Patience, patience and more patience. According to the camera crew for Walt Disney’s “The Living Desert,” they needed lots of patience to make the film a success. For several months in 1952, the desert and its inhabitants were the stars in a new Disney movie. It was part of the True Life Adventure Series.
Cameramen Bob Crandall and Paul Kenworthy used ‘hundreds of thousands of feet in film” to record the local critter population. Their work was not without some adventures.
Their filming technique may have been a bit more ‘hands on’ than what is now used. One day, when they were out digging for tarantulas, a local rancher started after them with a scattergun. As soon as he discovered what they were looking for he left, telling them “Brother, you can have all you find.”
There was the snarling bobcat that ran up a saguaro, after they had chased it around the desert. One version of the movie dvd has a depiction of such an incident on the cover, although it looks like a javelina was doing the chasing. A highlight of the film was the battle between the tarantula wasp and the tarantula.
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Other close encounters occurred when Kenworthy’s daughter suffered a scorpion bite as she put on her shoe. And Kenworthy placed his hand within inches of a resting rattlesnake, but fortunately he escaped being bit.
The movie went on to win a Best Documentary Oscar. It also has been selected to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Here is more information and some photos from “The Living Desert.”
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