They married adventure

by Pascal James Imperato

Martin and Osa Johnson thrilled American audiences of the 1920s and 1930s with their remarkable movies of faraway places, exotic peoples, and the dramatic spectacle of African wildlife. Their own lives were as exciting as the movies they made - sailing through the South Sea Islands with Jack and Charmian London, dodging big game at African waterholes, flying small planes over the veldt, taking millionaires on safari. Osa Johnson's ghostwritten autobiography, I Married. Adventure, became a national bestseller. The 1940 film version was billed as "the story of World Exploration's First Lady, whose indomitable daring would be stayed by neither snarling lion nor crouching leopard, tropic tempest nor savage tribesman!" Heroes to millions, this handsome pair from Kansas seemed to embody glamor, daring, and the all-American ideal of self-reliance. Probing beneath the surface of the Johnsons' public image, Pascal and Eleanor Imperato explore. The more human side of the couple's lives - and way