In 1935, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s niece Leila Roosevelt Denis and her husband Armand Denis, embarked on a journey across Africa in a Dodge car, starting in Belgium, driving across France and Spain, to Spanish Morocco, and then driving the full length of the continent southward. Leila Roosevelt had previously driven 24,000 miles around the world in 1933-34. The trip was made with Dodge trucks carrying cameras and Dodge cars. “Wheels Across Africa” is a record of that trip, released by Dodge as a promotion in 1936. The pair also made “Wheels Across India” which is also part of the Periscope Film archive.
This film includes rare footage of the French Foreign Legion.
Armand Georges Denis (2 December 1896 – 15 April 1971) was a Belgian-born documentary filmmaker. After several decades of pioneering work in filming and presenting the ethnology and wildlife of remote parts of Africa and Asia, he became best known in Britain as the director and co-presenter of natural history programmes on television in the 1950s and 1960s, with his second wife Michaela.
Denis married André Roosevelt’s daughter Leila (1906-1976) who was fourteeen years younger than him; they went on to have four children (Rene, David, Armand & Heidi Ann). In 1934-35, sponsored by the Belgian government, the couple travelled to the (then) Belgian Congo with the cinematographer Leroy G. Phelps, to record sound film material suitable for use in African movies. They recorded a wide variety of footage, including the first film of the music and dances of the Mangbetu and Tutsi (Watusi) peoples. The soundtracks were released as commercial recordings, and the movie material, from the Congo and the Sahara, was edited for release as Wheels Across Africa in 1936, and as Dark Rapture in 1938.
Armand and Leila continued to work together on short documentaries through the late 1930s, and in 1944 put together the movie Dangerous Journey covering their travels in Africa, India and Burma.
However, in 1948, Armand Denis met British dress designer Michaela Holdsworth in New York. They began an affair and, after he and Leila divorced, Armand and Michaela married in Bolivia.
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example like: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
