PSEUDO-EXPLORERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 9 (Supplement)

PSEUDO-EXPLORERS.

OVER-ZEALOUS NATURE FAKERS. THE LIONS IN CANADA. HOW CQMBATS ARE STAGED. (By CAPTAIN CARL VON HOFFMAN.)

Sometimes in their zeal for naturefaking some producers of films provide, unwittingly, ludicrous situations.

In Hollywood, California, as a cast was about to leave for location in Canada for scenes of the North-west, with incidental animal episodes, the head of a motion picture company, proprietor of a zoo on which the company drew from time to time, Baid to his director, "Well, I have shipped our lions to Canada for the picture."

The director protested frantically. "But there are no lions in Canada!" Without batting an eye, his employer assured him, "But there will be when you get there." And nature to the contrary notwithstanding, that film established that there are lions in Canada.

So thoroughly do some producers disregard facts, and attempt to work their fancy on the audience, particularly in African portrayals. If such portrayals are to be believed, Africa is a land in which wild beasts for ever are fighting, and always just when the camera is focused 'on them. It is- an impression that can stand some debunking.

In eighteen years of African Tesearch J saw very few such combats. On the 'screen, in American theatres, I have watched more than one thrilling leopard fight. In those eighteen years, which had more than a small measure of adventure, I was in close contact with only two leopards.

The first time I had-pitched camp on Lake Kivu, where I was examining a small extinct crater, one used by the Germans in the world war. It was thirty feet in diameter. I ventured into the grass, nine feet tall, near the rim. I heard a hiss, a snarl, and saw a spotted beast flash by, scared by my approach into a frantic departure from its lair. I had no gun, or I would have fired. The brute might have been wounded and returned to do combat. It was well, perhaps, I had no weapon. The second occasion was in the night. The leopard, incidentally, is a nocturnal prowler. My porters had raised a sudden clamour. I sprang awake. A leopard had scented meat hung near the tent and had slunk toward the smouldering fire. As I stepped into the open the beast swept by. And that was all there was to my second direct encounter, in eighteen years, with the ferocious leopard.

Staging Wild Animal Fights. The screen has a habit of offering the black leopard as an African tornado, when it so happens that the black species is a native of India, and is as rare m Africa as hair on a bald man's head; Many African wild animal fights, as shown in films, are bunk. Animals do not hang around, holding off their combats, "until the camera appears. So the photographer, does the next best. He conies backfto America and Btages scenes, wi& Animals that in many instances never: saw i&frica, but were born in cap"as S.P.C.A. and the laws of the States won't "pemit even these staged fights, the animals are put through their paces in many cases across the border in Mexico. Sometimes the fights are pyt on in the Slates surreptitiously. There are dealers- who furnish beasts for such purposes, some animal farms in California being busy in this respect. In New Jersey is a farm which furnishes a stage setting and provides animals for fights purported Ho have been photographed in the African jungle. 'In 1916, before the'flood of faked African: beast fights, the S.P.C.A. engaged me in Philadelphia to portray its activities with my camera. The organisation opposed cock fights. To show what a cock fight looked like, the society arranged a pit in a studio yard, using two confiscated birds as principals. The preliminaries were being prepared for the lens when a woman, leaning from her 1 window, saw what was going ori." She telephoned the police. They hot-footed it to the yard and gave the scehe a realistic touch the S.P.C.A. had not dreamed of. We had had no intention of staging a real cock fight, having in mind only to show the preliminary postures. I wonder how horrified this woman would be to-day if she were to note how "jungle beasts" are stoned and by othpr cruel means induced to get into scraps supposed to have occurred in Africa? . - ........<

Returning to leopards. You have seen few pictures of hunters, feet implanted on leopard carcases. The reason is that the leopard is rarely seen in daytime. It takes quick eye and quick shooting to get a creature that so thoroughly blends with its surroundings and provides a relatively small target.

One famous- film depicts the terrific grapple of a leopard and an Asian type of domestic water buffalo. The fight ends in a draw, of course, because the censors would forbid the showing of a fight to the death as being too cruel for the human spectator. Now this war was staged by man on the Malay Peninsula. Neither of the principals had any desire for battle. But the promoters of the bout had many stones. They pelted the animate into frenzy. Cruelty For Pictures. Infuriated with pain, they fought. The water buffalo killed the leopard. Whereupon a second leopard was run in, while the camera ground on. This one, too, succumbed, for the water buffalo can bo a tough chap. Several leopards were killed that the camera might make its realistic fake of a fight in the jungle; as one died the scene was resumed with its successor, the actual killings being cut because of the censors. Goring boms wrought havoc with those leaping, snarling cats. And the audience never paused to ponder on the good fortune of the photographer in "happening" to be in the right spot at the right time. It is interestuig that in such, fights there always is a solid background in the distance, foliapre, rock or slope. The reason is that behind these walls of foliage lie the bars of a cage, camouflaged by foliage and other "natural" scenery. Scenes -of Africa seem invariably to show jungle, as though all Africa were jungle. If the "Dark Continent" is eo primitively wild, why are all beast fights shown in clearings? Do the animals seek out the clearings for their .struggles? No; the camera must have unobstructed vision. The pictures are. made at close range very often. That is unnatural. Because the scent of man, long before the photographer could have reached the field of combat, in event of: a real fight in the jungle, would have frightened off the principals. 1

But thew pictures are not made in Africa. They are made on this side of the Atlantic, with animals in captivity that are forced by one cruel means or another to fight for the camera.

Why don't we see pictures of leopards or lions or hyenas attacking giraffes? Because the cage would have to be of impossible proportions. And we don't see lions and elephants fighting, because there is no cage strong enough for such fights.

I recall a popular film of an Asian scene, a tiger charging. The audience could not know the tiger was being enticed toward the camera by the holding up, on cords, of innumerable chickens, strung as a lure that teased the beast into focus.

An ugly-minded rhinoceros has been shown charging head-on. Virtually, he seems to have swept directly on to the photographer. That impression was made possible by telescopic lens. The

picture really was made at a distance of hundreds of feet. When the telescopic apparatus is used, neither foreground nor background stands forth sharply. The grass is high and blurred, except for a sharpness at the point, at which the subject of the picture is stationed. The high magnification of the lens produces a vibration and slight movement on the screen.

Another gross misrepresentation I have seen has been the ferocious charge of the wildebeest or gnu. Men were shown springing to the safety of trees to get away from a few tame wildebeeste. Even in its untrammelled state "this is not a vicious brute. I stood in a blind one morning waiting for wildebeeste to come to a waterhole. They scented me, thousands of them, a quarter of a mile away. There they stood, parebed. Not one would venture nearer. The human scent frightened them. At least, they gave up and left.

This is the "dangerous" animal that was made to appear a menace to man. The wildebeeste, true, may become danerous in a cage. But the broncho, under frenzy of restraint, can become a desperately dangerous enemy of man.— N.A.N.A.