the hands of an oligopoly, formed by major Hollywood studios including MGM, Warner Brothers, Twentieth-Century Fox, Paramount, and RKO, 26 that monopolized control of the commercial entertainment ~lm industry through vertical integration of production, distribution, and exhibition. Metro Pictures, for example, which promoted, distributed, and exhibited Trailing African Wild Animals, began as a modest Hollywood studio with a national distribution network that in 1924 merged with Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions to become one of the most powerful corporations in Hollywood. Throughout the 1920s, the Johnsons successfully straddled the worlds of Hollywood and science, but it was an alliance fraught with tension. In the eyes of wealthy patrons at the American Museum of Natural History, to exploit wildlife on camera in the interests of crass commercialism threatened to degrade the sanctity of nature and its importance as a therapeutic retreat from the profane in_uences of modern civilization. For them, the preservation of wildlife on ~lm served as a lasting record for future generations of a natural heritage that was being erased by the modernizing forces of civilization. In contrast, the Johnsons had far fewer scruples about the preservation of authentic nature when commercial success depended upon their ability to make nature conform to the conventions of Hollywood entertainment. Increasingly, the in_uence of Hollywood played an instrumental role in determining the conventions and market through which nature ~lms might reach a popular audience.1 Born in Lincoln, Kansas to a self-made Swedish businessman and a mother who was a Christian Scientist, Martin Johnson, unlike Burden, had few reservations about turning nature into a commercial commodity, particularly when the packaging of nature as entertainment offered a means to achieve wealth and standing in American society. In 1907, Martin Johnson accompanied Jack and Charmian London as a cook and photographer on a highly publicized two-year voyage aboard the Snark through the South Seas. Upon his return home, Johnson, spellbound by the glamour of the public limelight, capitalized on his ventures with the famous writer by opening the Snark theater in Independence, Kansas. Johnson successfully lured audiences with his tales, slides, and motion pictures of adventure through the Paci~c, which included male-only shows containing pictures of nude women and details of the sexual mores of New Hebrides men. In 1910 Johnson took the show on the road with his sixteen-year-old bride, Osa Leighty, whose soprano voice became a featured act in his travelogue lectures. Through the purchase of slides and motion picture ~lms of places and indigenous peoples that he had neither visited nor seen, Johnson crafted a travelogue-lecture science versus showmanship on the silent screen 27 show of the South Seas that earned him a six-year booking on the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit. In 1917, backed by a group of Boston investors, the couple traveled to the Solomon Islands where they obtained footage for their ~rst travelogue-adventure ~lm, Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Paci~c. The ~lm’s commercial success, attributed in part to the striking contrast of a photogenic, petite, yet “plucky” American woman amidst cannibals and headhunters and to titles replete with racial slurs and gags, attracted additional investors into the Martin Johnson Film Company. A second trip to Melanesia in 1919 provided material for their popular ~lm, Jungle Adventures, which was successfully marketed through tie-in advertisements for adventure clothing at several New York City department stores.2 In 1921, Johnson’s chance meeting at...

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