Hatari!

Hatari!

Original movie poster by Frank McCarthy
Directed by Howard Hawks
Produced by Howard Hawks
Paul Helmick
Screenplay by Leigh Brackett
Story by Harry Kurnitz
Starring John Wayne
Elsa Martinelli
Hardy Krüger
Red Buttons
Music by Henry Mancini
Cinematography Russell Harlan
Edited by Stuart Gilmore
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release dates
  • June 18, 1962 (1962-06-18)
Running time
 157 min.
Country  United States
Language English
Box office $12,923,077[1]

Hatari! (pronounced [hɑtɑri], Swahili for "Danger!") is a 1962 American action/adventure romantic drama film directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Wayne. It portrays a group of professional wildlife catchers in Africa.[2] The film includes dramatic wildlife chases and the scenic backdrop of Mount Meru, a dormant volcano.

Hatari! was shot in Technicolor and filmed on location in northern Tanganyika (in what is now Tanzania).

Plot

Hatari! is the story of a group of adventurers in East Africa, engaged in the exciting and lucrative but dangerous business of catching wild animals for delivery to zoos around the world. As "Momella Game Ltd.", they operate from a compound near the town of Arusha. The head of the group is Sean Mercer (John Wayne); the others are safari veteran Little Wolf a/k/a "Indian" (Bruce Cabot), drivers "Pockets" (Red Buttons), and Kurt (Hardy Krüger), roper Luis (a Mexican former bullfighter; Valentin de Vargas), and Brandy (Michele Girardon), a young woman whose late father was a member of the group; she grew up there.

Their method (shown in several action sequences) is to chase the selected animal across the plains with a truck, driven by Pockets, a former Brooklyn taxi driver. Sean stands in the bed of the truck with a rope noose on a long pole, and snags the animal by its head. (For smaller animals, Sean rides in a seat mounted on the truck's left front fender.) A smaller, faster "herding car" swings outside, driving the animal back toward the "catching truck". Kurt, a German auto racing driver, drives the herding car. Once the animal is snagged, Luis, an expert roper and lassoer, catches its legs and secures it. The animal is then moved into a travel crate, carried on a third truck, driven by Brandy. The captured animals are held in pens in the compound, tended by native workers, until they are shipped out at the end of the hunting season.

Sometimes the group ranges far outside the compound for several days, accompanied by additional trucks with camp equipment.

In the opening sequence, they chase a rhinoceros, but it attacks the herding car and severely gores Indian, who has to be transported to the Arusha hospital. While they are waiting to hear about Indian's condition, a young Frenchman (Gerard Blain) approaches Sean about taking Indian's job. This offends Kurt, who knocks the Frenchman down. Then Dr. Sanderson (Eduard Franz) says Indian may die without a tranfusion of rare type AB- blood. However, the Frenchman has that type. He provides the transfusion, but only after making Kurt ask him.

The group returns to the compound after celebrating Indian's survival. There, Sean, and then Pockets, are very surprised to find a strange young woman sleeping in Sean's bed. The next morning, she introduces herself as Anna Maria D'Alessandro ("Just call me Dallas"; Elsa Martinelli), a photojournalist sent by the Basel Zoo to record the capture of the many animals they have ordered.

Sean is annoyed, but under the contract with the zoo they must accommodate her, and Dallas quickly makes friends with the others, especially Pockets. Dallas rides along on the group's catching runs, snapping pictures.

She is immediately attracted to Sean, and (she thinks) he to her, but he treats her brusquely. Pockets explains: a few years earlier, Sean was engaged to a woman who came to the compound, and then abruptly left him. Ever since, he distrusts women - especially those he is attracted to. If he weren't attracted to Dallas, he wouldn't be rude to her.

The young Frenchman comes to the compound, and after proving himself a crack shot, is hired to replace Indian. His name is Charles Maurey, but Sean dubs him "Chips". His job is to ride with Kurt in the herding car, carrying a rifle in case of animal attack.

Indian returns, and urges Sean to forego catching any rhinos this season. A "nice Belgian kid" was killed in an earlier rhino chase, as was Brandy's father, and now Indian was nearly killed. He suggests there is a jinx. Sean agrees only to postpone rhino to the end of the season.

Dallas makes some progress with Sean, but friction between them continues, especially after Dallas adopts first one, then two, and finally three orphan elephant calves. This leads to her adoption by the local Warusha tribe as Mama Tembo ("Mother of Elephants").

Chips and Kurt flirt with Brandy; as Sean notices, "She's all growed up." But she falls for Pockets instead. Additional chases are shown, with the group capturing a zebra, a giraffe, a gazelle, a buffalo, and a wildebeest. They also trap a leopard in a baited cage. When the herding car is mired during a river crossing, Chips shoots a crocodile that is threatening Kurt.

Pockets spends several days privately tinkering in the compound workshop. He invents a method of flinging a net over a tree full of monkeys, which the zoos want. The group catches over 500 monkeys.

With all other orders filled, the group catches a rhino without serious incident, and Indian agrees that the jinx is broken. The group goes to Arusha to celebrate the end of the season, but Dallas declines. She is frustrated, because though she has had some intimate moments with Sean, he has never quite declared his feelings. When Sean urges her to join the group's excursion, she lashes out at him and bursts into tears, leaving him baffled.

The next morning, she's gone, leaving a farewell letter with Pockets. Sean and the group rush to Arusha to catch her. To help locate Dallas (by smell), they take along in a truck one of the baby elephants. Not wanting to be left behind, the remaining two baby elephants run after the truck. The ensuing chase scene ends when the elephants corner Dallas in a hotel lobby.

In the final scene, Dallas is again in Sean's bed when he enters the room, and they reprise the dialogue from their first meeting. As before, Pockets also comes in drunk and again asks Sean "What is she doing in your bed?" But this time, Sean announces "We got married today!"

Cast

Production

Hatari! has a very loose script and, like many other major works of Hawks, is principally structured on the relationships among the characters, though it is "bookended" by the initial violent (and nearly fatal) encounter with a rhinoceros and the end-of-season determination to make such a capture to fulfill the team's quota. Much of the film revolves around scenes of chasing animals in jeeps and trucks across the African plains. The animals pursued are also all live, wild, and untrained, a procedure banned today over concerns of exhausting and killing the targeted animals. The script was written by Hawks' favorite writer, Leigh Brackett, after the group returned from Africa with the catching scenes.

At the beginning of the production, all Hawks knew was that he wanted a movie about people who catch animals in Africa for zoos, a dangerous profession with exciting scenes the likes of which had never been seen on-screen before.[2] Hawks increased his knowledge on animal catching from the work of the famous South African animal conservationist, Dr. Ian Player. In 1952, South Africa was eliminating all large wild animals to protect livestock, and only 300 white rhinos survived. Player then invented his famed rhino catching technique to relocate and save the white rhinos. Player's project was called "Operation Rhino" and it was recorded in the renowned documentary film Operation Rhino. Hawks studied this film closely and incorporated aspects of it into his film.[3][4]

Michèle Girardon (Brandy) spoke no English when cast in the role; she taught herself English while on the set, according to a July 1961 LIFE magazine profile of the actress.[5]

Government licensed animal catcher Willy de Beer was hired by Hawks to be the close by technical advisor, and his assistants became their staff of experts in regard to catching the animals.[6]

Hawks was inspired by the famous animal photographer Ylla, so he had script writer Brackett add the character of Dallas. Hawks said, "We took that part of the story from a real character, a German girl. She was the best animal photographer in the world."[3][7][8][9][10]

Filming in Africa was dangerous for the production team and actors. According to director Howard Hawks, all the animal captures in the picture were actually performed by the actors; no stuntmen or animal handlers were substituted on-screen. The rhino really did escape, and the actors really did have to recapture it - and Hawks included the sequence for its realism. Much of the action sequence audio had to be re-dubbed due to John Wayne's cursing while wrestling with the animals. However, a stand-in, "Rusty" Walkley (real name: Mildred Lucy Walkley), was used for some scenes involving Elsa Martinelli.[11]

Hawks said Wayne admitted being scared during some of the action scenes, and "had the feeling with every swerve that the car was going to overturn as he hung on for dear life, out in the open with only a seat belt for support, motor roaring, body jarring every which-way, animals kicking dirt and rocks and the thunder of hundreds of hooves increasing the din in his ears." Wayne felt it was unpredictable with the terrain's hidden holes and obstacles which could have been disastrous.[12]

When Hawks interviewed de Vargas, he told him it would be very dangerous and showed him a documentary. De Vargas had no double and like the rest of the cast played in the animal catching shots.[13] One evening Buttons and Wayne were playing cards outside and a leopard came out of the bush towards them. When Buttons mentioned the approaching leopard, Wayne said, "See what he wants."[14] De Vargas said technical adviser Willy de Beer was mauled by a loose baby leopard that sprang on him from a tree, "He came back with his arm covered in bandages and throat completely wrapped, but he just shrugged it off." [15]

As the animals frequently refused to make noise "on cue" (in particular, the baby elephants refused to trumpet inside populated areas), local Arusha game experts and zoo collectors were hired to do "animal voice impersonations".

Hawks stated in interviews that he had originally planned to star both Clark Gable and Wayne in the film until Gable's death finally ruled that out.

Hatari! introduced the memorable Henry Mancini tune "Baby Elephant Walk".[16] Another memorable musical moment is a duet of Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home" (Swanee River) with Dallas playing the piano, and Pockets playing the harmonica.

Reception

Hatari! grossed $12,923,077 at the box office,[1] earning $7 million in US theatrical rentals.[17] It was the 8th highest grossing film of 1962.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Box Office Information for Hatari! The Numbers. Retrieved June 13, 2013.
  2. 1 2 McCarthy, Todd. Howard Hawks: the grey fox of Hollywood, New York, Grove Press, 1997, pg 572, ISBN 0802115985
  3. 1 2 McIntyre, Thomas. "Fifty Years of HATARI! – The Story of Most Expensive Safari In the World." Sports Afield, May/June 2012, pg 70
  4. ↑ McCarthy, pg 575
  5. ↑ LIFE. Time Inc. p. 80. ISSN 0024-3019. Retrieved January 31, 2015.
  6. ↑ Stanley, Frank. "Hatari." International Photographer: The Magazine of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, September 1961, Vol 33 No 9, pg 181
  7. ↑ Joseph McBride (writer), Hawks on Hawks University of California Press, 1982, ISBN 0-520-04344-8, pg 143
  8. ↑ Peter Bogdanovich, The Cinema of Howard Hawks, Museum of Modern Art-Doubleday, 1962
  9. ↑ Scott Breivold, Peter Bogdanovich interviewer, Howard Hawks: interviews, University Press of Mississippi, 2006, ISBN 1-57806-832-0, pg. 38
  10. ↑ McCarthy, pg 573
  11. ↑ Australian Woman's Weekly December 5, 1962
  12. ↑ McCarthy, pg 582
  13. ↑ McCarthy, pg 577
  14. ↑ McIntyre, pg 73
  15. ↑ McCarthy, pg 579
  16. ↑ Henry Mancini interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969)
  17. ↑ "All-time top film grossers", Variety, 8 January 1964, pg 37.

External links

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