The Alaskan

Nanuk to Be Film Ship
In North Country

Charter of the famous
fur trading schooner Nanuk, veteran
of thirty-eight cruises
to the
polar seas,
by Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer, motion picture producers,
for use in making a motion picture
version of the novel "The
Eskimo," in Alaska, is expected
to be closed in Seattle this week.
Negotiations between the
Swenson Fur Trading Company,
owner of the Nanuk, and Frank
Messenger, representing Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer, virtually
had been successfully concluded recently.
Peter Freuchen,
Danish author, who wrote the book,
"The Eskimo," was in Seattle recently
in connection with the expedition
to the Arctic, where the
story will be filmed.
A motion picture company of
twenty-seven persons, including
Johnny Weissmuller, famous
swimmer, who was the star of
"Tarzan the Ape Man," will sail
from Seattle in July or August in
the Nanuk. The vessel is now in
the plant of the Lake Union
for the cruise to the Arctic.
Of all the Siberian fur trading
vessels the Nanuk probably
is the most famous. The vessel has
been making cruises far to the
westward in the Arctic and
bringing back tales of adventure
in the ice floes and of wily Russians
bent on seizing the schooner,
her valuable cargo of furs
and her crew. The Nanuk often
was a mercy ship in the distant
reaches of the Arctic, where she
gave of her provisions to trappers
and traders marooned
in the great snow country.
Marion Swenson, former Seattle
high school girl, made a
cruise in the Nanuk to Siberia
in 1929, and was taken off by
airplane after the vessel had become
hopelessly marooned in
the Arctic ice. Miss Swenson was
accompanied by her father, Olaf
Swenson, president of the Swenson
Fur Trading Company.