I Married Adventure Read online

  Why I Married Adventure

  Became a Worldwide Bestseller in 1940

  “A pleasant, forthright…exciting book.”

  —Clifton Fadiman, The New Yorker

  “It makes good reading…at this dark hour, as good an ‘escape story’ as you are apt to run into for some time.”

  —Atlantic Monthly

  “I Married Adventure is a fine book on many counts…. A good travel book, a good adventure book, a good book about animals, a good book on photography, and, best of all…a good human story about two extremely likable people, told by one of them with simplicity, humor, [and] warmth.”

  —Rose Feld, Books

  “It isn’t just the animal-lover who will cherish this story. Anyone who likes a thrilling tale (a true one, too) with a plucky, nervy, cheerful, and charming hero and heroine is all set. I Married Adventure is as rare and real as the people who made it possible.”

  —Olga Owens, Boston Transcript

  “The reader is impressed with the tremendous industriousness of these two people, their physical endurance, their patience, their understanding of animals and natives, and their love for each other…. [The] old and young will enjoy this book. It is splendidly illustrated.”

  —M. N. Baker, Library Journal

  “Every page of her book is readable and exciting: the photographs are plentiful and have all the dramatic quality that we are used to in the camera work of the author and her husband.”

  —Manchester Guardian

  “The Martin Johnsons…were simple people who loved adventure,…animals, and who, thanks to a quiet singleness of purpose, must have lived a very happy life until Martin was killed in the crash of an American airliner. Their story…is almost as interesting for the picture it gives of two happy people as it is for the account of adventures in Borneo, Africa, and the South Seas…. I Married Adventure tells the whole story unaffectedly and with a simple charm that is highly engaging. It belongs in any list of Americana, for the Johnsons were as American as Davy Crockett.”

  —Joseph Wood Krutch, The Nation

  “I Married Adventure will delight the rocking-chair travelers and explorers and revive the urge in those who have wandered along the byways.”

  —Linton Wells, Saturday Review of Literature

  Books by Martin Johnson

  1913

  Through the South Seas with Jack London

  1922

  Cannibal-Land

  1924

  Camera Trails in Africa

  1928

  Safari

  1929

  Lion

  1931

  Congorilla

  1935

  Over African Jungles

  1980

  Martin Johnson’s Cannibals of the South Seas

  (edited by Sondra Alden and Kenhelm W. Stott, Jr.)

  Books by Osa Johnson

  1930

  Jungle Babies

  1932

  Jungle Pets

  1939

  Jungle Friends

  1940

  I Married Adventure

  1941

  Four Years in Paradise

  1941

  Pantaloons

  1942

  Snowball

  1944

  Bride in the Solomons

  1944

  Tarnish

  1966

  Last Adventure (edited by Pascal J. Imperato)

  Kodansha USA, Inc.

  451 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016, U.S.A.

  Published in 1997 by Kodansha America, Inc.

  by arrangement with The Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum, Chanute, Kansas.

  First published in 1940 by J.B. Lippincott Company. Revised edition published in 1989

  by William Morrow and Company, Inc.

  Copyright © 1989 by the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum.

  Photographs by Martin Johnson, used by permission of The Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum.

  Foreword to the Globe edition © 1997 by Nancy Landon Kassebaum.

  New Foreword by Kelly Enright, adapted from “Married to Adventure,” originally published in Wilderness magazine.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Janet Hansen

  Photograph: Martin and Osa Johnson.

  Courtesy of the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier edition as follows:

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Johnson, Osa, 1894–1953.

  I married adventure: the lives of Martin and Osa Johnson/Osa Johnson; with a new introduction by Nancy Kassebaum.

  p. cm.—(Kodansha globe)

  ISBN: 978-1-56836-128-4

  1. Johnson, Martin, 1884-1937. 2. Johnson, Osa, 1894-1953. 3. Photographers—United States—Biography. 4. Nature photography. 5. Wildlife cinematography. I. Title. II. Series.

  TR140.J63J64 1997

  910’.92’2

  96-46392

  [B]—DC21

  Book design by Patrice Fodero

  Maps by Vikki Leib

  Ebook ISBN 9781568366005

  v5.4

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Books by Martin Johnson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  List of Illustrations

  New Foreword

  Foreword to the Globe Edition

  Foreword

  Note to the Reader

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum

  Index

  With all my love,

  I dedicate this book

  to the memory of my husband,

  whose work will be an everlasting monument

  to his heroic dreams and indefatigable spirit.

  List of Illustrations

  Osa at the tender age of one

  Osa’s parents

  Osa’s birthplace

  Martin, a dreamer at eleven

  Martin
as a traveling photographer

  Osa in a party dress

  Martin, aboard Jack London’s Snark

  The crew of the Snark

  Osa in a Hawaiian costume

  Martin’s theater in Independence, Kansas

  Osa and Martin soon after their marriage

  Osa and Martin as traveling lecturers

  An advertisement for Martin’s barnstorming tour

  Osa and Martin with Jack and Charmian London

  Broadside advertising Martin’s first feature film

  Osa and Martin with Charlie Chaplin

  Osa in stage costume

  Osa in a Gibson girl dress

  Osa and Martin in the New Hebrides, South Pacific, 1917

  Osa in a talking circle with native islanders

  Campfire of island headhunters

  Osa on the Kinabatangan River

  On the Tuscon River, in search of the proboscis monkey

  Orangutans in the Borneo jungle

  Mother bear and cubs in Borneo

  Osa on her Borneo houseboat, 1917

  Osa drinks from a water-vine in the Borneo jungle

  Osa and a native Borneo girl

  Osa hunting, unhindered by her long summer dress

  Osa atop a tame zebra

  Osa watching a blow gun demonstration

  Osa with Bessie, a baby orangutan

  Osa with a bear cub

  Osa with young macaques

  Osa with a gray gibbon

  Osa and Martin sailing home to America

  Lake Paradise

  A male leopard at a cave entrance

  The Johnsons’ home near Lake Paradise

  Young and old giraffes in flight

  A newly born giraffe

  Herders, in characteristic posture, watching their flocks

  The guide, Boculy, and Osa examine an elephant track

  In camp with friends and colleagues

  George Eastman and Osa, baking bread in camp

  George Eastman puzzles over a village name on a trip up the Nile

  Wild hunting dogs

  A charging rhino

  Osa bringing home a meal

  Osa comforts a dog who defended its master from an attacking leopard

  An elephant in the bush near Lake Paradise

  A massive herd of elephants in Lorian Swamp

  Grazing zebras

  Giraffes on the Northern Frontier

  A lioness waiting for prey

  Feeding time for a pride of lions

  A Meru dandy posing for Martin

  A lion leaving its cave

  A hyena peering about for prey

  A leopard blends into the background

  Adult female gorilla

  Two young gorillas

  Baby gorilla Snowball and chimpanzee Beebee

  Martin with Snowball on his lap

  A foraging elephant

  Osa covers Martin as he photographs two huge elephants

  Young male lions loafing

  Elephants wading in a stream

  By tripping a flash, this leopard took its own portrait

  One of Martin’s favorite photos

  A nighttime photo of a striped hyena

  Two black rhinos

  Martin’s tent in the Congo

  Osa, up to her hips in trouble

  Dining room at Lake Paradise

  Osa’s bedroom at Lake Paradise

  Martin’s laboratory at Lake Paradise

  Osa and Martin with cameras and porters

  Relaxing after a frightening buffalo charge

  A village deep in the Ituri Forest

  Osa checking her rifle

  The Duke and Duchess of York with Osa

  Osa and the Duchess of York on safari

  An aardvark scouring for food

  Four cheetah cubs in Osa’s lap

  All the comforts of home

  Osa typing while furry friends vie for attention

  Bringing in guinea fowl and partridge

  The Johnsons’ houseboat with the Spirit in tow

  Simba

  A lion attacking

  A lion in repose

  A gorilla in the Alumbongo Mountains

  Mount Kenya camp and the Sikorsky aircraft

  Osa, Martin, and friends from the American Museum of Natural History

  A baboon at rest

  Conquering Mt. Kenya by air

  Mt. Kenya, shot from Osa’s Ark

  New Foreword

  In the course of their twenty years of traveling together, from 1917 to 1937, Martin and Osa Johnson explored—by boat, foot, car, and plane—islands of the Pacific, rivers of Borneo, and savannahs and forests of Africa. They made ten popular documentary films along with more than seventy lecture films. Between them they published 120 articles in publications ranging from Natural History (the journal of the American Museum of Natural History) and Forest and Stream to the Saturday Evening Post and Cosmopolitan. They inspired a comic strip and a kids’ club. Osa created a line of clothing featuring safari-inspired colors, and a line of stuffed animals to accompany her charming children’s picture books. Advertisers posted Martin and Osa’s faces in magazine ads hoping to boost sales of everything from beer to batteries.

  But behind their popular faces, lay the souls of true adventurers. As Osa explains in her autobiographical I Married Adventure, both she and Martin were from restless, adventurous lineages. Martin scored his first explorer gig on board Jack London’s Snark sailing to the South Seas. When back in Kansas (both were natives of the Sunflower State) lecturing with photographs from the trip, he and Osa met when she filled in as singer for his talk. Though she claims not to have been impressed by his work, the two were quickly married in a whirlwind affair. Not long afterwards, they embarked on their first married adventure to the South Seas, after which the couple were inseparable for two decades of adventure.

  Unlike the dry, matter-of-fact work of many adventurers, the Johnsons’ work revealed their personalities. In their films, books, and public personas, they were real people. They were young and energetic. They mixed humor and humility with science and pop culture. President of the American Museum of Natural History F. Trubee Davidson, who knew the Johnsons well, wrote in the Forward to I Married Adventure: “Here, in a story about everywhere else in the world, is romantic Americana that will one day be history…. The bigger story is of their life, sometimes to be read between the lines, and not quite so much of the world they went to see as of the hearts they took with them.”

  The Johnsons were both keen observers of the natural world. They wanted to understand and, especially later in their journeys, protect wildlife. About looking for lions at night, Martin wrote:

  It was an eerie ride. There was no moon, the night was softly brilliant with the light of the low-hanging tropical stars, but the light was not intense enough to dispel the earth’s shadows, every one of which seemed to us, as we rode, our nerves strained for animal enemies, to harbor a living thing in its deep blackness. From all sides the noises of the plain beat on our ears. The laughter of the hyenas, which so often, when we were safe in camp, had been contagiously comical, sounded mocking, threatening.

  When they saw a line of six lions running single file, he continued:

  It gave me a strange feeling to see them. When you have lived all your life without seeing wild animals, you get used to thinking of lions and tigers as unrealities, belonging in the same category as witches and ghosts and other childish nightmares. And now here I was, wide-awake, alert, in the full bright light of an equatorial afternoon, watching lions as calmly as if they had been jack-rabbits started from the autumn woods of Kansas.

  On a later journey, lions ha
d become more familiar. “We worked with lions, we ate and slept with their roars all around us,” said Osa. Their reputation for ferocity was not true, she asserted. Lions were part of “man’s dread of Africa,” but “curiously enough [man] is the only enemy the lion really fears…. For the most part, the lion is a thoroughly agreeable personage,” explained Osa. “He lives a most leisurely existence, loafs and sleeps a great deal, has just as playful moods as a house cat, and just as decided a personality. He minds his own business, is very fond of his family and takes his duties as a family protector very seriously.” It is this musing on the ways in which animals are relatable, the ways they are like humans, their capacity to feel emotions such as loyalty or laziness, that gave the Johnsons popular appeal.

  Bridging the worlds of entertainment and adventure, the Johnsons brought exciting experiences in wild places to audiences unable to undertake such adventures themselves. Though largely forgotten today, they were celebrities in their time. The popularity of the Johnsons relied upon their partnership. Audiences loved the idea of a traditional marriage played out in the wild.

  In many ways, the Johnsons subscribed to traditional gender roles. Martin was the cameraman and editor of the films—the “professional.” Osa made camp and prepared meals—the “housewife.” But Osa also hunted, fished, photographed, and protected Martin at the camera with her gun ready to shoot potential charging wildlife. Osa, Martin explained, “is a pretty woman” who looks wonderful in “the fuss and frippery of New York. But,” he continued, “I think her prettiest and I like best to see her in her wilderness wardrobe.”

  Being in the wild became simply their way of life. When they spent four continuous years in Africa at Lake Paradise (now a part of Marsabit National Park), adventure was their daily diet: “How strange to be a man in this alien animal world!” declared Martin, “How strange that civilized man’s need to work should have brought me into this world that knows no work! How strange to go to sleep, looking forward to a day of routine photography, from a stuffy blind looking out on an African waterhole! A day of routine in a land where even routine can be called adventure….”