September 5, 2019 • 27 mins
Nowadays her name may be unfamiliar, but in the 1920s Aloha Wanderwell was an international celebrity, traveling hundreds of thousands of miles across the globe and filming her adventures. Tune in to learn more about the life and times of the explorer often called "the Amelia Earhart of the Automobile".
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. According to a study that we just made
up before we went on the air, many of our
fellow listeners are checking out Ridiculous History while they're in
the car, while they're in traffic. Instead of honking your horn,
you're hopefully laughing at our terrible puns. Uh. And today's
(00:50):
episode is just for you automotive lovers. Hi, my name
is Ben, Hey, my name is non Ben. You know
what you are, after all, you're my wonder well a
loha to YouTube, thank you, and aloha of course to
our super producer Casey pegram Mahalo, there we go. This
guy knows this stuff. Casey, What did you fall on
(01:11):
the Blur versus Oasis Continuum? Definitely more on the Blur side.
On the Blur side, who who it's been? Casey on
the case full disclosure. We just went to an amazing
show last night. We saw some Australian rock bands, so
shout out to all of our Australian listeners if you've
heard of who were There was Orb stone Field and
(01:36):
then the Big Closer King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
and he gives heads out there. Is that the Is
that the nomenclature? Yeah? Oh wow. Yeah. They have their
own festival in Australia called gis Fest. Well, they are
super prolific to superal They made like five full length
records a couple of years ago in one single year,
totally independently record and release all that stuff. UM, huge
(01:58):
fan of theirs. In fact, I think it was either
on this podcast. No, I think it was on stuff
that I want you to know where I was distracted
because I was buying my tickets the day they came
out and bought them like got six months ago, and
uh it was it was worth worth the weight for sure.
So today's episode is also about a very prolific person.
(02:19):
Today's episode is about the adventures of Idris Galcia Hall.
But you may know her better as Aloha wonder Well,
or you may, like us, not know her at all,
because I was certainly unfamiliar with the story and it
is a doozy Aloha wonder Well not not wonder Wall
like my my funny, funny joke at the top of
(02:39):
the show. Uh. In nineteen twenty two, wonder Well we're
gonna refer to her as that moving forward joined a race.
It was more than a race. It was almost like
an automotive cult kind of I mean, it was very
much this event that was designed for both optics in
terms of like being this huge kind of spectacle with
these caravans of model T Fords trekking across forty three
(03:03):
countries four continents um and seeing some incredible sites along
the way. That's right. No, So, across the nineteen twenties,
when Aloha was still a teenager, she traveled almost four
hundred thousand miles across a total of eventually what would
become eighty countries. How did she get here? How did
(03:26):
she get involved in this strange thing? There is a
tale here, you see. Aloha was born on October nineteen
o six in Winnipeg, and her life did have some tragedy,
had some bumps along the road because at the start
of World War One, her stepfather joined the Canadian Expeditionary
(03:49):
Force and eventually he was killed in combat. During this time,
the person who had become known as Aloha was living
in a pretty strict French convent school while her mother
was searching for her husband's body. And while Aloha was
(04:09):
living in this very structured, pretty uptight environment, she started
to dream of far away lands. She wanted to get
out there, you know what I mean, see what is
over the next horizon. She wrote in her memoir published
nineteen thirty nine. I ached for action, but I did
not know in which direction to go. I had already
(04:32):
bothered my mother on the subject of my earning money.
I wanted a career. I wanted to become the man
of the family. That part's interesting because she was a tomboy.
She really was. She was a self described independent tomboy.
Great article on Atlas Obscura, the first woman to drive
around the world, wore men's breaches, and had a pet monkey.
We're gonna get there. As she grew up, her imagination
(04:54):
was really fed by adventure novels and stories by Rudyard Kipling,
Edgar Rice Burrows, folks like W. H. G. Kingston Um.
And when she was sixteen, she read an advertisement that
would change everything for her. And I don't want to
bury the lead. I referred to this automotive expedition as
(05:14):
almost like a cult on wheels. And we're gonna start
to see kind of why at the age of sixteen,
she saw this ad for the wonder Well Expedition and
that was in the Paris Harold and this is what
the tagline was, Brains, Beauty and breaches World tour offer
for lucky young women wanted to join an expedition Asia Africa.
(05:37):
This brings out my car, stuff blood, It's got me
raring to go here. The wander Well Expedition was the
brainchild of a man named Walter wander Well, whose real
name just spoiler alert, is not Walter wonder Well. He
was a little bit of a sketchy figure who was
(05:57):
what we would call larger than life. He was actually
put in jail during World War One because the FED
suspected him of being a German spy. He started the
Wonderwell Expedition in ninety one with something called a million
dollar wager. This was an endurance race around the world
(06:18):
with two teams racing four Model T s, and the
way that they were gauging success in the race was
entirely based on the number of countries visited. Right, So
you would tally up at the end the number of
countries your team had gone to, and whomever had the
most countries in their Tally would win. This was exactly
(06:41):
what Aloha wander Well was looking for. She met with
Walter wonder Well, who was referred to as Captain wonder Well,
in Paris, and she got a seat on the expedition.
She wore a lot of hats while she was doing this.
She was the translator, she was driving, She was all
so and this is amazing. She was filming so much stuff.
(07:04):
We actually have a clip that will just throw to
real quick so you can get kind of a sense
of the adventure. Here. Exciting thoughts racing through my mind.
Must have been responsible for the storm we ran into
of Haiti. All hands rotea don dick hatches battened down,
and as our ship stuck her nails into the storm,
huge waves broke over the entire superstructure, drenching even those
(07:26):
on the bridge and nearly washing away the lifeboats. Perfect Now,
she did take the name Aloha wonder Well. Captain Walter
Wonderwell was married at the time, just to be clear
about that. But very quickly Aloha became the face of
the entire adventure. People loved seeing her in the middle
(07:48):
and media arrests, visiting all these interesting places that most
people would never get a chance to see otherwise. And
they loved her. The media loved her. Yeah, she was
also gorgeous. I mean she really have the appearance of
a movie star, very statue asque, very pretty face, um
and very well spoken. I think she spoke of four languages,
and she learned more on the trip. She picked up
(08:11):
I believe, um some Asian languages. Yes, so she spoke.
She was fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Italian. And
she also spoke a little bit of Russian, Chinese and
Japanese I think specifically Mandarin. That but don't quote me
on that. Uh So when she got her name, when
she was aloha wonder well, as she says inner memoir again,
(08:34):
she says, we were off. The whole world was out there.
I was reaching for it, the world reaching for me. Ecstasy,
the ravishing thrill. And I want to go back to
something you brought up. No, uh that about her appearance, right,
She was six ft tall, She was an imposing figure,
and she was going to countries where people legitimately thought
(08:56):
she was a movie star. You know what I mean,
This is like a this is a real life Hollywood
figure to a lot of people that she's visiting, and
a lot of the footage that she captured ends up
becoming incredibly crucial to the historical record. And we should
say also she did not start off as the face
(09:18):
of the expedition. She started off in what you could
kind of call a p a production assistant position. She
was a secretary and assistant. But she worked way up right,
she absolutely did um And the details around how she
kind of rose in the ranks in her relationship with
Captain Wonderwell or a little sketchy, but it does seem
like wonder Well uh and his wife split up, and
(09:41):
that's kind of when Aloha was able to kind of
like fill that position exactly exactly. And going back going
back to wonder Well himself, because the guy does deserve
a little more scrutiny, right, Yeah, going back to Wonderwell
himself when he when he was inspired by the League
of Nations to start this endurance race, he did not
(10:04):
meet with unanimous support because the FBI, of all places,
the FBI was worried that old Cap wonder Well might
be starting some sort of mercenary or private army. That's right.
This uh, that expedition was called the Work Around the
World Educational Club or wa wack, which I love UM
(10:26):
and yeah it's true. I mean they really thought he
was trying to assemble some kind of private army. I
guess that's right. So wa WAK, despite having such a
beautiful acronym, was suspected of being um, being not entirely
above the board. So ostensibly it was aimed at bringing
people together some soft diplomacy. It was described by Aaron
(10:49):
Blakemore writing for Time as something that purported to be
an ad hoc international peacekeeping group right after the horrors
of World War but it's real purpose was to generate
money from a group of volunteer cadets whose dues actually
paid for the trip. Right, So this already feels like
(11:14):
maybe a little bit of a money grab, maybe an
intention grab to its critics. CAP also got some cash
from the Ford Motor Company. They donated those Model ts
we mentioned earlier, And I don't know, no, are you
super familiar with Model ts? Have you seen one? Yeah? Yeah?
(11:40):
And there. Uh we did an episode years back entirely
on how to actually start a model tea and get
it running. These things are vicious beast They will and
have broken people's arms just while they're in the process
of trying to get the thing running, cranking it right,
I mean you literally is isn't it like a thing
in the front that you have to have physically turn
a crank? Yeah, get the engine kind of get the
(12:02):
actual motor started. Yeah, and if it's having a bad day,
it will swing that crank back at you. So be warned,
be aware. I'm just saying this wasn't as easy as
you know, hopping into um, hopping into a two thousand
sixteen Prius or something. So here we are, we're set up,
(12:23):
We've got all the pieces in place, right, the FBI
has an arrested cap yet or anything like that. And
he says, I am going to compete against my wife
Nell in this race around the world. This goes back
to what you were saying earlier, all about kind of
this the ambiguous, the ambiguity around their rise to fame,
(12:47):
uh so, and around the whole thing. The whole operation
had some kind of a lot of questions surrounding it.
I mean I threw our I threw around the term
cult only because this guy was such an imposing character,
a very care matic you know what I mean. He
kind of had the folks, these volunteers almost under his sway.
And just a little bit of backstory. His name originally
(13:08):
was Valerian Johannes Paizinski. He was from Poland. That's about
all we know about his background. Um, and he likely been,
uh you were saying, changed his name to Captain Walter
wonder Well because he wanted something a little less Polish sounding,
a little more American dream kind of sounding right right exactly,
and you know it worked, that's right. The wonder Well
(13:31):
name was something that maybe lost to a lot of
us today, but back in the twenties, people were very
well aware of it. These were international celebrities. And Aloha
actually took that name because her mother, when she found
out that she was going to go on this tour, Um,
she wasn't super happy about it and didn't want people
thinking that her daughter was traveling in the company of
(13:54):
a man or something like that. I don't know it
was married, married man exactly. Um. So he uh. She
had him declare Aloha his ward, which isn't really a
thing we do anymore. The idea of having award, which
is like what Robin was on Batman. He was was
Bruce Wayne's ward and then for a while they were
called proteges, which also sounds scheduled, the odd concept. I
(14:17):
mean basically, does it mean like you kind of adopt somebody. Yeah,
you're like you're like a full time mentor. That's what
award is. So Also, if someone's parents died, for instance,
and they were under the care of their uncle or
not their aunt, then they would be the ward of
that person. So yeah, words are not a not a
(14:39):
thing that happens as often, or at least we don't
describe it that way. But at the time it was
seen as uh, it was seen as a way to
be politically or socially correct. But back to the model
t Ford um Ford really it was this was a
good deal for Ford because he was really showcasing the
durability of the mom te and the fact that they
(15:02):
were easily reparable. Um they were pretty convinced that folks
were doing the expedition that they could find parts to
fix these cars no matter where they were around the world.
They even did things like used kerosene in place of gas,
and they mixed elephant fat with water to make oil,
and they even took bananas and and squashed them to
(15:25):
collect grease. To grease down the parts in the engine.
I gotta say, look, Model t s are not gonna
win races in terms of speed, but I'm on board
with Dan Trace, who's a preserver of Model ts. He
he wrote an essay about the expedition. These things are
super sturdy. We also have to remember just how ubiquitous
(15:46):
they were and how easy it was to mcgever things
around these vehicles. Uh, wonder Wells team had a Model
T for nicknamed Little Lizzy. These cars were picked specifically
for the trip, of course, and they were forced to
make a lot of these on the fly improvisations. Right.
(16:09):
They were in China around the time the country was
struck by a civil war in nineteen four, and they
had to rely on these unorthodox methods. The kerosene you mentioned,
the mixing of elephant fat and water for oil, things
you just couldn't get away with in a modern car.
And the continent of Africa. They actually had to get livestock,
(16:33):
oxen and mules to tow their vehicles. And let's take
a second and look at some of the amazing accolades
that Aloha wonder Well racked up during her time. So
she was taken captive by bandits by ne'er do Wells
near the Great Wall of China, and she managed to
(16:55):
get everybody out of this hostage situation by t seen
the bandits how to make machine gun nests and then
teaching them how to use automatic weapons. Did she know
all that? She just learned it from just being scrappy
and just like you know, traveling around. Well, there is
a rumor that she joined the French Foreign Legion disguised
(17:17):
as a dude, because even now the French Foreign Legion
doesn't allow female members. She is suspected to have fought
in desert warfare, So yeah, she definitely. We do know
for sure that she was made an honorary colonel in
the Siberian Army, right, so we know that she probably
did have some sort of, if not military experience, familiarity
(17:40):
with military tactics and firearms and so on. This is
a silly question, man, I mean, like, for the portions
of the trip that required crossing the ocean, I guess
they loaded all the cars up onto some kind of freighter.
Well one would assume, right, because model ts are a
lot of things, but they're not seaworthy. True, So uh
that we also know that Cap wonder well bought a craft,
(18:03):
bought a bought a boat, a ship called the Karma
with a C C A R M A uh Ford
bucks at some point. And this this was not an
impressive boat. He was also I gotta say, man, I know,
I keep going back to it, but he was. He
(18:24):
was pretty sketchy, right. He fell in love with a
Loha while they were on while they were in the
middle of this expedition, and they married in n But
if you look back at that Atlas Obscura article, uh
that you mentioned earlier, you'll see that people believe the
marriage may have been a marriage of convenience, a way
(18:46):
of stopping the FBI from arresting Cap, who was still
like they put him in jail for a second, thank you,
as German spy, and they let him go, but they
always still suspected that he might be associated with spycraft. Uh.
They in to arrest him on trafficking charges because we
have to remember this time human trafficking Aloha, trafficking Aloha
(19:08):
because at this time she's still a teenager. Right. So
as soon as they got back in the US, Cap
got a divorce, they got married and they both walked
away Scott free. Yeah, and they spent a lot of
time continuing to travel after having two kids together, Nile
and Valerie. They went to places like Cuba and South Africa,
(19:29):
and Aloha kept rolling her camera. Um, and that included
some really important films of the indigenous Borrero people of Brazil.
And she kind of got a little bit of a
bad rap because of her association with uh Captain Wonderwell,
because he was seen as kind of a little bit
sketchy still and and not really the most upstanding citizen
(19:52):
and was kind of seen as a bit of a
con man right right, a smooth talk or real glad
hand er. This is where this story takes a true
crime turn. On December five, the day before the wonder
(20:15):
Wells are going to make another trip to South America,
Captain Walter wonder Well is shot fatally in the back
by an unidentified assassin. This murder happens on his boat
on the Karma. It's anchored near Long Beach, California, and
right away the police have two very clear suspects, William
(20:38):
James Guy and Edward Eugene Fernando Montague, who is also
the son of the Duke of Manchester. That's that's such
an extra name that sounds like a character and clue
it totally does. It's fantastic. But he he ends up
slipping the noose and William James Guy is actually charged
for the murder and tried and his court case is
(20:59):
a real fiasco. That's true. This was also sort of
a there was a legal case, but there was also
a court of public opinion case, and a lot of
people say that the fact that guy was a handsome
person and the fact that he he kind of had
a cool vibe. William James Guy was this sort of
(21:20):
dude you would sit down and grab a beer with
or something, so people will say that his wonderful bedside
manner swayed the jury during his trial and led to
him eventually being acquitted. It also did not help that
Walter wonder Well was a known shadester. I'm gonna I
think that's a good word. I'm gonna point that he
(21:41):
was a known shadester, a womanizer and beyond a divisive figure.
A lot of people thought this guy was a criminal.
And guy was actually a member of that expedition uh
in wonder Wall's crew one to South Africa and he
was not a fan of Walter all. He claimed that
he had swindled him out of money and had actually
(22:04):
single handedly destroyed his marriage. And there appears to be
more than a dollar of truth to that. Back to Aloha,
so law enforcement never names her as a suspect in
the murder, but they do think she is behaving in
an odd way, so odd like she to the police.
(22:27):
At least, she did not seem like a distraught widow.
She did not seem as upset as they thought she
would be, and this left a bad mark on her character.
In the press, people started referring to her as the
Rhinestone widow. A year after capps death, Aloha marys a
guy named Walter Baker. He is a former cameraman. He
(22:50):
helped wonder Well start Wawak. This is the thing. The
press goes nuts and bananas over this second marriage, with
Aloha only waiting a year after her first husband's death.
But they brushed it off jay Z style. You know,
(23:10):
they got the dirt off their shoulder. They continued traveling
around the world. They were always filming stuff. They were lecturing,
you know, they were doing like a Ted Talk kind
of thing. And they went to New Zealand, Hawaii, Australia, Cambodia, India,
and more more places. Eventually, like many world adventurers do,
(23:31):
they settled down in Cincinnati. Yeah, and that's more or
less where the story ends, at least as far as
her travels are concerned. Um. She passed away at the
age of ninety uh and the crazy thing as as
as as well known as she was at the time,
as we said at the top of the show, neither
one of us, I don't believe it, heard of this
story before. She's referred to as like the Amelia Earhart
(23:51):
of the automobile. She was one of the most well
traveled women, um in the world really at the time. Yeah,
and you can see a lot of her work in
various museums today because she was alive until what six
She was alive at the same time a lot of
us listening were alive, which I think I think is amazing.
(24:15):
According to Richard Diamond, who has wonder Well's grandson, she
has been sort of this open secret for years to
history buffs. She also kept exceptional records and scrapbooks and
diaries and journals and gathered, as we said, all this
amazing video and audio footage. Some of her work is
(24:38):
in the Smithsonian the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and
Sciences film Archive. She also submitted her documentary Car and
Camera Around the World to Henry Ford. But maybe this
is one of the reasons it's not more well known.
Henry Ford looked at it and he said, a little Lizzie,
(25:00):
the nickname of the model t again wasn't important enough
to be showcased in the World War two effort because
it was going to be sort of a propagandistic pr thing, right.
I think they ended up having destroyed it. Yep. And
you can still find her book today. If you'd like
to learn more about Aloha, you can find her book
(25:20):
Call to Adventure on Amazon. Oh. Also, her grandson Mr
Diamond made a Twitter account for her, which I think
is delightful. It really is, and I want to point
out to that she was also alive the year the
Oasis smash hit wonder Wall came out. Nice call back there, man,
(25:40):
I think you brought that around really well. And I
don't think we mentioned I think we teased at the
top of the show. We don't know a whole hell
of a lot about this other than that It's true
that she existed, but she had a pet monkey named
Chango during all of these adventures. Uh, and that's just delightful. Yes. Yeah.
You can see a picture of her and Walter and
Chaango from nineteen four in China. It's on the Twitter feed.
(26:07):
So a life well lived. I don't know about you, guys,
but I am a fan of road trips and taking
this to the nth degree is a personal dream of mine.
We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Let us know about
the most epic road trip you've ever taken. Where's the
weirdest place you ended up? You can find us on Facebook.
(26:27):
You can find us on Twitter. You can find us
on Instagram, not just as a show, but as individuals,
so you can catch up with our own travels on
our personal instagrams. You can find me at how Now
Noel Brown and you can find me at Ben Bolan
on Instagram, where at Ben Bolan hs W on Twitter. Man,
here we are in the studio, and back in the twenties,
(26:50):
people were like making elephant fat into oil and driving
through you know, the hinterlands of the world. Pretty exciting stuff.
Back not to say that you're not a pretty well
trapped gentlemen yourself, sir, I get kicked into and out
of a lot of places, So you say so, You
say so. Huge. Thanks to super producer Casey Pagram for
being our travel buddy, uh and podcast Land at least um.
(27:13):
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Thanks to
Christopher Haciota is here in spirit. Thanks to Ryan Embarrish
and Gabe Lousier, our research associates. Tonight, I thought it
was awesome to have Ryan on the show. We've got
to have him back sometime soon. What do you say? Yeah,
I have a feeling that's gonna happen week week. Nuch nuche.
We'll see next time, Folks. For more podcasts for my
(27:43):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. According to a study that we just made
up before we went on the air, many of our
fellow listeners are checking out Ridiculous History while they're in
the car, while they're in traffic. Instead of honking your horn,
you're hopefully laughing at our terrible puns. Uh. And today's
(00:50):
episode is just for you automotive lovers. Hi, my name
is Ben, Hey, my name is non Ben. You know
what you are, after all, you're my wonder well a
loha to YouTube, thank you, and aloha of course to
our super producer Casey pegram Mahalo, there we go. This
guy knows this stuff. Casey, What did you fall on
(01:11):
the Blur versus Oasis Continuum? Definitely more on the Blur side.
On the Blur side, who who it's been? Casey on
the case full disclosure. We just went to an amazing
show last night. We saw some Australian rock bands, so
shout out to all of our Australian listeners if you've
heard of who were There was Orb stone Field and
(01:36):
then the Big Closer King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
and he gives heads out there. Is that the Is
that the nomenclature? Yeah? Oh wow. Yeah. They have their
own festival in Australia called gis Fest. Well, they are
super prolific to superal They made like five full length
records a couple of years ago in one single year,
totally independently record and release all that stuff. UM, huge
(01:58):
fan of theirs. In fact, I think it was either
on this podcast. No, I think it was on stuff
that I want you to know where I was distracted
because I was buying my tickets the day they came
out and bought them like got six months ago, and
uh it was it was worth worth the weight for sure.
So today's episode is also about a very prolific person.
(02:19):
Today's episode is about the adventures of Idris Galcia Hall.
But you may know her better as Aloha wonder Well,
or you may, like us, not know her at all,
because I was certainly unfamiliar with the story and it
is a doozy Aloha wonder Well not not wonder Wall
like my my funny, funny joke at the top of
(02:39):
the show. Uh. In nineteen twenty two, wonder Well we're
gonna refer to her as that moving forward joined a race.
It was more than a race. It was almost like
an automotive cult kind of I mean, it was very
much this event that was designed for both optics in
terms of like being this huge kind of spectacle with
these caravans of model T Fords trekking across forty three
(03:03):
countries four continents um and seeing some incredible sites along
the way. That's right. No, So, across the nineteen twenties,
when Aloha was still a teenager, she traveled almost four
hundred thousand miles across a total of eventually what would
become eighty countries. How did she get here? How did
(03:26):
she get involved in this strange thing? There is a
tale here, you see. Aloha was born on October nineteen
o six in Winnipeg, and her life did have some tragedy,
had some bumps along the road because at the start
of World War One, her stepfather joined the Canadian Expeditionary
(03:49):
Force and eventually he was killed in combat. During this time,
the person who had become known as Aloha was living
in a pretty strict French convent school while her mother
was searching for her husband's body. And while Aloha was
(04:09):
living in this very structured, pretty uptight environment, she started
to dream of far away lands. She wanted to get
out there, you know what I mean, see what is
over the next horizon. She wrote in her memoir published
nineteen thirty nine. I ached for action, but I did
not know in which direction to go. I had already
(04:32):
bothered my mother on the subject of my earning money.
I wanted a career. I wanted to become the man
of the family. That part's interesting because she was a tomboy.
She really was. She was a self described independent tomboy.
Great article on Atlas Obscura, the first woman to drive
around the world, wore men's breaches, and had a pet monkey.
We're gonna get there. As she grew up, her imagination
(04:54):
was really fed by adventure novels and stories by Rudyard Kipling,
Edgar Rice Burrows, folks like W. H. G. Kingston Um.
And when she was sixteen, she read an advertisement that
would change everything for her. And I don't want to
bury the lead. I referred to this automotive expedition as
(05:14):
almost like a cult on wheels. And we're gonna start
to see kind of why at the age of sixteen,
she saw this ad for the wonder Well Expedition and
that was in the Paris Harold and this is what
the tagline was, Brains, Beauty and breaches World tour offer
for lucky young women wanted to join an expedition Asia Africa.
(05:37):
This brings out my car, stuff blood, It's got me
raring to go here. The wander Well Expedition was the
brainchild of a man named Walter wander Well, whose real
name just spoiler alert, is not Walter wonder Well. He
was a little bit of a sketchy figure who was
(05:57):
what we would call larger than life. He was actually
put in jail during World War One because the FED
suspected him of being a German spy. He started the
Wonderwell Expedition in ninety one with something called a million
dollar wager. This was an endurance race around the world
(06:18):
with two teams racing four Model T s, and the
way that they were gauging success in the race was
entirely based on the number of countries visited. Right, So
you would tally up at the end the number of
countries your team had gone to, and whomever had the
most countries in their Tally would win. This was exactly
(06:41):
what Aloha wander Well was looking for. She met with
Walter wonder Well, who was referred to as Captain wonder Well,
in Paris, and she got a seat on the expedition.
She wore a lot of hats while she was doing this.
She was the translator, she was driving, She was all
so and this is amazing. She was filming so much stuff.
(07:04):
We actually have a clip that will just throw to
real quick so you can get kind of a sense
of the adventure. Here. Exciting thoughts racing through my mind.
Must have been responsible for the storm we ran into
of Haiti. All hands rotea don dick hatches battened down,
and as our ship stuck her nails into the storm,
huge waves broke over the entire superstructure, drenching even those
(07:26):
on the bridge and nearly washing away the lifeboats. Perfect Now,
she did take the name Aloha wonder Well. Captain Walter
Wonderwell was married at the time, just to be clear
about that. But very quickly Aloha became the face of
the entire adventure. People loved seeing her in the middle
(07:48):
and media arrests, visiting all these interesting places that most
people would never get a chance to see otherwise. And
they loved her. The media loved her. Yeah, she was
also gorgeous. I mean she really have the appearance of
a movie star, very statue asque, very pretty face, um
and very well spoken. I think she spoke of four languages,
and she learned more on the trip. She picked up
(08:11):
I believe, um some Asian languages. Yes, so she spoke.
She was fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Italian. And
she also spoke a little bit of Russian, Chinese and
Japanese I think specifically Mandarin. That but don't quote me
on that. Uh So when she got her name, when
she was aloha wonder well, as she says inner memoir again,
(08:34):
she says, we were off. The whole world was out there.
I was reaching for it, the world reaching for me. Ecstasy,
the ravishing thrill. And I want to go back to
something you brought up. No, uh that about her appearance, right,
She was six ft tall, She was an imposing figure,
and she was going to countries where people legitimately thought
(08:56):
she was a movie star. You know what I mean,
This is like a this is a real life Hollywood
figure to a lot of people that she's visiting, and
a lot of the footage that she captured ends up
becoming incredibly crucial to the historical record. And we should
say also she did not start off as the face
(09:18):
of the expedition. She started off in what you could
kind of call a p a production assistant position. She
was a secretary and assistant. But she worked way up right,
she absolutely did um And the details around how she
kind of rose in the ranks in her relationship with
Captain Wonderwell or a little sketchy, but it does seem
like wonder Well uh and his wife split up, and
(09:41):
that's kind of when Aloha was able to kind of
like fill that position exactly exactly. And going back going
back to wonder Well himself, because the guy does deserve
a little more scrutiny, right, Yeah, going back to Wonderwell
himself when he when he was inspired by the League
of Nations to start this endurance race, he did not
(10:04):
meet with unanimous support because the FBI, of all places,
the FBI was worried that old Cap wonder Well might
be starting some sort of mercenary or private army. That's right.
This uh, that expedition was called the Work Around the
World Educational Club or wa wack, which I love UM
(10:26):
and yeah it's true. I mean they really thought he
was trying to assemble some kind of private army. I
guess that's right. So wa WAK, despite having such a
beautiful acronym, was suspected of being um, being not entirely
above the board. So ostensibly it was aimed at bringing
people together some soft diplomacy. It was described by Aaron
(10:49):
Blakemore writing for Time as something that purported to be
an ad hoc international peacekeeping group right after the horrors
of World War but it's real purpose was to generate
money from a group of volunteer cadets whose dues actually
paid for the trip. Right, So this already feels like
(11:14):
maybe a little bit of a money grab, maybe an
intention grab to its critics. CAP also got some cash
from the Ford Motor Company. They donated those Model ts
we mentioned earlier, And I don't know, no, are you
super familiar with Model ts? Have you seen one? Yeah? Yeah?
(11:40):
And there. Uh we did an episode years back entirely
on how to actually start a model tea and get
it running. These things are vicious beast They will and
have broken people's arms just while they're in the process
of trying to get the thing running, cranking it right,
I mean you literally is isn't it like a thing
in the front that you have to have physically turn
a crank? Yeah, get the engine kind of get the
(12:02):
actual motor started. Yeah, and if it's having a bad day,
it will swing that crank back at you. So be warned,
be aware. I'm just saying this wasn't as easy as
you know, hopping into um, hopping into a two thousand
sixteen Prius or something. So here we are, we're set up,
(12:23):
We've got all the pieces in place, right, the FBI
has an arrested cap yet or anything like that. And
he says, I am going to compete against my wife
Nell in this race around the world. This goes back
to what you were saying earlier, all about kind of
this the ambiguous, the ambiguity around their rise to fame,
(12:47):
uh so, and around the whole thing. The whole operation
had some kind of a lot of questions surrounding it.
I mean I threw our I threw around the term
cult only because this guy was such an imposing character,
a very care matic you know what I mean. He
kind of had the folks, these volunteers almost under his sway.
And just a little bit of backstory. His name originally
(13:08):
was Valerian Johannes Paizinski. He was from Poland. That's about
all we know about his background. Um, and he likely been,
uh you were saying, changed his name to Captain Walter
wonder Well because he wanted something a little less Polish sounding,
a little more American dream kind of sounding right right exactly,
and you know it worked, that's right. The wonder Well
(13:31):
name was something that maybe lost to a lot of
us today, but back in the twenties, people were very
well aware of it. These were international celebrities. And Aloha
actually took that name because her mother, when she found
out that she was going to go on this tour, Um,
she wasn't super happy about it and didn't want people
thinking that her daughter was traveling in the company of
(13:54):
a man or something like that. I don't know it
was married, married man exactly. Um. So he uh. She
had him declare Aloha his ward, which isn't really a
thing we do anymore. The idea of having award, which
is like what Robin was on Batman. He was was
Bruce Wayne's ward and then for a while they were
called proteges, which also sounds scheduled, the odd concept. I
(14:17):
mean basically, does it mean like you kind of adopt somebody. Yeah,
you're like you're like a full time mentor. That's what
award is. So Also, if someone's parents died, for instance,
and they were under the care of their uncle or
not their aunt, then they would be the ward of
that person. So yeah, words are not a not a
(14:39):
thing that happens as often, or at least we don't
describe it that way. But at the time it was
seen as uh, it was seen as a way to
be politically or socially correct. But back to the model
t Ford um Ford really it was this was a
good deal for Ford because he was really showcasing the
durability of the mom te and the fact that they
(15:02):
were easily reparable. Um they were pretty convinced that folks
were doing the expedition that they could find parts to
fix these cars no matter where they were around the world.
They even did things like used kerosene in place of gas,
and they mixed elephant fat with water to make oil,
and they even took bananas and and squashed them to
(15:25):
collect grease. To grease down the parts in the engine.
I gotta say, look, Model t s are not gonna
win races in terms of speed, but I'm on board
with Dan Trace, who's a preserver of Model ts. He
he wrote an essay about the expedition. These things are
super sturdy. We also have to remember just how ubiquitous
(15:46):
they were and how easy it was to mcgever things
around these vehicles. Uh, wonder Wells team had a Model
T for nicknamed Little Lizzy. These cars were picked specifically
for the trip, of course, and they were forced to
make a lot of these on the fly improvisations. Right.
(16:09):
They were in China around the time the country was
struck by a civil war in nineteen four, and they
had to rely on these unorthodox methods. The kerosene you mentioned,
the mixing of elephant fat and water for oil, things
you just couldn't get away with in a modern car.
And the continent of Africa. They actually had to get livestock,
(16:33):
oxen and mules to tow their vehicles. And let's take
a second and look at some of the amazing accolades
that Aloha wonder Well racked up during her time. So
she was taken captive by bandits by ne'er do Wells
near the Great Wall of China, and she managed to
(16:55):
get everybody out of this hostage situation by t seen
the bandits how to make machine gun nests and then
teaching them how to use automatic weapons. Did she know
all that? She just learned it from just being scrappy
and just like you know, traveling around. Well, there is
a rumor that she joined the French Foreign Legion disguised
(17:17):
as a dude, because even now the French Foreign Legion
doesn't allow female members. She is suspected to have fought
in desert warfare, So yeah, she definitely. We do know
for sure that she was made an honorary colonel in
the Siberian Army, right, so we know that she probably
did have some sort of, if not military experience, familiarity
(17:40):
with military tactics and firearms and so on. This is
a silly question, man, I mean, like, for the portions
of the trip that required crossing the ocean, I guess
they loaded all the cars up onto some kind of freighter.
Well one would assume, right, because model ts are a
lot of things, but they're not seaworthy. True, So uh
that we also know that Cap wonder well bought a craft,
(18:03):
bought a bought a boat, a ship called the Karma
with a C C A R M A uh Ford
bucks at some point. And this this was not an
impressive boat. He was also I gotta say, man, I know,
I keep going back to it, but he was. He
(18:24):
was pretty sketchy, right. He fell in love with a
Loha while they were on while they were in the
middle of this expedition, and they married in n But
if you look back at that Atlas Obscura article, uh
that you mentioned earlier, you'll see that people believe the
marriage may have been a marriage of convenience, a way
(18:46):
of stopping the FBI from arresting Cap, who was still
like they put him in jail for a second, thank you,
as German spy, and they let him go, but they
always still suspected that he might be associated with spycraft. Uh.
They in to arrest him on trafficking charges because we
have to remember this time human trafficking Aloha, trafficking Aloha
(19:08):
because at this time she's still a teenager. Right. So
as soon as they got back in the US, Cap
got a divorce, they got married and they both walked
away Scott free. Yeah, and they spent a lot of
time continuing to travel after having two kids together, Nile
and Valerie. They went to places like Cuba and South Africa,
(19:29):
and Aloha kept rolling her camera. Um, and that included
some really important films of the indigenous Borrero people of Brazil.
And she kind of got a little bit of a
bad rap because of her association with uh Captain Wonderwell,
because he was seen as kind of a little bit
sketchy still and and not really the most upstanding citizen
(19:52):
and was kind of seen as a bit of a
con man right right, a smooth talk or real glad
hand er. This is where this story takes a true
crime turn. On December five, the day before the wonder
(20:15):
Wells are going to make another trip to South America,
Captain Walter wonder Well is shot fatally in the back
by an unidentified assassin. This murder happens on his boat
on the Karma. It's anchored near Long Beach, California, and
right away the police have two very clear suspects, William
(20:38):
James Guy and Edward Eugene Fernando Montague, who is also
the son of the Duke of Manchester. That's that's such
an extra name that sounds like a character and clue
it totally does. It's fantastic. But he he ends up
slipping the noose and William James Guy is actually charged
for the murder and tried and his court case is
(20:59):
a real fiasco. That's true. This was also sort of
a there was a legal case, but there was also
a court of public opinion case, and a lot of
people say that the fact that guy was a handsome
person and the fact that he he kind of had
a cool vibe. William James Guy was this sort of
(21:20):
dude you would sit down and grab a beer with
or something, so people will say that his wonderful bedside
manner swayed the jury during his trial and led to
him eventually being acquitted. It also did not help that
Walter wonder Well was a known shadester. I'm gonna I
think that's a good word. I'm gonna point that he
(21:41):
was a known shadester, a womanizer and beyond a divisive figure.
A lot of people thought this guy was a criminal.
And guy was actually a member of that expedition uh
in wonder Wall's crew one to South Africa and he
was not a fan of Walter all. He claimed that
he had swindled him out of money and had actually
(22:04):
single handedly destroyed his marriage. And there appears to be
more than a dollar of truth to that. Back to Aloha,
so law enforcement never names her as a suspect in
the murder, but they do think she is behaving in
an odd way, so odd like she to the police.
(22:27):
At least, she did not seem like a distraught widow.
She did not seem as upset as they thought she
would be, and this left a bad mark on her character.
In the press, people started referring to her as the
Rhinestone widow. A year after capps death, Aloha marys a
guy named Walter Baker. He is a former cameraman. He
(22:50):
helped wonder Well start Wawak. This is the thing. The
press goes nuts and bananas over this second marriage, with
Aloha only waiting a year after her first husband's death.
But they brushed it off jay Z style. You know,
(23:10):
they got the dirt off their shoulder. They continued traveling
around the world. They were always filming stuff. They were lecturing,
you know, they were doing like a Ted Talk kind
of thing. And they went to New Zealand, Hawaii, Australia, Cambodia, India,
and more more places. Eventually, like many world adventurers do,
(23:31):
they settled down in Cincinnati. Yeah, and that's more or
less where the story ends, at least as far as
her travels are concerned. Um. She passed away at the
age of ninety uh and the crazy thing as as
as as well known as she was at the time,
as we said at the top of the show, neither
one of us, I don't believe it, heard of this
story before. She's referred to as like the Amelia Earhart
(23:51):
of the automobile. She was one of the most well
traveled women, um in the world really at the time. Yeah,
and you can see a lot of her work in
various museums today because she was alive until what six
She was alive at the same time a lot of
us listening were alive, which I think I think is amazing.
(24:15):
According to Richard Diamond, who has wonder Well's grandson, she
has been sort of this open secret for years to
history buffs. She also kept exceptional records and scrapbooks and
diaries and journals and gathered, as we said, all this
amazing video and audio footage. Some of her work is
(24:38):
in the Smithsonian the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and
Sciences film Archive. She also submitted her documentary Car and
Camera Around the World to Henry Ford. But maybe this
is one of the reasons it's not more well known.
Henry Ford looked at it and he said, a little Lizzie,
(25:00):
the nickname of the model t again wasn't important enough
to be showcased in the World War two effort because
it was going to be sort of a propagandistic pr thing, right.
I think they ended up having destroyed it. Yep. And
you can still find her book today. If you'd like
to learn more about Aloha, you can find her book
(25:20):
Call to Adventure on Amazon. Oh. Also, her grandson Mr
Diamond made a Twitter account for her, which I think
is delightful. It really is, and I want to point
out to that she was also alive the year the
Oasis smash hit wonder Wall came out. Nice call back there, man,
(25:40):
I think you brought that around really well. And I
don't think we mentioned I think we teased at the
top of the show. We don't know a whole hell
of a lot about this other than that It's true
that she existed, but she had a pet monkey named
Chango during all of these adventures. Uh, and that's just delightful. Yes. Yeah.
You can see a picture of her and Walter and
Chaango from nineteen four in China. It's on the Twitter feed.
(26:07):
So a life well lived. I don't know about you, guys,
but I am a fan of road trips and taking
this to the nth degree is a personal dream of mine.
We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Let us know about
the most epic road trip you've ever taken. Where's the
weirdest place you ended up? You can find us on Facebook.
(26:27):
You can find us on Twitter. You can find us
on Instagram, not just as a show, but as individuals,
so you can catch up with our own travels on
our personal instagrams. You can find me at how Now
Noel Brown and you can find me at Ben Bolan
on Instagram, where at Ben Bolan hs W on Twitter. Man,
here we are in the studio, and back in the twenties,
(26:50):
people were like making elephant fat into oil and driving
through you know, the hinterlands of the world. Pretty exciting stuff.
Back not to say that you're not a pretty well
trapped gentlemen yourself, sir, I get kicked into and out
of a lot of places, So you say so, You
say so. Huge. Thanks to super producer Casey Pagram for
being our travel buddy, uh and podcast Land at least um.
(27:13):
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Thanks to
Christopher Haciota is here in spirit. Thanks to Ryan Embarrish
and Gabe Lousier, our research associates. Tonight, I thought it
was awesome to have Ryan on the show. We've got
to have him back sometime soon. What do you say? Yeah,
I have a feeling that's gonna happen week week. Nuch nuche.
We'll see next time, Folks. For more podcasts for my
(27:43):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Noel Brown
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