Champagne safari

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Movie
Original title Champagne safari
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1951
length 60 minutes
Rod
Director Jackson Leighter
script Jackson Leighter
Lawrence Klingman
production Herbert Bregstein
camera Jackson Leighter
cut Myron L. Broun
occupation

Than herself:

Champagne Safari is an American documentary about the second honeymoon of Rita Hayworth and Aly Khan from 1951.

action

A good year and a half after their wedding, which was followed with a lot of media attention, Prince Aly Khan, son of the Aga Khan , and Hollywood star Rita Hayworth decide to go on a second honeymoon through Africa. The film agent Jackson Leighter and his wife Lola are to accompany them, and Leighter decides to capture the trip with a film camera. In Pompeii , the Leighters first meet Hayworth and together they look at the excavations of the ancient city. According to the Leighters, despite her title of princess, Hayworth is still the down-to-earth and natural girl she has always been. On their trip to Africa they also stop in Athens , where they visit the Acropolis . Once in Egypt , Aly Khan joins them. From Cairo they travel the Nile together and then visit the Valley of the Kings and the temple complexes of Luxor .

In Nairobi , the capital of Kenya , they stop in one of Khan's residences and his servants are introduced. Like his father, Khan is worshiped almost like a god by the local Ismailis . The Leighters decide to explore the area and drive to a British garrison, where the Kikuyu ethnic group is living in prison camps as a result of the Mau Mau War . Back at Khan's residence, Ismaili women perform a ritual dance in the garden. Hayworth watches them from a balcony. In Mombasa , the Leighters and Hayworth attend a school founded by the Aga Khan. Then they pay a visit to the Wakamba tribe, who perform a ritual dance for them. With Khan's private plane, which he controls with a former Royal Air Force officer , they arrive at a remote Ismaili community in Tanganyika , where a grand official reception for the prince and princess takes place. The male dignitaries surround Khan while Muslim women turn to Hayworth. They then visit schools and greet scout groups. Later, the local police band played a concert for Hayworth on the estate of an Indian lawyer. Hayworth clumsily operates a recording device, the tape of which then has to be laboriously untangled and then rolled up again. Also in Zanzibar , where Khan has another residence with a private golf course, Khan and Hayworth are received with great pomp. After a short shopping spree, a girls' school will be awarded certificates in the heat. Hayworth gives a short speech in Swahili and then hands out awards to the best female students. Thereupon a ghost dance of a Buganda tribe is shown. In Madagascar , Khan, Hayworth and the Leighters are welcomed as guests by the French government. Together with the American consul, Hayworth and Lola Leighter visit a market where Hayworth buys several lengths of silk fabric.

Back in Kenya, the Leighters go on safari. Tents and supplies are brought into the Maasai hunting reserve by numerous trucks and set up by Khan's servants. Thanks to a generator, there is even electricity for electric light and cooling systems to keep the champagne you brought cool. Shortly afterwards, a curious baboon and several young lions appear in the camp and they are given something to eat. Khan eventually arrives without Hayworth. She ultimately concluded that their marriage was not working. While Khan hunts buffalo, the Leighters inspect the local wildlife. In addition to impalas and antelopes , giraffes, wildebeests, elephants, crocodiles and hippos are shown. A lioness receives special attention when she eats her fill of a buffalo that Khan had previously shot.

After three months, Hayworth wants to return to the United States. She has left Aly Khan and longs for her two daughters, who were left behind in the south of France. In Alexandria she goes with the Leighters on a ship that is supposed to bring her home. Shortly before, Hayworth received an invitation from King Faruq , which the actress declined. The king takes a boat to her ship to see her off. However, Hayworth gives him to understand from afar that she does not want that, and the king drives away again. Hayworth's ship finally casts off.

background

The remains of a bakery in Pompeii, a location for the film

The film was shot between December 1950 and February 1951 during the second honeymoon of Rita Hayworth and Aly Khan, who had invited Hayworth's friend Jackson Leighter and his wife Lola to accompany them. Hayworth and Khan's relationship had been in the public eye from the start and attracted a lot of media coverage. The second honeymoon was an attempt to save their marriage after they had drifted apart after a year and a half. During the trip, however, Hayworth left Aly Khan and returned to the United States with her two daughters. After filing for divorce, she gave her consent to the release of the material Leighter had made on the condition that she would share in the profit of the documentary. Jackson Leighter and Eileen Pollock can be heard as speakers in the film.

Champagne Safari premiered on December 31, 1951 at New York's Rialto Theater. The film was then shown in Chicago , among others, along with Hayworth's comeback film Affair in Trinidad . In 1952 it ran under various titles in several New York cinemas. An alternative title was Safari So Good . When the film was re-released in January 1954 with significantly more publicity in the major cities of the United States, Hayworth, now divorced from Khan , made headlines with her fourth husband, singer and actor Dick Haymes . In May of that year there was a lawsuit between the film's distributor, Defense Film Corporation, and Jackson Leighter Associates against Hayworth's production company, Beckworth Corporation, and Columbia Pictures . Columbia's boss Harry Cohn asserted exclusive rights for every Hayworth film and, citing this, interfered in the publication of Champagne Safari . It finally came to an out-of-court settlement, whereupon Columbia and Beckworth Corporation were no longer allowed to intervene in the distribution of the film. In the summer of 1955, the film was broadcast on a Los Angeles- based television station. However, only the first 25 minutes were shown before the broadcast was canceled in favor of a baseball game. In the United States, Champagne Safari was later also released on VHS.

Gene Ringgold, in his 1974 book The Films of Rita Hayworth , doubted that the film could have recouped its cost in copying, advertising, and transportation. According to Hayworth, the film was a flop. You have "not earned a cent" with him. Originally shot in Eastman Color , the film is now only in circulation as a black and white copy.

Reviews

The film critic Leonard Maltin described the documentary as “a fascinating curiosity that combines a travel report in the style of National Geographic with gossip à la Photoplay ”. Leighters camera captured the image of a marriage "that was already beginning to break up". According to the film critic Gerald Peary, the film comes “too much from the chat corner of the gossip newspapers” and is “too irrelevant to be rated”.

literature

  • Champagne safari . In: Gene Ringgold: The Films of Rita Hayworth . Citadel Press, Secaucus 1974, ISBN 0-8065-0907-4 , pp. 178-179.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Champagne Safari . In: Gene Ringgold: The Films of Rita Hayworth . Citadel Press, Secaucus 1974, ISBN 0-8065-0907-4 , p. 179.
  2. ↑ cf. Notes on tcm.com
  3. ↑ "I never made a cent out of it." Rita Hayworth 1973 quoted. after Gene Ringgold: The Films of Rita Hayworth . Citadel Press, Secaucus 1974, ISBN 0-8065-0907-4 , p. 179.
  4. ↑ Lt. Opening credits of the film.
  5. ↑ “Documentary […] is a fascinating curio that combines National Geographicstyle travelogue with Photoplay-esque heartbreak-of-the-stars. [...] Leighter's camera captures a marriage that is already beginning to unravel. " Leonard Maltin : Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide . Plume, 2010, p. 109.
  6. ↑ Gerald Peary: Rita Hayworth. Your films - your life . Heyne Film Library, Volume 30, Heyne, Munich 1981, p. 144.