Africa Screams (1949 Abbott & Costello Comedy film)

Africa Screams is a 1949 American adventure comedy film starring Abbott and Costello and directed by Charles Barton that parodies the safari genre. The title is a play on the title of the 1930 documentary Africa Speaks! The supporting cast features Clyde Beatty, Frank Buck, Hillary Brooke, Max Baer, Buddy Baer, Shemp Howard and Joe Besser. The film entered the public domain in 1977.

Plot
Diana Emerson visits the book section of Klopper's department store seeking the book Dark Safari by the famed explorer Cuddleford. She tells the clerk, Buzz Johnson, that she will pay $2,500 for a map that is inside the book. Buzz's friend and coworker Stanley Livington, an armchair explorer, has read the book and says that he is familiar with a map within it.

Buzz brings Stanley to Diana's home to draw the map, but when he overhears Diana offer Clyde Beatty $20,000 to lead an expedition to capture a legendary giant ape, Buzz realizes that the map is worth considerably more. Buzz negotiates for more money and for he and Stanley to join the safari.

Cast
Bud Abbott as Buzz Johnson
Lou Costello as Stanley Livington
Clyde Beatty as himself
Frank Buck as himself
Max Baer as Grappler McCoy
Buddy Baer as Boots Wilson
Hillary Brooke as Diana Emerson
Shemp Howard as Gunner
Joe Besser as Harry
Burton Wenland as Bobo
Charles Gemora as The Ape

Production and history
Africa Screams was filmed from November 10 through December 22, 1948, at the Nassour Studios in Los Angeles. The film was produced by Edward Nassour and A&P heir Huntington Hartford. It was the second of Abbott and Costello's independently financed productions while they were under contract to Universal. It was released by United Artists.

Abbott and Costello surrounded themselves with family and friends, and the picture ran over budget. Nassour was so distressed that a running joke on the set was that the film should be retitled "Nassour Screams".

Clyde Beatty provided his own animals for the film. The affectionate gorilla pursuing Costello was originally scripted as a female. However, the Breen Office censors who enforced the Motion Picture Production Code demanded that the gorilla's gender be changed to avoid suggestions of bestiality.

Africa Screams was Abbott and Costello's first production with Hillary Brooke and Joe Besser, both of whom would later become part of the ensemble cast of the television series The Abbott and Costello Show. The film also marked the only time that Besser and Shemp Howard appeared together in a film; Besser would replace Howard as one of the Three Stooges following Howard's death in 1955.

The film was purchased in 1953 by Robert Haggiag, an independent distributor in New York. Haggiag failed to renew the copyright because he had lost interest in the film, and it fell into the public domain in 1977. Author and film historian Bob Furmanek contacted Haggiag in the late 1980s and obtained the original nitrate stock. Most of the original camera negative had decomposed, but the nitrate fine grain was still serviceable, and Furmanek transferred it to 35mm for preservation.