Africa Screams For Metro

Trader Horn A Gamble That Paid --- Part Two

Trader Horn’s caravan hauled thirty-five whites, two hundred natives, three sound trucks, and sixteen cameras, a to-then record heft for safaris. Van Dyke was advised not to let a single piece of equipment exceed one-ton weight, so off he went with stock weighing nine. Warned too against trek to Murchison Falls, it being tsetse fly infested, if picturesque and a haven for exotic wildlife, Van Dyke set forth anyway, taking cast/crew. He'd have husk of a story, dialogue mostly winged, eyes alert to sights and spectacle to capture and somehow work into whatever plot they’d develop. Nature plus its denizens did much of writing for Trader Horn. Setbacks were common and daily expected. One night a wall of water swept away the camp. Olive Carey (playing a missionary) lauded Metro for quickness at recovery, as in restocking everyone’s gear. This was no lost colony, but a well-subsidized one, white hunters along the route hired to shoot game and supply meat for those not afraid to eat it. Van Dyke pulled his weight with five million feet of Africa footage, a resource for not only Trader Horn, but every Metro jungle from there on, plus stock to supply renters. There was cost overrun, a given. Van Dyke was finally told to come home now, or not at all, so he sent others back and stayed with a few cameras to get more scenery. Bosses knew Van Dyke would not waste resource, trust earned on White Shadows In The South Seas and The Pagan. Again, who else had his steel? I see maybe King Vidor, Victor Fleming, or Clarence Brown equal to the task, but could these have stood the gaffe like Van Dyke?

Metro’s job was just beginning as the expedition returned home. Word was, everyone got the gate when they landed in New York. Van Dyke knew there was a quilt to patch, and so brought two native giants to do matching scenes at Culver. Panicked execs meanwhile hired a dialogue director from back east to augment whatever could be used from the trip, an effort lasting through 1930 and never sure to end up coherent. There was a snoopy press to contend with, so MGM dribbled out work in progress yarns w/o letting on the jumble from jungles they had. The expedition back by November 1929 initiated months to make Trader Horn a hot-anticipated event, publicity kept boiling for a corker show to come. Early as July ’29 saw Clyde De Vinna filing his on-location report for readers of American Cinematographer, the camera genius chased up a tree by wild buffalo, plus other close calls he told of. Press agent for the trip John W. McClain kept a diary for the New York Times, was employed too by the Sun. His bulletins were regular through the shoot. McClain also did a detailed (and pictorial) re-cap of the trip for Screenland’s March 1930 issue. Well-told fans accepted that Trader Horn was too big a venture to be rushed. Whatever we finally got would be worth the wait.

Final negative cost was $1,312,636, a lot on one hand, a bargain on the other. Trader Horn sold itself, the savage beasts and a White Goddess pearls from an African oyster. Grauman’s Chinese had the opener and drew ads of a topless Edwina Booth (see The Art Of Selling Movies). Van Dyke’s natives were pressed into lobby greeting. There is newsreel footage of Van Dyke standing with them. If any circus was this wild, no one had seen it. Trader Horn became a movie to bring people out that didn’t ordinarily care for movies, a best definition of a hit. The million three was got back in a flash and soared from there. Trader Horn did even better foreign than here, a worldwide $3.5 million the happy wrap. A roadshow souvenir book told “How The Picture Was Made” in terms of high-risk and non-stop peril. Some wondered if what they saw was real. Had MGM truly sent all these people to Africa? Photoplay answered (April 1931) in an article surprising for its candor. Moderns are told that fan mags toadied to the studios, more/less true, but every now/then, one would lift a mask and give out facts re dream-weaving, as here. “How “Trader Horn” Was Made,” they called the piece, brief text, but with insider stuff not shared elsewhere or cited since, except by Kevin Brownlow in his epic tome, The War, The West, and The Wilderness. Photoplay’s writer (no byline) spills truth of how Metro had to “improve upon nature in order to make a picture more dramatic and more entertaining to the spectator,” this not a dig, for Trader Horn was “neither an animal picture nor a travelogue, but a dramatization of a human-interest story with a jungle background.” Photoplay in fact praised MGM for having “the good taste not to misrepresent (Trader Horn) to the public like so many others have done.” Faking as practiced by nature-set filmmakers had been an issue (again, see The Art Of Selling Movies chapter, Leave The Children Home).

Edwina Booth Was Trade-Credited For Bringing Down a Hippo, But It Was Harry Carey That Did The Deed

What Photoplay revealed was “many instances” where “jungle scenes, natives, animal shots, and growls” were “doctored,” assuring us, however, that “most of the background scenes were taken in Africa.” These were “one hundred percent true and accurate,” though to tell Trader Horn’s story properly, MGM had to “supplement” footage brought from the location. “Accordingly, they did most of the sound over,” the result “so well pieced together that it’s impossible to tell where the genuine and the false begin and leave off.” Animation, “after the manner of … cartoons,” was used for a scene where a rhino tosses a native; “the studio work cannot be detected,” said the article. Most notorious, to current sensibilities if not 1931 readers, was reveal of footage shot in Mexico (to avoid ASPCA notice, says Brownlow) where animals were herded into a corral, lions starved over days so they would attack anything that moved. The resulting bloodbath proved useless to the final film, much resource and wildlife wasted, according to Duncan Renaldo. Here was outlaw filmmaking by a highest profile company for which ends justified means. What with cash already poured into Trader Horn, desperate time called for desperate measure. As to “native shots,” in addition to the specimen brought from Africa by Van Dyke, there would be “Negroes … recruited from the colored section of Los Angeles, playing the parts of natives.” The Dunning process, later called rear projection or process shots, enabled players to emote against background footage from the location. “All of those labors were expertly and effectively done … Trader Horn is a splendid example of the mechanics of making an effective, dramatic picture,” concluded Photoplay.

Ad For The Summer 1953 Reissue of Trader Horn with Sequoia

What lent Trader Horn much verisimilitude was stills taken on the Africa trip and used later for publicity. These were vistas and scenes that could not have been captured elsewhere, with cast members foregrounded in each. They were assurance to a paying public that Trader Horn was the real stuff, whatever measures necessarily taken to sweeten a final product, and had much to do with joyous reception the picture got. For Edwina Booth, the venture ended less happily. Her health was ruined, with one jungle-bred malady after another. She sued MGM, they’d not budge, finish to the sorry chapter squibbed by Variety (5/1/35) under the headline, “Metro Settles Edwina Booth’s $1,000,000 Suit.” Amounts weren’t indicated, though sources indicate it was a frugal pay-off, not near enough to meet her needs. The Edwina Booth saga, start to end, was told by historian D. Robert Carver, a terrific job of research published in 2008 by the Provo (Utah) Daily Herald. This is a harrowing, multi-part story, well worth the read. More fine investigation was done by Byron Riggan for June 1968's issue of American Heritage. He dug deep into Trader Horn fact and lore, interviewed Duncan Renaldo and Olive Carey, then found Edwina Booth, whom many (including her cast-mates) thought long dead. Renaldo getting Booth on the telephone after all those years is a dramatic highlight of Riggan’s definitive Trader Horn history.

Our Liberty Theatre Gets Trader Horn for a 1953 Date

Trader Horn was cutting-edge for early 1931, but mighty primitive to viewers afterward. Still, it acquired legend many would fondly recall, and secure placement in MGM’s Hall Of Fame. That standing brought audiences back in 1937 for a reissue that earned $188K in domestic rentals. Profit after prints and advertising was $123K. A 1953 revival surpassed that, thanks to radio and TV saturation modeled on King Kong’s revival of the previous year. A brand-new, and really persuasive trailer, was more sugar for lure (see that at TCM's site). Domestic rentals this time were $350K, with foreign an additional $63K. Overall profit was $248K. Variety’s verdict: “While hardly … sensational, Metro had a degree of success with Trader Horn,” while exhibitor comment was mixed: “It is an old picture and the print shows up poorly, but there’s plenty of Africa, natives, (and) animals. We were pleased with it” (James Wiggs, Jr., Tar Theatre, Tarboro, NC). Summer 1953 may have been the last viable opportunity to loose Trader Horn on theatres, as MGM’s “Mighty” Mogambo was just around a corner for Fall ’53 release, doing Africa to a Technicolor turn, all else hopeless by comparison. Trader Horn went to television among “Pre-48 Greats” from MGM in 1956. Charm lies yet in its antiquity, and TCM has upgraded Trader Horn to HD for broadcast. The DVD from Warner Archive is happily a re-master. Of classics from Leo, Trader Horn needs patience, a little charity perhaps, but values are plenty for the watching, history it represents topped by precious few.