NARRATOR 1 Hear You Are:

In the George Eastman .

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Once the home of the founder of Kodak,it’s interior drips with wealth. Lime washed wooden panels, marble floors, crystal glassware and exotic plants furnish every inch of the multi-million dollar mansion. Lining the halls are richly colored fabrics and priceless rugs, glistening chandeliers and sizeable paintings.

NARRATOR 2 Windows adorn every corridor and fill the space with natural light, giving visitors the chance to view Eastman’s personal courtyard. Complete with a terrace garden, ivy embroidered arches, and a quaint frog pond in the center, the eight and a half acre property feels open, yet serene at the same time.

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NARRATOR 1 The museum has done its best to preserve the wonder of the estate, guiding visitors through Eastman’s many rooms with purple velvet ropes and mementos of his own personal collections. But no matter how impressive the mansion itself may be, one feature catches your eye unlike anything else: a giant elephant head.

NARRATOR 2 As visitors are guided into Eastman’s conservatory, the elephant in the room is quite clear. Not a painting, not a statue, and certainly not your typical house decoration, George Eastman mounted an adult

1 bull elephant head high above the first floor.

Shot by Eastman, taxidermied locally, and displayed proudly in the largest room of the estate, the elephant head is George Eastman’s proud reminder to all that enter his home: “I bested that animal.”

NARRATOR 1 As the centerpiece of the living room, the elephant is a reminder. While barely a fraction of Eastman’s hunting trophies it is clear he saw it as his greatest.

The prominence of the bull elephant distracts visitors from another fact: the mansion is a mausoleum of dead African wildlife.

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As you walk deeper into the house you arrive in his game room,

SFX: footsteps continue and animal noises begin decorated with a cheetah pelt couch cover, an antelope hoof ashtray, and a muskrat fur blanket. A desk with a rhino skin stretched over it sits in the room next door, offset by the elephant foot spitoon and rhino foot vase.

Travelling upwards, you pass the second floor for a closer view of the goliath elephant head, and move up towards the third and final floor.

There, you are greeted by the mounted heads of a boar, , rhino, water buffalo, and lion.

And that’s when it hits you:

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2 Eastman’s house is stuffed with dead animals.

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NARRATOR 2 But why did he keep all of these animals around? And how did he get them? Eastman was a busy man with a knack for photography, but his passion for hunting is abundantly clear from the moment you see that elephant’s head. So where does that passion come from? Did he want to preserve certain species or hang them as trophies?

NARRATOR 1 I’m Sam

Narrator 2 And I’m Chloe

NARRATOR 1 And this is Hear UR. Episode 5. Lived By The Will.

NARRATOR 2 Today we will be looking into Eastman’s appetite for trophy hunting and the steps he took to preserve the animals he saw fit to display. With two safaris, thousands of hunted species, years of detailed journal entries, and numerous taxidermied animals, Eastman was a man that got what he wanted. George Eastman lived by the will.

Barb Tuttle George Eastman was born in 1854 in Waterville, NY.

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Waterville is way east of here south of Utica, NY.

Narrator 2 That’s Barb Tuttle, a Rochester local and guide at the George Eastman Museum.

3 Barb Tuttle

He was the youngest of three children. He had two older sisters, Emma Kate and Ellen Maria. And his dad George Washington Eastman, and his mom Maria Kilbourn Eastman, um had a nursery specializing in fruit trees and rose bushes.

Narrator 1 In 1888 George Eastman founded his camera company, Kodak which eventually turned ​ ​ Eastman into the 5th wealthiest person in the U.S. Eastman was an avid sportsman and enjoyed being in the outdoors,he had a love for fishing and hunting. He believed in the philosophy that “What we do in our working hours determines what we have in this world; what we do in our play hours determines what we are.”

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NARRATOR 1 Eastman championed triumph over conservation. Despite his hunting license often being granted to him on the basis of museum donation,

Eastman thoroughly believed that the animals he tracked were his trophies. His detailed journal entries favored the exhilaration of the hunt and the sensation of shooting big game. His descriptions were rich in detail, sometimes lasting pages describing one encounter; yet, once the animal was shot dead,

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Eastman loses all interest.

NARRATOR 2 He documents their moving of camps often. They were always following the best animals, and he even shortened his stay in Nairobi specifically to move and get bigger game such as elephants, buffalo, and rhinos. He describes one camp as..

4 EASTMAN VOICE ACTOR The ideal place to hunt, kill, or murder the wild animals.

NARRATOR 2 For Eastman, a dead animal wasn’t much of an animal at all. It was an object for him to display.

In fact, George Eastman believed that animal’s existed for man’s use. He wasn’t generally concerned with animal endangerment, hunting the animals that he found suitable at any time he pleased. On the second of his two safaris, Eastman stayed an extra 7 months after reaching his hunting quota; killing over 1000 animals on his own. His house showcases his trophies, with elephant feet and antelope hooves being crafted into home decor, along with cheetah pelts and rodent skins sewn into blankets.

Barb Tuttle This is a really nice elephant hoof ashtray. They had these things all over the house. At least they used the animal for something back then.

NARRATOR 1 Despite the fact that he was known to have constantly been documenting life around him through pictures, George Eastman, at age 72, still wrote and published every piece of his safari travels. From the mundane to the thrilling, Eastman wanted someone to remember what he was doing in .

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EASTMAN VOICE ACTOR “Audley and I have now gotten nearly all the trophies here we want except a few more lions. All the animals,

SFX: truck noises end except perhaps the lion can run like the wind for long distances, and it is very hard to get a shot at them closer than 200 to 300 5 yards. I Hope to get a very interesting affair and some excitement.”

NARRATOR 1 To help explain the extent of Eastman’s hunting journal, George Eastman House Curator, Kathy Connor weighs in on the extent of his daily reports.

Kathy Connor Um he published two books. One was when he was still alive and he gave it out to friends, to um to tell about his experiences in Africa, as it was very unusual to go there especially at his age. Um and photograph and take movies of all of this and hunt and bring back the animal trophies and it was very expensive so that’s why it was just a old, old rich white guys sport type of thing. But through the pictures and his writing, his little oral histories and his letters to his secretary about what they were doing each day kinda like a diary, those books became very popular. And he ended up printing about fifteen hundred of them, and then giving them out to his staff so if people asked about the trip, rather than trying to explain things he would hand them a book. If there were friends or other people and they didn’t work with him at Kodak, he had a few others published that he hand wrote a little inscription for them.

NARRATOR 2 And there’s good reason to believe that at this point in his life, Eastman was considering his legacy. Eastman often bragged about his hunts in his journal entries claiming that he had done some of “the best quail shooting” of his life in Africa. He recorded the comments of others praising him as well. Colleague and friend Leslie Tarlton, said that Eastman’s collection was “the finest he has seen in a while.”

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6 Despite his age, Eastman always wanted to come out on top, constantly comparing himself and his trophies to the rest of the group.

SFX: Sounds of an elephant in the distance, careful footsteps, one shot is taken sounds end and Teddy Roosevelt begins talking Teddy Roosevelt The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside.

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NARRATOR 1 Eastman was an avid admirer of Teddy Roosevelt. His entire first safari in Africa was mapped out to mimic a trip Roosevelt had previously taken. He planned to return with an elephant and white rhino as Roosevelt did. When Eastman did not achieve this goal he planned his second safari shortly after returning home. It was not only in his safari plans that Eastman showcased his admiration for Roosevelt, but as well as within his home.

Barb Tuttle He contracted with an architectural firm out of New York City called McKim, Mead & White and they were the premiere architects in the U.S at the turn of the century. They were responsible for the original Pennsylvania Station in New York City. Along with the restoration of the White House during Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency so this room looks very much like what the state dining room looked like during Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency.

NARRATOR 2 His admiration of Roosevelt came from an interest in those who held very powerful positions in society; specifically men who were influential in their respective countries. Along with Roosevelt, Eastman held the greatest reverence for Benito Mussolini. In his many correspondences with 7 Mussolini, Eastman consistently refers to him as “your excellence”, and was very upset that he did not get the chance to meet him while in Italy before departing for safari. In Eastman’s eyes, Mussolini was “no doubt one of the ablest men in Europe.”

NARRATOR 1 Eastman’s dominance over the African safari was a physical representation of the power he possessed. Every animal he killed or helped seize was another notch on his belt as George Eastman: Conqueror of the African Safari.

Yet, Eastman’s dominance over the land encompassed more than he even considered. Local hunters, chefs, townspeople, drivers, ammunitions transporters, and more, inhabited the land that Eastman only referenced to hunt and control. Whether in Nairobi, Sudan, Uganda, or any of the other 4,000 miles he travelled, the natives were consistently referred to as separate from Eastman and his cohorts.

NARRATOR 2 The difference between the native people of Africa and Eastman’s sporting group is made clear by his delineation of skin color as a means of description.

His notes on the locals remain polite and respectful, as Eastman was not a racially malicious man, but his accounts of big game hunts with the locals reveal an unmistakable superiority complex. Eastman writes of an African Bull elephant terrorizing a small village in Nairobi. The elephant had already claimed four lives, and Eastman’s travels had conveniently landed him close enough to the elephants whereabouts. In a single day, Eastman tracked and ended the life of the ferocious animal, and supposedly returned to the village as a hero. Greeted by songs and many thanks, George Eastman believed he was the savior of a small African town; one unable to stop the rampage of an enraged elephant.

8 NARRATOR 1 Kathy describes the encounter in great detail on-site at the Eastman House. Coincidentally, George Eastman’s player-organ couldn’t help but chime in as well...

Kathy Connor That elephant had um been ravaging two villages in that part of east Africa and . And had destroyed people’s homes and crops and had killed some people. So when he killed the elephant, even though it wasn’t a perfect specimen, it only had the one tusk, the villagers were just thrilled. And so they ate the meat of the elephant, for quite some time it fed the village as well.

NARRATOR 1 Whether or not Eastman embellished this story is unknown, but there were four elephant related casualties in that small village, and Eastman was able to kill an elephant in that area. The main takeaway being this: this was exactly what Eastman wanted. To be a hero, to be remembered for his valiance among the native people, and to conquer another area. The people that surrounded Eastman were just as important as the game he hunted, and his pride in hunting for them hints towards the superiority he craved.

Kathy Connor These were the animals. So at the time, if you were into that you definitely displayed them in your home. It was definite they were trophies, they were things you brought back that you had done. So um not quite the political opinion against it back then. Okay, a lot of these animals, some of them including the elephant, they were getting extinct. But if you could pay the money for a permit or a license to do it, you could do it legally.

NARRATOR 2

9 Shooting an elephant had become an obsession for Eastman, he was determined to leave with a trophy to show. Along with bagging an elephant, Eastman had desperately wanted a white rhino, despite being endangered. He wrote to friend, Baron de Cartier who had helped to organize details of his second safari asking for permission.

VOICE ACTOR “Do you think there is any chance of me being able to get permission to shoot one white rhino? I understand that they are on the protected list but that sometimes exceptions are made.”

NARRATOR 2 With this still in mind, Eastman bagged his white rhino, despite his irreverent attitude towards its endangerment.

NARRATOR 1 Recording, preserving, and presenting. Eastman travelled with his close friends and fellow sportsmen, Martin & Osa Johnson, and . Each hunter was skilled, tenacious, and wealthy, yet each had very different perceptions of their purpose in being on those safaris.

Narrator 1 Martin & Osa Johnson accompanied Eastman on both of his safaris to Africa, but for very different purposes. The Johnson’s were filmmakers looking to get live footage of different scenes, such as spear hunting lions and animals in nature, that no one else had captured before.

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NARRATOR 2 Carl Akeley also traveled to Africa with Eastman and the Johnson’s on both safaris. Akeley also seeked to preserve the animals but through a different method. Akeley was beginning to collect specimen for his Hall of African Animals opening in the 10 American Museum of Natural History. Akeley believed that by hunting these animals and creating taxidermies of them in of their natural habitats, was the best way to preserve these species. So where does George Eastman fit in?

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Eastman I am happy to great this gathering of motion picture engineers. It is a great satisfaction to be able to speak to you through the medium of this wonderful invention. And will be far more dependent on the work of the engineers in the future than it has in the past. I hope that the society of motion picture engineers will continue to flourish and to serve the industry.

NARRATOR 1 Eastman was proud of the Johnsons success in the film industry and admired Akeley for his work at the Natural History Museum. He believed in the work and purposeful engagement of his friends and fellow hunters, but his interests were far more personal.

George Eastman valued the hunt and cherished the reward. He was wealthy, accomplished, charitable, and respected; so by no means did Eastman need anything from ​ ​ anyone else. What Eastman needed was a legacy that he could construct on his own terms. Physical taxidermies of animals that could surpass him, photographs of species he killed, newspaper articles of his two published safari journals, and the stories that he publicized along with them. These were all controllable features of George Eastman’s remembrance.

NARRATOR 2 Just 6 years after his final Safari, George Eastman took his own life, leaving behind a note that simply reads,

VOICE ACTOR 11 “To My Friends, My Work is Done. Why Wait?”

NARRATOR 2 Crippled by lumbar spinal stenosis, he feared an illness that left him crippled and inactive. He makes no mention of his age in any journal entry, instead, opting to recount his aggressive encounters with charging rhinoceri, human killing elephants, and man-eating lions. Yet, the physicality that Eastman portrays in his letters was not a sign of insecurity, but rather a consciousness of his own legacy. By telling stories of tracking big game and detailing his expenditures of large sums of money, Eastman was crafting the personal life he wanted to portray.

NARRATOR 1 But not all of Eastman’s safari escapades can be so neatly packaged by the man that experienced them. In his desire to mimic the travels of Teddy Roosevelt, Eastman finds himself boasting of his own empiricism. The dominance over African animals and cultures alike lies underneath the subtext of every encounter. From his furnished tents to his lion pelt dressed Buicks, Eastman was unaware of the innate cultural supremacy he was displaying. In a direct quote from Eastman himself, he writes,

EASTMAN VOICE ACTOR Whether anybody is justified in killing a lot of wild animals, just for the pleasure of taking home so-called “trophies” to show his friends and bragging is entirely dependant on the hunter.

NARRATOR 2 Eastman wrote that he was returning home with a mind full of memories, and eager to once again live in a place where the people were not “hopelessly and unspeakably filthy”. In a letter to , Carl Akeley’s wife, Eastman actually thanks her 12 for the original idea to journal his experiences after his first safari, and exclaims his joy in arriving in Rochester; a civilised area, unlike any land in Africa.

NARRATOR 1 He enjoyed the company of the native people, but not their lifestyle. He relished in the hunt for big game, but viewed each animal as an object for his own pleasure. And finally, George Eastman admired the land of Africa, but was unable to appreciate it’s worth past the trophies that lied within it.

In Eastman’s obituary, writer Lewis B. Jones recounts,

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“George Eastman played the game to the last. By his own hand he lived his life, and by his own hand he ended it”

Narrator 1 HearUR is a podcast created by students at The University of Rochester.

Narrator 2 This episode was co-produced by Sam Roth and Chloé Salone with co-production, theme music and audio engineering by Josh Copperman.

Narrator 1 We’d also like to thank The George Eastman Study Center as well as Jesse Peers, Kathy Connor and Barb Tuttle for their assistance with research and contributions to the episode.

Narrator 2 And finally, we’d like to thank our voice actor, Rick Carl, for bringing George Eastman to life.

Narrator 1 The coordinating producers for this season of HearUR are Maya Lippard and Liam Gousios. The executive producers for Hear UR are Thomas Fleischman and Stephen Roessner. 13

Narrator 2 HearUR is made possible by the Teaching Innovation Grant at the University of Rochester.

Narrator 1 Be sure to check out the other episodes of HearUR, Season Two: Nature Reconstructed at HearUR.com

Narrator 2 Thanks for listening.

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