This comes from the film Wild Cargo (1934).
(Source)
Frank Buck made several films of this type, which were widely popular in the 1930’s and 40’s.
Buck was born in Texas, where he became an expert at catching all sorts of animals. After a possessing a winning hand at poker, he wound up in Brazil, where he caught several birds. When he returned to New York, he was able to sell these birds at profits that he couldn’t imagine.
And that’s how the famed animal collector got started.
This particular film was mostly taken on the estates of the Sultan Ibrahim of Johor in what was then the British colony of Malaya. This Sultan was one of the Empire’s puppet rulers– and one of the richest men in the world at the time.
I don’t know if this cat actually weighed 500 pounds or if it actually had been a man-eater.
But it is good Hollywood.
