ABC’s pioneering travelogue / adventure program “Bold Adventure” presented stories from all over the world to a rapt audience in the mid-1950s. Equipped with 16mm movie cameras, various adventurers journeyed to remote or interesting locations all over the world, then returned and presented their stories. Host John Stephenson presented each episode, and prompted the guest to provide commentary and answer questions. In this episode, Eric Pavel and his wife travel to Ecuador, South America and into the Andes and Amazon Jungle. There they interact with and document two tribes, the Tsáchila tribe, also known as Colorados, and Jivaro tribe.
The host John Stephenson introduces the adventurer couple, Eric Pavel and his wife and co-producer Maria “Maita” Pavel. The couple cross a log on donkeys (00:30). Jivaro people dance around a pole. The Colorado people help someone off a horse. Eric is interviewed on the UCLA campus. Animal skins and tribal artifacts from around the world adorn the Pavel living room in San Clemente, California (2:21). They ride into the Andes on mules. Close ups of the Colorado people (3:35). Their faces are painted with black lines. A woman rocks her baby. A little girl plays with her puppy. Another girl feeds her large pet rat (5:15). His wife sits under Elephant Ear Leaf. She climbs on the back of a Colorado man’s horse. The wife holds a baby and sits with the children (6:11). A girl opens a plantain with her teeth. The women boil the plantain in a pot over fire to make soup. A man cuts down sugar cane with a machete. They work the sugar cane in a wooden sugar press that dates back to the 16th century (7:25). Eric drinks alcohol made from the sugar cane with two men on a log. A man picks achiote seeds, close up of the seeds that provides red dye for the Colorado’s body paint (8:29). A man mixes the achiote with clay and rubs it in lines on his body an on his hair to form a hard cap that will repel rain. Two men play a marimba (8:50). Children start to dance, soon the adults join them encouraged by the cane sugar liquor. Mountain peaks of the Andes and waterfalls. A jeep drives down a dirt road overlooking the Pastaza River, which flows from Ecuador into the Amazon Basin. They ride mules through the jungle. The Ecuadorian Army sees them off in a canoe (11:47). Aerial views of the Amazon Jungle and rivers. Termites in their hill protecting their queen. A woman holds a tucan (13:41). A centipede fights a mouse (13:54). A woman plays with a kinkajou, it eats a banana on it’s back. A monkey eats a banana. A little boy rides a giant Amazon tortoise. A Jivaro man chops down a tree with a hatchet (15:20). Eric explains their practice of head hunting and head shrinking which is outlawed. A woman harvests yuca root, also known as tapioca root (16:30). The women cover boiling pot of yuca root with banana leaves. A man paints his face using a bamboo stick and the achiote seeds. A woman washes her child by spitting water into her hand and wiping him, his father then paints his face (17:41). Shot of a wild chicken. A man makes blow darts by sharpening bamboo, then wrapping silk around one end and dipping the other end into poison called curare (19:00). A bird is hit with a dart and falls out of the sky. A man holds up an ocelot skin. A woman serves Chicha, a liquor made from the yuca root (20:03). The men and women walk out of their separate exits of their house. The chief holds up a shrunken head (20:56). He puts it on a pole and they dance around it. A man plays a flute. John Stephenson and Eric Pavel wrap up the film back on the UCLA campus (22:38). They speak about the five missionaries killed by the Huaorani tribe the pervious year. Title reads “Produced by Julian Lesser.”
Eric and Maria Pavel lived in San Clemente, CA, where they worked together to produce documentaries. They spent a life of traveling throughout the world filming and producing 16mm cultural documentary films, which were presented on stage, and TV, including on National Geographic.
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