Last Unspoiled

Armand Denis'

World

Armand Denis’ magic with wild animals had en tertained millions through TV and films. And, al though he has some pretty

quaint ideas about Papua-

New Guinea, hi s auto biography, On Sajarai, should enhance his reputa tion.

THESE days Denis and his blonde wife, Michaela (sometimes seen in the TV series coiled up with a python or fondling a baby baboon), live near Nairobi, Kenya, which is their permanent headquarters for making their TV series.

Denis, however, was born in Bel gium, of a family of the highest rectitude. His father was a Judge and so puritan in outlook that Armand and his sister were forbidden the monkey-house in the Antwerp Zoo for fear that their tender minds should be exposed to something they should not.

Perhaps because of these restric tions, young Armand early developed an interest in the lowest orders of the animal kingdom. At three he bred flies in a matchbox; a few years

later he had graduated to collecting lizards.

World War I interrupted his activ ities but the science degree he took as i refugee student at Oxford turned 3ut to be another link in the chain ;hat would eventually lead—by some Ddd by-ways it is true —to bigger and setter things in the world of animal expertise.

He took a job in a Massachusetts chemical laboratory, acquired a con siderable collection of tortoises and urtles and invented, in 1926, when adio was still in its infancy, a de rice for regulating volume. The de rice produced $6,000, and Armand slew it all in on a couple of antique novie cameras and a ticket to Bali then as unknown as radio volume :ontrols), determined to make a movie ricture, Jake, the Galapagos tortoise, iccompanied him and caused many complications, but it could be said hat Denis was safely away on a life hat was thereafter to contain animals ind films almost to the exclusion of ill else.

There followed an interlude with Yank Buck, pre-war bring-‘em-back tlive film hero, a trip to Ceylon and ome free-lance educational film naking, but in 1935 he made his first

film expedition to Africa. Africa was all he had ever expected of it and he has been telling the rest of the world about it on film ever since.

Michaela came into the Denis picture late—in 1948 when with several successful African films under his belt he was taking a cameraman’s holiday looking at Bolivia, Michaela, a New York fashion designer, was there on her own account looking into traditional Indian design.

New Guinea!

Michaela acclimatised herself to Armand’s off-beat way of life and was with him in 1952 when he visited Australia to film the Great Barrier Reef. They then, as he puts it, pre pared for the most hazardous part of their journey—an expedition to New Guinea, Their quarry in New Guinea was not animals or even birds, but natives and their headquarters were at Kup, in the Wahgi valley . . . “which the Australian Government was making a praiseworthy effort to protect . . . against undue contact with the outside world.” (This was in 1952; Armand should see the old place now).

Perhaps for the sake of the rest of the Denis book, the short passage on Papua-New Guinea would have been best left out. It is superficial and there is, for example, the story of the “good Bishop of Papua” who told them, more in sorrow than in anger, that he had recently found that some of the people in his diocese were still practising cannibalism. The Bishop,

infuriated, had forthwith descended on Yule Island, preached a stem episcopal warning against the faithful eating the flesh of their brothers and departed with the protestations of the islanders that never again would they so indulge.

Shortly after the Bishop had “sailed back to New Guinea”, a neighbouring non-Christian tribe arrived with a peace-offering for the Yule Islanders —a human arm from a slain enemy.

Having been warned off by the Bishop, but still not wanting to offend their friends, they had solved the problem by giving the arm to their children to eat. [Yule Island, about 60 miles from Port Moresby, has been the head quarters of the Roman Catholic mission since about 1875 and even before then was not noted as a centre of cannibalism.] However, the Denis story of film ing and capturing wild animals in Africa is all good armchair adventure stuff and one that cuts right across political and human barriers. As such it provides the right sort of tonic for this weary world—and something more than that —a record. Armand Denis says, and we believe him, that within the next 20 years the sort of things he has spent his life filming and describing in Africa and the rest of the unspoiled world, will be gone forever. (ON SAFARI. Published by Wm.

Collins Ltd. 35/-.)