Where No Vultures Fly (1951)

Interesting facts

• Filmed in: Kenya

Where No Vultures Fly is a 1951 British adventure film directed by Harry Watt and starring Anthony Steel and Dinah Sheridan. It was released under the title Ivory Hunter in the United States. The film was inspired by the work of the conservationist Mervyn Cowie. The film's opening credits state that "the characters in this film are imaginary, but the story is based on the recent struggle of Mervyn Cowie to form the National Parks of Kenya." The title Where No Vultures Fly denotes areas where there are no dead animals. A sequel, West of Zanzibar, was released in 1954.

Production

Where No Vultures Fly was one of a series of "expeditionary films" Harry Watt made, like The Overlanders, where he would find the story from visiting a location. "These expeditionary films are really journalistic jobs", he wrote later. "You get sent out to a country by the studio, stay as long as you can without being fired and a story generally crops up."

Watt got the idea of the film after a chance remark from a game warden in Tanganyika. He was shooting zebras and when Watt wondered if it was necessary, the warden remarked that Watt "talk like Mervyn Cowie". This prompted the director to track down Cowie in Nairobi, who inspired the story.

W. P. Lipscomb wrote the script based on Harry Watt's original idea. Ralph Smart worked on it. According to Leslie Norman "the script was turned down generally, so I went in and added a bit which made them accept it."

The film was a co-production between Ealing and South Africa's African Films, with half the financing coming from South Africa. (Africa Films was a South African theatre chain.)

Dinah Sheridan flew to Kenya at the end of November 1950 for a four-month shoot. Watt took a full unit to Africa and based it at Amboseli, south of Nairobi. They built a complete village of huts for the crew to live in.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.