White Hunter - Representations in Literature and Film

Representations in Literature and Film

The exploits of white hunters were subjects first for novels and later for film. They were romanticized in adventure novels of the so-called "Lost World/Lost Race" genre.

Perhaps the first fictional Victorian adventure hero was Allan Quatermain, a white hunter who appeared in books by H. Rider Haggard, starting with King Solomon's Mines. In 1924, Richard Connell published his short story "The Most Dangerous Game", in which an American big-game hunter finds himself being hunted by a Russian aristocrat who has tired of hunting in Africa; the story is still widely read. Alex Raymond created the Jungle Jim comic strip in 1934 that later lead to a comic book, film serial, film series, and television show. Geoffrey Household's 1939 novel Rogue Male featured a white hunter going after Adolf Hitler; it was filmed twice, first in 1941 as Man Hunt and, a generation later, under the original title. Captain CG Biggar, a supporting character in the P. G. Wodehouse comic novel Ring for Jeeves, is another example of the white hunter.

Not surprisingly, actual white hunters were often involved in the filming of the exploits of their fictional counterparts: Bunny Allen led many film companies on safari to enable location filming for King Solomon's Mines, Mogambo, and Nor the Moon By Night. The white hunter on safari in his khakis and pith helmet became an instantly recognizable stock character.

Abbott and Costello lampooned the type in their 1949 release, Africa Screams, which was a parody of a 1930 documentary, Africa Speaks. Bob Hope parodied the safari genre in Road to Zanzibar (1941) and Call Me Bwana (1963).

Hemingway's safari story, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," richly addresses the questions of courage, cowardice, racism and power on safari. The story was made into a film titled "The Macomber Affair," but it was reissued in the United States under the title, "The Great White Hunter." The title character is an American tourist looking to find his own courage by facing danger on safari. In the story, Hemingway accurately refers to the professional hunter leading the safari, a character named Wilson, as a "white hunter". (Wilson is said to have been based on Hemingway's own guides, Philip Percival and Bror Blixen). The addition of "great" in the movie release title may have helped to lodge the ironic use of the phrase in the popular culture.

In Clint Eastwood's 1990 film, "White Hunter, Black Heart" there is a clear example of this type, both in the professional hunters leading John Wilson in to the bush but also in the director's passion to be a such a hunter.