So the ad campaign went.
In the summer of 1962, my dad took my sisters and to see ‘Hatari!”. I can’t say if he did so, because he was aware of the San Francisco world premiere that had just occurred, with the main stars of the film in attendance, and all the hoopla, or if it was because of the striking advert in the movie section of the San Chronicle that surely must have caught my eight year old, wide-eyed attention. A charging rhino has gotta rank up there with dinosaurs went you ain’t got any living dinosaurs around anymore! It’s like the next best thing! If it was the second scenario, I can well imagine my having pleaded with my dad to see the film.
On a side note: I can even recall sitting before the tele watching a certain Three Stooges short the moment my father came into the room and told us to get our things as we were about to set out to the movies. If I ever stumble on that Three Stooges episode, I’ll be sure to list it here.
Once at the Paramount, as the curtains opened, and the first four notes of Henry Mancini’s horn section sounded, I was mesmerized! For me, the nearly three hour long feature was a visual and auditory feast. I couldn’t get enough! I came home humming the ‘Theme to Hatari’ over and over and, within days, I manage to find a wooden pole, and with my dad’s hemp rope, tried as best I could to fashion the boom used by John Wayne’s character, Sean Mercer.
And the drawings, I never stopped! Pages and pages of paper were spent, happily recreating the standout scenes so indelibly etched into my boyhood brain. In fact, up until four years ago, I still had many of those illustrations. Sadly, they were an accidental casualty of a move.
‘Hatari!’ was instantly, my all time favorite movie to see at the theater. (‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ which I also on television that same year - it had its national network television premiere on NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies - is my favorite movie). Anyway, I got taken to see ‘Hatari!’again. And as grew older, every chance I got to catch the film playing at some neighborhood movie house, I would go.
All in all, I believe I saw the picture at the local show, fourteen or more times!
In 1967, ‘Hatari!’ had its network debut on ABC and I was so mad at what the broadcasters did; taking the main credits and sticking it along with Henry Mancini’s wonderful theme, at the end of the telecast, leaving this awful jump cut as the crew prepare to leave the Ngorogoro crater, after the opening chase, to Kurt (played by Hardy Kruger) instantaneously arriving at the compound to pick up Brandy (Michele Giradon) many hours later. It literally cuts from noon day to dusk! Jarring!
Here is the opening rhinoceros chase and the main title credits that follow a couple of scenes later.
Oddly enough, I was never a John Wayne fan, though as a kid I did like Red Buttons. Actually, it was music, the location, and the cinematography that had me utterly enthralled. Director Howard Hawks' signature use of ensemble acting also added to the film's appeal, though I was too young to realize the technique for what it was at the time.
I didn't realize a lot of things then. Now with hindsight, I can see how 'Hatari!' was very much a product and reflection of its time. There are sociological artifacts that clearly date the film. However progressive it tried to be - going from the genre of the big game, safari hunt to wild animal capture or utilizing an"international" cast - "Hatari!' is still entrenched in some outdated notions.
True, the animals are no longer being shot for sport, but they are being ruthlessly hunted nonetheless to be wrested from their native habitat to become the sole captive property of this or that zoo.
The said "international" cast consists only of westerners. And sadly, the most telling indictment of all against the film is the fact that only nine words of English, in the picture's entire 2 hours and 37 minute running length, is given to the actors playing the indigenous Africans!
Arga, the House"boy" has three:
"In room,"
"Bad?"
Three scenes later, the Safari Bar Bartender (played by Emmett Smith), has the remaining six:
"Safari Bar. Yes sir, they're here!"
That's it!
The adult, African extras that make up the Momella Compound staff and catching crew are repeatedly referred to as "boys" throughout the film.
What's dismaying, is the racist assumptions deemed so unquestionably normative. Yet even today, sixty three years later, the white male gaze and perspective still predominate in many a big budget, motion picture. It's getting better, but not fast or far enough.
There are sexist tropes as well. Right at the start, Pockets (Red Buttons) first line in the film is to quip about the weaving rhino "This one's got to be a female! She can't make up her mind which way to go!" Incidentally, the rhino's gender changes from feminine to masculine once it has gored The Indian / Little Wolf (played by a Caucasian Bruce Cabot). "Hatari", i.e., "danger", means male as well, I suppose.
Undoubtedly, the dating advice concerning the roles to be played by men and women garners many an eye roll.
Okay, that does it for my critique, which also must include myself, as I still find the romantic chemistry charming, chiefly for its nostalgic familiarity. I grew up on Hollywood romance, finding myself still affected by it. Oh well,
I''m sure missing many other things.
'Hatari!' even had its world premiere in my home town of San Francisco with cast members John Wayne, Elsa Martinelli, Red Buttons, and Bruce Cabot live on stage, in person, not to mention Sonya, the cheetah being the fifth “cast member’ present!
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Yes, for decades I even had the Dell comic book (which I unfortunately lost in the mid 1990's)
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Many years later in the early 1990's I went to the San Francisco Fleishhacker Zoo, as it was then known, and stopping with my friends two daughters, Sarah and Stephanie, to see the elephants, listened as Sarah, struck up a conversation with one of the staff. She in turn shortly found out I had seen 'Hatari!' as a child thirty years earlier. That's when the staffperson, becoming all excited, suddenly couldn't wait tell me and the girls that it was "Tembo", the film's main baby elephant herself, standing before us, all grown up and in the pink! (Sorry for that last pun.) Needless to say, I was simply gobsmacked!
Addendum: There’s information on IMDB wherein another zoo in Europe is claiming “Tembo” to have been theirs. Well, as there were three baby elephants in the film, who knows which zoo has who.
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