Africa Screams only time that Shemp Howard and Joe Besser appeared together in a film; Besser would replace Howard as one of the Three Stooges following the latter's death in 1955. The main character's name Stanley Livington is suggestive of the surnames of British explorers Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone who had a famous meeting in 1871. It is not known whether the change from Livingstone to Livington is the result of a typist's error or a deliberate obfuscation. As this film is in the public domain in the United States, there have been a variety of DVD releases from multiple
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,