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A 1939 film that was directed by Henry King and stars Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan and Cedric Hardwicke. Tracy stars as Stanley, a newspaper man who at first is seen talking to the chief of a bunch of hostile Indians and Walter Brennan is his guide. Tracy is then asked by his editor to go into Africa to find Livingstone, but they don't even know if he's alive. The next half hour is basically spent Tracy and Brennan spending over a year just trying to find Livingstone. When they finally do, they're surprised to see that Livingstone doesn't want to leave and Livingstone thought they were coming to help him. I love black and white movies but i thought that this movie would of been better if it had been done in color like Northwest Passage or Jesse James. Both Tracy and Brennan do a good job and Hardwicke also does a good job as Livingstone.

If any of you have read some of my reviews of other films, you'll note that I've said that Jim Bowie of all the colorful frontier characters in American history gets the biggest whitewash in films. The man was a notorious scoundrel and half of this film is devoted to another scoundrel.

Henry M. Stanley was just such a scoundrel. The film does not go at all into his later life as a paid shill of King Leopold of Belgium and his brutally administered regime in the Belgian Congo. Nor does it mention when he came to America, he enlisted and deserted from both sides of the Civil War.

Stanley found his calling as a reporter for the New York Herald where on the strength of his reporting on the American Indian wars, editor James Gordon Bennett decided he was the guy to send to Africa and scoop the English papers in a search for famed missionary Dr. David Livingstone.

Whatever else he was, Stanley was a brave man and his explorations into Africa added considerable knowledge for the Caucasian world about that continent.

As for Livingstone, by all indications he was a Christian who did walk the walk in his beliefs in life and probably would have been aghast at Stanley's later activities with the Belgian Congo.

Spencer Tracy plays Stanley as if he was doing one of his roughneck characters who finds the piety of a Father Flanagan in the African jungle. Cedric Hardwicke is a very proper and pious David Livingstone. Hardwicke's portrayal is the truth and Tracy does put his characterization of Stanley across, false though it is in real life.

This was Spencer Tracy's only film away from MGM for the time he was under contract to them. It was for his former studio 20th Century Fox and he certainly never got as big a budget on his previous films with them except possibly Dante's Inferno.

Though the film takes incredible liberties with the facts, fans of Spencer Tracy might like this story of a scoundrel in search of a saint in the jungle.

A brash young newspaper reporter is sent into the unexplored regions of Central Africa to find a highly revered missionary-explorer who has seemingly disappeared. This is the account of their meeting - a fateful encounter which would not only transform the young man, but would profoundly change the history of Africa itself. This is the story of STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE.

Here is one of the excellent adventure films from the golden year of 1939 & it is a very enjoyable evening's entertainment. More than just that, though. It is rare for Hollywood movies of the period to show actual spiritual epiphanies in the lives of their protagonists. That STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE makes that significant attempt only adds to its prestige.

Spencer Tracy does an admirable job as Stanley, who - in the movie, at least - is basically moved or motivated by the whims of others. The two men who control his destiny, his publisher and Livingstone, could not be more different; yet each help prepare him for a profound spiritual turnabout in his life. Stanley's infatuation with a pretty English woman he meets in Zanzibar is also destined to lead only to inspiration, not love. Tracy's great skill as an actor helps make all these changes in Stanley's life clear to the audience. His delivery of one of the most famous greetings in history - `Dr. Livingstone, I presume?' - is perfect, spoken with just the right mixture of relief, awe & absolute weariness.

Walter Brennan has great fun with the role of an old Indian scout sent along to protect Stanley. Brennan - like Tracy, already a double Oscar winner - effortlessly walks away with several of his scenes. His colorful performance is a good counterpoint to Tracy's more mannered interpretation.

Best of all is the quiet, understated performance of Sir Cedric Hardwicke as the saintly Livingstone. With his comely, calm voice, Sir Cedric, who does not appear until late in the film, easily captures the attention of the viewer. He makes his character come alive and helps us understand why Livingstone was so important and revered a figure in the 19th Century. He is the very picture of vital, vibrant, muscular Christianity. Leading his native converts in a spirited rendition of `Onward! Christian Soldiers,' Sir Cedric gives the film its most delightful moments. (This rousing hymn, with words by the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, was not set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan until 1872, so it's not possible Livingstone could have sung it in 1871. A small quibble - it's still a great scene.)

The rest of the fine cast - Richard Greene, Charles Coburn, Henry Hull & especially Henry Travers - offer splendid support in small roles.

To their great credit, 20th Century Fox actually sent a crew to British East Africa to film authentic safari footage which was then interspersed with shots of the actors. These on-location scenes, under the supervision of chief white hunter Captain A. J. Klein, add a great deal of veracity to the movie, providing views of natives, wildlife & scenery not possible to replicate in a Hollywood studio. (Some of the resulting rear projection shots, with Tracy or Brennan superimposed over the real African film, are rather annoying in their fakery, but this is a very small irritation.)

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As STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE deals with the lives of two men who had a profound impact upon the Victorian world, a little check of the actual historical facts is in order.

David Livingstone was born to a poor Scots family in 1813. One of seven children, Livingston's family lived in a single room atop a tenement for laborers. Although working 14-hour days in a cotton mill, he eked out the time to educate himself. Becoming a committed Christian early in life, by the age of 20 he had determined to become a medical missionary. After studying in Glasglow, he was sent by the London Missionary Society, at the age of 27, to South Africa in 1841.

Upon arriving, Livingstone walked the 600 miles to his mission station on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. He spent the next eight years very hard at work there and at his new mission at the headwaters of the Limpopo River, marrying a missionary's daughter and beginning to raise a young family. Then, feeling God wanted a change in his life, Livingstone began to explore the interior of the continent. If proper maps could be made of this vast unknown territory, he reasoned, Africa could be opened to missionaries, educators, scientists & geographers - all enhancing civilization, spreading Christianity & bringing about an end to the hideous Arab slave trade.

Thus began a life of trekking that would take Livingstone over 29,000 miles. In 1849 & again in 1851 (this time with his family) Livingstone crossed the Kalahari, making contact with the natives of the Zambezi region. Sending his family back to Britain in 1852, Livingstone spent the next four years trying to find a connection between the Zambezi and either African coast, in the hopes of opening up the interior to civilizing commerce. Although he failed in his quest, Livingstone became the first European to traverse the entire width of the Southern continent and to see the tremendous falls on the Zambezi, which he named Victoria Falls.

Returning to England in 1856 to much laud & acclaim, he was given an audience with the Queen and met with enthusiastic crowds wherever he appeared. His book, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, was a bestseller.

Back to Africa in 1858, (with an official appointment as Her Majesty's Consul for the East Coast of Africa) Livingstone's next expedition - up the Zambezi by steamboat - was met with tragedy. Members of the party, including Mrs. Livingstone in 1862, died of malaria and the river proved ultimately unnavigable. Livingstone was ordered home to London in 1864.

Livingstone remained a hero to the public and the publication of his new book, Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi and Its Tributaries, only enhanced his reputation. In 1866, under the auspices of the Royal Geographic Society and with the new appointment as British Consul for Central Africa, Livingstone began his last great quest - the search for the true source of the Nile. Spending the next seven years in fruitless wandering, and appalled by the sufferings of the slaves he encountered, Livingstone was broken in health and out of communication with England for nearly five years. There was enormous public interest as to his fate.

It was at this point that Stanley tracked him down, in the village of Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, in the Autumn of 1871. After exploring near the Lake together, Stanley left in March of 1872. Livingstone stayed behind, but continued his search, although in very ill health. He died while kneeling at prayer, on May 1, 1873, at the age of only 60. As per his request, his heart was reverently buried in Africa. His porters carried his mummified body nearly a thousand miles to the sea, where it was returned to London. On April 18, 1874, Dr. David Livingstone was buried in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph, which includes a verse from St. John's Gospel, reads `Brought by faithful hands over land and sea, here rests David Livingstone, missionary, traveller, philanthropist, born March 19, 1813, at Blantyre, Lanarkshire, died May 1, 1873, at Chitambo's village, Ulala. Other sheep have I which are not of this fold; them also I must bring.'

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Stanley was not, as many believe, American. Neither was he English, as the movie oddly insists. In fact he was Welsh and he was born John Rowlands in 1841, to unmarried parents. After a wretchedly humiliating youth spent in a workhouse, he sailed as a cabin boy in 1859 to New Orleans. Taking the name of an early benefactor, Henry Stanley managed to fight on both sides of the American Civil War before being discharged for dysentery.

After spending some time on Atlantic merchant ships, Stanley cultivated his flair for writing and became a newspaper correspondent in 1866, traveling with the U. S. Cavalry in its conflicts with Midwest Indians. In 1867 Stanley joined the New York Herald and soon accompanied the British in their successful excursion against the self-proclaimed Emperor Theodore II of Ethiopia.

From 1869 to 1871, Stanley journeyed for the Herald to Suez, the Crimea, Persia & India before undertaking the assignment to find Livingstone. (It was on this expedition that Stanley began the harsh, often cruel punishment of African resistance which would stain his reputation.) The film is correct in depicting the British geographical hierarchy's disinclination to initially believe his claims as to finding the old doctor. Stanley's 1872 book, How I Found Livingstone became a bestseller and answered his critics.

After reporting on the 1873 British assault against the Ashanti Kingdom on the Gold Coast, Stanley began his most ambitious & dangerous expedition yet: to fill in the blank spaces left by Livingstone's death in the knowledge of Central African topography. From 1874 until 1877, Stanley traveled across the entire width of the continent from East to West, beginning in Zanzibar and finishing up at the mouth of the Congo. In betwixt, he circumnavigated & explored Lakes Victoria & Tanganyika, and traveled the lengths of the Lualaba & Congo Rivers. He survived a horrendous cannibal attack, virulent disease and the drowning & desertion of many of his native bearers. He once again showed his ruthlessness in dealing with defiance, at one point shooting dozens of villagers that showed hostility. Of the 359 individuals that started the trip with Stanley, only 108 finished it. His 1878 book, Through The Dark Continent, answered many questions in European minds about African geography. The major colonizing powers were not slow to take notice.

In 1879, Stanley undertook the interests of Belgian King Leopold II and spent 5 years helping to open the Congo region to commerce, as described in his 1885 book, The Congo And The Founding Of The Free State.

Working for the British Crown, Stanley undertook the dangerous mission in 1888-89 to resupply & rescue the British Pasha of the Egyptian Sudan, who was surrounded & threatened by the fundamentalist Islamic forces of the mad Khalifa. This assignment, although with great loss of life, proved successful, as Stanley described in yet another book, In Darkest Africa, 1890.

Having lived through enough thrills for ten men, Stanley married in 1890 and began a series of lecture tours. In 1895 he entered Parliament and made his last tour of Africa in 1897, which resulted in his final book, Through South Africa, 1898.

Henry Morton Stanley was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1899 for his services to Britain. Sir Henry died in 1904 & was also buried in Westminster Abbey.

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Together, Livingstone & Stanley hold the greatest responsibility for the exploration of Central Africa. The knowledge they gave to the world promoted Christianity in the region and helped to crush the slave trade. They also initiated the Scramble for Africa, in which the major European powers all took a chunk of the continent for themselves. This huge colonial land grab was completed by the time of Stanley's death. However, Livingstone's beneficent treatment of the Africans and his championing of their rights in no small measure helped directly influence their eventual nationalistic drives for self-determination & independence.

Stanley and Livingstone is an elaborate 1939 American adventure film directed by Henry King and Otto Brower. It is loosely based on the true story of determinated Welsh reporter Sir Henry M. Stanley's (Spencer Tracy) quest to find Dr. David Livingstone (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) , a Scottish missionary presumed lost in Africa, who finally met on November 10, 1871. This is the entertaining , attractive and legendary true-story of detailing the obsessive search for find a missionary by a savage land American . As journalist Tracy sets out into darkest Africa to locate a long lost British explorer . As Stanley carries out a tumultuous expedition that gains new life in this handsomely produced account . All the world no show like this! He succeeded in the maddest quest in History...because one girl believed in him! A woman he never could have . Inspired him to complete the greatest adventure the world has ever kown ! "Find Livingstone" The command that sent Stanley on the most stirring adventure ever known! The most heroic exploit the world has known !. Into the perilous wilderness of unknown Africa...one white man ventured to seek another! Heat...fever...cannibals...jungle...nothing could stop him!

This is a spectacular film set at turn of century with beautifully understated interpretations , containing adventure , action , romance , thrills and historical events .The classic Hollywood kistch version of the Victorian legend-based-on-fact . Being a lavish and dramatically solid fictionalized history . The interesting story of two strangers who made good friends and being competently performed . Spencer Tracy plays Stanley , while Cedric Hardwicke portrays Livingstone. Other cast members include Nancy Kelly, Richard Greene, Walter Brennan, Charles Coburn , Henry Travers and Henry Hull. Special mention for starring Spencer Tracy who's magnificent , as usual and low-key . The motion picture was competently directed by Henry Koster .

The film is based on actual events from these two great explorers : Stanley travelled to Zanzibar in March 1871, later claiming that he outfitted an expedition with 192 porters and many of his porters deserted, and the rest were decimated by tropical diseases. Stanley found David Livingstone on 10 November 1871 in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania. He later claimed to have greeted him with the now-famous line, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" However, this line does not appear in his journal from the time-the two pages directly following the recording of his initial spotting of Livingstone were torn out of the journal at some point-and it is likely that Stanley simply embellished the pithy line sometime afterwards. Neither man mentioned it in any of the letters they wrote at this time, and Livingstone tended to instead recount the reaction of his servant, Susi, who cried out: "An Englishman coming! I see him! . Stanley joined Livingstone in exploring the region, finding that there was no connection between Lake Tanganyika and the Nile. On his return, he wrote a book about his experiences . In 1874, the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph financed Stanley on another expedition to Africa. His ambitious objective was to complete the exploration and mapping of the Central African Great Lakes and rivers, in the process circumnavigating Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and locating the source of the Nile. Between 1875 and 1876 Stanley succeeded in the first part of his objective, establishing that Lake Victoria had only a single outlet - the one discovered by John Hanning Speke on 21 July 1862 and named Ripon Falls. If this was not the Nile's source, then the separate massive northward flowing river called by Livingstone, the Lualaba, and mapped by him in its upper reaches, might flow on north to connect with the Nile via Lake Albert and thus be the primary source. Between November 1876 and August 1877, Stanley and his men navigated the Lualaba up to and beyond the point where it turned sharply westward, away from the Nile, identifying itself as the Congo River. Stanley and his men reached the Portuguese outpost of Boma, around 100 kilometres from the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic Ocean, after 999 days on 9 August 1877. Stanley's diary show that he started with 228 people and reached Boma with 114 survivors, with he being the only European left alive out of four. Stanley was approached by King Leopold II of the Belgians, the monarch who had already established the International African Association (a front organization for the later International Association of the Congo) at the Brussels Geographic Conference of 1876. Stanley first hoped to continue his pioneering work in Africa under the British flag. But neither the Foreign Office nor Edward, the Prince of Wales, felt called to receive Stanley after the many rumors of his looting and killing in the interior of the African continent. Leopold II eagerly received a disenchanted Stanley at his palace in June 1878, and signed a contract with him.

Spencer Tracy is on top form in this story of the British-born American journalist Henry Stanley who is despatched by his editor into the uncharted reaches of the African interior to track down the famed explorer David Livingstone, rumours of whose death having been reported by reputable British newspapers. Armed with plenty of money and his reliable sidekick "Slocum" (Walter Brennan) they set off and with some help from the rather fever-ridden British consul in Zanzibar find themselves crossing Africa staring the most beautiful and dangerous travails head on. The screenplay is based in fact, as we all know, so there is little jeopardy in regard to the results of their trekking, but the film takes it's time to develop a bit more of a look into what motivates both men, and how these motivations evolve as their exposure to the dark content and it's peoples moulds and changes opinions and priorities. Sir Cedric Hardwicke is convincing as the missionary explorer who has an innate, if middle-class, decency about him, as is Charles Coburn (Lord Tyce), the publisher of a rival newspaper all too eager for Stanley to fall flat. Though one could never describe him as versatile, the usually charismatic Brennan delivers consistently too. The on-location filming gives us a grand scale vista of their escapades and Tracy and Hardwicke's thoughtful and considered delivery makes this well worth a watch.