Yosemite the Magnificent

During his 25-year career producing his signature Traveltalks series of short subjects (well over 200 entries in all), James A. FitzPatrick circled the globe six times. There were few countries on Earth he did not visit. Many of his travelogues, however, were made closer to home, centering on various cities and landmarks in the United States; several, such as Yosemite the Magnificent (1941), focused on American national parks, offering moviegoers a splendid Technicolor look at places they had likely only seen in black and white images. In fact, during World War II FitzPatrick was forced to concentrate on locations in the Americas; the logistics of traveling to other continents at this time, especially with bulky Technicolor camera equipment, were just too daunting. Three years earlier, FitzPatrick had met his second wife while on location in Hong Kong. She accompanied him back to New York on an ocean liner, and they married the day they disembarked. At her insistence, they honeymooned in Niagara Falls, ironically a place that FitzPatrick had never visited. She happily traveled with him from then on, even helping to write his Traveltalk narrations. FitzPatrick's Traveltalks were released by MGM. The studio gave FitzPatrick enormous freedom to choose and present his subjects the way he wished, giving him monetary advances on a limited budget. He even edited his films on his own, away from the studio, saving MGM money on overhead expenses. As MGM shorts department head, Hal Elias, later said, "The Fitzpatrick pictures were made by Fitzpatrick. He didn't consult anybody, he just supplied the pictures. He didn't have a producer. He was his own producer." By Jeremy Arnold SOURCES: Douglas Bell, Oral History with Hal Elias (AMPAS Oral History Program) Douglas Bell, Oral History with Richard Goldstone (AMPAS Oral History Program) Thomas Meehan, "Those Old Movie Travelogues, Or, 'As the Sun Sinks Slowly In the West, We Bid Farewell...'" The New York Times, Nov. 28, 1971 Variety obituary for James A. Fitzpatrick, June 18, 1980