NINETEEN

WITH CAR AND CAMERA

Although it’s unlikely anyone in the expedition had heard, on February 21, 1927, a Swiss aviator named Walter Mittelholzer touched down in Cape Town after leaving his home in Zurich. Travelling via Alexandria, he became the first person to fly the length of Africa from north to south. It was a glorious achievement, not least because the journey took a mere seventy-seven days, but also because it demonstrated that even a solo pilot could cross vast and forbidding expanses with relative ease. In other words, even if the Wanderwell Expedition had succeeded in driving Cape to Cairo, it’s likely their achievement would have been lost in an airplane’s shadow.

Even Mittelholzer’s achievement was largely forgotten after Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris on May 21 that same year, thus completing the first solo air crossing of the Atlantic and collecting the $25,000 Orteig Prize — the same sum Art Goebel had won in the Dole Air Race. Curiously, the first contestant for the Orteig Prize was French flyer René Fonck, pal of Aloha’s aviator boyfriend in Nice. Fonck’s plane had crashed on takeoff, though he survived.

But it wasn’t just planes that were overshadowing the Wanderwells’ achievements. While the expedition was off documenting the wilds of Africa, escaping stampedes of elephants, and eating pots of maggot-infested mealie-meal, people in New York flocked to see a film that had premiered on October 6. Called The Jazz Singer, the film had caused a sensation thanks to the new technical innovation of synchronized sound. And earlier in the year, director Fritz Lang had released a German film called Metropolis, a futuristic view of technology and society that wowed audiences with special effects and terrified them with its dystopian vision. It was the most expensive and sophisticated film yet made and raised the bar for all that fol-lowed — including the Wanderwell films. Henry Ford, meanwhile, was furthering his own idea of progress, embodied by the introduction of a car called the Model A. People were quick to welcome its appearance — a car that came in any of seven body styles and four colours, except black — and helped the Ford Company of Dearborn, Michigan, accumulate 400,000 sales orders from dealerships across America in two weeks.1 As for the Model T — the basis for the Wanderwell cars — the last was produced on May 26, 1927, after a run of 15,000,000 units.

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Newspaper accounts of the expedition’s route to Europe are contradictory A surviving photograph showing cars and crew posed in a town square eases the confusion, for down in the frame’s left corner is advertising on one of Unit N^o IV’s wheels. Magnified, the text reads: “Wanderwell Expedition – Mombasa by Marseilles – s/s Adolph Woermann – Woermannlinie A.G. – Deutsche Ost Afrika.” Ship records for the Adolph Woermann show the route taken was Mombasa, Suez, Port Said, Genoa, Marseille.

On board, Aloha was relieved to be drifting back into a world of white sheets and bone china teacups. She was troubled, however, by the failure of their well-publicized aim — to traverse Africa and reach Cairo. Had their year in the wilds of Africa risking life and limb been for nothing? She needed to make a major film out of their adventures to compensate, and the storyline was far from clear. In any case, editing a feature-length film at a professional lab would cost a fortune, and a fortune was not readily at hand. So, it was back to Europe and back to work. This was no easy life.

The expedition landed at Marseille sometime in January 1928 and quickly moved on to Italy, where they remained for seven months, playing theatres, selling souvenirs, and stockpiling cash.

 

Aloha Wanderwell graces the cover of one of the thousands of souvenir pamphlets expedition members circulated and sold worldwide, circa 1929.

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In what can only be described as an epic omission from any of Aloha’s writings, the most momentous of events resulted in not even a single note of mention. In driving to Italy from Marseille, Aloha Wanderwell had driven around the world. She had departed Nice just over five years before at the age of sixteen. She had succeeded, despite hardships unimaginable even today, to circle the globe in a car. This accomplishment cannot be understated. In the early twenty-first century, with vehicles and aftermarket modifications specifically designed for the purpose, plus satellite phones, GPS, and wireless Internet — not to mention actual roads — this achievement would still be front-page news.

A year later, German auto enthusiast Clärenore Stinnes would complete her round-the-world trek, covering more overland distance than Aloha, but Aloha tackled routes that no one else had yet dared, and she had done it by the time she was twenty-two.

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The expedition reached Berlin in November 1928 to find the country again steeped in political turmoil. Just as they arrived, the chief of police, Karl Zörgiebel, banned all public demonstrations in an attempt to calm dissent and steady the teetering republic. Berliners, exhausted by so many years of uncertainty, merely shrugged at the Wanderwell’s African adventures. The mood was captured by one weary show-goer, a certain Joseph Goebbels whose diary entry for October 21 tersely reviewed the show he’d seen the previous evening: “In desperation I went to the movies and heard about the American Wanderwell’s world trip. Why does this economic opportunist pretend to be interested in pacifism?”2

Still, despite unpolished reels and surly theatregoers, the expedition made good money in Europe — enough for Aloha to get started on a proper edit of the African footage. There was a Christmas in Ostrów, a snug Polish village about 80 miles west of Posen (the town where Walter went to school), after which Aloha tucked the raw African footage under her arm and made for Paris. Editing would require several months, so it seemed a perfect time to reunite with her mom, Miki, and the kids. A wire was sent, asking them all to meet her in France.

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There are no surviving records of Aloha’s reunion with her children, but the volume of photographs suggests she was charmed by the children she hardly knew. The children seemed to like Aloha, but they adored their laughing, playful aunt Miki.

Aloha found lodgings at Joinville-le-Pont, a district in southeastern Paris, less than 5 miles from the Pathé film lab on Rue Villiot. The apartment, located at 26 Avenue du Président Wilson, was a narrow but charming two-storey building with a terracotta roof and shuttered windows. There was a gated courtyard where the children could play while Miki watched over them. A pastry shop up the road provided breakfast each morning as Aloha left for work. Since her last visit to a professional lab, splicing equipment had improved, and there was a menagerie of new devices she’d never seen. Some filmmakers were experimenting with sound and colour, even hand-colouring individual frames so that a black-and-white film might suddenly have yellow and orange flames at a campfire. Developing chemicals had also been improved, allowing contrasts to be more finely controlled, resulting in deeper blacks and sharper whites that could add drama to a scene.

Despite feeling like a house painter at the Louvre, Aloha managed to assemble a coherent (if not entirely accurate) visual account of the Wanderwell Expedition, beginning with Aloha’s arrival on the scene. The film carried audiences from Paris of 1923 through Europe to North Africa (the pyramids), India (Benares), Singapore, China (the Great Wall and war scenes), Siberia (an honorary colonel), Japan (Hirohito), the US (Hollywood, Wyoming, the devastation of Miami), Cuba, Canada, South Africa through Mozambique to Uganda and Kenya, before arriving back in Europe. Short interstitial cartoons depicted the little cars winding a dotted line across the atlas in the style of the time. Running almost an hour, the film was christened With Car and Camera Around the World and was by far the most compre-hensive and artful account of their travels to date. Its completion dramatically enhanced their credibility and, for the moment at least, set them apart from the glut of adventuring show folk. Even among masters of the travelogue, such as Burton Holmes, none boasted so many countries visited, depicted such offbeat locales, or demonstrated how it could be accomplished with just a car and a camera. The films documented dozens of disparate cultures

and environments at a time when technological advances and political transgressions were about to alter them forever.

With a newly polished film to drum up publicity, the crew swelled to twelve members, including two young Germans — Frederick Müller and Hans Wolfart — who would accompany the expedition across the Atlantic. There were also now two female Belgian recruits, Olga van Dreissche and Justine Tibesar — the latter a cherubic-faced brunette with a quick tongue, able to silence any of the male crew members. She had an affinity for long silk scarves and liked to throw them around her neck with a flourish like Isadora Duncan, before sauntering into a car or away from a boring conversation. Aloha liked Justine but kept a wary eye out as well: Walter was no less impressed.

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On the strength of reviews in Paris, Aloha was able to secure a week-long engagement at London’s Shaftesbury Avenue Pavilion. The theatre, also known as the London Pavilion, was the city’s largest playhouse, seating over a thousand people.3

Aloha was anxious to show off her film to the most important city in the world. Unfortunately, while the London Times was thrilled by the stories of adventure and found that “Miss Wanderwell [sic], the heroine of these adventures, has personality, and one cannot but admire her courage and that of Captain Walter Wanderwell,” they also found that “the expedition has been handicapped by a lack of professional knowledge in the use of the camera and by being forced to develop negatives under very trying conditions.”4 To sophisticated audiences of the late 1920s, death-defying adventures and never-before-seen vistas were no longer enough. They wanted a dramatic soundtrack, fight scenes, regular explosions, and a love interest or two. They wanted Hollywood’s talkies.

Despite the reviews, Walter was quick to use the strength of the Shaftes-bury booking to contact steamship companies: the crew would present their films and lectures on board the ship in exchange for free passage.

Walter’s pursuit of sponsorship may not have been limited to steamships. A biography of Colonel Percy Fawcett (an English explorer who mysteriously vanished in Brazil’s Mato Grosso region in 1925) recounts a story told by Fawcett’s widow, Nina. For years after her husband’s disappearance, Nina was hounded by opportunists offering to search for her husband in exchange for money — including one memorable German adventurer. “She wrote bitterly that the man had ‘more than one passport, at least three aliases, and a sheaf of Press cuttings was found on him.’”5 While there’s no way of knowing whether this was Walter, it is certain that the story of Fawcett’s disappearance had reached his ear. It was a tale too interesting not to follow, and Walter and Aloha were already making plans to do just that.

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On October 18 Margaret and Miki set sail for Montreal from Liverpool aboard the White Star Line’s SS Doric. Their final destination would be Qualicum Beach and the possibility of a veteran’s land grant for Miki courtesy of her father. Walter, meanwhile, had managed to secure passage for his family and four other crew members with the French Compagnie Générale Transatlantique who granted them passage on the SS Île de France, an ocean liner decorated in the art deco style and considered the most beautiful ship then afloat. They would board at Le Havre — first class for Walter and Aloha, but, for some reason, steerage for the crew and their children.

 

Aloha posing with the freshly cleaned N^o IV aboard the Île de France, en route to New York City, Atlantic Ocean, November 1929.

Then, on October 25 before they left port, troubling news arrived from the United States. An enormous sell-off of stocks had taken place in New York the day before. Newspapers proclaimed, “Greatest Crash in Wall Street’s History,” and described the frenzy of panicked selling that had punctured the bloated market and caused prices to tumble “like an avalanche.” In the days that followed, prices continued to fall, despite the spending heroics of major investment firms and prominent businessmen, including the Rockefeller family. By week’s end the market had lost over $30 billion and there were whispers of imminent bank collapses. The Wanderwells had most of the expedition’s money held in US accounts.

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Aloha and Walter were among the first on the Île de France, supervising as the cars were swung aboard by slow donkey cranes. The sky was grey and a light mist was falling, but the air was unusually still and magnified every sound: the talking voices, the slow rumble of the ship’s engine, the clatter of chains against the ship’s hull. When at last everyone was on board and busy finding their cabin or the restaurant or the ship’s railing, there came a sensation of movement, gentle at first, but then stronger as the engines rumbled and the buildings and cars and people of Europe slipped gradually behind them.

It was November 1, 1929, and as the sun set and passengers enjoyed their last glimpse of Europe (and their last legal sips of champagne), no one knew for certain what they would find when they docked in New York.