Cinema: Voice Unglobed

For twelve years U.S. cinemaddicts have listened patiently to “The Voice of the Globe” express his boundless regret at having to say farewell to Hong Kong, Stockholm, Ceylon, Prague and other scenes of his Traveltalks. The Voice belongs to a temperamental, blue-eyed romanticist named James A. FitzPatrick, the poor man’s Burton Holmes, who is now seeing America last.

Having journeyed nearly a million miles to make some 200 one-reel travelogues of exotic spots since 1928, Traveloguist FitzPatrick’s wanderings have been limited by World War II. The Voice will fill his 1941 quota of twelve Talks within the boundaries of the U.S. and Canada, then quit. Last week he and his crew prepared to do North Carolina.

In 1928 FitzPatrick returned from Spain with his first travelogues. Since that time the nasal narration of the Traveltalks has continued almost unchanged through Benares, the Hindu Heaven, Bali, the Island Paradise, Tibet, Land of Isolation. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer rates FitzPatrick as a producer. His films cost about $15,000 apiece.

Three years ago Traveler FitzPatrick met a Chicago newspaper woman. They married and for their honeymoon the couple selected one of the few sight-seeing spots the bridegroom had never visited: Niagara Falls, Land of Newlyweds. Now 39, father of two, FitzPatrick has a small “self-sustaining” island near Victoria, B.C., and a consuming desire to make feature pictures. War or no war, he no longer cares to roam, says plaintively: “Now I get homesick.”