How jungle Fights are Faked for the Films.

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 35, 11 February 1933, Page 16

How jungle Fights are Faked for the Films.

When the industrious globe-trotter is planning a lecture on his expedition up the Amazon or the Congo, or wherever he is going, he would naturally like to illustrate It with something exciting. , . ° Well, that is where the ghost photographer conies in.

The ghost photographer never strays far from his own fireside, yet his camera ranges over the.whole of this planet, from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand. Under the title. 'Confessions of a Wild Animal Photographer," Mr. A. H; Fisher has been telling some of his experiences in the Detroit "Sunday News." "For hours," he relates, "I have waited against the bars of a zoo enclosure while my patience trickled through my. shoes and unholy words formed on my lips." Mr. Fisher has also been in the jungles of South. America, but the novelty of the story he tells is bound up in the work he did in . artificial jungles, while keeping the home fires burning. And how does his own ghost photography look to him when he sees it on display before a goggle-eyed public? He tells us:—

Recently I sat through a Tound-the-world movie and witnessed the excited reactions of the audience to a scene in the Amazon jungle, where a jaguar, the powerful and fierce feline of the American tropics, won a fight and killed a plucky little species of wild boar about one-third his size.

The fact that.l had made this scene a- year previously, jn a man-made jungle in Jersey. City, New Jersey, with ;a milk-loving jaguar, two white-dipped peccaries from Texas, and an obliging lieutenant of1 police as the principal actors, failed to thrill me. On the contrary, it made; me a bit ashamed of .having, been the ."ghost photographer" of this one-sided and visual paragraph of unnatural history. During this same, picture I saw a boa-constrictor, 'which I had borrowed from one of our leading. zoological parks, making its way through the trppical foliage of an equally important botanical garden.

Terrified monkeys. shrieked with fear and hatred as they leapt to safety, and how the audience shivered as the explorer, ; who appeared "in./ person," shifted the latitude forty degrees southward, likewise these monkeys I had carried from a pet shop in Gotham to the- narrow confines., of that twelve-by-twenty-foot jungle in Jersey City. : On another occasion I am seated in a large opera hous& N while a world traveller - thrills his audience with his mighty Amazon and its tributaries.'

One. by one T see strange denizens of those gloomy forests appear on the screen, ana I hear him tell how he left tho heads of the huge stinging ants buried in his quivering flesh that he might bring back their pictures to show in America.

This and other adventures I hear him narrate, but since I know he has never travelled in the Amazon country, I am somehow , restrained from joining, in the applause that comes to him for his courage, fortitude, and skill with the camera.

Being a ghost has its dark moments. However, I could hardly expect him

to say that most of the animal pictures had been made by me in a small 200 ia Para, Brazil, or that the ants were a large, harmless species. Here Mr. Fisher reminds that animal photography is an expensive game, and confesses that if he were rich he would make a hobby of it. As things are, he sells the pictures he 'makes, and doesn't concern himself about what is done with them. But, he adds: I will now tell .you how the picture of the fight between the jaguar and the peccary was made, and from this you may form an opinion of animal thrillers, whether they b& of lions killing zebras and occasionally getting a kick in the face for lack of space to avoid them, or tigers getting the worst of battles with, water-buffalo and showmen. .In is usually the same hokum with variations, according to the size of the animals, the enclosures, and the amount of cruelty. The huge jaguar I used, "as far as I could make out, both from the condition of his. teeth and his behaviour, was an old man-eater slightly past the prime of two -of his nine" lives. I have photographed scores of dangerous cats, but this one was as mean. :a carnivore as has ever expressed a desire to do me harm.

Two peccaries had arrived,, from Brownsville, Texas, in response to a wire_ to ship me the biggest and nastiest pair they- could dig up—pigs with a desire to ■ stay about a bit longer.

On _a vacant lot, just outside a rambling and highly odorous building used for storage by an animal dealer, I built an. enclosure, covering sides and' bottom with strong welded wire. It was only twelve by twenty, feet in size and eight feet in height; rath«r a small affair in which to depict a cat approaching the size of a tiger roaming the jungles of Brazil in search of prey. • ' '

From near-by hothouses. I secured sufficiently fresh and truly Brazilian foliage to set the stage. At one end of the enclosure were small openings to accommodate the cameras; at the other end a "well-hidden door to, permit ingress and egress for the animal actors. ' . ■

In attendance were a lieutenant of police and an aid to try their luck at big-game hunting in case the jaguar carried a set of burglar tools.and broke gaol. :

With everything in readiness, "the jaguar was . brought out in a large shifting bos that was then lashed against th& small entrance. Then the door was opened and into the set walked the large spotted cat." We read on:—

The cameras were grinding off negatives at the rate of a foot a second.

In less than thirty seconds after his entrance, th© big cat spied me, and with a throaty growl sprang -with all his force against the wire, only to be thrown violently back by the rebound of the slack. I had placed great confidence in that thin welded wire, and it was not misplaced. With the aid of iron bars and ammonia fumes, the jaguar was driven back into his box and later emerged to fight the peccaries. ■