In the fall of 1926 Mac­Mur­ray and his wife trav­eled through South China and to the Philip­pines, where they vis­ited Gov­er­nor Gen­eral Leonard Wood in Manila and Camp John Hay in Baguio. A trip to Bon­toc, where the Mac­Mur­rays stayed with gov­er­nor John C. Early, became the high­light of the jour­ney. Fea­tured below is a film of this trip from Baguio to Bon­toc. It con­tains rare footage of the local Igorots, who danced for Mac­Mur­ray dur­ing a fes­ti­val that Early orga­nized in honor of his guests on Octo­ber 9, 1926. The sec­ond film was shot dur­ing the boat trip from Shang­hai to Hongkong, pre­sum­ably pre­ced­ing their visit to the Philip­pines. The last film that is fea­tured con­tains footage of a trip to Nanking in 1929.

The film opens with footage that was shot along the trail from Baguio to Bon­toc. Mac­Mur­ray wrote his mother in detail about his visit to the Philip­pines on Octo­ber 8 and Decem­ber 12, 1926. A descrip­tion of the Igorot fes­ti­val on Octo­ber 9 can be found In the sec­ond let­ter, which Mac­Mur­ray wrote after he had returned to Peking and seen the film. His account of the dances that he filmed explains some of the footage. An old man, who was “a lit­tle drunk,” appeared in every dance, “whether of the sea­soned war­riors or of the maid­ens of the vil­lage.” Mac­Mur­ray was impressed with the tact and con­sid­er­a­tion that the Igorots dis­played when get­ting him out of the way. He also described a “par­tic­u­larly uprightly and engag­ing head-hunter,” who taught the “towns­men” the dance of another tribe, which he had recently seen.

A photo album of the trip to can be found in MacMurray’s papers (box 157). Descrip­tions of some of the pho­tos may be found on post­cards that he printed of the neg­a­tives and sent to his mother (box 26).

 

Accord­ing to a list of scenes that was found among MacMurray’s reels (see SouthChinalistofscenes.pdf), the footage of this film was orig­i­nally attached to that of a fam­ily vaca­tion in Chefoo. Pre­sum­ably, the film fea­tured here cov­ers the trip through South China that pre­ceded the visit to the Philip­pines. It begins with lotus ponds at Hang­chow (Hangzhou) and is fol­lowed by footage shot aboard a ship between the har­bors of Shang­hai and Hong Kong. In between both har­bors Mac­Mur­ray lists Amoy Har­bor, Can­ton Har­bor with the HMS Sacra­mento, and scenes along the West River, includ­ing a pagoda on the inner reach and the USS Pamfanga.

 

The trip to Nanking, dur­ing which Mac­Mur­ray shot this footage, pre­ceded his visit to Nanking to attend the rein­ter­ment of Sun Yat-sen on June 1, 1929 (see our pre­vi­ous post). The film begins with a brief train scene and footage shot aboard a boat, pos­si­bly across the Yangtze River between the train sta­tion at Pukou and Nanking. This is fol­lowed by shots of the new mau­soleum for Sun Yat-sen, which appears not to be fin­ished yet. The film ends with a train being guarded by a sol­dier, fol­lowed by men car­ry­ing lug­gage and peo­ple hold­ing uniden­ti­fied banners.

 

Pre­vi­ous posts about the films of John Van Antwerp MacMurray: