Paul Fejos was not only an anthropologist, but a film director as well. He attended medical school at the request of his family and received his M.D. degree in 1921. He then served in the Hungarian army during the First World War in the Seventh Hussars Regiment and was among the first to pilot a plane during the campaign in Italy. After the war, he emigrated from Hungary to the United States where he took up working in a piano factory. Shortly thereafter, he was recommended to work in the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and was hired in the laboratory for 80.00$ a month. In 1926 he left the Institute to work as an Assistant Director and set designer of The Glass Slipper by Ferenc Molnar. He was soon signed on with Universal Studios, but was unhappy with the owners and producers of the motion pictures and quickly resigned.
In 1931, Fejos returned to Europe as he was dissatisfied with the boredom and monotony he found in Hollywood. For the next few years, he switched filmmaking companies frequently; hoping to escape the restlessness he'd felt in Hollywood. Upon being presented with the opportunity to film wherever he wanted, he chose Madagascar. He was so taken by the native tribe in southern Madagascar that he filmed over 100,000 feet of film and collected artifacts which he later presented to the Royal Geographic Society of Denmark. Thus enticed, he began reading books in anthropology.
Fejos worked as Director of Anthropological Research for the Wenner-Gren Foundation and sought to make anthropologists aware of the various branches of anthropology and to stimulate their interest in them. During the war, he was called upon to train men at Stanford University. It was Fejos who suggested the idea of applying the geophysical apparatus for researching the existence of the Pleistocene in Mexico City. As a result the Tepexpan man was found. Later he emphatically pushed the use of C-14 dating which has since changed highly upgraded archaeological dating.
This picture reprinted by permission of the American Anthropological Association from American Anthropologist vol 66 1964 Not for reprint.
American Anthropologist vol 66 1964 American Anthropological Association.
Written by: Nikki Akins