(Celebrated hunter and animal collector Frank Buck narrate...)
Celebrated hunter and animal collector Frank Buck narrates and stars in this documentary-type expedition film. Buck first received world-wide fame for his book of the same name which shared his tales of jungle adventure and live animal captures. This film follows Buck's expedition into the jungles of Malayan where he and his native helpers work to capture many rare animals to share with zoo's around the world. Absolutely a product of the times, be prepared to witness several animal fights along the way, brutal and staged scenes that are not for the faint of heart. 63 minutes *Quality Note: This was recovered from a print that was decayed and shrinking producing a warble in the film's music track. There is no problem at all in understanding Frank Buck's narration.
(Because of the war the price of rubber is up! And now tro...)
Because of the war the price of rubber is up! And now trouble is brewing for the jungle rubber plantations of Seemang as gangster scheme to seize the rubber supple and take the profits for themselves. One such plantation owner is Edward Elliot, fortunately though Elliot is friends with two-fisted animal trapper Frank Hardy (Frank Buck) who isn't about to back down, no matter what tricks and perils the greedy gangsters have in mind! Three discs - Fifteen Chapters - 305 minutes "A Million Thrills!"
Frank Howard Buck was an American hunter, animal collector, and author, as well as a film actor, director, and producer. Beginning in the 1910s he made many expeditions into Asia for the purpose of hunting and collecting exotic animals, bringing over 100, 000 live specimens back to the United States and elsewhere for zoos and circuses and earning a reputation as an adventurer.
Background
Buck was born on March 17, 1884. During childhood he began collecting birds and small animals, tried farming, and sold songs to vaudeville singers before getting a job as a cowpuncher, (a term for cowboy used mostly in Texas and surrounding states). Accompanying a cattle car to the Chicago stockyards, he refused to return to Texas.
Career
After being educated in Dallas public schools, he traveled in the Midwest, finally settling in Chicago where, at the age of 21, he married the drama critic, Amy Leslie. Her acquaintances aided Buck in becoming a theatrical agent. Buck's first trip away from the United States was in 1911, to the South American jungles, where he sought birds and returned to New York to sell them. Before World War I he went to Singapore and later returned to the San Francisco Exposition, and was engaged in administrative work. His explorations took him across the Pacific Ocean more than forty times and around the world more than a dozen times. His travels were the subject of a book Bring 'Em Back Alive (1930), written with Edward Anthony and titled to indicate Buck's record of never having willfully harmed any form of wildlife. Buck brought many "firsts" in animals to United States zoological gardens, such as the man-eating tiger, the largest king cobra ever captured alive, the pigmy water buffalo (anca) of Celebes, and the babirusa. He owned what is probably the largest private zoo in the world, at Amityville. Buck collaborated with Edward Anthony in the writing of Wild Cargo (1932) and with Ferrin L. Fraser on Fang and Claw (1935), Tim Thompson In the Jungle (1935), and On Jungle Trails (1937). Buck's autobiography, All In a Lifetime, appeared in 1941. He died in Houston on March 25, 1950.
In Chicago, while working as captain of bellhops at the Virginia Hotel, Buck met hotel resident Lillian West (pen name Amy Leslie). West was a former actress and operetta singer. At the time that Buck met her, she was one of the very few female drama critics in the country, and the only one working in Chicago, where she wrote for the Chicago Daily News. Although their relationship was highly unusual at the time, she being 46 years old to his youthful 17 (a 29-year difference), they married in 1901. Buck and West divorced in 1913, and the following year he married Nina C. Boardman, a Chicago stenographer who accompanied him on jungle expeditions. Buck and Boardman divorced in 1927; when she later married a California packing company official, she told reporters "As long as I live, I don't want to see any animals wilder or bigger than a kitten. "Buck subsequently married Muriel Reilly in 1928, and the two had a daughter, Barbara.