Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Hey there, signature Diana saying song welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. I did used to have a little tune
Speaker 1: that I would do for everyone I worked with at
Speaker 1: the Highland Bakery. It was a short lived thing because
Speaker 1: I think that musical. But it's like your version of
Speaker 1: giving someone a nickname is yeah. I'd be like Maggy,
Speaker 1: yeah you know, or something sweet? What what what was yours
Speaker 1: for me? Oh? You never had one? Sorry, babe? Should
Speaker 1: I make up one for you? Now? Would that make
Speaker 1: you feel better? I mean it doesn't feel as genuine.
Speaker 1: I'll go no. I feel like I feel like I
Speaker 1: could come up with one really fast. Let's hear it. Eli, Okay,
Speaker 1: how's that all right? You lucked out? Because that was
Speaker 1: very good. It kind of sounds like a gum commercial,
Speaker 1: which is all I ever really wanted for myself. Car
Speaker 1: something jingle anyway, go what a week? We got to
Speaker 1: go see some friends again. Last night we Scream five
Speaker 1: for five cream as the local says, that's great. I
Speaker 1: love the Scream movies. We're not big horror people, no,
Speaker 1: especially me. I'm I'm a bit of a woosh. I
Speaker 1: don't like to stress myself out with my entertainment. You're
Speaker 1: stressed out enough with my life, you know, getting carved
Speaker 1: up and running for their lives. Well, I'm glad we're
Speaker 1: talking about movies, because that's kind of what we're talking
Speaker 1: about today, is somebody who made a lot of silent films.
Speaker 1: I'm travel documentaries specifically, which we also have a lot
Speaker 1: of interest in doing one day in our lives, because
Speaker 1: today we are talking about a Loha wander Well. She
Speaker 1: was yearning to travel when she answered an ad looking
Speaker 1: for a lady with brains, beauty and breaches to rush
Speaker 1: it through unexplored terrain all over the world and make
Speaker 1: silent film travelogs of their adventures. Now, this trip would
Speaker 1: change her life forever. She would become in nationally famous
Speaker 1: as the first woman to drive across the world, and
Speaker 1: she would meet her husband, the leader of the expedition,
Speaker 1: Walter wander Well, listen to all. This story has everything.
Speaker 1: It's got a pants wearing adventurous a fake dad, a
Speaker 1: plane crash in Brazil, Hollywood, hob Nobbin, j Edgar Hoover,
Speaker 1: and even a murder mystery. Yes, let's go. Hey, their
Speaker 1: French come listen Well, Elia and Diana got some stories
Speaker 1: to tell. There's no matchmaking a romantic tips. It's just
Speaker 1: about ridiculous relationshift. A lover might be any type of
Speaker 1: person at all, and abstract cons at a concrete wall.
Speaker 1: But if there's a story with the second plant, ridiculous
Speaker 1: romance A production of iHeart Radio Aloha. Wander Well was
Speaker 1: born in dressed Galcia Hall in nineteen o six in Winnipeg, Canada,
Speaker 1: and her father, Herbert Hall, joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force
Speaker 1: at the start of the Great War in teen, and
Speaker 1: then he was transferred to the British Army when he
Speaker 1: was seriously injured in nineteen sixteen. It just his mother, Margaret,
Speaker 1: put her in a boarding school and she took herself
Speaker 1: and her youngest daughter to England like hang out with Herbert.
Speaker 1: In seventeen, Herbert died in action in Apra, and even
Speaker 1: though she was only twelve years old at the time,
Speaker 1: it just traveled from her boarding school in Canada to
Speaker 1: England by rail and steamship, all by herself, so that
Speaker 1: she could be with her mother in this time of grief. Jeez,
Speaker 1: when I was twelve, okay, you know, well, I rode
Speaker 1: my bike around the neighborhood. But I feel like I
Speaker 1: did very little on my own. I think a steamship
Speaker 1: was out of the question. Can I ride my bike
Speaker 1: down to Mike's house? Sure? Can I take a steamship
Speaker 1: to Canada? Ask your father? Now? When she got to England,
Speaker 1: it just made a shocking discovery. Herbert Hall failed to
Speaker 1: mention it dress in his will, and her mother was
Speaker 1: forced to admit that Herbert had been his stepfather all along.
Speaker 1: Her real father was a man named Robert Welch, and
Speaker 1: according to The New York Times, he died when she
Speaker 1: was only two years old. But I feel like it's
Speaker 1: still shitty that he left her out of his will
Speaker 1: because he was still her dad like most of her life. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so weird choice on Herbert's part. And you know she
Speaker 1: just have Did he just have this disdain for her
Speaker 1: her whole life? I don't think so, because in her
Speaker 1: autobiography she's like, oh, we had a love and laughter
Speaker 1: filled childhood and everything was just great. All this time.
Speaker 1: He's thinking, in the back of his mind, Okay, this
Speaker 1: girl's great, but I ain't gonna leave her none of
Speaker 1: my money. They're not a single Canadian dollar. That doesn't
Speaker 1: seem very nice. I know, very young Canadian un Canadian,
Speaker 1: of so that was a shocker, and uh, it just
Speaker 1: definitely was like at that point, I kind of felt
Speaker 1: like I didn't belong anywhere in the world. So she
Speaker 1: was feeling a bit unmoored by this, of course, and
Speaker 1: like disconnected from her childhood and everything. But at that point,
Speaker 1: Margaret it sent both of her daughters to like a
Speaker 1: stuffy French convent in nice to be educated, and then
Speaker 1: she went to the front where she was searching in
Speaker 1: vain for Herbert's body. Just really sad. So in dress,
Speaker 1: this girl is like nearly six feet tall, and she's gorgeous.
Speaker 1: She's got a total movie star face. She's got curly,
Speaker 1: dark blonde hair, she's got big, wide doe eyes, very beautiful,
Speaker 1: something of a tomboy. Though. She was really restless, and
Speaker 1: she was very outspoken, so at the convent, you know,
Speaker 1: didn't quite fit in. She was always kind of annoying
Speaker 1: the nuns by demanding things like you need to give
Speaker 1: me a room with a window that will open so
Speaker 1: I can let the breeze in, which I mean reasonable demand,
Speaker 1: I think, but the nuns obviously weren't used to hear
Speaker 1: in that kind of talk. A breeze the Lord doesn't
Speaker 1: send a breathe. The Lord wants you to suffer in
Speaker 1: the She would also speak up on behalf of her
Speaker 1: class mates, which obviously the nuns don't like either. Not
Speaker 1: big on challenging authority, those nuns not so much. But
Speaker 1: she was able to learn languages really easily. She was
Speaker 1: comfortable with English and French and Spanish and Italian. She
Speaker 1: also started to learn to drive, just very exciting because
Speaker 1: the car would have been very new at this point.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and most women didn't learn how to drive period.
Speaker 1: In fact, Idris said that she even wished she'd been
Speaker 1: born a boy so they could she could do things
Speaker 1: like drive and join the navy and travel the world.
Speaker 1: She was, also, incidentally, crossover alert here, a big fan
Speaker 1: of Collette. She read her books well. She was in
Speaker 1: France at the right time to be reading like Claudine
Speaker 1: and stuff Collecte real Hot right now amongst the tomboys
Speaker 1: and outspoken young women of the world, right all the
Speaker 1: like liberated ladies of the twenties. Well. Finally, in her
Speaker 1: chance to escape the confines of her life came in
Speaker 1: the guise of an advertisement reading Brains, Beauty and Reaches
Speaker 1: World tour of for a lucky young woman who is
Speaker 1: as clever journalist as her appearances attractive. She must forcewear
Speaker 1: skirts and incidentally marriage for at least two years and
Speaker 1: be prepared to rub it in Asia and Africa. You
Speaker 1: have to forcewear skirts and incidentally marriage, because if you
Speaker 1: get rid of those skirts, you know you ain't getting
Speaker 1: married anyway. No man marries a lady and pants. Yeah
Speaker 1: right now. This ad was Austin. Sensibly they were looking
Speaker 1: for a secretary, a driver, and a French translator, but
Speaker 1: the ad also concluded she must learn to work before
Speaker 1: and behind a movie camera camera camera brand new. We
Speaker 1: haven't learned how to pronounce it yet. Now. It just
Speaker 1: could not resist this ad. I mean it was basically
Speaker 1: written for her. I can barely resist this ad. I'm
Speaker 1: ready to bosom buddies this job. I want to show
Speaker 1: up an address and be like, I'm going to give
Speaker 1: up my skirts for this job and just put on
Speaker 1: a wing. Oh wear pets for you, hi and me?
Speaker 1: What a beautiful lady get in here. I do hate that.
Speaker 1: It's like you gotta be cute, wink wink, Like what's
Speaker 1: that got to do with anything? But whatever? She's like,
Speaker 1: look I'm cute, I'm hot, I can speak French, I
Speaker 1: know how to drive. Let me go for it. So,
Speaker 1: even though she's only sixteen years old at this point,
Speaker 1: she answered the ad and she met the expedition's leader
Speaker 1: and organizer, Captain Walter wander Well, and he met her
Speaker 1: and he was like, you know, maybe you're going to
Speaker 1: be the one to save me. Oh no, I was
Speaker 1: waiting for the oasis, because after all, I was over here,
Speaker 1: like I came in, like, go wander Well, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I wonder whall it makes more sense,
Speaker 1: That's what I was doing. Walter wander Well was a
Speaker 1: Polish national. His real name was Valerian Johann Paisynski, but
Speaker 1: he changed it because no one in America could pronounce it,
Speaker 1: and he threw in captain just for good measure. And
Speaker 1: he went beyond just the title. He actually loved to
Speaker 1: illegally wear a military uniform in public, and he got
Speaker 1: quite a few petty criminal charges throughout his life because
Speaker 1: of it, impersonating an officer and all that. He was
Speaker 1: kind of a shady character in general. He'd spent a
Speaker 1: brief time imprisoned in Atlanta during the War on suspicion
Speaker 1: of being a German spy, and he also accounts suggest
Speaker 1: that he was probably a rum runner during the Prohibition
Speaker 1: as well. So real slippery dude doing all kinds of
Speaker 1: little petty crimes getting away with it. In nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: he met a Broadway chorus girl named Nell, and he
Speaker 1: married that woman, and together they started the work around
Speaker 1: the World Education Club. According to an article on Morristown
Speaker 1: Green dot com by Jeffrey V. Moy, they vote envisioned
Speaker 1: it as a volunteer international police force that would monitor
Speaker 1: countries for signs of military build up to prevent a
Speaker 1: repeat of the atrocities and death of World War One.
Speaker 1: Interesting idea, Yeah, an international police force, right started by
Speaker 1: these two randos, like a fake captain and a Broadway
Speaker 1: chorus girl. You're going to go out and stopped the
Speaker 1: Nazis from rising, you know, they spoiler alert, They didn't
Speaker 1: know well, and like I guess this is sort of
Speaker 1: they were marching alongside like Woodrow Wilson's trying to start
Speaker 1: League of Nations, which is supposed to be you know,
Speaker 1: eventually becomes a U N And it's sort of supposed
Speaker 1: to be that kind of world police thing. So he's like,
Speaker 1: I'll help a little weird way by doing this. I
Speaker 1: don't know right well, And some people say that Walter
Speaker 1: and Nell and later Eddress who joined them were genuinely
Speaker 1: working towards peace and justice, but others say that Walter
Speaker 1: was just kind of a guy who was really good
Speaker 1: at finding money to support himself without ever actually holding
Speaker 1: down a job. So this club was just a way
Speaker 1: to get what they called volunteer cadets to fork over
Speaker 1: expensive fees that he would just use to support himself.
Speaker 1: So basically he's a con artist. Yeah, I think you're right. Well, whatever,
Speaker 1: it was, their main activity and promoting peace around the
Speaker 1: world was just going on a bunch of trips and
Speaker 1: sharing their footage with paying customers. Wait a second, we've
Speaker 1: been trying to get a travel podcast this whole time. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should just approach some world governments and say, hey,
Speaker 1: well we'll promote peace around the world. Yeah, prevent the
Speaker 1: atrocities of World War ones, World's War, World Wars one,
Speaker 1: then two. Yeah, what will you do? Well, we'll go
Speaker 1: places and we'll film what's happening there, and then people
Speaker 1: can buy that footage from us. It'll be great. They'll
Speaker 1: be like Instagram already exists, thank you all right now.
Speaker 1: But of course, at this point, you know, travel was
Speaker 1: something I was pretty out of reach for the average person.
Speaker 1: So going and the cameras knew, the cars knew, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of new things going on, so um, it
Speaker 1: was pretty special to see someone's travel foota looking at
Speaker 1: their vacation photos was like the real a real get
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to see that. And this is not
Speaker 1: long after everyone was freaking out reading books about Amelia
Speaker 1: Earhart's put them and all of them, you know, going
Speaker 1: on these global treks and explorations, and they're reading about them.
Speaker 1: But imagine if you could see it exactly. So by
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, Walter and Nell decided to do a Forge
Speaker 1: sponsored million dollar wager race around the world. Each of
Speaker 1: them would lead competing teams and see who could travel
Speaker 1: the most miles and visit the most countries, and they
Speaker 1: would film their travels. They would do screenings and lectures
Speaker 1: to pay for their time on the road, and Nell
Speaker 1: always wore pants, which she found to be quote more
Speaker 1: practical and comfortable, but it had the added bonus of
Speaker 1: always grabbing a headline was very good for headlines, because
Speaker 1: at the time, a woman wearing pants was about as
Speaker 1: weird as someone wearing a duck for a hat or
Speaker 1: something like just like, what are I seeing? Well, now
Speaker 1: I've seen everything, a woman in pants, what's next? Horses
Speaker 1: with glasses? But by two Nell and Walter were separated.
Speaker 1: Nell once said that walter quote couldn't be true to
Speaker 1: any one woman. He was the eternal mother, Oh, the
Speaker 1: looking nothing, an actress from here, a stenographer, a shop girl,
Speaker 1: Geisha's quiet Girls, dowagers from sue As to the Straits,
Speaker 1: Sebilance and back against everything in skirts had a fascination
Speaker 1: for their romantic gaptain. Oh I want you to play
Speaker 1: a scorned wife. Yeah, she's not having it. I could
Speaker 1: just see you with a little cigarette, like, get out
Speaker 1: of here. I've said it all. This is the last
Speaker 1: time you'll be cheating on Nay saying see yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know why she suddenly I gang from Hey, she
Speaker 1: went through a lot. It hurts you, hardens you. So
Speaker 1: Nell and Walter on the outs. And this is around
Speaker 1: the time that Idris saw this ad and applied got
Speaker 1: the gig. She joined the team, and Walter and Idris,
Speaker 1: we're going to be the new partnership. Their main competition
Speaker 1: was Walter's estranged wife Nell. As they traveled around the world.
Speaker 1: They have modified a nineteen seventeen Ford Model Team to
Speaker 1: have a bigger gas tank, oil tank, and even wheel
Speaker 1: modifications so the car could also travel on railways and
Speaker 1: then at the back of the car it could fold
Speaker 1: out accordion style into a traveling dark rooms. They could
Speaker 1: develop film and photographs right there in the car. Incredible.
Speaker 1: I want this car. Diana put it on the old
Speaker 1: Christmas list. I love it, and she did. They did eventually,
Speaker 1: um donate it to the Ford Museum. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they still have it, but you you probably, I'm
Speaker 1: sure what they do which to me, you know what,
Speaker 1: it sounds like We've got a heist coming on you
Speaker 1: and I steal that. Yeah, ridiculous crime is going to
Speaker 1: be covering us next year. Yes, amazing copy trying to
Speaker 1: steal uh in dressed Wanderwell's car wonder Well Model t
Speaker 1: It probably goes like driving out of the museum. Slow,
Speaker 1: let's get out of here, let's burn rubber lot. The
Speaker 1: security guards were like, we'll walk, We'll wait. It was
Speaker 1: no gas. That's a half mile per ten gallons. You're
Speaker 1: not going anywhere. Let meet you at the door, all right. Well,
Speaker 1: before they left on this race around the world, Interest
Speaker 1: changed her name to Aloha wander Well. Now, Aloha was
Speaker 1: apparently a family nickname. I think it's kind of cute.
Speaker 1: If she's like, I want to travel and I want
Speaker 1: to run around with the navy. They were like call
Speaker 1: her hello, goodbye. But as far as taking Walter's last name,
Speaker 1: sources kind of very on why. Some say her mom
Speaker 1: had Aloha declared as Walter's ward so that she would
Speaker 1: not like, she wouldn't ruin her reputation by traveling with
Speaker 1: a man alone, and she she actually may have gone
Speaker 1: as far as adopting Walter herself so that they would
Speaker 1: legally be brother and sister. Unclear, Mom, will you adopt
Speaker 1: this old man who wants to take me around the world? Okay, Henney,
Speaker 1: so we could be brother and sister and it won't
Speaker 1: be weird. Some say that Walter gave her the name
Speaker 1: himself for like ease of travel and branding and all
Speaker 1: kinds of little reasons like that. Uh, speculation station. I
Speaker 1: think Aloha was just like wander Well, what a great name.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a great name. Yeah, if you're a traveler.
Speaker 1: So whatever the case, she had her nom de root
Speaker 1: and the dash around the world began and we will
Speaker 1: hear more about it right after this Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, everybody. So during Aloha and Walter's first trip
Speaker 1: from Aloha didn't just translate French and drive the car.
Speaker 1: She also became like the face of the expedition basically,
Speaker 1: and its main camera operator and narrator. She was their seamstress,
Speaker 1: their lawn dress, their editor. She was a salesperson and
Speaker 1: a negotiator, a mechanic, and a photographer. She did vaudeville
Speaker 1: performances where they would sell photo pamphlets. They would screen
Speaker 1: their silent films, and she would give lectures about what
Speaker 1: was happening on screen during their films. Obviously silent films
Speaker 1: you need someone to do that. These events not only
Speaker 1: turned her into a star, they helped fund the trip,
Speaker 1: so Walter was pretty happy. I mean he's say, you
Speaker 1: have to admit savvy fundraiser. Yeah, and this trip was amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean it was grueling, but it was incredible. Aloha
Speaker 1: was often low on supplies, so she had to get
Speaker 1: clever with it. She would use kerosene in place of gasoline.
Speaker 1: She would crush bananas for Greece, and she used water
Speaker 1: and elephant fat for oil in the car. So it's
Speaker 1: like the original biodiesel basically, right, this is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And the fact that the car would run on any
Speaker 1: of those things, right, pour anything in there. It might explode,
Speaker 1: but it'll move. It's like doc and back to the future,
Speaker 1: like corn beer into the Florian mr fusion And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they went through it, Okay. So in India,
Speaker 1: Oxen had to tow the ford through impassable mud flats
Speaker 1: and rivers because of course a lot of places don't
Speaker 1: have roads yet. In China, it was laborers who were
Speaker 1: paid to drag the car eighty miles after it broke down,
Speaker 1: and I hope they're paid well. Okay. They also went
Speaker 1: through war torn France. They saw Italy right before Mussolini
Speaker 1: took control. They went through food riots and hostile mobs
Speaker 1: in Germany, which was, you know, suffering a deep depression
Speaker 1: at this point after the harsh reparations that world governments
Speaker 1: demanded after World War One. In Saudi Arabia, she disguised
Speaker 1: herself as a man in Mecca so that she could
Speaker 1: enter and pray. Another time she did the same to
Speaker 1: fight with the French Foreign Legion. She made friends with
Speaker 1: Chinese bandits, and the Red Army in Siberia made her
Speaker 1: an honorary colonel for being the first woman to drive
Speaker 1: into Siberia. They camped at the feet of the Sphinx
Speaker 1: in Egypt. They drove into Palestine to watch the beginnings
Speaker 1: of a new nation being built for Jewish people. They
Speaker 1: wandered the highlands of Portuguese East Africa. They nearly died
Speaker 1: of thirst in the Student Desert. I mean, this trip
Speaker 1: was christ insane, way harder than our drive out to Utah.
Speaker 1: I know, the worst thing that happened to since we
Speaker 1: stayed at Ojo, right, we didn't have to disguise ourselves
Speaker 1: as men at any point on that trip, not even
Speaker 1: on The trip ended in New York in nine and
Speaker 1: by this point Aloha was famous as the first woman
Speaker 1: to drive around the world, and she mingled with stars
Speaker 1: like Douglas Fairbanks and her childhood idol Mary Pickford. Newspapers
Speaker 1: started calling her the Amelia Earhart of the Open Road. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then she cut together their most famous film with
Speaker 1: car and camera around the world for which they had
Speaker 1: shot forty thousand feet of film, which is in Calcutta.
Speaker 1: They'd even crossed paths with the aviators who were trying
Speaker 1: to fly across the world in eighty days, and Aloha
Speaker 1: filmed their encounter In all. Aloha went through forty three
Speaker 1: countries across four continents, and even though Walter was kind
Speaker 1: of a demanding and tyrannical boss, throughout their years together,
Speaker 1: they forged a real connection and eventually they fell in love.
Speaker 1: But when they landed, Walter was arrested on charges of
Speaker 1: white slavery under the Man Act, which prohibited the transportation
Speaker 1: of any woman or girl across state lines for quote
Speaker 1: unquote immoral purposes. Um, because Aloha was still a miner,
Speaker 1: so they were like, you're taking this girl all over
Speaker 1: the place. Now. The sources vary on the exact reason
Speaker 1: for this as well. Some say the FBI was still
Speaker 1: suspicious of Walter because of his wartime activities the German
Speaker 1: Sky thing. UM and j. Edgar Hoover thought that his
Speaker 1: whole work around the World Education Club that he had
Speaker 1: started with Nell I'm still doing with Aloha was actually
Speaker 1: his attempt at putting together his own private army that
Speaker 1: could be hired by any country at any time, which
Speaker 1: just sounds like some crazy ship Jed or Hoover would
Speaker 1: come up with, because Walter is really just trying to
Speaker 1: scamp people out of two hundred bucks. He could he
Speaker 1: could be lazy and not work and go travel everywhere,
Speaker 1: And I was like, Hooever never liked a regular explanation.
Speaker 1: He's like, it was some weird ship going on on
Speaker 1: top of this, So the Man Act was just kind
Speaker 1: of a convenient excuse to get him arrested. But other
Speaker 1: sources say that Nell Underwell, who was still technically married
Speaker 1: to Walter at this point, accused him under the Man
Speaker 1: Act so that she could force a better divorce settlement
Speaker 1: and get some more money out of him. Either way,
Speaker 1: the most expedient solution was to marry Aloha, of course,
Speaker 1: so Walter got his divorce and they tied the knot,
Speaker 1: and they would go on to have two children together,
Speaker 1: Nile and Valerie. I know, there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: details about it, but speculation station Nell got a really
Speaker 1: good deal in that divorce. She's like, oh, you want
Speaker 1: to marry Aloha to keep yourself out of jail, do
Speaker 1: you well? Let me bust out the list here for
Speaker 1: that divorce. Yeah, I'll give it to you, no problem.
Speaker 1: You just give me the following one helicopter smokerenades. Who
Speaker 1: knows what she was looking for? How many membership fees
Speaker 1: did it take in this year? But neither of the
Speaker 1: wander wells, Aloha or Walter. We're looking for a quiet
Speaker 1: life on the home front. It wasn't time to settle
Speaker 1: down with a picket fence and a dog and TV dinners.
Speaker 1: So those two children they had ended up staying with
Speaker 1: family members or in foster homes as the couple took
Speaker 1: to the road again, which they did famously in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty when Aloha learned how to pilot a plane and
Speaker 1: they decided to fly to South America to search for
Speaker 1: the explorer Percy Fawcett, who had vanished while trying to
Speaker 1: find the mythical lost city of z in Brazil. But
Speaker 1: they found something very different. According to Mysterious Universe dot Com,
Speaker 1: their little German seaplane ran out of fuel and came
Speaker 1: down somewhere along the Paraguay River. This area was remote,
Speaker 1: it was unexplored and uncharted, and the couple probably would
Speaker 1: have died there if they hadn't met the boro Ro tribe. Now,
Speaker 1: this is an indigenous tribe. It was from the most part,
Speaker 1: completely unknown to the outside world, and they provided a
Speaker 1: safe place for Alohattes stay while Walter hiked through the
Speaker 1: jungle back to civilization to get few and replacement parts
Speaker 1: to you know, get the plane flying again, which was
Speaker 1: supposed to just take a couple of days, but Aloha
Speaker 1: ended up being alone with this tribe for months. However,
Speaker 1: we know our girl, she did not waste her time.
Speaker 1: She learned their ways. She became the first to film
Speaker 1: the tribe's daily routines and rituals, including ceremonial dances, a
Speaker 1: first contact meeting between the tribe and Aloha, and the
Speaker 1: men of the tribe experiencing sympathy labor pains while a
Speaker 1: woman gave birth, which I think is just really interesting.
Speaker 1: Had like they were like trying to be a part
Speaker 1: of it. And Aloha edited this into a thirty two
Speaker 1: minutes silent documentary called Flight to the Stone Age Bororos, which,
Speaker 1: as Mysterious Universe rites quote is still considered by the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian Institute's Human Studies Archive to be a very important
Speaker 1: anthropological study and resource. Now finally, Walter made it back
Speaker 1: and they flew home in one and no trace of
Speaker 1: Percy Fawcett was ever found. Wo uh, I got to imagine.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is super cool, you know, But a
Speaker 1: couple of things. One, it's impressive to see these sympathy
Speaker 1: labor pains, yes, coming out of this tribe, and and
Speaker 1: and realizing that, you know, technologically advanced. Though some civilizations
Speaker 1: became others were still far more advanced. Other ways, Yeah, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you guys have empathy for your women. Although I did
Speaker 1: learn that they had like an odor thing where they
Speaker 1: thought your body odor corresponded with like your your moral
Speaker 1: goodness or something, and your your breath corresponded with your soul.
Speaker 1: So like when I wake up, when I woke up
Speaker 1: this morning, I was like, the barobros would be like,
Speaker 1: she needs to go. Yes, that's something. Um. Also, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine, like it's still nineteen twenties white people going
Speaker 1: out in South America. I can't imagine she was, you know,
Speaker 1: the picture of of empathy and understanding. Yeah. No, I
Speaker 1: mean she was definitely ahead of her time in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways as we're learning, but in this way,
Speaker 1: you're right, she was very much of her time. She
Speaker 1: wrote a nine autobiography um called Call to Adventure and
Speaker 1: This Lady. Tracy Landecker on Aloha wanderweld dot Com wrote
Speaker 1: that it's not always pleasant to read quote. While the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties was an era of ideological and technological growth,
Speaker 1: American exceptionalism and racism were still the order of the
Speaker 1: day for the majority of white people. In most of
Speaker 1: her accounts, Aloha retains the haughty distance of a missionary
Speaker 1: and an imperialist. Never, at any time is that wall penetrated,
Speaker 1: no matter the beauty or the courageous character of the
Speaker 1: cultures that either welcome her or look on her with
Speaker 1: perplexity and sometimes derision. So which is interesting too, because
Speaker 1: it's clearly like other cultures would see her and be like,
Speaker 1: who's this tall white lady? Like right, Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: just culture clash stuff. But yeah, she definitely felt superior
Speaker 1: to the people she was talking to. I think she
Speaker 1: wasn't so shitty that she couldn't charm them and live
Speaker 1: with them and feel a kinship with them and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But yeah, she held herself apart in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways as well. So a good point. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, It's always the challenge with dealing with these
Speaker 1: early twentieth century explorers because their lives are so cool,
Speaker 1: and also like, I don't know if you should be
Speaker 1: doing that right. In fact, that might be why Percy
Speaker 1: was never found. Some people say that he got real
Speaker 1: uppity with some locals in South America and like slapped
Speaker 1: him around and they were like, and then he disappeared.
Speaker 1: So he's probably got killed because he was being an asshole.
Speaker 1: He's like, it's called a smoking jacket, and we all
Speaker 1: wear them where I come from, and you should too.
Speaker 1: It's uncivilized. And they were like, to kill man. Done
Speaker 1: with this? Oh my god. Well, Walter and Aloha we're
Speaker 1: back in Los Angeles in ninety two after this adventure,
Speaker 1: and they planned to do more trips and more films together.
Speaker 1: Aloha stayed with her sister in Los Angeles cutting together
Speaker 1: a film of their latest adventure, while Walter was working
Speaker 1: on fixing up their hundred and ten foot yacht called
Speaker 1: the Karma. The plan was that they would sail to
Speaker 1: Tahiti and film a voyage around the South Seas. It
Speaker 1: was stocked in Long Beach, and he and his two
Speaker 1: wanderwell children lived on the ship. As usual, he put
Speaker 1: out advertisements for young attractive adventurers to join our crew
Speaker 1: at two hundred dollars ahead, and of course there were
Speaker 1: several people either on board the yacht or just ashore
Speaker 1: doing various tasks to prepare for the trips. They show up,
Speaker 1: they pay him the two hundred dollar dues, and then
Speaker 1: they are permitted to do all the work for him. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'll also say a yacht sounds really fancy, but apparently
Speaker 1: authorities at the time said it was about as seaworthy
Speaker 1: as a cardboard box, so they were kind of like,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't go on this trip, but they couldn't really
Speaker 1: do anything about it, And like, I hope he's fixed
Speaker 1: the note it seems like a guy who would cut costs.
Speaker 1: He does definitely now. On December five, some of these
Speaker 1: crew members were playing cards on the yacht when a
Speaker 1: man in a light gray trench coat and hat pulled
Speaker 1: down partially to obscure his face, appeared at a porthole
Speaker 1: and asked, Hey, there, can I see Walter Wanda Well please, Well,
Speaker 1: they figured he was just another potential crew member or
Speaker 1: maybe a worker who was called to fix something, so
Speaker 1: they said, yeah, he's back there in his cabin. The
Speaker 1: man walked away, and moments later they heard a gunshot
Speaker 1: and they went running to Walter, only to find him
Speaker 1: dead with a bullet in his back from a thirty
Speaker 1: eight revolver. What there was no trace of the man
Speaker 1: in the great coat. Who done it? We'll find out
Speaker 1: more right after this. Welcome back to the show. Everyone.
Speaker 1: There's a murder afoot there, sure is. Walter was shot
Speaker 1: in the back and the police were a little stumped
Speaker 1: because thanks to Walter's shady dealings. As Mysterious Universe says quote,
Speaker 1: the list of possible killers with a motive would have
Speaker 1: made Agatha Christie's head spin. It could have included husband's boyfriends,
Speaker 1: jilted women, jilted business partners and agents of a foreign power,
Speaker 1: rogue police, and Aloha herself. Check check check check. They're like, motive, motive, motive, motive, motive.
Speaker 1: Oh the poor Long Beach p D. You're like, we
Speaker 1: do not have the manpower to go down this list
Speaker 1: of aspects, like there are a hundred and twenty local
Speaker 1: sess specs and over fourteen thousand across the world. Now
Speaker 1: Aloha is a suspect because even though they had definitely
Speaker 1: planned to take another trip together. Their marriage was on
Speaker 1: the rocks by this time, mostly due to Walter's philandering,
Speaker 1: because he was always getting it wherever he went, wherever
Speaker 1: he went, and a few days before the murder, Walter
Speaker 1: had the crew searching for his thirty eight Revolver, which
Speaker 1: he said had disappeared from his supply supplies Aloha had
Speaker 1: access to. Aloha also did not react to his death
Speaker 1: the way that people expected. She's a little detached kind
Speaker 1: of no, you know, she didn't like start screaming and
Speaker 1: crying and grief for anything. Instead, she just immediately asked
Speaker 1: about her kids, and they were not only just buying,
Speaker 1: they had slept through the whole thing. And after that
Speaker 1: she just kind of withdrew into herself. Aloha wanderwell dot
Speaker 1: Com writes that she quote lapsed into a state of
Speaker 1: glittery immobility, which was to earned her the name of
Speaker 1: the Rhinestone Widow. I mean, she didn't react to his
Speaker 1: death the way people expected. I'm not really expecting much
Speaker 1: of a reaction at all. I'm like, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: he sucks what he She's like, ah ha, sure somebody
Speaker 1: killed him and took him took him so long. Not
Speaker 1: very surprising, No, not at all. You know, she's like,
Speaker 1: okay whatever. Or also if she's like lapsing into a
Speaker 1: state of glittery immobility, I think that's also a sign
Speaker 1: of grief for shock, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, and its
Speaker 1: own way. I mean, but I'm always lapsing into glittery immobility.
Speaker 1: It is what people say about you, the most glittery
Speaker 1: and immobile. But the police really felt that they had
Speaker 1: found their Well Guy when they heard about William James Guy.
Speaker 1: Crew members who had spoken to the mysterious man in
Speaker 1: the porthole said he had a slight act scent and
Speaker 1: William Guy was either Welsh or Australian. He also owned
Speaker 1: a light great trench coat and a hat. But the
Speaker 1: most damning evidence against him was motive because a year
Speaker 1: or so before the murder, William Guy and his wife Vera,
Speaker 1: along with another woman, had been in Buenos Aires and
Speaker 1: saw an advertisement for English and Spanish speakers to join
Speaker 1: the wander Wells Latest Expedition. So they answered it. They said,
Speaker 1: sounds great, that's us, let's do it. And William had
Speaker 1: to pay the two d dollar feet to get the
Speaker 1: three of them on board, and he told the police quote,
Speaker 1: I didn't like wander Well from the beginning, or no,
Speaker 1: he's Welsh or Australian. He told the police quote, I
Speaker 1: didn't like Wanda Well from the beginning. He was a
Speaker 1: disagreeable and pettyman, a regular dictator, likes to be called
Speaker 1: the little admiral, all that sort of thing. He worked
Speaker 1: us like dogs. We were principally fed on beans. That's
Speaker 1: enough for anyone to it, not two Viking cruise beans here,
Speaker 1: you know. Well, totally fed up, William Guy had gone
Speaker 1: to Walter and demanded better conditions, but Walter called this
Speaker 1: an attempted mutiny, and he docked the ship and left
Speaker 1: William Guy, his wife, and their friend on the beach. Dang.
Speaker 1: William Guy told the police quote, where you were absolutely stranded,
Speaker 1: now money to get anywhere. Finally I arranged for a
Speaker 1: steamship company to take the new girls back to England,
Speaker 1: which was the address on their passports, and I set
Speaker 1: out on foot to Nicaragua. I haven't seen my wife since,
Speaker 1: and I haven't seen the money I gave wander Well.
Speaker 1: Just sometimes I'm a little more Cockney than Australia. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a mysterious accent. William Guy. No one was quite
Speaker 1: sure where he's from. So yeah, this William Guy guy
Speaker 1: had plenty of reasons to kill Walter, so he was
Speaker 1: formally charged for the murder and he was put on trial.
Speaker 1: That's literally what the headlines are. It's so funny, they're
Speaker 1: like guy indicted. But there were a few problems with
Speaker 1: William Guy being the murderer. One was that Walter, after
Speaker 1: he was shot, was found with six hundred dollars in
Speaker 1: his pocket, so that kind of ruled out robbery or
Speaker 1: money as the motive, although you know, he shot a
Speaker 1: guy while there were definitely people nearby, so maybe just
Speaker 1: didn't have time to like roll his the pot go
Speaker 1: through his truck before he had to run off. Who knows,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of like clearly that wasn't the reason
Speaker 1: he was here. Um. The other problem was that William
Speaker 1: Guy was able to produce six witnesses, putting him at
Speaker 1: a friend's house thirty miles away when the shooting happens.
Speaker 1: Pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty tough to get over, so
Speaker 1: he was acquitted. Um. The only other suspect named by
Speaker 1: police was Lord Edward Montague, who was the second son
Speaker 1: of the ninth Duke of Manchest and his dad was
Speaker 1: a spendthrift who exhausted the family fortune, so Edward became
Speaker 1: a world traveler himself. He gravitated to America, where, according
Speaker 1: to Michael Newton's Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes quote, he lived
Speaker 1: at various times as a taxi driver, hot dog vendor,
Speaker 1: private in the U. S. Army, a hobo drifter, and
Speaker 1: a seagoing deckhand. What a life to go from being
Speaker 1: a duke's son a hot dog vendor. Pretty interesting. That's
Speaker 1: like Prince Harry to be a hot dog vendor. I heard,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see him hock and hot dogs.
Speaker 1: Flenty of people would would want his sausage. I heard
Speaker 1: it was all frost bitten. You're right, maybe they don't
Speaker 1: want it anymore. The main evidence against Edward Montague was
Speaker 1: that he owned a thirty eight revolver that he had
Speaker 1: lent to a friend, and then the friend had then
Speaker 1: lent it to a third guy, so nobody was aware
Speaker 1: of where it was anymore. And they were like, so,
Speaker 1: you might have had some to it with that murder weapon,
Speaker 1: but otherwise it really wasn't anything to pin on him,
Speaker 1: so he was never even formally charged. So the murder
Speaker 1: of Walter Wanderwell is still unsolved to this day, and
Speaker 1: they never found his revolver either. What you hear that
Speaker 1: super sleuths get out there past? Yeah? Yes, Aloha. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: she was left with only fifteen hundred dollars to support
Speaker 1: herself and her two kids, so she memorialized Walter in
Speaker 1: the most appropriate way she could think of for him.
Speaker 1: She used the scandal around his death and murder trial
Speaker 1: as publicity for their latest film, River of Death. Now
Speaker 1: that didn't help with the folks who thought that she
Speaker 1: was the murderer, but Aloha didn't care. She needed the money,
Speaker 1: so she got back on the road, touring America, screening
Speaker 1: her movies, doing lectures, everything she used to do with
Speaker 1: her husband. And then in nineteen thirty three, she met
Speaker 1: another Walter, Walter Nicholas Baker. This guy was eighteen years
Speaker 1: old and he was working as a gas station attendant
Speaker 1: and Laramie, Wyoming when he met Aloha, and he joined
Speaker 1: her crew as a driver and a mechanic. He was
Speaker 1: eight years younger than her, but sparks were flying, spark
Speaker 1: plugs were flying, and They married only two months later,
Speaker 1: and they toured the world together. They made films from
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three until nineteen thirty nine, when, of course,
Speaker 1: World War Two started and kind of made international travel
Speaker 1: pretty impossible. But in ninety they also documented a wild
Speaker 1: horse round up in the Red Desert of Wyoming called
Speaker 1: Explorers of the Purple Stage, and ultimately, by the end
Speaker 1: of her life, Aloha traveled over five hundred thousand miles
Speaker 1: through six continents and eighty countries. A long way from
Speaker 1: that convent. She made over a dozen films, She wrote
Speaker 1: two books, She worked as a journalist and radio operator.
Speaker 1: She just did a whole bunch of cool ship and
Speaker 1: she and Walter Baker settled in Newport Beach. She gave
Speaker 1: her last lecture in nineteen two. Apparently she asked the
Speaker 1: crowd like, how did y'all get here? And they were
Speaker 1: like car and plane, and She's like, let me show
Speaker 1: you what that was like. Walter Baker died in They
Speaker 1: had been together for over sixty years at that point,
Speaker 1: and Aloha followed a year later in having more than
Speaker 1: earned her nickname of the world's most traveled girl. Amazing,
Speaker 1: I want to this is another person I would just
Speaker 1: love to be on the next go round. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, not without her struggles, But jeez,
Speaker 1: I think it balanced out. She got to do the
Speaker 1: coolest stuff ever, um, you know, minus the racism. Yeah
Speaker 1: well yeah, imperialism and all that stuff. Not have that part.
Speaker 1: But I do admire her for being willing to put
Speaker 1: up with all this stuff. I mean, she was really
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and cold and hot and starving and thirsty and
Speaker 1: covered in mud and who knows, you know, just immortal
Speaker 1: danger many times, and she's just like all of it
Speaker 1: was a dream. I loved it. I loved every minute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I think that's go into those
Speaker 1: situations the you know, you hear about a lot of that,
Speaker 1: the horror stories and the near death experiences and all that,
Speaker 1: But what's the opposite of that that you're getting as well? Right,
Speaker 1: it must balance out because if you're in those extreme situations,
Speaker 1: the highs have got to be you know, as intense
Speaker 1: as the lows, if not more so. Well, and I
Speaker 1: think it just says something about her, like the type
Speaker 1: of travel she wanted to do. She wasn't just a
Speaker 1: travel enthusiast, she was an explorer because there's people who
Speaker 1: like to travel at this time, but they wanted to
Speaker 1: take like the Titanic to England, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be comfortable the whole time. She liked
Speaker 1: the ads she read because it was like, you're going
Speaker 1: to rough it incasion, and you're going to be in
Speaker 1: places that people don't go, and that's I think what
Speaker 1: was the real attraction. And I think that makes her
Speaker 1: really unique, especially in her time, especially as a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old, She's like, please make me uncomfortable for a
Speaker 1: very long time, right, because there was even another woman,
Speaker 1: right who also drove across the world. Yes, um, the
Speaker 1: first woman to circumnavigate the world in an automobile was
Speaker 1: Harriet White Fisher in nineteen o nine. But she used
Speaker 1: a chauffeurs. She did not drive herself. She was sitting
Speaker 1: on a silk cushion the whole time. Probably, alright, Hattie,
Speaker 1: you did something. Someone sitting right next to her with
Speaker 1: a fan seeded her grapes the whole time. Speculation stage, speculation, stage,
Speaker 1: I don't know. She probably was also pretty tough, but right,
Speaker 1: I'm sure she wasn't fixing flat tires herself. No, that's
Speaker 1: again Yeah, just that's why they give a little how
Speaker 1: this honorific because she drove the car. She wanted to
Speaker 1: get her hands. Yeah, she and she, I mean she's
Speaker 1: crushing bananas and stuff like she's doing all kinds of
Speaker 1: crazy ship and yeah. Her films are still really important today.
Speaker 1: You can watch a lot of them online as well
Speaker 1: as you're interested. But hark around the Greats dot Com
Speaker 1: says that her footage of the taj Mahal and the
Speaker 1: Ganges River in six dazzles to this day. They say,
Speaker 1: quote she gives viewers a sense of the scope and
Speaker 1: scale of the taj Mahal, displaying the building from unfamiliar vantages.
Speaker 1: And she and Walter Baker also visited like New Zealand, Hawaii, Cambodia.
Speaker 1: I want to see that taj Mahal footage we've got.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. All the tash Mahal is on the list.
Speaker 1: It is so we are going to tell that story
Speaker 1: of Shah Jahan, But I want to do that episode
Speaker 1: at the taj Mahal. So let's start a little go
Speaker 1: fund me and see if we can't get out there
Speaker 1: and record that episode on site. Wouldn't that be never happened, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll record it before then. Oh and this guy Captain
Speaker 1: Wanderwell here, like, what a character, Yeah, what a wacko.
Speaker 1: He seems like the kind of guy that could only exist.
Speaker 1: But if he was alive today, he would still be
Speaker 1: a grifter. It would just be different. It would be
Speaker 1: different and probably really annoying. You think he'd be like
Speaker 1: a scam artist on those dating apps or anything like
Speaker 1: that like that. Yeah, I was like, oh, he kind
Speaker 1: of it was like a cult of personality sort of
Speaker 1: person So maybe he'd just have a podcast. But now
Speaker 1: he'd be he'd have a pyramid scheme. Yeah, you're right. Maybe,
Speaker 1: like you buy into this and then you can do
Speaker 1: all the work for me. That's right, You're still right.
Speaker 1: He would have like leggings or vitamins or something. Captain
Speaker 1: wander wells leggings. You could wander Well in Wanda Well leggings. Hey,
Speaker 1: you already we should do this pyramid schemes all right,
Speaker 1: but it wants to buy into our pyramid scheme. Wink
Speaker 1: wink wink. Then please send to Dick Romance at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. Send us anything ever, Dick Romance at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. We would love to hear your thoughts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: episode on any episode on suggestions for new episodes, just
Speaker 1: reach out. Yeah. You can also find us on social media.
Speaker 1: I'm at Dyanamite Boom on Twitter and Instagram, that's right,
Speaker 1: and I'm at Oh Great it's Eli there as well,
Speaker 1: and the show is at ridicul Romance. Don't forget to
Speaker 1: follow us on TikTok as well, where you can find
Speaker 1: little video clips we're doing and summaries of episodes. That's
Speaker 1: at Ridiculous Romance on TikTok. So hopefully loved it as
Speaker 1: much as we did, and we will catch you next
Speaker 1: time with another amazing ridiculous romance. That's right. By bye,
Speaker 1: so long friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening
Speaker 1: to our show. Tell your friends Nabor's uncles in this
Speaker 1: to listen to our show Ridiculous roll Nance