Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

A talk with Stewart Edward White makes you feel like a six year old at the circus. NO, the list above is not a new version of the animals that went in two by two nor a list of the 1919 tenants of Mr. Noah's well known ark. Merely a leaf from the sporting notebook of Stewart Edward White, famous author, sportsman, society favorite and major of the California Grizzlies during their recent service in France. Novelists as a general thing aren't thrilling talkers. But when I got through with Stewart Edward White I felt like a six-year-old who has just seen his first circus. I had learned so much and so intimately about lions that if I'd met one on Hollywood Boulevard I should have walked up to shake hands. Mr. White, who a short time ago burst into the movies with a picturization of his well known novel "The Westerners," had been lured from his fashionable Burlingame home to the movie precincts of Hollywood to see a preview of his first screen venture. He slipped unobtrusively into the dim lobby of the Hollywood Hotel and no doubt cherished fond visions of being able to slip out the same way. Doubtless the majority of the celebrities and satellites that frequent that section of moviedom failed to connect the sandy, slender man in worn and unfashionable tweeds with the mighty hunter who once slew four lions in about as many minutes. Frankly, he looks most harmless. I darn near overlooked him myself. In which case I should not have had a peep into the famous notebook nor heard about the greatest lion battle ever .staged single-handed by a white man in Africa. The news recently drifted through from England that the British Government during its campaign against the Germans in East Africa used the maps of routes and waterholes made and explored for the first time by White during his 22-months trip into this unknown section, also carried the tip as to the four lions. , Now Mr. White didn't want to talk about it, never had talked about it and, except for his conscience and my previous .30 49 rhinoceroses 17 elephants 52 buffalo 27 leopards And here is a lion fight yarn that will thrill you — if you are thrillable. By ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS knowledge, would have denied it flatly. Under the terrific fire of my cross examination he admitted the feat, and when he once got warmed up on his favorite topic of lions, I was able to sit back and listen. Since he tells it much better than I can ever hope to write it, I can give you his own version of the thrilling battle, probably one of the most daring, unusual and startling encounters that ever took place in the dense jungles of Africa between a white man and wild beasts. "It was really quite simple," he said, trying not to look as annoyed as he felt, "nothing to talk about, you know. The lions had been Wthering a bit, roaring at night, so that we couldn't get the sleep we needed and so on this particular morning I wandered out to see if I could dig up any of 'em. I was strolling along with my gun bearer when over the top of an ant hill — they're about three feet high out there — I saw a big lioness peeping at me. "I took a pop at her for luck and her tail flipped up, which is generally a pretty good obituary. Just then, a lion stepped around the corner of the ant hill and paused to look at me accusingly. His suspicions evidently being justified, he started for me and I let him have it, stopping him with a wound in his shoulder. I glanced down at my gun and when I looked up, there, on the other side of the ant hill stood the most magnificent lion I ever saw. When we measured him later the top of his head stood even with my shoulder. "Right there I made one of those mistakes that lead the murderer to the gallows. Instead of finishing up the first lion, who came back just then, I took a shot at this new one because he was such a beauty. I only wounded him and both of them started for me. At precisely the same moment the old lady had a resurrection. Where the fourth one came from I never knew. Apparently he materialized out of blue air. If the remains had not been present afterwards, I should have believed him the figment of my overwrought brains — which was slightly overbalanced on the subject of lions just then. "From that time on it was like trying to shut a door on a bunch of puppies — you shove it closed, but you never get 'em all at the same time — some darn fool always' has his nose out. My gun bearer was a good boy and he stuck. Otherwise the entire bunch deserted. The trees around there rained darkies for half an hour afterwards. I'm admitting freely if it hadn't been for maintaining my prestige as a little tin god with those savages, I'd probably hold the African altitude record myself. But I decided that I might as well be eaten by a nice, clean lion as sliced up by a bunch of black heathens. But for a while there was hardly any place I could think of where I wouldn't rather have been. "One lion is sport, two are thrilling, but three is indecent and four is like the prohibition amendment — they can't do it. Lion shooting is sport but excess is always a curse. "I shot 18 times and luckily only missed three times. I put' 15 shots into the four. The last lion was just four feet away when I got him.