Dialogue
As if they were showing their film to a few friends in their home, the Johnsons describe their trip across the world, which begins in the South Pacific islands of Hawaii, Samoa, Australia, the Solomons (where they seek and find cannibals), and New Hebrides. Thence on to Africa via the Indian Ocean, Suez Canal, North Africa, and the Nile River to lion country in Tanganyika. (They are briefly joined in Khartum by George Eastman and Dr. Al Kayser.) Taking a safari in the Congo, the Johnsons see animals and pygmies, and travel back to Uganda, British East Africa, and Kenya.
Director
At the beginning, Thirty Years of Motion Pictures (The March of the Movies) was merely a presentation/lecture given by Otto Nelson at two National Board of Review conferences, in 1925 and 1926, under the title Early History and Growth of the Motion Picture Industry. These proved so successful that work on a film version began, with historian Terry Ramsaye (who around the same time published the seminal study A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture) coming onboard the production.
