How Jane Goodall Changed What We KnowAbout Chimps
Newly revealed imagesshed light on her research breakthroughs, how she became famous, and thephotographer she loved.
「FOR THOSEOF you who may hear a story twice, please forgive me,」 Jane Goodall told heraudience at a 2015 lecture. But sometimes, she noted, 「stories are nice to hearagain.」 The basic narrative of Jane Goodall’s life is instantly recognizablefrom the many times it’s been written, broadcast, or otherwise sent into theworld: A young Englishwoman conducts chimpanzee research in Africa andwinds up revolutionizing primate science. But how did it happen? Howdid a woman with a passion for animals but no formal background in researchnavigate the male-dominated worlds of science and media to make enormousdiscoveries in her field, and become a world-famous face of the conservationmovement? This is that story
GETTINGTHE SHOT
These frames are from reels of film outtakes that werefound in storage in 2015. They were shot in the early 1960s at Gombe StreamGame Reserve, in what is now Tanzania, byJane became widely known because of a film, Miss Goodall and theWild Chimpanzees, which came out in 1965 and was produced by NationalGeographic. She hasn’t seen it in years. But now I’m playing it for her on alaptop at the West London home of a friend. The primatologist, 83 this year,studies her 28-year-old self.
「Think how fun it would be to be thatage again,」 Jane says with a smile. The young Jane on the screen is hikingthrough the forest of Gombe Stream Game Reserve in what is now Tanzania. She’swearing high-top canvas sneakers and khaki shorts, and her blond hair is in theponytail that became her signature. She appears to be doing field research—butin reality, Jane says, she was reenacting events from her first six months atGombe so that photographer Hugo van Lawick could film them. Those months hadbeen a remarkable period of solitude and discovery, a time before cameras werepresent. They』ve been present in her life ever since.
National Geographic executives hadspecifically told Hugo which shots to get, Jane remembers: 「They gave us alist: Jane in the boat, Jane with binoculars, Jane looking at a map.」When Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees was broadcast onCBS on December 22, 1965, an estimated 25 million North American viewers tunedin—a huge audience, then and now.
The exposure brought Janeinternational acclaim and ignited what became a legendary career inprimatology. In Jane, National Geographic found a telegenic researcher andstoryteller with a film-ready setup: an attractive white woman doing scientificwork in the African bush. It was especially poignant at a time when womentypically were discouraged from pursuing careers in science.
Since then, Jane has completed aPh.D. at Cambridge University, authored dozens of books, mentored newgenerations of scientists, promoted conservation in the developing world, andestablished several sanctuaries for chimps. Today the Jane Goodall Institute’sRoots & Shoots program is in nearly a hundred countries, training youngpeople to be conservation leaders. And Jane still travels about 300 days a yearto lobby governments, visit schools, and give speeches.
Jane has been the subject of morethan 40 films and has made countless appearances on television. Now she is thesubject of a new National Geographic Documentary Films release about her lifeand work. The two-hour feature, JANE, draws from never beforeseen footage to offer a revealing portrait of the woman whose devotion tochimpanzees made her famous.
When Hugo first went to Gombe in 1962to document Jane’s discoveries, he shot thousands of still images and more than65 hours of 16mm film footage. A fraction of the work made its way into the1965 television special and National Geographic magazine. Whatthe editors didn’t use, the outtakes, went into film cans and boxes for storageand over time were forgotten. In 2015 they were found in an underground storagefacility in rural Pennsylvania. These precious rolls of film held the promiseof something rare: a new perspective on Jane. On film, every so often at theend of a take, she drops her serious persona and glances directly at thelens—toward Hugo, her director. In these few instances, we see the stirrings oflove for the man behind the camera.
a pivotal time: When a young womanwho had known Africa only from Tarzan and Dr. Dolittle books was dropped intoher fantasy, and when a novice scientist’s discoveries debunked long-heldbeliefs about humans』 closest living relatives.
At Gombe, Jane withstood all mannerof natural threats: malaria, parasites, snakes, storms. But in her dealingswith the wider world, the challenges often required shrewd strategy anddelicate diplomacy. Early in her career, Jane had to contend with a primarilymale science establishment that didn’t take her seriously; with mediaexecutives whose support hinged on her willingness to be scripted andglamorized; with men who said they』d be her partner or patron but also soughtcontrol, concessions, or relationships that she did not want.
Through it all, Jane’s philosophyseemed the same: She would endure slights, accommodate demands, tolerate fools,make sacrifices—if it served to sustain her work
From her childhood in England, Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall professeda deep love of animals and a desire to work with them in Africa. Her familylacked the means to send her to college, so Jane went to secretarial school.She worked at Oxford and then for a documentary film company in London. In thesummer of 1956 she returned home, where she waited tables to save for an oceanpassage to Kenya.
In Nairobi she boldly asked for anappointment with paleoanthropologist Louis S. B. Leakey, whose interest ingreat apes grew from his pioneering research into human origins. Leakey hiredJane on the spot to do secretarial work and saw in her the makings of ascientist. He arranged for her to study primates while he raised funds so shecould conduct chimpanzee field research in Tanzania.
And within months of their firstmeeting, he told Jane he was in love with her.
REALITY TV
Once Jane and Hugomarried, the focus of the human interest frame widened to
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Jane wrote to others that she was「horrified」 by the overture from Leakey, who was 30 years her senior and married.For months after Jane told him firmly that she』d never return his feelings,Leakey still sent her love letters.
In an interview years later withVirginia Morell, author of a book on the Leakey family, Jane said that 「what Iwas most afraid of was what my rejection of him might mean for my study of thechimpanzees.」 But Leakey never withdrew his support—and by the summer of 1960Jane was setting up camp in the Gombe Stream Reserve near the shores of LakeTanganyika, with enough funding for six months of fieldwork. Because governmentofficials wouldn’t allow a lone female to live in the reserve, VanneMorris-Goodall came along as her daughter’s chaperone.
From the start Jane followed herinstincts for conducting research. Not knowing that the established scientificpractice was to use numbers to identify animals under study, she recordedobservations of the chimps by names she concocted: Fifi, Flo, Mr. McGregor,David Greybeard. She wrote about the chimps as individuals with distinct traitsand personalities—for example, when a female she called Mrs. Maggs was preparinga treetop nest for the night, Jane wrote that the chimp had 「tested thebranches exactly the way a person tests the springs of a hotel bed.」
She spent most waking hours locatingthe animals through her binoculars, then trying to draw gradually closer sothey』d get used to her presence as she sat jotting notes. But with one monthleft in the study grant, she hadn’t made the kind of significant discovery shefelt would justify Leakey’s faith in her.
As her study was approaching its end,Jane made three discoveries that would not only make Leakey proud but wouldalso turn established science on its head.
In her first discovery, she observeda chimp gnawing on the carcass of a small animal, which belied the prevailingbelief that apes didn’t eat meat. The chimp was memorable for his prominentgray goatee, and she would name him David Greybeard. He in turn would open thedoor for her to the hidden world of Gombe’s chimpanzees.
Within two weeks Jane observed DavidGreybeard again, but this time what she witnessed was truly game-changing.Squatting by a termite mound, he picked a blade of grass and poked it into atunnel. When he pulled it out, it was covered with termites, which he slurpeddown. In another instance, Jane saw him pick a twig and strip it of leavesbefore using it to fish for termites. David Greybeard had exhibited tool useand toolmaking—two things that previously only humans were believed capable of.
As Jane began to write up and publish her field research,she met with skepticism from the scientific community. After all, she had noscience training—no degree other than a secretarial certificate affirming thatshe could touch-type.
In the spring of 1962, Jane gave apresentation at the Zoological Society of London’s primate symposium and impressed manyin attendance, including zoologist and author Desmond Morris. But she alsofaced derision. A society officer delivered a thinly veiled critique of her work as 「anecdote and … speculation」that made no 「real contribution to science.」 AnAssociated Press report began withthis: 「A willowy blonde with more time for monkeys than men told today how she spent 15months in the jungle to study the habits of the apes.」
A FEEDINGSTRATEGY
Jane sits on theconcrete foundation of the new feeding station she and Hugo built
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A photographic record of Jane’sdiscoveries would put them beyond dispute. But Jane rebuffed National Geographic’s request to send aphotographer, saying a stranger might disrupt the relationship she was buildingwith the chimps. After spending months getting close enough to even be incamera range, 「I want to do my own photos—or have a jolly good try,」 she wrote in a letter home.
National Geographic shipped a cameraand several rolls of film to Africa with detailed instructions on how to usethem. Jane made a valiant effort. But her dark-furred subjects tended to hide in theshadows, and the photos she submitted weren’t up to the magazine editors’standards. Again, editors pressed to send a Geographic photographer, and again Jane held them off: Her younger sister, Judy, had photography experience, and the two lookedand sounded enough alike that the chimps might not be upset by the sister’spresence.
Louis Leakey underwrote Judy’s trip to Gombe, covering the expense byselling rights to print the first pictures to a British weekly. Ultimatelythe Geographic’s editors found her photos unsatisfactory too.
National Geographic magazine wanted Jane to write an article abouther work—but it couldn’t go forward without 「good pictures of the animals,」 aneditor warned. Jane understood that if she couldn’t get her work covered in themagazine, her funding from the National Geographic Society could be in jeopardy.
Leakey had helped Jane get into aPh.D. program at Cambridge University—she was one of the few individualswithout an undergraduate degree to ever be admitted—and he asked National Geographicto support Jane as she wrote up her Gombe research and worked on her dissertation.
When the Geographic turned down therequest, saying, 「this lady … is unqualified in the sense that she holds nodegree of any university,」 an outraged Leakeyfired off a memo listing her accomplishments.National Geographic officials gave Jane the requested grant, but as part of thedeal, she agreed to welcome a professional photographer to Gombe. On Leakey’srecommendation, National Geographic hired Hugo van Lawick for the job.
EVERYONE'SA CRITIC
Jane shows a photoof an adult chimp to infant Flint. Before Hugo built a darkroom
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The opportunity to work at Gombe withJane would be a huge break for the 25-year-old Dutchman, who had someexperience in natural history filmmaking. Jane wrote to a friend that sheactually looked forward to his arrival because she』d been told that Hugo was 「afirst-class photographer, wonderful with animals—well, it’s just too good to betrue.」
When I interviewed Jane in 2015, sheinsisted that 「Louis was definitely matchmaking when he sent Hugo. There’s no question, and headmitted it.」 Jane believes that Leakey’s enduringlove for her was selfless in the end.
Hugo reached Gombe in August 1962. Hesmoked heavily; Jane detested the habit. Otherwise they were well matched, both ardent observers ofwildlife and devoted to their work. In a letter to a friend, Jane wrote, 「Weare a very happy family. Hugo is charming and we get on very well.」
As Jane and Hugo documented the chimps』behavior, neither felt it worthwhile to focus on Jane as well. But NationalGeographic executives were increasingly eager to turn the camera on her.
「I know you won’t forget to get somepictures of straight camp life—cooking, the writing of reports into the nightby lamp light, bathing, hair washing and the like,」 assistant illustrationseditor Robert Gilka wrote in a letter to Hugo in the fall of 1962. 「I bring upthe hair washing bit because there came out of Jane’s last trip to the chimp reserve just such a picture, but it was … so underexposed that it would notreproduce.」 Good shots of Jane washing her hair in a stream, Gilka stressed,「would be a big help.」
In the London home where Miss Goodall and the WildChimpanzees is still playing on the laptop, we』ve come to thehair-washing scene. Even today, it doesn’t sitwell with Jane.
「I was angry they filmed this,」 shesays.
Why? I ask.
「I don’t see why people should see mewashing my hair. I couldn’t see why it was interesting.」
Hugo’s work pleased NationalGeographic’s editors. He was checking off the boxes: capturing photographicproof of the chimps』 toolmaking and use, nestbuilding, social hierarchies—anddutifully taking the human interest shots of Jane that Gilka had requested.
His photographs appeared with Jane’swords in National Geographic magazine’s August 1963 coverstory, 「My Life Among Wild Chimpanzees: A courageous young British scientistlives among these great apes in Tanganyika and learns hithertounknown details of their behavior.」
The issue was a resounding success. NationalGeographic Society President Melville Grosvenor paid Jane and Hugo bonuses andcalled the article 「magnificent.」 On its first page, a short text introducingJane captured the duality of the public image being crafted for her. In oneparagraph, she was called 「a modern scientific zoologist」—and in the next, 「acharming young Englishwoman.」
Flint was the first infant born at Gombe after Janearrived. With him she had a great opportunity to study chimp development—and tohave physical contact, which is no longer deemed appropriate with chimps in thewild.HUGO VAN LAWICK, NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
As Jane and Hugo expanded theresearch station at Gombe, they also developed ideas for new films, butNational Geographic wanted to keep the spotlight on Jane in films being madefor television and the lecture circuit. The requests were increasinglyspecific, as in this letter to Hugo fromJoanne Hess of the National Geographic Society’s lecture branch:
「It will be most important andhelpful to have several shots of Jane, which you will have to pose, showing herlooking through binoculars, laughing at chimps, staring up at chimps in trees,staring into distance at chimps, and writing notes in her book, etc.,」 Hesswrote. 「I mean you should take about 200 feet of close-ups of Jane 『pretending’to do these things, so that we can cut pictures of her into the film.」
The pressures to pose rankled Jane, but she handled it diplomatically. In a letter to Melvin Payne, whose NationalGeographic committee oversaw her funding, Jane wrote, 「Certainly I understandthat it is necessary to build up a story around 『Jane Goodall』 and we havecooperated with Joanne as much as we possibly could.」
But when Hess came to Gombe tooversee some filming, Jane allowed herself a private act of rebellion. 「We are alreadycollecting large numbers of evil looking spiders and centipedes to lay aroundcasually in her tent, in an endeavor to shorten her visit,」 Jane wrote to her mother.
HUGO』SAUDITION
Jane captured chimp images with pen and paper, Hugo usedfilm. At National Geographic in Washington for his job interview, Hugo washanded a camera and told to shoot some
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When I interviewed Jane years later,during a 2015 visit to Gombe, she could look back on the celebrity treatmentmore philosophically:
GOODALL: There’s this glamorous younggirl out in the jungle with potentially dangerous animals. People likeromanticizing, and people were looking at me as though I was that myth thatthey had created in their mind. And the Geographic helped create it too.
GERBER: A lot of people would resistthat and fight back and say, That’s not me.
GOODALL: There was nothing I could doabout it because as far as they knew, it was me. And there was no way I couldbe portrayed differently. It wasn’t inaccurate. It’s just that people take thefacts and weave stories around them.
GERBER: But at some point youembraced it? You embellished it? You made it better?
GOODALL: Well, at some point Irealized that if people were going to think this way, then they would listen tome, which is true. And this would help to conserve chimps and do all the otherthings I need to do.
ROUGHINGIT
In herbook My Friends, the Wild Chimpanzees, Jane recalled her first day at
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As 1963 ended, Jane confided to friends that she and Hugowere 「very much in love.」 During Christmas holidays at her family home inBournemouth, on England’s southern coast, she received a telegram: 「WILL YOUMARRY ME STOP HUGO.」 She replied yes. They set March 28 as the wedding date, onemonth after what would be another red-letter day for Jane: her first majorpublic lecture in the United States.
Jane was a little nervous about beingon stage at the 3,700-seat DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, but the membersof National Geographic’s lecture committee seemed more nervous. She was to giveher remarks against the backdrop of a film made from Hugo’s Gombe footage. As theFebruary 28 event neared, the committee asked for a draft of her speech. Janehadn’t written one.
Seeking assurance that the lecturewould go well, Joanne Hess and her team asked Jane to join them in the editingroom, to practice her remarks as the film played. When I interviewed her atGombe in 2015, she recalled the scene:
「The Geographic naturally wanted tohear what it would be like,」 she recalled. 「Well, it’s very hard for me topractice something ahead; it comes out to the audience. I didn’t know thatthen. I just knew that with three people listening to me in that cutting room,this isn’t a lecture! Apparently they were all whispering to each other, 『Shallwe cancel it? It’s going to be a disaster! Can we really have the Geographicassociated with this young gal? She doesn’t seem to know what she’s going tosay.』 I had every idea what I was going to say, but I wasn’t going to give awhole speech to three people in a cutting room.」
In her speech and film presentationat Constitution Hall, Jane reported on her scientific discoveries, which shecalled 「results beyond my wildest dreams.」 She evoked scenes of Gombe’s beautyand tranquility. And as she would throughout her career, she described chimpsby their personalities and the names she』d given them. She called Fifi 「agileand acrobatic」 and described Fifi’s older brother Figan as an adolescent who「feels he’s a little bit superior.」 To a baby who was 「just beginning to findher feet,」 Jane had impishly given the name Gilka, after the NationalGeographic editor.
And in describing the need to protectthe chimps and prevent them from being shot or sold to circuses, Jane referredto David Greybeard, the trusting chimp who had opened the door to some of hermost important discoveries.
「David Greybeard … has put hiscomplete trust in man,」 she told the audience. 「Shall we fail him? Surely it’sup to us to do something to ensure that at least some of these fantastic,almost human creatures continue to live undisturbed in their natural habitat.」
A NOVELAPPROACH
Jane’s study hadno precedent. Here she shows the juvenile Fifi a toy chimp. As
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Her presentation was a triumph, and amilestone in her emergence as a public figure—a status she didn’t start outseeking but was learning to manage to her advantage. It caught the attention ofa National Geographic executive who was launching a television specialsdivision. A good deal of the Gombe footage ended up in one of the division’sfirst prime-time broadcasts: Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees, withnarration by Hollywood luminary Orson Welles.
When Hugo and Jane first screened thefinished film, they complained of its many inaccuracies. They found the Wellesnarration patently unscientific—and at Jane’s insistence, the script was partiallyrewritten.
To this day, as she watches the filmon the laptop, Jane points out flaws. That leopard wasn’t photographed by Hugo,it was stock footage. That scene isn’t in Gombe, it’s somewhere in the Serengeti. And whenWelles begins a sentence with 「After two months』 search in vain,」 Jane cuts himoff: 「It wasn’t true that I didn’t see any chimps for two months. That’s anabsolute lie.」
The flaws seemed to matter only toJane and Hugo; the film was a commercial success. The two hoped they might doanother film project and have more creative control, but Geographic officialshad other ideas. They wanted to do more with Jane and Gombe, but notnecessarily with Hugo. Jane was their star; Hugo, an accessory.
In the years after the filming atGombe, Jane and Hugo took different paths. In 1967 Hugo and Jane welcomed a son,Hugo Eric Louis van Lawick, known by his nickname, Grub.
With Jane’s work anchored in Gombe and Hugo’s filmmaking passion in the Serengeti,nearly 400 miles away, the two grew apart. In 1974 Jane and Hugo divorced. In1975 she married Derek Bryceson, a Tanzanian government official.
By the time Grub was eight, he wasliving with his grandmother and attending school in Bournemouth. Derek and Janehad been married for only five years when he died of cancer in 1980. After a career spanning four decades, Hugo died of emphysema in 2002.
When I interviewed Jane in Gombe, it had been 55 years sinceshe』d climbed out of a skiff and onto a pebble beach there for the first time. In her mind’s eyeshe can see things as they were then, from that beach up to the high ridge known as the peak:「It’s like another life, so long ago.」
"APECULIAR WHITE APE"
That’s how Jane thought the chimps regarded her: As oneof them, just different. Here Flo’s daughter Fifi looks up Jane’s shirt. 「Ibecame totally absorbed into this forest existence,」 Jane wrote later.
GETTYIMAGES
She can even watch herselfpretending, and today recount it with a smile.
In the film footage, Jane sees her28-year-old self seated on the peak. It’s magic hour, nightfall. Hugo’s exposureis perfect. On screen, Jane pulls a blanket around her shoulders. She raises atin cup to her mouth and sips.
Now it’s Jane who’s the narrator.
「That cup is empty, I swear,」 shesays. 「There’s nothing inside it.」