Screenland (Nov 1929-Apr 1930)

66 SCREENLAND vast herds of wild game: zebra, giraffe and ostrich. During the night a fine red dust creeps in under the windows, through the ventilators and covers everything. In the morning at breakfast, Edwina appeared in a spotless wash dress, wearing a cork helmet, and smiling. The rest of us were dirty and our eyes were bloodshot from the dust and soot. My repeated efforts to get towels and soap from the porter had produced everything from a new blanket to a gin sling. Edwina had apparently worked a miracle. In Mairobi we paused long enough to repack our equipment, and to establish a laboratory for developing our rushes. Then we organized a regular safari, hired one hundred natives, five hunters and started for the bush. From Nairobi to Jinja, on Lake Victoria, there is a branch of the railroad. From there we went by motor to Kampala. At that point it became apparent that civilization was leaving us in the wake. Edwina left her trunk in the hotel and jumped into khaki pants, flannel shirt and felt taria, that was to be everything but her negligee for the next six months. And somehow it was rather becoming. Along about May 15, we waved goodbye to the hotel keeper and pushed off toward the Congo. We were traveling in nineteen motor lories and six passenger cars. Our nine-ton electric generator truck brought up the rear. We were carrying more equipment by at least fifty tons than any safari that had entered that part of Africa. There were twenty kleig lights, forty tents, beds, chairs an iceless refrigerator, a wireless set, and enough foodstuffs, ammunition, films, and canned goods to last three months. At every bridge we had to stop and build a reinforcement under it before we could drive the generator truck over. Sometimes this took hours. We were eating on the march, living on canned food and crackers most of the time. At night we pitched a few tents and slept until dawn unless the mosquitoes were too thick. All over the roads there were tracks of everything from elephants to leopards. One day we arrived at Lake Albert, in Uganda, on the border of the Belgian Congo. There we left our cars and loaded our personal kit on a river boat the size of a tug. There was a white man stationed there who looked after the shipping on the Lake. His name was Buckler. When he saw Edwina he said, "You This spot was home for the "Trader Horn" expedition for many weeks, at Murchison Falls, Uganda, on the banks of the Victoria Nile. Edwina Booth as Nina T. and Harry Carey as Trader Horn in an African setting for a scene in the screen version of the old philosopher's novel. can't take her where you're going. It is reeking with sleeping sickness and fever. She can't stand it." Before Van Dyke could answer, Edwina stepped up to the man. "Have you ever tried to cross Fifth Avenue at Forty-second street during the rush hour, Mr. Buckler?" she asked. "Well, I have, and I guess I can stand this country!" She didn't talk much the rest of the day but she was all right when we got off the steamer at Panyamur next morning. That was the first location — a wilderness on the West side of Lake Albert. Flat, tallgrass plains running down to the water's edge, with the land rising a mile or so from the lake and climbing gradually into the purple hills of the Congo. The water smooth and oily, simmering in the heat of a tropical sun and the monotonous hum of insects hanging over the whole scene like the purr of a distant airplane. I looked for Edwina. She was trying to talk to some natives who had come down to meet us. They were laughing and making signs and she was looking up words in her Swahili handbook. We shot the first sequence of the picture there, scenes showing the arrival of Little Peru in Africa and his introduction to Trader Horn. We defied all the rules of Africa during those first days, working all day in the sun, through the worst heat of the day at noon and far into the dusk. The generator was stationed off-shore on a tender and the juice was run ashore in cables. It looked like a losing bet for Edwina some of those times when we sat in the scorching sun, waiting for the clouds to drift into the background. Times when you could have baked a potato under your hat and when nobody spoke and everybody just sat. Harry Carey, brave in the costume of the 'tough customer' of the early times, was driving herds of shackled natives that staggered under burdens of ivory tusks until they fell. It was easy for him to look grim. Renaldo arrived with slaves carrying guitars, luggage, and a bath tub, and faced the sarcastic scrutiny of Trader Horn. It was easy for Renaldo to look uncomfortable, as these two sweated through the opening scenes. At night the mosquitoes were pretty bad. We had nets over our beds, but during dinner and right afterwards there was nothing to do about it. Some of the boys went down with fever after a couple of weeks. Van Dyke (Cent, on page 120)