Daily Archives: January 2, 2016

Champagne Safari
Directed by Jackson Leighter
Written by Lawrence Klingman
USA/1954
Jackson Leighter Associates
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] As far as I know it bombed. I never made a cent out of it but at one time I did have a print of it which I thought might interest Yasmin (her daughter) when she was old enough to understand it. I suppose I still have it around….somewhere….” — Rita Hayworth, 1973[/box]

Prince Aly Khan, the son of the Aga Khan, and his then wife Rita Hayworth invited her American friends Jackson and Lola Leighter to accompany their party on a trip through the Middle East and Africa.  The trip was about two years after their marriage and was planned as a second honeymoon.  At the end of the trip, Hayworth returned to America alone and despite some later attempts at reconciliation the marriage was over.

Leighter photographed the trip.  The film has the feeling of a home movie, with snippets of Hayworth posing for the camera.  The sights include the Valley of the Kings in Egypt and African Ishmaelis paying tribute to Aly, whose father was regarded “almost as a god”, in Kenya and Tanganyika.  Aly and the Leighters continued on to an animal safari but Hayworth went to pack her belongings.  Hayworth and the Leighters reunited for the ocean voyage back to the U.S.

This is an amateurish movie but might be of interest to Hayworth fans or for its glimpses of the last gasps of colonial Africa (the Mau-Mau rebellion had already begun in Kenya.)

Clip

The Vanishing Prairie
Directed by James Algar
Written by James Algar, Winston Hibler, and Ted Sears
1954/USA
Walt Disney Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] “Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons.”
― Willa Cather, My Ántonia[/box]

This is what a nature documentary looked like in the 1950’s.

The film starts out with a cartoon view of the American prairie.  Then the narrator creates a picture of what a party of early settlers would have seen as it crossed the wild prairie on the way to Oregon.  After the introduction, the film focuses on various prairie birds and animals, often creating little anthropomorphic stories to go with their behavior.

I enjoyed this for what it was.  There seemed to be more focus on birds than there was in Disney’s The Living Desert and I especially liked that part.  The movie spent a lot of time with prairie dogs who are, of course, super cute and easy to create drama and comedy around.

The Vanishing Prairie won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Feature.

Clip – opening