Screenland (Nov 1929-Apr 1930)

for March 1930 65 Three barbers — no waiting! Edwina Booth helps give a hair cut. That's local color in the background. A Movie Company Pioneers in Darkest Africa for Authentic Native Atmosphere By John W. McClain that we knew. It didn't call for words. All the talking had been done in Hollywood. When Edwina took the part she was told that it meant great personal risk. Van Dyke told her — as only Van Dyke can — that there would be no room for temperament, for coddling or for anything, in fact, except hard work and plenty of it. She took the job with her eyes open and we had to hand it to her for the way she played the game. It was May 1, 1929, when we all landed at Mombasa, the front door to East Africa — that fantastic little adjunct of the Bronx Zoo situated plumb under the equator on the East Coast. There were about thirty of us: Van Dyke, Edwina Booth, Harry Carey, Duncan Renaldo and the cameraman and technicians that go to make up a studio production company. In the hold of the ship was more than one hundred tons of equipment — hundreds of items we had been told to leave at home, things that 'could never be moved into the heart of the continent.' The weather was sibling. Nobody seemed to be very much interested in what we were doing. Natives were asleep in the shade. Lizards were crawling up the white walls of the customs warehouses on the pier. Two days of hard work were required to get everything onto the little woodburning train that runs three hundred and fifty miles inland to Nairobi, our temporary headquarters. It takes eighteen hours to make the trip, up-grade all the way, for Naibori is a mile above sea level. You pass through native villages through Above: Members of the company prepare a crocodile set for action at Mitrchison Falls. Center: Edwina Booth in her out-door dressing room in the wilds of A frica. Right: Elinor Glyn hasn't a corner on leopard skins — it's an old African costume. Harry Albiez, property man, sews 'em up on his Singer.