Frederick Russell Burnham - Legacy

Legacy

Burnham in real life is more interesting than any of my heroes of romance!

In 1899, Frank E. Fillis brought his circus and stage show Savage South Africa along with Zulu performers to the Empress Theatre at Earls Courte, London, England, as part of the Greater Britain Exhibition. Twice-daily the actors dramatically played out famous battles from both Matabele wars. One of the shows, Wilson's Heroic Stand at the Shangani River re-enacted the battle of the Shanagani Patrol. Frank Fillis himself played the part of Major Alan Wilson, Peter Lobengula played the Matabele King Lobengula, and Burnham was played by the American 'Texas Jack' Jr., the adopted son of Texas Jack Omohundro and a man best remembered for running a Wild West show in South Africa where he gave Will Rogers his start as an entertainer. In September of that year, the re-enactment was filmed and sold to movie houses around the world as Major Wilson's Last Stand.

In 1933, the newly discovered Serbelodon burnhami (now Amebelodon burnhami), an extinct gomphothere (Shovel-Tusker elephant) from North America, was officially named after Burnham.

Ernest Hemingway acquired the rights to produce a film version of Scouting on Two Continents in late 1958. CBS immediately contracted Hemingway to produce the film for television, with Gary Cooper expressing an interest in playing the part of Burnham. Hemingway was already behind schedule in his other commitments and never started on the film when he committed suicide in July 1961.

On My Honor, an epic film conceived and begun by Cecil B. DeMille, was to document the founding of the Scouting movement but was left unfinished because of the legendary producer's untimely death in January 1959. In the screenplay started by Jesse Lasky, Jr., the film would have focused on Baden-Powell and the Scouting pioneers who were a major influence on Baden-Powell, including Burnham. Even after DeMille's death, associate producer Henry Wilcoxon continued to invest substantial work on the film until 1962, and Sydney Box was hired to assist with the script. Starting in 2001, producers Jerry Molen and Robert Starling began work to finish DeMille's project, including an updated screenplay by Starling based on the earlier work of Lasky and Box.

Burnham was portrayed by Will Hutchins in Shangani Patrol (1970), a feature film by David Millin. Filmed on location in Bulawayo, Rhodesia by RPM Film Studios, 35 mm copies of the film are now preserved by the National Film, Video and Sound Archives, Pretoria, South Africa.

Union Oil was the official sponsor of the Major Burnham Bowling Trophy, an annual bowling event supported by the Boy Scouts of America and held in California.