M.A. Wetherell

(b. Bodmin, Cornwall, 1883 – d. Johannesburg, 25/02/1939). According to Thelma Gutsche, Marmaduke Arundel Wetherell was born in India and went to England to take up acting as a profession, while the Encyclopedia of British Film gives his birthplace as Leeds (1886) and Rachel Low his birth year as 1884. In fact, he seems to have been born in 1883 in Bodmin, Cornwall. Prior to the outbreak of World War I he was a frontier policeman in the Bechuanaland Protectorate and had a stab at farming in Rhodesia (his son Ian was born in 1910 in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia) but by 1912 he was part of Leonard Rayne’s repertory company, which had been touring South Africa. Shortly afterwards he started acting in films, mostly for African Film Productions. These included Harold M. Shaw’s De Voortrekkers (1916) and The Rose of Rhodesia (1918), as well as Joseph Albrecht’s Isban / The Buried City (1920) and Swallow (1922) for Leander de Cordova. Back in England he resumed his acting career. He also succeeded in raising money for his own production of David Livingstone (1925) and returned to South Africa to shoot on location. When, in 1933, a soundtrack was added to the film, the American distributors elected to call the reissue Stanley. Livingstone was followed by his version of Robinson Crusoe (1927) and two features with World War I settings, namely The Somme (1927), a documentary reconstruction of the battle, and Victory (1928), a romantic drama, both photographed by the great Freddie Young. He also produced four more documentaries with an African background, namely Adventure (1925), Wanderlust (1930), Land of Zinj (6 one-reelers) (1933) and Safari (1937). He died on 25 February 1939 before a projected film on the life of Paul Kruger could commence production. Another project that fell through was a 1927 film on the life of T.E. Lawrence, to be shot by Freddie Young, who later photographed David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. There is also a copy of a unproduced script entitled "The tavern of the sea" in the National Archive in Pretoria. Ironically his biggest coup only came to light in 1975, when it was revealed that he had been behind the 1934 appearance of a famous (faked) photograph of the Loch Ness monster that was published in the Daily Mail. He was married to Helene Humble and also had a stepson, Christian Spurling, from his wife’s previous marriage.