Strange Cargo: Ray Densham’s film and Audrey and Ivor Noël Hume’s hatching tortoises

On 24 February, I recounted the story of the the film Strange Cargo and how I first learnt of its existence.

Ivor and Audrey Noël Hume referred to the film in their books and in interviews. An imported female Mediterranean Spur-thighed Tortoise (Testudo graeca) they called ‘Mrs Callaway’ (after a character in a cowboy film they had seen) produced eggs and the filming of those eggs hatching was an important sequence in Strange Cargo. The whole episode was described by Audrey in her book, My Family of Reptiles, published in 1955 (see online here). A photograph of one of the tortoises hatching was included and attributed to Ray Densham, the producer and cameraman. It was clearly a still from the film, since when I extracted one from the film, I was obviously just a few frames away from the one he chose.

The hatching tortoise photograph from
My Family of Animals

Audrey continued:

He [Ray Densham] decided to take some more shots of mother and babies, so while she sat on a table Noël held the tiny How in his hand at one side of her. Mrs. C. could not have given a better performance if she had been rehearsed all afternoon. She turned her head to Noël's hand and peered at the baby for a few minutes. Then with the most self-satisfied expression that I have ever seen on the face of any mother, human or animal, she looked straight at the camera. Later she appeared on cinema screens all over the country when these sequences were included in the film Strange Cargo, and she even received a little fan mail. When Noël and I published a book about keeping tortoises it was inevitable that such an excellent sitter should pose for the cover photograph, and she can now be seen in bookshops as far away as America and Australia.

The book on keeping tortoises, Tortoises, Terrapins and Turtles in the Foyles Handbook series was published in 1954; it can be seen in full here. Ray Densham was thanked by Ivor and Audrey for his help.

You can find my earlier articles on the Noël Humes and their books here and here.

Ivor and Audrey emigrated to the U.S.A. where he became well-known as an archaeologist of Williamsburg and pioneer of historical archaeology. Audrey, also an archaeologist, died in 1993; Ivor in 2017. They were born in 1927 and married in 1950. New homes were found for their numerous animals before they left London, except for one. Her particular favourite, ‘Tigellinus’ was carried by Audrey onto the plane. ‘Tigellinus’, was identified in their book, as the species now known as Chelonoidis denticulatus. However, it is more likely that ‘Tiggy’ was a Red-footed Tortoise (Chelonoidis carbonarius) which even in the 1950s was the one more commonly imported from South America.

I have been unable to find out whether their interest in reptiles in general and tortoises in particular was maintained after they reached Virginia. Although much more has been learnt about keeping and breeding tortoises (and their mass import for the pet trade banned), their book was the best guide available for several decades, with reprints in different covers published into the 1980s.

Here are stills taken from Strange Cargo:

Audrey and Ivor Noēl Hume and the airing cupboard
used to incubate the tortoise eggs