Acquanetta

Acquanetta was born Mildred Davenport on July 17, 1921, and, depending on your source, was of either black or American Indian origin.  A few writers have claimed she was Cheyenne Indian; possibly they're confusing this with reports of her being from Cheyenne, Wyoming, or having been born in Ozone, near Cheyenne.  However, by most accounts she was born on an Indian reservation and raised in Norristown, Pennsylvania.  These conflicting reports may be due to the possibility that she had both black and Indian blood in her.  (Adding to the confusion regarding her ethnic origins, some still report that she was born in Venezuela!)

  
Acquanetta herself said, “My mother was Arapaho, and I was born on the Arapaho Reservation in Wyoming, near the Wind River.  Of course I have no recollection of that, because I was given away to my father when I was approximately three years old.  My father took me to Pennsylvania and gave me to his then-wife, and I grew up in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where I went to school."  She also claimed that her father's grandfather "was the illegitimate son of the King of England.”  (For the sake of brevity -- if not credibility -- we'll disregard her frequent claims of royal heritage.)

According to the Milwaukee Journal in an article for the July 20, 1942 edition, Acquanetta had a variation on that story: "My parents died when I was 2 years old and I was taken in by another Arapaho family to raise."

Acquanetta's story gets even more convoluted: she also claimed that her foster mother, an Indian woman named "Linda Smith", remarried when Acquanetta was 10 years old, and that her new foster father had taken a disliking to her.  "Just when I was about to be left with no home, an artist and his wife who were studying our tribe said I could live with them.  They were Dan and Ann Brothers.  They travelled all over the country in a trailer and I went with them."

In the February 14, 1952 issue of Jet, "The Weekly Negro News Magazine", Acquanetta was featured on the cover (as "Hollywood's Jungle Girl") and in a three-page article which reported that she was a graduate of the West Virginia State College for Negroes.  Here they give her age as 30, though subsequent articles give an age that suggests she was born in 1923, which is often -- and erroneously -- given as her year of birth.

  
The Arizona Republic for August 22, 2004, reported that Acquanetta's brother, 85-year old Horace A. Davenport, was present at her funeral.  A retired judge, Horace Davenport was, according to the Pennsylvania Bar Association, "the first African-American judge in Montgomery County."  Horace said that he'd never seen any of Acquanetta's movies.
 
Bill Feret, in his 1984 book, LURE OF THE TROPIX, said of Acquanetta, "She has never clarified her ambiguous origins, which over the years have varied between being an Arapaho Indian from Wyoming, a Latin from Venezuela, or a black girl from Pennsylvania..."  Certainly, her exotic and sultry beauty and the ambiguity of her past added to the mystique.

Perhaps the 1940 United States Census can clear up matters: Mildred Davenport was born in 1921 in Newberry, South Carolina and was residing in Norristown, Norristown Borough, Montgomery, Pennsylvania with her parents, William and Julia, and five siblings, including Horace and Catherine (spelled "Kathryn" in a Jet article).  Each member of the family is identified as "Negro" (race) and "African American" (ethnicity).

from LIFE magazine, October 26, 1942 (photo by Erwin Blumenfeld)

After high school, she left her past behind.  "I went to New York and became a model, and lived at the Barbizon Women's Hotel."  At first she modelled for Harry Conover, then she met John Robert Powers, who added her to his list of lovely models.  "I went from a small amount of money a week, in a small town, to $100 an hour on some jobs, which in those days was incredible."  She admits to having worked as a paid escort: "In those days, men liked to have attractive women to escort them places.  So it was almost like a job."

According to a Life magazine article from the August 24, 1942 issue, "Burnu's origins are veiled in mystery.  A year ago in New York she read some newspaper stories about Pan-American relations.  So she decided to pose as a Venezuelan..."  She even affected an accent.  Said Acquanetta, "I looked the part -- I was dark and exotic..."

Nothing sarong here: a still from RHYTHM OF THE ISLANDS (1943).

Acquanetta met a press agent for Universal Studios producer Walter Wanger, who got her a job with the producer and dubbed her the 'Venezuelan Volcano'.  According to Life, "The volcano blew up, however, when Burnu was unable to produce any identification for the Screen Actors Guild, finally insisted her parents were Arapaho Indians from Ozone, Wyo. where she says she was born in 1921...After seeing her dance and swim, Hollywood has decided, in any case, Burnu's future is more important than her past."


Acquanetta, as usual, remembered things differently: "I met some people from Rio de Janeiro, and they wanted me to come to South America and perform at the Copacabana in Rio.  I was a natural performer and a dancer, and that's what they wanted me to do at the Copa.  So I packed my things and got on a train.  We stopped in Hollywood and went out to the Mocambo."

Burnu, as LIFE magazine called her, lounging about on the set of ARABIAN NIGHTS.

 
The heads of casting for MGM, Warner Brothers and Universal were present and Walter Wanger "went wild" over her.  She did a screen test for Universal and, when they found out she had done a test for MGM the day before, they signed her without even seeing the rushes.

Acquanetta went uncredited for her role in ARABIAN NIGHTS, but her name and image (top left) appear on some of the movie posters, such as this one-sheet.  She played one of six harem girls in a brief (less than 3 minutes) framing sequence, where she reads a few lines from a book called Arabian Nights.

Wanger tried to get her the  female lead in ARABIAN NIGHTS (1942): "...unfortunately they had already signed Maria Montez.  That started the big so-called 'feud' between the two of us.  She said no, she would not geev up thees role -- it was to be her first starring role, in Technicolor and all that."  She ended up with a small speaking part in ARABIAN NIGHTS as Ishya, one of the harem girls, and was told that Burnu Acquanetta was too long for any marquee.  She opted to call herself Acquanetta.

"Universal found there was so much reaction to my appearance, my presence, whatever, that they threw me into the so-called bread-and-butter pictures.  Those were the films that they spent less money on, but made the most money off of."

Her next role was a bit part in RHYTHM OF THE ISLANDS (1943), an obscure, low-budget musical.  The two leads were Allan Jones and Jane Frazee, with Andy Devine and Ernest Truex along for comic relief.  Acquanetta played Luani, the Cannibal King's daughter, in love with Andy Devine, whom she saves from the cooking pot.  Though she had already been seen in ARABIAN NIGHTS, the credits for RHYTHM OF THE ISLANDS read "introducing Acquanetta".

Acquanetta, with Mary Wickes and Andy Devine

Next, she was cast in her most famous role as the silent ape-woman Paula Dupree in CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943), directed by Edward Dmytryk.  Acquanetta had done a screen test and was pronounced "perfect for the role."  She didn't mind playing an ape-woman: "Whatever I was given, I did my best.  I became a character actress.  I am a natural actress.  They tell me that when I was a little girl, I used to gather the neighborhood children and put on shows!  I did write a play when I was in junior high school, and I was in a play when I was in grammar school."

Cheela the ape, before and after.  Ray "Crash" Corrigan spent much of his career in a gorilla costume.

  
In CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN, Beth Colman brings her ailing sister to the Crestview Sanatorium, run by Dr. Walters (John Carradine) who has been conducting secret experiments in his basement laboratory, hoping to create a race of superhumans.  Stealing Cheela the ape from the circus, Dr. Walters then murders his nurse and transplants her cerebrum into Cheela, and with glandular injections from Dorothy the ape turns into the lovely Acquanetta, whom he renames 'Paula Dupree'.  Dr. Walters brings Paula to the circus, and discovers her mysterious power over wild animals when she enters the lions' cage and rescues the unconscious trainer from one of the beasts by terrifying it with her deadpan expression.  Impressed, Fred hires the silent and mysterious woman as his assistant, but when it becomes apparent to her that Fred is in love with Beth Colman, Paula becomes jealous and in her fury begins reverting back to her simian form.  That night, the ape-woman attempts to kill Beth, but instead kills another woman who stumbles upon the scene.  Paula is scolded by Dr. Walters for jeopardizing his work.  After receiving a desperate phone call from Dorothy at the sanatorium, Beth demands to see her, and Dr. Walters decides that she too may be of use to him in his experiments.  By now, Paula is once again Cheela the ape, and is freed from her cage by Dorothy.  Cheela kills Dr. Walters and returns to the circus where she once again saves Fred from rampaging lions, and is shot dead for her efforts by a confused police officer.

The mysterious Paula Dupree, with her creator, Dr. Sigmund Walters (John Carradine)

  
Acquanetta sat for two and a half hours at a time while a makeup artist applied rubber and clay to her face.  She found the experience exhausting: "You could hardly breathe.  It was kind of scary."

  
"It was interesting to work without speaking in CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN.  It was more difficult, a challenge. But you know, I read an article once that said I was not an actress at all, and that in fact I couldn't even talk. They didn't understand that this was deliberate, and that I had to project more because I had to do it with my body language, my eyes, my face.  Every movement had to mean something!"

Above: an original CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN Universal poster; below, Realart re-released the movie in 1948

  
Acquanetta says she and Edward Dmytryk "had great rapport.  In fact, we dated briefly.  What a career he should have had -- what a talent.  He was my favourite director."  She also says that they "used to sit and talk for hours."

Next on Acquanetta's schedule was THE MUMMY'S GHOST (1944), directed by Reginald LeBorg.  Lon Chaney Jr. was returning to his role as the 3000 year old mummy, Kharis, and Acquanetta was to be his long lost love, Princess Ananka, now reincarnated.  She had begun working on the movie when an accident occurred: "We were shooting a scene where I walk along a path and then fall, and these scabs [non-union workers] had put real rocks down on the path.  They were supposed to put down papier-mache rocks, but they didn't -- these scabs painted real rocks white!  I fell and struck my head, and that's all I remember.  I woke up in Cedars Of Lebanon Hospital."

Posing in front of an "Aztec" temple; doubling as an Egyptian temple, this studio lot creation was used in Universal's THE MUMMY'S HAND (1940), and in subsequent Mummy films

Leborg's version of events that day differs: "In the morning of the first day of shooting [August 23, 1943], Acquanetta was on the set at 9:00 but she was walking very awkwardly -- she was scared, I think because this was her second or third film.  In the second shot, she was supposed to walk from a lawn, up a couple of stairs and into a house.  She slipped and fell, and hit her head, and for half an hour she was unconscious.  They took her to the dispensary and gave her smelling salts -- she was all right, but she had a slight concussion.  [Producer Ben] Pivar didn't want to take any chances, so the role was recast with Ramsay Ames."
 
Henry Sucher and Griffin Jay, the team who wrote the screenplay for CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN, also wrote THE MUMMY'S GHOST, with Brenda Weisberg.

Lobby card

 
Acquanetta eventually got to work with Lon Chaney, in DEAD MAN'S EYES (1944).  This was the third in the Inner Sanctum series of movies and was based on a mystery from the radio program of the same name.  Chaney starred as Dave Stuarts, an artist, with Acquanetta as his model, Tanya Czoraki.  Jealous over his affection for Heather, she blinds him by putting acid in his eye-drops.  Heather's father bequeaths his eyes to Dave and when the old man is murdered the artist becomes the prime suspect.

DEAD MAN'S EYES lobby card (1944).

Acquanetta has a funny way of showing her affection for Lon Chaney Jr. in DEAD MAN'S EYES.

Reginald LeBorg directed Acquanetta's next movie, JUNGLE WOMAN (1944), her last for Universal.  The good reviews for CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN and the success of their Mummy series encouraged Universal to make a sequel.  

In JUNGLE WOMAN, Dr. Fletcher obtains Cheela's carcass for research purposes, but to his surprise discovers faint life signs.  Her health restored, Cheela escapes into the surrounding jungle.  Dr. Fletcher and his large, simple-minded assistant, Willie, search for the ape, but Cheela has once again transformed into Paula.  In lieu of an ape, Willie brings back Acquanetta, an equitable trade, to say the least.  Supposing her to be mentally disturbed, Dr. Fletcher places her under his care for observation.  His daughter Joan and her boyfriend Bob drop by, and once again Paula becomes infatuated with another woman's man.  Oblivious to the others present, Paula introduces herself to Bob, speaking for the first time: "Hello!  My name is Paula!" Her speech is laconic, delivered in a child-like manner.  Bob leaves, and Paula watches from her bedroom window as he drives away.  She gives off a low and disturbing wail, testament to her lonely and unhappy existence.  Dr. Fletcher discovers that the brooding, sexually frustrated Paula can crush steel in her bare hands.  When Bob and Joan return the following evening, Paula dashes outside to meet him at his car: "Hello, Bob!  I have been waiting for you!"  Bob rudely ignores her and he and Joan take a moonlit canoe ride in the lagoon.  Willie pursues Paula through the jungle, and she kills the annoying lummox.  Next, she swims underwater, overturns the canoe, and tries to pull Joan under but fails.  By the following evening, through circumstantial evidence and forensic science, Dr. Fletcher concludes that Paula is some kind of dangerous monster that must be destroyed.  He fills a hypodermic syringe with a sedative, and goes in search of Paula, who is stalking Joan through the jungle.  Paula ferociously attacks Dr. Fletcher, but he manages to inject her with the sedative; unfortunately, he gives her too much and she overdoses.  In death, Paula reverts to her ape-woman form.

Acquanetta named LeBorg as her other  favourite director.  However, she said, "I just did it because I was assigned to it.  But once I accepted it, I did it to the best of my ability."

LeBorg may have been one of her favourite directors, but she certainly wasn't one of his favourite actresses.  "She was a nice-looking girl, but she had a squeaky, high-pitched voice.  A lower-class Maria Montez.  Again, as with Ramsay Ames, she developed a little later, after a few pictures, but unfortunately..."

Paul Dupree gets the cold shoulder from Bob (still from JUNGLE WOMAN)

Next, she went to Mexico "at the instigation of President Roosevelt, as one of the emissaries of Hollywood.  Somehow during the trip I made lots of contacts with important people there, producers, and they wanted me to come to Mexico and do films.  I did not speak Spanish at the time, but they said, 'If you live here we'll get tutors.' "

Acquanetta was fascinated with Mexico and wanted a release from her contract.  Universal wouldn't allow it.  They wanted to keep the Captive Wild Woman series going, and offered her an extended contract and more money.  Somehow, she managed to get out of her contract.  "Universal never forgave me for that."
 

Acquanetta, the pinup girl: this bit of cheesecake was used in the September 29, 1944 issue of YANK, an American military magazine published weekly.

 
One more movie in the series was released, JUNGLE CAPTIVE (1944), with Vicki Lane taking Acquanetta's place.  "It bombed, and that was the end of that series."  Nevertheless, CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN and JUNGLE WOMAN gave Acquanetta the unique distinction of being the only female to play the monster more than once in a movie series!

She didn't go to Mexico, after all.  Instead, she signed with Monogram: "At Monogram, I had the approval of my scripts because I had been so unhappy about my pictures at Universal.  And I disapproved of every one!  The scripts they submitted were mostly cowboy things.  Had I done them, I probably would have become a western star!"  Concluding that she was difficult, Monogram simply let Acquanetta's contract expire.

During the brief period Acquanetta was signed to Monogram, the low-budget movie company had a stable of 28 stars, including the Bowery Boys.  They had a number of movies in mind for their new acquisition, all to be produced by Sam Katzman and Jack Dietz.  Titles mentioned over the months were BELLE OF NEW ORLEANS, SPELL OF THE TROPICS, JUNGLE FEAR, JUNGLE QUEEN, VOODOO QUEEN, QUEEN OF THE HONKY TONKS, and a "song-and-dance picture".  It's probably for the better that this last one didn't materialise.

A more sophisticated Lea

She had been absent from the screen for two years when RKO signed her for the only big-budget movie she would star in: TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN (1946).  Acquanetta played Lea, high-priestess of a leopard-worshipping cult who terrorize the jungle with their steel claws and inevitably run into Tarzan. The shapely Acquanetta, fetching in her leopard-skin bikini, dominated the posters, which read: Sworn... to bring back Tarzan's body for her fiendish jungle rituals!  And Beauty veils her lust for human blood!

Lea keeps her leopard cult in shape with calisthenics

In 1948, Johnny Weissmuller, who had been making Tarzan movies for sixteen years, was about to start the Jungle Jim series for Columbia.  Weissmuller wanted Acquanetta: "...he wanted me to play opposite him in the series, but I declined to do that, because it was to be shot on the backlot somewhere."

At some point in the 1940s, Acquanetta married a businessman from Mexico City named Luciano Baschuk and divorced him in 1950.  According to a January 10, 1952 article in Jet, she "sued the millionaire for divorce but lost the suit when the court could find no record of a marriage.  Baschuk denies there ever was a marriage but the former West Virginia state coed insists they were married in Mexico [five years earlier]."  They had a son, Sergio, who died in 1952 at age five.

Acquanetta and Luciano Baschuk, Mexico City, 1948

In April, 1951, Acquanetta married illustrator/painter Henry Clive, in Juarez, Mexico, when he was 71 and she was 29.  She was his sixth wife.  She occasionally modelled for him.  They divorced in 1952.  Henry Clive said, "I still think she is the finest girl I have ever known.  I'll love her always..."  One of his paintings shows Acquanetta in Cheyenne Indian garb with long braids, a look she would keep for the rest of her life.

  

After an absence of five years, Acquanetta accepted a minor role in THE LOST CONTINENT (1951).  In search of a missing rocket, Cesar Romero and his crew find themselves on an uncharted prehistoric island where they encounter dinosaurs and meet Acquanetta and her little brother, the last of their tribe.  The opening scenes of a military installation are from ROCKETSHIP X-M.  Acquanetta appears in only one scene lasting little more than two minutes, in which she points the way to the sacred mountain where the rocket crashed, and warns of the danger in going there.

Posing with Cesar Romero for THE LOST CONTINENT (1951)

Acquanetta retired from the movie business soon after.  "I'm a good actress, I know that I'm a good actress, but I feel that I have never really achieved my acting potential, or had the right opportunities."  She said directors and producers "were always trying to get these young girls in amorous situations.  That never happened with me.  That's why I never did any of these big Technicolor extravaganzas."  She added, "I maintained my self respect.  I had it then, I have it now."

In 1953 she became a disc jockey, working four hours a day for radio station KPOL in Los Angeles.  According to Jet, she presented "the tops in popular music, plus baseball scores, race results and latest news flashes."

 
Acquanetta met her third husband, Jack Ross, "who was working at a Lincoln-Mercury store in Culver City.  Jack and I were married; I bore a son, Lance, in California; we moved to Arizona and we bought the Lincoln-Mercury dealership in Mesa, Arizona."  Soon, she was appearing in commercials for her husband's business, and began hosting a show called Acqua's Corner at a local television station, a job she held throughout the 1960s: "I was on live for almost ten years, five days a week for an hour and a half, and what I did was introduce movies...every 15 minutes I had five minutes to come on and talk!  So instead of doing commercials, I started to talk about community events and to interview people.  My commercials became totally different than anything anyone had ever done.  I would also say, 'By the way, we also sell automobiles!'"  She and her husband were prominent philanthropists in the area.  They had four sons and divorced in the 1980s.

In 1974 she had a book of her poetry published, "The Audible Silence," illustrated by Emilie Touraine.  In 1990 she was featured in a TV movie, GRIZZLY ADAMS: THE LEGEND CONTINUES, after an absence of 39 years.  She continued to live in the Phoenix area and became known locally as the 'Leopard Woman'.  She didn't smoke, or drink alcohol, tea or coffee.

She seemed to have had nothing bad to say about her co-stars.  Asked if she enjoyed working with John Carradine, she replied: "Oh, very much so.  I think of him a lot.  He was great.  I always think of him as Dracula, always picture him in my mind's eye wearing that cloak!"  To which she added: "Milburn Stone was a gentleman, a real nice person, and Evelyn Ankers, too."  Asked how she got along with Lon Chaney, she said: "Beautifully.  He was a good friend."  She had this to say of J. Carrol Naish: "...he was always offering suggestions and being very helpful and kind and gentle.  What a nice man!"  And asked if she liked working with Johnny Weissmuller, she said: "Oh, yes, very much so.  He was a nice man."

If she had one pet peeve, it was that her name was often misspelled.  Acquanetta died August 16, 2004 at the age of 83 from Alzheimer's disease.