Borneo (1937) DVD-R

Starring Martin E. Johnson, Osa Johnson, Lowell Thomas, Lew Lehr
Directed by Truman H. Talley

Print: black/white
Runtime: 76 min.
Genre: documentary/drama

The last travelogue/documentary/exploitation film shot by the husband-and-wife team of hunters/trappers/explorers/film-makers Martin and Osa Johnson, albeit Mrs. Osa Johnson pieced together another one of all-archive footage, taken from previous films, in the early 1940s. This time out they are in Borneo searching for an orangutan to capture and sell to a zoo, but film everything in natural sight and stage a few other items. Martin Johnson died shortly after the Borneo expedition but his widow sold the footage to 20th Century-Fox's newsreel department and they took it from there. The fad for semi-real/semi-staged exploration/exploitation films was long over by 1937, and the people at Fox decided to jazz this up a bit in hopes of getting better bookings...and the Johnson-name still had an audience of its own. Lowell Thomas, a newsman who practically made an icon out of T. E. Lawrence all by himself and the lead commentator on Fox newsreels...