Stanley and Livingstone Stanley and Livingstone Stanley and Livingstone is a 1939 film directed by Henry King and Otto Brower. It is loosely based on the true story of Welsh reporter Sir Henry M. Stanley's quest to find Dr. David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary presumed lost in Africa, who finally met on November 10, 1871. Spencer Tracy plays Stanley, while Cedric Hardwicke portrays Livingstone. Other cast members include Nancy Kelly, Richard Greene, Walter Brennan, Charles Coburn and Henry Hull. Henry Stanley is a fearless newspaper reporter ready to do whatever it takes to get a story, regardless of any danger to his life.
Henry Morton Stanley singled out for his supposed excesses in Africa, while other European explorers, often responsible for far more loss of life than Stanley, receive sympathetic treatment." For example, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, who was revered in France, had shot Africans in self-defence but, unlike Stanley, never spoke of it. Samuel Baker killed far more Africans than Stanley did and, in 1873, was mauled in the press for "cold blooded murder". David Livingstone shot dead several African Yao slave traders in 1861, when they attacked the mission at Magomero. In "Through the Dark Continent", Stanley wrote that "the savage only respects force,