August 12, 1958 – The True-Life Adventure White Wilderness Premieres in Theaters
“Every species had to adapt itself to the bitter cold, or perish.”
On August 12, 1958, the thirteenth True-Life Adventure featurette, titled White Wilderness, was released to theaters. It would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was directed by James Algar and filmed primarily in Canada. It took a team of several photographers three years to gather enough footage in the Arctic to create the film, creating a story about the struggle between predatory beasts and migratory animals. This film is also notorious for its “lemming scene,” where a mass of lemmings are seen leaping into the Arctic Ocean; however, lemmings do not commit mass suicide, and the scene was eventually uncovered as staged.
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