Martin E. Johnson

The forgotten story of Martin and Osa Johnson, rebel filmmakers and Kansas natives who made some of the first films in Africa in times when filming itself was more dangerous than lions or malaria.

Osa Johnson, "The First Lady of Exploration", stars in this rare documentary -- lost for over 50 years!! After the success of her 1940 book, I Married Adventure, Osa Johnson was contracted to write three follow-up novels. The first of these, Four Years in Paradise, documented her and her husband Martin's exploits in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, an area they dubbed "Lake Paradise", their own personal Garden of Eden. To promote the book, Osa embarked on an international speaking tour. Her lectures were accompanied by a new silent documentary, African Paradise, compiled by Osa using never before seen footage from her and Martin's second trip to Africa between 1923 and 1927. Like many early travelogues, it was considered lost until a volunteer at the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum discovered this pristine print.

A 1940 Columbia Picture feature film, "I Married Adventure" stars Osa Johnson and closely follows her 1940 best-selling book of the same name. Osa portrays herself in studio-produced scenes which bridge the transition between actual documentary footage segments as the film recounts the Johnson's nine world expeditions to Africa, Borneo, and the South Seas. Jim Bannon, a Hollywod stuntman who lent his voice to many western's including Red Ryder, Don Clark, and Albert Duffy narrate this adventure classic that compiles the very best images from the Johnsons' original feature films.

The 1935 Morro films, shot by Martin and Osa Johnson, recount the 60,000 mile "Flying Safari" undertaken by the filmmakers as they flew their two amphibious airlanes(the Zebra stripped 'Osa's Ark' and the Giraffe-spotted 'Spirit of Africa') from Capetown, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt. Famous shots from the movie include the first-ever aerial pictures of the tops of Africa's highest peaks, Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya. Along the journey, Martin filmed Osa surrounded by a pride of Lions and together they captured amazing scenes of a baboon colony, an event striking enough to give the movie its name.

The first sound movie made entirely in Africa, Congorilla premiered in 1932 and permitted audiences to hear what they had only been able to see during previous safari films. Martin and Osa Johnson began in Kenya and Tanzania before moving to Uganda and the Congo Basin (Zaire). Along the way they filmed Zebra in the Serengeti, charging Rhinos in the Northern Frontier District (Southern Somalia), and recorded exciting encounters with Crocodiles and Hippos as they went down the Nile. The latter part of the film is devoted to the 7 months the filmmakers spent in the Ituri Forest with the Mbuti people as they captured village life despite the humidity, which caused batteries to deteriorate, wires and connections to erode, and mildew to form on camera cases.

As if they were showing their film to a few friends in their home, the Johnsons describe their trip across the world, which begins in the South Pacific islands of Hawaii, Samoa, Australia, the Solomons (where they seek and find cannibals), and New Hebrides. Thence on to Africa via the Indian Ocean, Suez Canal, North Africa, and the Nile River to lion country in Tanganyika. (They are briefly joined in Khartum by George Eastman and Dr. Al Kayser.) Taking a safari in the Congo, the Johnsons see animals and pygmies, and travel back to Uganda, British East Africa, and Kenya.

Documentary of an expedition by Martin E. Johnson and his wife into the native habitats of the Solomon and New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific. The Johnsons travelled 18,000 miles by schooner, whaleboat, and native canoe to shoot footage of tribes previously unseen outside their native lands.

First of many films by the husband/wife team of Martin and Osa Johnson, originally backed by George Eastman.