Michaela Denis Likes Life In The Open

Press, Volume C, Issue 29684, 30 November 1961, Page 2

Michaela Denis Likes Life In The Open

(By SUSAN VAUGHAN]

When Michaela Denis and her husband, Armand, passed through London Airport recently there was a strike of porters. Armand put all the luggage he could heave on to a trolley. Michaela carried a large holdall on her head. “It’s by far the easiest way to carry things,” she said. “I learned that from native women.” From many people such a remark would have sounded affected. Michaela managed to utter it without a trace of self - consciousness because undoubtedly she does identify herself with the outdoor life. The freedom of the jungle, the open plains, are her career. Through their films and books the Denises have an audience of many millions all over the world. At The Top In the remarkable upsurge of interest in wild life which has been a feature of a world which is becoming rapidly urbanised. Michaela and Armand have come out right, at the top. They have made nature study big business. Parts of their entertainment have been criticised as terribly silly. But what is important is that the Denises are on the side of the animals, and against the tusk hunters and the bullies. They live in a white stone house on high ground a few miles from Nairobi, a house inhabited by dogs and cats and sometimes even lion cubs. "I’m very fond of lions,” says Michaela. "I think if you spent a couple of generations or so with them you could get them as tame as dogs.” They built the house 11 years ago when Armand was adviser for the film “King Solomon’s Mines.” Hyenas Howl From an upstairs window (they live upstairs, sleep downstairs) you can look across miles of rolling

countryside and, on some particularly clear days, see the snow-capped mountain of Kilimanjaro, 160 miles away. Every night they hear the howls of hyenas. “Part of the enchantment,” says Michaela. Born in London 40 years ago, Michaela was only three months old when her father, a White Russian archaeologist, died. In adulthood, she drifted into dress designing and went abroad whenever she could. Then, on one expedition overseas, she met Oxfordeducated Armand, a tall handsome brown-haired Belgian, who had been to Hollywood in the thirties and had made a name for himself with films on wild life. Michaela’s first trip to Africa w’as nearly fatal. In a car crash in the bush she broke her nose. A plastic surgeon restored her features without a scar. Never Frightened A lion has bitten her thigh, a gorilla her chest, a leopard the middle of her back, and a baboon her knuckles. She has been half strangled by a python. Once she fell alone into an elephant pit in the dark. Once she fell out of a canoe into a river teeming with crocodiles. Neither time was she frightened. Does anything frighten her? Curiously, untidyness. “I get into a queer sort of panic in untidy surroundings and it doesn’t go off until I’ve got everything neat,” she says.