By Jeffrey V. Moy, North Jersey History and Genealogy Center
Walter Wanderwell co-founded the Work Around the World Educational Club with his wife Nell in 1919 in an effort to promote world peace after the Great War.
To raise money to keep the expedition going, Walter, a charismatic salesman and something of a rogue, sold tickets to screenings of their travelogue footage where he and Nell spoke of their adventures to rapt crowds.
Walter’s charismatic appeal and infectious personality frequently landed him in trouble, but he mostly emerged unscathed. A Polish expat, Walter was born sometime around 1895 as Valerian Johannes Pieczynski.
Nell Miller was born in 1896 outside of Seattle, WA, and worked as a Broadway chorus girl before meeting Walter in 1918. After a brief courtship, the couple married in Birmingham, AL, in 1918 and set out on their worldwide adventure.
The Wanderwells initially envisioned the Work Around the World Education Club as a volunteer international police force that would monitor countries for signs of military buildup, to prevent a repeat of the atrocities and death of World War I.
However, the “peace through education and disarmament” campaign transitioned into a more manageable mission: Embarking on a globe trek and sharing footage of their travels with paying audiences along the way.
The Around the World Race and Travelogue Film Series
Travelogue films were an extremely profitable genre in the 1920s. Explorers set out in automobiles, ships and airplanes, rushing to document and share their views of far-flung peoples.
Residents of small and mid-sized American towns rarely traveled more than a few miles from home, so this footage offered an irresistible glimpse into faraway kingdoms and civilizations.
Most travel shorts played up the “exotic” otherness of their subjects to sell tickets, and while some of the Wanderwell’s footage utilized the chauvinistic language of the era, they went to great lengths to explore the common humanity and good nature of the people they befriended in their films.
In 1922, Nell and Walter set out on a “Million Dollar Wager” race, in which separate teams led by the husband and wife departed from Atlanta on an expedition around the world to see who would be first to visit the most countries, and travel the most miles.
The race had no defined route and apparently no finish line, as it lasted for the next seven years. The Wanderwells filmed their travels and edited the footage on the fly to present to audiences in towns they visited, raising money in the process to further extend the tour.
News coverage consistently remarked that Nell insisted upon wearing army trousers or pants, since “Army breeches and similar clothes are far more practical, serviceable, and comfortable.”
Nell and Walter knew that the idea of women forgoing skirts and feminine dress would grab headlines in American towns during a time when women had barely gained the right to vote.
One of Walter’s letters to the Ford Motor Company seeking sponsorship for the race depicts the promoter’s exuberance and flair as he attempted to sell the negatives of his footage to Henry Ford and extract additional funds to help underwrite the race.
For his part, Mr. Ford was satisfied in merely selling Mr. Wanderwell the Model T that he converted to become his signature touring car.
Nell commanded a modified Jordan Motor Car, a touring automobile built by independent manufacturer Edward Jordan between 1916 and 1931. The highly specialized vehicle featured a 54 gallon fuel tank, a five gallon oil tank, and a five gallon water reserve (a wise safeguard against overheating on long desert stretches).
Specially designed by Walter and Nell, the Jordan also came equipped with camping gear, and wheel and axle modifications that allowed it to travel along rail lines.
The other Mrs. Wanderwell
Over the course of the race, the pair rarely crossed paths, meeting only once in Paris over a four-year period. By 1920, Nell had separated from Walter and the pair later divorced.
Walter’s extra-marital affairs doomed their union, with Nell remarking, “Too many women caused our marriage to go on the rocks.”
Idris Galacia Hall learned of the Around the World Race through a 1922 Parisian newspaper ad seeking an adventurous woman to become its new secretary. The independent 16-year-old joined the group of explorers with the permission of her mother. (Her father had died at the third Battle of Ypres).
Soon she became the face of his travelogue series under the stage name Aloha Wanderwell. Charismatic and fluent in four languages from living on two continents, Aloha quickly found her place among the ragtag bunch.
Members of a documentary film crew rarely stuck to one job, especially in the 1920s when long distance automobile travel was itself an adventure. Aloha may have signed on to be the group’s secretary but she soon proved herself to be a talented director, editor, and speaker.
In addition to becoming the expedition’s onscreen narrator, Aloha joined Walter onstage to recount their travels while screening copies of With Car and Camera Around the World (1919-1929), The Last of the Bororos (1930-1931), and The River of Death (1934).
Their first film together, ‘With Car and Camera Around the World,’ followed Aloha and Walter as they set out on their race against Nell Wanderwell from 1921-1929. Footage included detailed descriptions of the many cultures and sites from North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Despite Walter’s serial infidelity and the couple’s divorce, Nell stuck with the race. By 1926, she was competing against both Walter and his new wife, Aloha Wanderwell, to see who could reach the farthest point across the globe.
During a stop in Omaha, the Sunday World Herald noted that Nell was “head of a party on the last lap of a round the world tour, which has been in progress for the last seven years.”
Nell did not mention if her decision to continue with the contest was rooted in her sense of adventure, out of a desire to best her former husband and his new bride, or something else entirely. But at least publicly, she showed no sign of animosity towards Walter.
Rather, she cited her marriage to him as sparking her spirit of exploration, and told reporters she insisted upon finishing the race even after their divorce.
The Herald observed that “only once have their paths crossed when they visited in Paris in 1922 for a brief time, and then again they resumed their travels, each making his way by lectures, travelogues, and the sale of pictures and stories of their travels to news bureaus and syndicates.”
By 1924, Nell’s team had been to every state in the U.S., and had ventured to Canada, Holland, New Zealand, South America, Cuba, China, Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Philippines, and Africa.
Although Walter and Aloha had already been to India and Alaska by August 1926, Nell believed she was 150,000 miles ahead in terms of distance. Her car logged 214,715 miles and was next to tour Mexico.
The converted Model T was covered in the autographs of celebrities and public figures she’d met, including Warren G. Harding, Douglass Fairbanks, Gen. John Pershing, William Jennings Bryan, Pancho Villa, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplain.
As with Walter’s team, each member of the expedition served multiple roles: Driver, camera operator, mechanic, and promoter. Over the years, new members would join the team to replace departing veterans.
Along Nell’s journey, three of her teammates married and chose to settle down with people they’d met along the way; she dubbed her car the “Honeymoon Express.” Throughout the never-ending race, the three sole members in common were Nell, Walter, and Aloha.
Murder and Aftermath
By December 1932, Aloha and Walter returned to Southern California for a reprieve. The couple had become estranged and Aloha retreated to a home in Los Angeles where she worked on editing footage from the latest leg of their expedition, while Walter assembled a crew of paid amateur adventurers to accompany them on their next adventure, a sea voyage aboard his schooner, The Carma.
While Aloha was in L.A., Walter Wanderwell was living aboard his yacht with the couple’s two children as it was docked in Long Beach, CA. On the evening of Dec. 5, 1932, several of the Carma’s crewmates were approached by a man in a grey coat who asked them where the captain was.
After pointing him to the captain’s quarters, they heard two men speaking for several minutes before a single gunshot rang out. Rushing to his stateroom, the crew found Walter dead of a single shot to the back. The mysterious stranger gone without a trace.
Newspaper headlines from across the country traced details of the extensive police investigation that followed. Suspects included jilted husbands and boyfriends of Walter’s mistresses, foreign agents, and even his wife Aloha, who had taken advantage of the constant publicity to promote their latest film, River of Death.
Following Walter’s murder, Oakland Tribune reporters tracked down his ex-wife Nell Wanderwell Farrell, now living in San Francisco. She suggested that Walter may have been targeted by one of the husbands or boyfriends of his many affairs, or perhaps by someone he had swindled in a business deal.
“He had a peremptory, arrogant way of dismissing one by turning on his heel and walking off… He did it once too often,” Nell stated.
As the crime reporter teased out other clues into what may have precipitated Walter’s murder, the former Mrs. Wanderwell noted that “he could be an Erich von Stroheim of the screen, cool, calculating, arrogant, supremely egotistical. And he could, when he wanted, be charming, gentle, chivalrous.”
Nell further dished to the Daily News that “Cap. Wanderwell couldn’t be true to any one woman. He was the eternal lover – overlooking nothing. An actress here, a stenographer, a shop girl – geishas, choir singers, dowagers, from Suez to the Straits, settlements and back again – everything in skirts had a fascination for the romantic captain.”
If Nell refused to acknowledge any animosity between herself and Walter after their divorce, she held no pretense following his death. Nell declared: “My life with him was one of constant problems, getting him out of scrapes, leaving town in the middle of the night so I wouldn’t have to testify against him. There were innumerable seduction charges, and he was just slick enough to talk himself out of them.”
Whatever her motivation, in the aftermath of Walter’s murder Nell abandoned her public image of the independent explorer and re-cast herself as the victimized heroine. Nell Wanderwell eventually remarried, and by the time of the 1932 murder she was living with husband Raymond Farrell at a home on 506 Grove St. in San Francisco.
Accused killer William James Guy was a 24-year-old soldier of fortune who Walter had previously accused of mutiny while they were both serving aboard the Carma in Panama.
Guy followed Wanderwell to Long Beach to confront him over unpaid wages from his service. With a suspect under arrest and a motive in hand, police turned over the case to prosecutors for trial. At the last moment, Mr. William provided a rock solid alibi and the case was dismissed. Walter’s murderer never was held to account.
Following the acquittal, Nell Miller Wanderwell Farrell once again dropped out of the public spotlight. If she continued with her travels she did so privately, as Nell does not appear in public records or news coverage after 1932.
Unlike Walter and Aloha’s extensively documented lives, Nell’s story is largely told through the photographs and news clippings documenting her early adventures.
With two small children to support, Aloha continued producing travelogues until World War II made travel impossible. She briefly took employment in Ohio as a radio and print journalist. In 1933, she married Walter Baker, a former Work Around the World Education Club cameraman, who served as her cinematographer on later expeditions until the couple retired to Newport Beach in 1947.
Aloha chronicled her life in the 1939 memoir, Call to Adventure! and carefully curated years of field notes, motion picture footage, artifacts, and photographs that she donated to various museums and historical societies, including the Smithsonian Institute.
Walter Baker died in 1995 after 60 years of marriage to Aloha, who herself passed away in 1996 at age 89. Nell Miller Wanderwell’s fate remains unknown.
Sources:
- Janice Unger, “Aloha Wanderwell Baker, the World’s Most Widely Travelled Girl,” the Henry Ford, theHenryFord.org, March 1, 2019.
- Jessica DePrest, “Aloha Wanderwell Baker,” Women Film Pioneers Project, wfpp.columbia.edu
- Daniel Eagon, “The Long Journey of Aloha Wanderwell, Film Comment, filmcomment.org, November 3, 2015
- “The Weird, Wandering Wanderwells,” Strange Company, Strangeco.blogspot
- “Arrogance Blamed for Wanderwell’s Death,” Oakland Tribune, December 10, 1932 cdmc.ver.edu
- “Nell Wanderwall in Omaha,” Falls City Journal, Vol 149, No. 32, August 12, 1926, pg14
- “Party of Around the World Tourists arrive in this City; Woman Piloting Jordan Car that has travelled 189,600 miles,” Allentown Morning Call, Sept 23, 1924
- “Girl Identifies Guy in Yacht Murder,” Daily News, Dec 11, 1932
- “Aloha Wanderwell, the World’s Most Widely Travelled Woman”, PetroleumServiceCompany.com, June 12, 2018
- State and federal census records, North Jersey History & Genealogy Center collections.
- Proquest historical newspaper database, North Jersey History & Genealogy Center.
- Curtiss photo collection, North Jersey History & Genealogy Center collections.
For a behind the scenes look at our collections and additional information on New Jersey history, follow us on Twitter @NJHistoryCenter and Facebook; and read our other MorristownGreen.com articles here.
Obit – 11 May 1968 for Nell, age 71. San Carlos, San Mateo, California. Husband, Farrell, died in 1963. Also present in 1950 census in San Mateo, California.
Following Nell is like chasing a ghost. Records concerning her conflict, even federal documents. Was she born in 1892 or 1896? Using 1900 Census records suggests 1892. Nell corrected the earlier date to 1896 in 1930. She briefly married Howard Williams on Dec. 29, 1929 in San Francisco before marrying Raymond Farrell. She may have been married at least once before marrying Wanderwell in October 1918.
Curiously once she settles in with Farrell she lives what appears to be a stable life until her death in 1968.
On my last message I did not do math properly. Nell was born in 1897, not 1893. Woman who died in 1983 can’t be Nell!
I did find Nell and her husband Raymond in the 1940 Census records. They were living in South San Francisco. Beyond that, there is a 1983 death entry of a Nell Farrell in Cypress, CA, with a birthdate of 1893.
Nell used two cars on her expeditions — a Jordan Blue Boy and later an Auburn. Interesting, and from what I could flesh out, she kept the Hanson body and placed it on those two chassis. That is why the various signatures on the car of famous people continue to be featured.
Thanks for the compliment, John. There was surprisingly little information about Nell after her touring days; perhaps new details will emerge when the results of the 1950 census are released next year.
From what I was able to gather, sponsorship guided most of the Wanderwell’s purchasing decisions during the expeditions, as they traded advertising space on the cars and in their lectures for supplies and equipment; I don’t know what preferences in automobiles Nell and Walter (or Aloha) had beyond that. There are some interesting looking collections of Nell, Walter, and Aloha’s papers at various institutions, including collections in Detroit and the USC library, that I’d like to look at if given the opportunity.
– Jeff
Very nice post! The story of what happened to Nell is most intriguing. So much of the personal details remain murky. Nell’s account after Walter’s death was most revealing. There is plenty of material on Aloha, given there isa major manuscript and phot collection in Detroit, but comparatively little on Nell.
I take it that after the separation between Nell and Walter in 1922 the former drove Jordan cars and the latter Fords.
That would be great, thank you!
The Wanderwell expedition visited Hungary. There are 1-2 photos surviving if you are interested I can share the digital versions