Faking It With Frank "Bring Em Back Alive" Buck

I wrote a bit, yesterday, about the wildlife and nature fakery occasionally employed by everyone from David Attenborough to Marlin Perkins, and from Marty Stouffer to Walt Disney.

One fellow I left out was Frank Buck who was an animal dealer and adventurer who brought back a lot of zoo animals in the 1920s and 30s, even as he puffed up his "Bring 'Em Back Alive" exploits with grand tales and even staged film, as above.

This Frank Buck film was shot in 1931 or 1932, and its making was immediately met with cries of hoax.

In response, Modern Mechanix sent out a gullible reporter who documented how the "real live animals" were filmed.  You can read his report here, but upon close reading you will find it is a captured and boxed python and a captured and boxed tiger. 

Frank Buck and his photographer (both of which had every reason to lie) claim the Python and the Tiger were boxed after the battle, but is there anyone who seriously believes that?

I will let you judge for yourself, but please note that Frank Buck cannot help bragging about his new DeVry automatic camera which just happened to be placed perfectly, with its lens "trained on the scene to be filmed" and which got it all dead center despite the fact that the camera could only capture movement within 10 feet of dead center!

A miracle!

Or, more likely, an entirely staged "battle to the death."

Faking nature, it seems, has been going on for a pretty long time.
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