The Aloha Wanderwell Story – Driving Passion

Aloha Wanderwell Video Biography – Official documentary of the first woman to drive around the world. Her life achievements & global adventures beginning at 16 years old. Born in Canada as Idris Hall, Aloha was drawn to adventure and the thrill of traveling across uncharted roads in faraway lands very early in life.

In 1922, with her mother’s permission, the precocious 16-year-old left school in the south of France to answer a newspaper ad seeking a secretary for a round-the-world expedition. She joined the self-proclaimed “Captain” Walter Wanderwell, and his expedtion. Idris Hall took the stage name Aloha Wanderwell and became known as “Queen of Adventure” and “the world’s most widely traveled girl.”


Motion Picture Academy Film Archive

This rarely seen footage of adventure filmmaker Aloha Wanderwell Baker, the first woman to drive around the world by auto 1922-1927, was recently preserved by the Academy Film Archive. The Aloha Wanderwell Film Collection at the Archive is a unique assortment of 16mm and 35mm films, revealing the story of Aloha’s around-the-globe adventures that captured the people, cultures and historical landmarks of six continents from the 1920s and 1930s.


The River of Death – 1934

Aloha Wanderwell Baker’s only sound film, The River of Death (1934), from the Library of Congress. One of three films she assembled from a 1930-1931 trip she and her husband took to the Mato Grosso region in Brazil.


Wanderwell Expedition in Bucharest

Detroit Newsreel from the 1920’s shows “Detroit Tourists” Walter and Aloha Wanderwell arriving in Bucharest. Captain Wanderwell pays a visit to the Romanian King.


Aloha Wanderwell in Holland – 1923

Original footage from July 1923 shows the Wanderwell expedition arriving with their Ford Model-T’s in Holland. A busy day photographing the bonneted girls strolling arm in arm along the sea dike in their Sunday best, the robust children, elder fishermen clenching their grille-covered tobacco pipes, the fleet of squat fishing smacks, their fish nets drying in the fall sun.


Aloha Wanderwell Baker 1949 Home Movies

Restored home movie filmed by Walter Baker at their home on Lido Island in Newport Beach, California. Aloha is pictured with her mother, Margret V Hall, sailing in the first Ensenada sailboat race to Mexico. Shots of Newport Harbor, Aloha’s patio and Siamese cat “Sinbad” with Mr. Humphrey Bogart at the Balboa Yacht Club in 1949.