Michaela Denis, who with her late husband Armand pioneered wildlife documentary programmes on British television in the 1950s, has died aged 88. The British-born Denis, who lived for many years outside Nairobi, Kenya, died of undisclosed causes.
Armand and Michaela Denis's first TV series, Filming Wild Animals, debuted in 1954. Other series followed: Filming in Africa (1955), On Safari (1957-59), Michaela and Armand Denis (1955-58), and Safari to Asia (1959-61).
The couple spent most of their time traversing the African continent, but they also made film-making forays into South America, Australia, New Guinea and other exotic locales that most home viewers only dreamed of visiting.
The pair became known for what the Guardian described as their "casually intimate voice-overs," including this recurrent - and often mimicked - exchange: "Look, Michaela." "Yes, Armand." Armand Denis, an Oxford-trained chemist from Belgium, had a heavily accented, somewhat sonorous voice.
The enthusiastic Michaela Denis was a perfect complement to her husband, who was 17 years her senior. She was the more camera-friendly half of the documentary duo and is credited with helping attract viewers to their wildlife programmes. An attractive blond who wore khaki shirts and men's trousers, Michaela Denis always managed to maintain a camera-ready appearance. She was frequently shown breaking out her compact or comb and once said she wouldn't think of getting into the water with crocodiles until she had used her eyebrow pencil.
But Michaela Denis was no jungle prima donna, and she managed to maintain her cool even when being charged by a hippopotamus, mauled by a gorilla, bitten by a baboon and half-strangled by a python.
She was born Michaela Holdsworth in London on August. 28th, 1914. Three months later, her father, an English archeologist, died in combat during the first World War, and she was brought up by her Russian-born mother and grandmother.
After winning a scholarship to fashion school, she trained as a dress designer in Paris, where she lived until the start of the second World War. After the war, she moved to New York city, where she met her future husband at a party.
Armand Denis, who had turned to filming and exploring the primitive areas of the world after making money from his invention of the automatic volume control system for radios, was in the process of being divorced from his first wife, Leila Roosevelt (a cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt). In 1948 Armand married Michaela during a film-making trip in La Paz, Bolivia.
A year later, Michaela Denis was doubling for actress Deborah Kerr on location in Uganda for King Solomon's Mines.
Before turning to television, the Denises made full-length films, including Below the Sahara (1954). Michaela Denis also wrote books, including Leopard in My Lap (1957) and Ride on a Rhino (1960).
After retiring in Nairobi, Armand Denis died in 1971 of Parkinson's disease. Four years later, Michaela Denis married her lawyer, Sir William O'Brien Lindsay, former chief justice of Sudan, who died in his sleep a couple of months later.
Michaela Denis: born August 28th, 1914 died May 4th, 2003.