Osa Johnson

1893–1953

Osa was born in 1893 in Chanute, Kansas, USA. She married Martin Johnson, a pioneer in photography who had just returned from a voyage around the world with Jack London. Together they travelled across the Wild West showing a film that Martin had made during his journey to the South Pacific. Osa sang Hawaiian songs at each performance, and by 1912 they had saved enough money to finance an expedition to the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides. They wanted to make a film about the cannibals of the island of Malekula, in the New Hebrides, with the aim of preserving a primitive way of life on film before it disappeared with civilisation.

Martin had heard stories about the fierce “Big Nambas”, a tribe on Malekula, the same people that the British entomologist Evelyn Cheesman would study twenty years later. At that time, relations between white settlers and the local tribes were far from cordial. The islands were being invaded by white men who kidnapped the natives and forced them to work on their plantations under conditions of slavery. In retaliation, the Big Nambas captured and killed as many foreigners as they could. During their brief stay on Malekula, the Johnsons were taken prisoner, and it was only thanks to the miraculous arrival of a British ship that they were released. They had to run through the jungle to save their lives. The film that resulted from this encounter, Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Pacific, became a great success. The couple returned to the South Seas in 1919 with a larger support crew to film their next production, Cannibals of the South Seas.

Once back in New York, they met Carl Akeley, who had just invented a new motion-picture camera and suggested that the Johnsons concentrate on Africa and travel there to film wildlife. Martin and Osa travelled to Africa to explore and film the continent’s wild animals. They walked for weeks through the territory of northern Kenya until they reached a volcanic crater where thousands of animals gathered around a vast lake, a place they called “Paradise”. Their first African film, Trailing African Wild Animals, was a great success, and they returned to Paradise for a period to make wildlife films. After filming in Paradise for four years, the Johnsons went to the Serengeti for a year to film lions. The footage they shot during this period was used in the film Simba, King of the Beasts.

The Johnsons later explored the Ituri Forest in the Belgian Congo. Their film Congorilla documents the elusive pygmy tribes of the forest and the mountain gorillas. Their last major expedition together took them to northern Borneo, where they lived for two years, travelling by canoe and rafting along the rivers. They were the first to explore the Kinabatangan River region and the first to enter the lands of the Tengarra headhunters to document their way of life.

After Martin’s tragic death in a plane crash in 1937, Osa continued her travels, and in Africa she made the films I Married Adventure and Jungles Calling. Osa also wrote several bestselling books about her experiences. In 1949, the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum was established in Chanute, Kansas, USA.

Books written by Osa Johnson, in English:

I Married Adventure: The Lives and Adventures of Martin and Osa Johnson
Four Years in Paradise
Bride in the Solomons
Last Adventure: The Martin Johnsons in Borneo