This 1950s film from Sterling Television “Dear Diary” — apparently part of a series — features journalist Inga Rode. It was directed by Roy Creveling and produced by Jackson B. Pokress. The film shows Rode’s journey to meet Attilio Gatti, the adventurer and explorer, at his home at 66 Park Avenue. (This site is now the Kitano Hotel). At 3:00, some of the books written by Gatti are shown on a shelf, at at 3:40 Gatti shows off his vast filing cabinet system filled with photos and documents. At 6:05 Gatti introduces his assistant Mr. Jackson, who shows Rode some of Mr. Gatti’s documentary movies shot in Africa. They include images of both wildlife and African tribal culture, and hunting footage of an Emu (12:40).
Attilio Gatti (Voghera (Lombardy, Italy) 10 July 1896 – Derby Line (Vermont, USA) 1 July 1969; 72 years old) was an Italian-born explorer, author and documentary film maker who travelled extensively through Africa in the first half of the 20th century.
Gatti, a member of the Società Reale Italiana di Geografia ed Antropologia, was among the last great safari expedition men. He led thirteen expeditions to Africa from 1922 on. Broke after the financial disaster of his 7th African expedition, Gatti settled in the USA (1930). His (second) spouse Ellen accompagnied him from his 8th expedition on. They did the 10th expedition (in Belgian Congo, 1938-1940) and the 11th expedition (“To the Mountains of the Moon” i.e. the Rwenzori Mountains at the border of Uganda, 1947-1948) with a caravan of motor vehicles, including a fantastic motor home, the 9 ton “Jungle Yacht”, especially build for their expeditions by International Harvester in Chicago.
Gatti became one of the first Europeans to see and capture the fabled okapi and the bongo, a brown lyre-horned antelope with white stripes. He was an enthusiastic amateur radio operator (his callsign in the Belgian Congo was OQ5ZZ) and he tried to operate from the Congo deep inland regions. Commander Gatti, known by the Africans as “Bwana Makubwa”, knew the Pygmy peoples of the Congo very well. He took good photographs of them and of the Watussi and the Masai. He met an important female python shaman and became experienced with African magic.
The books and many articles that Gatti wrote about the native peoples he met and the no less than 53.000 photos he took on his expeditions, contain invaluable scientific and anthropological material about an entire world which has since disappeared.
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