In 1917, a young Kansas couple found themselves on a South Sea island 7,000 miles from home, surrounded by cannibals.
Martin and Osa Johnson had been taken prisoner by a tribe called the Big Nambas. The natives gathered in a tight circle around the strangers, staring intently at them. Martin and Osa feared that by the time the tribe had finished feasting their eyes, they’d be ready for a somewhat more substantial feast.
Just then, a British patrol boat appeared on the horizon, sending the Big Nambas into a panic. Martin and Osa used the distraction to make a break for it. They fled back through the jungle to their boat and escaped.
If you think that sounds like the far-fetched plot of an old movie, you aren’t far wrong. Martin and Osa Johnson were, in fact, on the island to film a motion picture. They were capturing the first footage of cannibals that movie audiences had ever seen. Their feature documentary “Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Seas” was a sensation when it hit movie theaters in 1918.
Osa poses with a slain rhinoceros. She was considered a deadly shot.
The story of the filmmakers is fascinatingly told in The Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum. It’s inside a beautifully restored 1903 Santa Fe depot at 111 North Lincoln Avenue in Chanute, the town where Martin and Osa first met.
As a teenager, Martin had grown bored in Independence, Kansas. He craved adventure. So he quit school and stowed away on a ship to Liverpool, reading Jack London novels along the way. When he heard that the author was planning a new worldwide expedition, Martin wrote an impassioned telegram to London, saying he would “undergo any hardship” to join the crew.
London telegrammed back, asking simply, “Can you cook?”
Martin responded, “Just try me!” He got the job, joining London in 1907 to sail the world on a 45-foot boat called The Snark. The expedition was cut short when London grew ill, but Martin didn’t return to Kansas empty handed. He had a collection of photos from exotic faraway places, and began showing them to paying audiences around the state.
After a show in 1910 in Chanute, he met a beautiful 16-year-old local girl named Osa. They fell in love and eloped. And they began an adventure of shooting wildlife documentaries that lasted until Martin died in an airline accident in 1937.
“For 27 years, we devoted our lives to capturing a vanishing world,” Osa wrote. “We assembled a vast film library of wild animals, savage human beings and landmarks of natural beauty, so that posterity might be able to recall it as it existed in its last & greatest stronghold.”
The Johnsons’ silent films were enormously popular. And after sound came along, audiences heard a lion’s roar for the first time in the films Martin and Osa shot in Africa. With popular movies like “Congorilla” and “Baboona,” the Johnsons had invented the wildlife documentary category. Their footage of stampeding elephants and charging lions was so riveting, it was spliced into early Tarzan movies to add authenticity to scenes shot in Hollywood.
An aviation-themed weather vane honors Octave Chanute in the town that’s named for him.
By the way, the Johnsons returned to the Big Nambas’ island to show them the film they’d shot. The cannibals were delighted, shouting out the names of tribe members as they appeared on the screen. But they grew agitated when tribal elders who’d died somehow came flickering back to life in the movie.
Osa remarried after Martin’s death, but it didn’t last. She continued to scratch her itch for adventure in a number of different ways. She led an expedition to East Africa in 1938 to shoot footage for the movie “Stanley & Livingstone” with Spencer Tracy.
After that, health issues kept her mostly in the United States, where she wrote wildlife books for children, designed wildlife toys and developed a wildlife TV series called Osa Johnson’s Big Game Hunt, using footage she and Martin had shot. The series premiered in 1952, a year before Osa died of a heart attack in New York. She’d been planning another trip to Africa.
The museum opened in 1961. Osa’s mother, Ruby Isabelle “Belle” Leighty, gave Osa’s personal artifacts to the museum and was a driving force behind its formation. Belle had inherited the huge collection of films and photos from her daughter and dedicated herself to keeping her Osa and Martin’s memory alive. Belle died in 1976 at age 100.
In the museum, you’ll see everything from Martin’s old cameras and Osa’s zebra skin shoes to pages from a Martin & Osa comic book.
There are also extensive collections of hand-made tribal masks, weapons and tools, all brought back from the same remote villages and areas visited by the Johnsons. The artifacts are displayed with the kind of thoughtful design that might make you think you’re in the Smithsonian. But this great little museum is just a two-hour drive east from Wichita. It’s open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday. Admission is free.
If you need an additional incentive to make the trip to Chanute, Howard’s Toys for Big Boys is also here. It’s an antique car museum. And there’s an interesting tribute to Octave Chanute, the French-born civil engineer who helped bring the railroad to town. Chanute was also a technical advisor to Orville and Wilbur Wright. In a small park on Main Street, he’s honored wtih a giant aviation-themed weather vane.
Contact Joe Norris at joe.norris47@gmail.com.
