Skip to content ↓

View entry

Back to search results

Name: JOHNSON, Martin Elmer

image of individualimage of individualimage of individualimage of individualimage of individualimage of individual

Birth Date: 9 Oct 1884 Rockford, Winnebago, Illinois

Death Date: 13 Jan 1937 air accident in Newhall, California

First Date: 1920

Profession: Explorer, photographer

Area: Box 51, Nairobi, Naivasha

Married: In Independence, Kansas 10 May 1910 Osa Helen Leighy b. 14 Mar 1894 Chanute, Neosho, Kansas, d. 7 Jan 1953 New York

Book Reference: Lytton, Red 25, Red 31, Hut, Garden, EA & Rhodesia, Into Africa, Chandler, Wikipedia

General Information:

Lytton - They amused Estelle Brick - Martin so earnest, Osa so very photogenic and knowing it, arriving in Isiolo in safari kit, then a quick change and a complete Hollywood star.
Garden ".... I was much interested to hear that we were close to Martin Johnson's "Paradise". Long years ago I only knew him as a discontented soul. We met at a Poets' Club dinner and he confided to me that he was private secretary to a very large Jewess who lived somewhere in Surrey. I replied that I had a cottage among the pine-woods of the Bourne and loved my garden more than London. Upon that frail thread the poor young man found occasional escape from a job he detested; he turned up one day when I was planting out heliotrope, to my surprise, and immediatley made friends with the kennel of sheepdogs. Great shaggy bouncing tramps they looked , but I loved their faithful hearts and their clever brains ... so did he. We talked in a desultory way on one thing and another; he did not care for my garden - "too tidy," he said, and I felt rather flattered, knowing its many weedy reaches. I gathered he was glad to come to the Garden of Ignorance, ever a bolt-hole and sanctuary for the untamed; might he come, he asked, and roam the garden when he could escape "prison" ... which was the pressure of a mentality utterly alien to his own, of that I felt sure even then; knowing him hardly at all. After that he would be found sitting in the garden, now and again; would, very occasionally, share a meal. Generally he preferred to be outside, munching an apple, reading some book or other. I forget what he chose. He did not stay long enough in Surrey to become an intimate friend of the house; I doubt if he ever would have become that. He detested England, I think; there was something difficult, aggressive, about him ... my neighbours the Hurd-Woods at Tilford thought him "pig-headed and conceited." But I contested that. "No! He is unhappy, he does not like his job, that is the trouble." "What do you want to do?" I asked one day of the restless good-looking youth. "Couldn't you do it?" I wondered if it would be possible to help him get it in any way. But what he wanted was fantastic. "I want to live among savages; black savages. There is something about primitive people that appeals to me. I want to photograph them and write of them ..." I was staggered. In that pre-War long-ago time these creatures were not in the least fashionable. Only missionaries talked about them; and they always wanted money for them. "I can't find you any savages," I said doubtfully, "but I have a camera; would you care to use it?" "There is nothing here I want to take," he said, "but you can take my photograph if you like." So I did. He arranged himself with Weaver, son of two champions, and I snapped him; but he was not satisfied. I had been too quick about it. "I want my hands to show," he complained. "All right!" I said, amused by this ego. "I'll do another." So he sat on one of the large balls on the little terrace wall by the path of pitching stones, and put his hands to his liking Soon after that he vanished, without word or sign; I hoped the poor lad had gone back to his native States and found some plantation negroes or something to write about. But the years showed he did better. He was "pig-headed" enough to fight through to all he wanted. He lived among real savages; wrote of them, photographed them; the cult of the cinema arrived; he made wild-animal films, having a great gift for taming and training them. He carted them about in cages and made most spectacular "shots"; but much of his work was truly done from the untamed wild. He worked hard and well. He had found the job he wanted. And more than that, Martin Johnson found a woman to be the mate of his strange heart and life. She never failed him. He had great fortune in his days on earth. ......…'
East Africa & Rhodesia - 15/1/53 - Mrs Martin Johnson, whose death in New York is announced, collaborated with her husband in making films of wild life in East Africa and elsewhere for 25 years, until his death in an air accident from which she had a narrow escape. She was a crack shot, and her part was often to bring down charging animals before the camera. In 1940 she published a graphic account of her experiences in "I Married Adventure" and she was also the author of "Jungle Friends" written mainly for children. Just before the last war she participated in the Livingstone-Stanley film, most of which was made on the banks of Lake Naivasha. Her second marriage to Mr Clark H. Getts took place in 1941.
Red 25 has Martin Johnson, Box 51, Nairobi

Back to search results