With Oboler we bounced first around the Kenya area.
We went to the Indian Ocean beach for a couple days,
and while there we filmed and recorded in a cashew nut
farm where they had about a hundred natives wielding hammers. They were using them to get the nuts out
of a shell. It was quite a sound to hear all those hammers clonking away at the same time, especially while
Arch was interviewing the farmer. Oboler wanted all recordings done from the true location, so we went
everywhere to get the recordings on site.
You can see from these maps on the back of the record album, that we didn't
cover the eastern African area too well on the disk; it is a big place; but
Oboler chose the various ngoma recordings that were on the long-play
record.. We made many that didn't make it into the album, and we recorded
interviews at many, many places that don't show on the maps. The audio
tape was really rolling through the recorders in those days.
We went from place to place with the help of Geoff Hutchinson and
missionary Father Fornier, and we taped a broad range of East African
music for the album, and also we got representative bits of African life for the
Ziv shows.
We went north to the Acholi tribe and did filming and recording sound of their ngoma dancing. (I came home
to Fargo with an Acholi shield that still graces my basement rumpus room (which is now filled with furniture
and stuff from my wife's sister's and my mother's estates.)
While in Africa, Oboler was having all kinds of souvenirs crated to ship back to the states for his Frank Lloyd
Wright designed home. I did only a few pieces that really told a story to me.
What a difference Arch Oboler made in my life. When I was with Gatti, I was a slave to his whims, so to
speak; however, with Arch we were doing things that were very interesting, and I was part of the creative
work without a blizzard of Gatti-grams eating me out.. For example: we climbed up on Mount Kenya with two
male Swedish university scientists who were investigating the ancestry and lives of a little animal called the
rock hyrax. They were collecting specimens of the little rat-like creatures on all the high mountains in the
East Africa.
Oboler made a number of recordings of the Swedes at various locations on the mountain. The thing that got
me, was the fact that while were there, it drizzled when it wasn't raining, and raining when it wasn't drizzling.
The rain fell on and off every day we were on the mountain, and fog and clouds obscured the peak of Mt.
Kenya most of the time.
With the weather against us, we only saw the peak of the mountain about a total of 20 minutes and each
view was slightly foggy. I didn't get any film that amounted to anything due to the moisture in the air all the
time. My boots were soaking wet for five days. I think we climbed up to about the 12,000 foot level of the
majestic 15K peak. I know I was cold, wet and tired from the climbing.
One of the Swedes spoke very good English, the other none, so when we got back to the famous Outspan
Hotel we had an impromptu party. Steeg, the non-English speaker opened a bottle of Norwegian Aquavit that
he had saved for a special occasion. After a couple of drinks from his bottle, Steeg was talking English with a
Swedish accent. Great stuff, that aquavit.
At the western edge of our four months of travel, we filmed the nearly seven foot tall Watussi dancers
performing the same thing they later did for the African movie, King Solomon's Mines. The king of the
Watussi was a French speaking native, and we had a good time with him. He furnished the beer...
Another great muscle-busting adventure happened in the Impenetrable Forest near Kabale, Uganda after
Arch met a gold miner named Peter Mathews in the Kampala, Uganda Imperial hotel. "I've got to go to Peter
Mathews' gold mine and record the big ngoma he is going to have one of these days," said Oboler, and so
we went. It was some trip, believe me.
Like most of our travels, we never did do things on time, Peter Mathews gave Arch the instructions on how to
get to his mine. "It's a long trip through gorilla country," he said to begin with, "and I suggest you get a real
early start because it measures about 17 miles you have to walk after you cross Lake Mutanda in the dugout
canoes I will have waiting for you. And all that hike is over a series of mountainous ridges, one right after
another and some are steep climbs.. You'll sweat every one of those ridges to be sure. I'll have some native
carriers for the lady, if you want to bring her."
Peter was a wiry sort of person, no fat or excess poundage to haul around.
So on the day appointed by Peter, we drove to the edge of the lake Peter had
named, got into the long native dugout canoes paddled by dozen or so husky
natives who met us there. The native oarsmen paddled us, along with
rhythmic vocal singing, for what I estimated three miles to the other side of
the lake. It was a nice ride and it reminded me of the canoes I had seen on
Lake Sentani in Dutch New Guinea during WW-II.
When we beached the canoes, there were porters waiting to carry our
camera and battery boxes, and the recorder and allied equipment, plus Eleanor Oboler. We had a number of
extra porters whom our guide said were to carry us, if we had any hiking problems. Peter Mathews had
thought of everything.
When we beached the canoes, there were porters waiting to carry our camera and battery boxes, and the
recorder and allied equipment, plus Eleanor Oboler. We had a number of extra porters whom our guide said
were to carry us, if we had any hiking problems. Peter Mathews had thought of everything.
This was in mountain gorilla country and the porters were a noisy bunch. Every now and then they would
emit a string of wild yells. "That's to keep the animals away from our safari," said our native guide.
As we progressed towards the mine, we kept picking up other native groups who had been waiting for us to
arrive. Our guide kept us posted on the new members of the trek, who they were, and why they were joining
us. Peter Mathews had a good group of native followers that were going to the party.
The day went by slowly; it was a grueling hike. I lost count of the ridges we crossed, but someone said there
would be one a mile before we got to the Mathews' mine. Eleanor was riding to the ngoma on the shoulders
of husky natives who never seemed to tire of hauling her along. We hikers were slipping and sliding on some
of the trail to the mine. Then daylight left us in a hurry as it does in the tropics, and we began traveling in the
dark.
Imagine this scene, Oboler had only one little one-cell flashlight to light our way. But some of our native
traveling companions had made torches which they lit in order to see.
The jungle we were now in was hard to get lost in, because the trail had been literally hewn out of the green
vegetation we were walking through. As we crossed one ridge close to midnight, we could see lights being
carried by another group of natives coming toward us. They were on the last ridge, and the torches were
being carried by a native group that Peter had sent out to find us and guide us to the mine. By now, we had a
big crowd of dancers and drummers, some who were occasionally beating time on the drums they were
taking to play at the ngoma.
I was really glad to see the torches coming down into a valley as we came
down off our ridge to meet them.
Peter was a great host. He had a shot of whiskey, Scotch that is, for us when
we hiked into his camp about 2 a.m. The Ngoma got its start right then and
there. And the dancing continued for the next whole day and night. We only
recorded some of the dancing, but it was fun to watch all the natives having
fun at the party. And they did have fun!
A few years later, back in the states, I got a Christmas card from Peter who
remembered that night:
"I shall never forget the skilled technician who although able to
rectify an intricate recording machine by improvisation and genius strange
to the center of the Impenetrable Forest, yet had eternal youth in his
eyes when he plodded up the last steep hill having canoed Lake Mutanda
and climbed many weary rocky miles to arrive in the black of night with
his pigmy and Wakiga escort.
I feel that you'd be a real good side partner to have in a scrap and
fine to relax with. In fact, think of you as of the forward line of the USA
and to me you make me sure that America is a real country to live in.
May you have all good fortune and the best of luck as you go ahead.
Was glad to get your address and sincerely hope we may again meet."
I can't remember what I had to fix so the recorder would work after that trek, but I must have done something
to cause Peter to write that line.
I'll never forget the Impenetrable Forest, believe me. Today, part of the forest is a National Park with tourists
taken to see the gorilla family groups. In our day it was just what the name implies, impenetrable forest.
I spoke of the Imperial Hotel in Kampala, Uganda earlier. Another time we arrived in Kampala and wanted to
make future reservations for a few day stay, as was our custom while traveling. I said to the white lady at the
desk, "I'd like to reserve our rooms again for the 15th and will be staying three days."
"I can give you rooms for the 15th, but not longer," she said, "You see the Aga Kahn is coming and he
reserves all the rooms on the second floor, and all the rooms on the floors above that, too. He can't have
anyone staying above him in the hotel."
"How does he get away with that?" I asked.
"It's very simple," the lady smiled at me, "He owns the hotel."
So we stayed at another hotel after the 15th.
Oboler was fascinated by a book about building the railway in East Africa..." I'd like to get the rights to that
book and make a movie of it." he said to me one day. By then I had told him of my days at Technicolor in
Hollywood. I explained the imbibition method of putting color on the movie film, and how it had lasted so well.
The book that fascinated Arch was by an engineer named Patterson who, when the railway was being built,
had to kill man-eating lions that tied up the progress of building the railway. It was a really dramatic story...
The lion were old and hungry, and they would invade the construction efforts and dine on Indian workers
imported to build the line.
A GREAT IDEA WAS BORN
"I was thinking, Arch," I said to him as we drove to a new location, "If you were to make a movie of that book,
you should do it in three dimension film. The lions cold jump right out of the screen at the audience."
"I never thought of that," he said, as he slowed down for a herd of wild elephants crossing the roadway.
"The reason why I thought of that, Arch, is because when I worked at Technicolor we made a bunch of Pete
Smith one-reel shorts in 3D. They put a mouse on a stick and poked it at the audience. And they dropped a
heavy safe out of high building right at the audience. I guess people jumped almost out of their seats at the
realistic view."
"You know, Bill, I remember those shorts," Oboler said as we waited for the elephants to clear the road.
From then on, we talked again and again about what later came to the screen as " Bwana Devil." I explained
how the Technicolor IB process worked using a red image for one eye and a green for the other, and then
projecting them both at the same time so an audience wearing glasses that filtered the two colors saw the
realistic film.
I also told him about seeing a polarized 3D film at the San Francisco World's Fair in 1941. "That is way to
go," I said, "but it still takes two cameras synchronized together to do the job."
CARR HARTLEY, GAME EXPORTER
One of the great African friendships we made was that of Carr Hartley, the
African game exporter of Rumuruti, Kenya. In the map that Gatti has in his
website story, I see that he admits he stopped at the Hartley ranch after we
were there. So, you can be sure the pictures of rhino, the albino zebra, and
other "wild "animals that Gatti shows in his books were probably taken in
Hartley's many pens. So here are a few of the pictures we got from Carr after
we had been there. Hartley had two white rhino that the kids could ride. And
he had a big pen of giraffe that could pose for close shots, and a flock of 26
ostriches that I recognize as being shot at the ranch. Riding a rhino, a child
can do it. The photos of cheetah posing on top of the International Station
Wagon are certainly taken at the Hartley ranch. He had four that were petting quality, and I heard it took a lot
of Gatti's coaxing to get one of them to stand on the top of an International station wagon for a still picture. .
In a Gatti movie originally called "African Adventure" for the International
Harvester Company, of which I have a worn out and damaged print, there is
a sequence of Hartley's cheetah climbing all over an IH station wagon.
Those were Carr's barnyard animals posing for the pictures. I got the
damaged film print from a local IH dealer and had it transferred, after
patching, to DVD in the year 2003.
Oboler's recordings were about Hartley's game farm, and how he collected
wild animals for circus and zoo use. We filmed capturing a giraffe, but the
young animal died from the chase.
Another one of our adventures was in a Pygmy village in the Ituri forest. It cost us a cow that one of our
negotiators found for sale. On the cover of the Decca photograph record is a drawing of one of the Pygmy
drummers, the one with the hole in his drum head, which was taken from a photo that we snapped there.
The little people, many less than 48 inches high, showed us how they made a village in a hurry as they were
nomadic in nature. With their machetes they chopped bushes down and made the beehive-shaped frames
first, then they covered their little huts with long leaves from some local trees. It was in no time at all that
their village was up and ready for occupancy. I often wondered if the same group we had demonstrating for
us, were the ones that Gatti used when he was there before the war and was featured in his "Jungle Yachts
in the Congo" booklet that he gave to Bob and me when we were interviewed in Derby Line, Vermont.
At a luncheon in the nearby Parc Albert headquarters, the park superintendent made his famous statement
about keeping Gatti out of the park he controlled. I'll never forget those words.
Where Gatti was pretending that East Africa was in need of exploration, and he was the man to do it, Arch
Oboler was trying to tell of how life in both the native and European villages was going on. And he wanted to
paint the picture that it was a modern country, because there were railways with dining cars and steamships
carrying passengers in comfort on the inland waterways.
One of the wonderful water trips we had was on the SS Murchison on the
Nile river from Lake Albert to Murchison Falls. This river voyage started
the night before and we anchored during the night just a short ways from
the falls. The accommodations were small but very comfortable, and the
food service was excellent. The next morning the boat was surrounded
with hundreds of Hippos, called river horses in the local jargon, while on
the river banks, there were many crocodiles of giant size basking in the
sunshine.
So the skipper of the Murchison started to take us up the river to the falls landing. As we journeyed, he kept
swinging the boat toward one shore and then the other to let me get shots of the animals, including rhino and
elephants, which also populated the Nile river area. It was great!
The boat docked near the falls and all the passengers hiked up to the top of the falls to cap the greatest boat
trip I have ever been on for seeing wild life. The Oboler's liked it very much, too. We made a lot of recordings
on the voyage also. It was something!
I seem to remember that Ernest Hemingway, many years later, was injured in an airplane accident near
Murchison Falls. It made big headlines in the newspapers.
I also remember the day we were at Jinja, Uganda where the second largest lake in the world, Lake Victoria,
dumped water over Ripon Falls and started the Nile river flowing to the Mediterranean Sea. This was just
before the British built a huge dam there, knocking out the falls. However, the dam harnessed the power of
falling water and changed it to electricity in the Owen Falls scheme.
Nearby was a Jinja golf course, where I saw a sign which said, "Balls hitting hippo may played again without
penalty." I always wanted to play that course and hit a hippo.
POOR ELEANOR
Oh there were other things that now dot my memory in this 21st century. Every now and then I have a
mental picture of Africa and things like filming in a leper colony or the one day we went to record and film a
volcano in the Belgian Congo. That was a terrible experience for Eleanor.
Oboler and Father Fornier wanted to hike to the volcano where lava had been pouring out and running over
the ground. So we hired a bunch of porters and a native guide to haul our equipment for us. I did part of the
negotiations but it was our first few days in the Congo, and over in that country everyone spoke French at
the time.
So when we were hiring our native help, I asked the guide who spoke very little English, "How far is the
volcano?" in Swahili. Now the Congo Swahili had a French accent and I did not know that so when the native
said, "Kido kidogo," which to me translated "very small," We left Eleanor sitting in the Jeep Father Fornier
was driving and started out walking to the volano. We walked and walked and nobody thought of the poor
gal sitting along the road in that open Jeep.
Oboler wanted to keep going, so we kept asking the guide and getting the same answers each time. We
kept going and going and going. At about 4.p.m. we arrived at the volcano and did our thing for the record.
Then we started back. Now keep in mind we did have a sandwiches for lunch, but no water bottle of any
size, and we were tired from the hiking. But we kept going and Arch started to worry about his wife when it
grew dark. We didn't hire enough porters so when one of them carrying a 40 pound battery stepped in a hole
and turned his ankle, we didn't have anyone to take his load. I finally talked the guide into taking it for more
money.
The natives did not have any trouble with water, when they were thirsty they would find an elephant track
that had rain water in it, break off a hollow reed and poke it into the water and drink like a straw. We ran out
of our water. And boy, was I thirsty. So were every other European on the hike.
It was 2:30 a.m when we reached Eleanor in the Jeep, and she was really a mental wreck. The stories she
told us of her fright caused by the natives passing her spot on the road. They kept stopping and looking into
the Jeep at her, and that was multiplied by her worry about Arch being gone so long. That was enough to
send anyone to the looney bin.
And so we slowly kept moving toward South Africa by auto. We stayed at many of the White Fathers
Missions in the various countries we traveled through. Beside the Congo, Ruanda, Urindi, North and South
Rhodesia we arrived in South Africa by railway. It was a pleasant trip from Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia
to Capetown.
My room mate on the train was a local man going to Capetown on business.
"What do you do for a living?" I asked him.
"I have a small company that makes farm machinery." He said quietly.
"What kind of farm machinery, tractors and the like?"
"No, I make hoes and rakes for natives to use." was the answer. Africa was a different world!
We had to wait in Capetown for a ship on the Farrell Lines, so we did a lot of visiting. Oboler had a diamond
merchant relative there, and I found that I owned a case of amoebic dysentery which had been with me
since Kenya. The doctor gave me a prescription to take on the voyage home. When I finally got back to
Fargo, I had the local doctor there finish the treatment.
After a short time at my parent's home, I went to California where I worked
for Arch Oboler Productions. Working with Harry Komer, an old time MGM
film editor, I finished the short film we made for The White Fathers
missionary group in payment for all those many nights we ate and slept in
their guest rooms. They were fine hosts.
I have some good memories of the African traveling. We took the SS
Coryndon for an overnight voyage from Usumbura, Ruanda-Urundi at the
northern tip of Lake Tanganyika to Albertville on the west shore. It was there
we left Father Fournier and his jeep. He was a great friend. From there we
took the train to Capetown
I also recall vividly crossing Victoria Falls on a train just at sundown. It was quite a sight. I stood out in the
vestibule of the sleeping car and watched the train carefully chug across a big bridge so we could see the
falls.
And so my African Adventure came to an end in Capetown. Instead of the six months with Gatti I had applied
for the year before, I had been there nearly a year. There were many other places we we visited, it was a
great trip.
We took the Farrell lines ship, "Morgantown Victory," back to the states, arriving in New York city And, I"m
sorry to say, not one other empty booze bottle of the Hallicrafters' bon voyage present of 48 jugs of bourbon
that we tossed into the various oceans with fake notes inside, ever showed up to haunt us. Darn it!
And as a couple of afterthoughts: Years later in the 1960-70s, I used to fly to Los Angeles quite often in my
own Cessna airplane, and I usually took one of my employees along, Arch Oboler would always take us out
for a dinner while we were there. He always gave me a verbal chewing out for flying my own airplane over
the mountains, so I never invited him to ride with me anywhere.
On one trip Arch invited me and one of my film editors, Jerry Fiskum, to
a local Hollywood theater after midnight to see part of a Japanese
movie that he was making. It was in 3-D and beautiful! I never did find
out what he did with it later. Any way, I outlived him by many years, and I
sold my plane when I retired and sold Bill Snyder Films, Inc.
And about this long story, I really wrote most of this years ago, I didn't
date the copy I dashed off in the early days after I returned to Fargo. My
memory was a lot better in those days, and much of the dialog was well stamped into my brain, although I
can hear some of the lines to this day, especially the bon mots from Gatti.
I can hear him now saying, "...keeping in mind the resale value!" I'll never forget that one, and I don't think
Bob has forgotten it either.
CHAPTER 15, The End
Copyright 2003,William D. Snyder
All Rights reserved