Simba: The King of the Beasts

They were an unlikely pair to become international celebrities and America’s foremost filmmaker-explorers. Martin Johnson first met the 16-year-old Osa Leighty in the small town of Chanute, Kansas while presenting lantern slides from his Snark voyage with Jack London. One month later they became husband and wife — launching a partnership that would take them around the world. Osa described their lives together in the title of her memoirs — I Married Adventure. Journeying to remote and exotic regions, Martin and Osa Johnson produced, wrote and photographed films celebrating the natural wonder and native tribes of Africa, Asia and the South Seas. For SIMBA, they forded crocodile-infested rivers, braved stampeding elephants and stared down angry rhinos in order to film lions in their natural habitat, the veldt. Killing only for food, self protection or scientific study, the Johnson’s became two of Africa’s first conservationists. It was Martin and Osa’s films that directly influenced F