Southeast Missouri lion hunt caught on film

Intent on staging his very own "African safari," St. Louis leather manufacturer Denver Wright turned two retired circus lions loose on Commerce Towhead, an island in the Mississippi River near Commerce, Mo., on Oct. 17, 1932.

Missourian writer/photographer G.D. "Frony" Fronabarger was there to record the event. He accompanied Wright to the island when the lions were prodded from their cages, and he returned later in the day with Scott County chief deputy sheriff Tom Hodgkiss, Tom Wise and Joe Kent, both of Commerce, and a big city newspaper man.

The Southeast Missourian recorded the demise of the big cats that evening. The were slain, according to the newspaper at the time, by Wise using a submachine gun. Splashed across the cover of the next day's Missourian were pictures of the lions being released on the island, their slayer, and the dead cats themselves. According to the caption, the photographs were rushed overnight to St. Louis, and the engravings were returned to Cape Girardeau shortly before noon the next day by an airplane of the American Airways, the pilot dropping them at "the new Cape Girardeau airport."