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Six decades later, Jane Goodall is still defending herself against criticism of her iconic National Geographic cover.
The acclaimed zoologist, whose work with chimpanzees revolutionized the way scientists study and interact with animals, recently looked back on the 1963 photographs that started it all. During a visit to the Call Her Daddy podcast, Goodall, 91, recalled that some academics fixated on her looks rather than the research.
“Some of the jealous male scientists will say, ‘Well, you know, she’s just got this notoriety, and she’s getting money from Geographic. And they want her on the cover, and they wouldn’t put her on the cover if she didn’t have nice legs,'” Goodall told host Alex Cooper. “I somebody said that today, they’d be sued, right?”
But Goodall was focused solely on her work, and shrugged off the commentary.
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“Back then, all I wanted was to get back to the chimps,” she said. “So, if my legs were getting me the money, thank you legs. And if you look at those covers, they were jolly nice legs.”
Goodall, the world’s top expert on wild chimpanzees, began her now-famous study of the animals in Gombe Stream National Park in 1960. At the time, she had no university degree and no formal training as a scientist, but studying animals in the wild was a childhood “dream” that she dared to pursue.
Noting that she didn’t accomplish her dream alone, Goodall gave some credit to the National Geographic photographer behind the famous photos: her ex husband, Hugo van Lawick.
Widely considered one of the best wildlife photographers of all time, van Lawick interrupted her solitude with the chimps by putting a camera on Goodall as she studied and befriended the creatures.
“They wanted to make a film and they wanted good photographs, so they sent Hugo van Lawick and I really didn’t want him to come,” she recalled. “I hadn’t met him [but] I just wanted to be there with the chimps, you know. I didn’t want anybody and I was afraid they’d be scared of him and all my hard work would be undone.”
But Goodall soon discovered that van Lawick “loved animals” and “always wanted to be out there with them.” Photography was his “route” to explore that passion and ultimately, the duo (and the chimps) got on well.
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“It was thanks to his photos and film that everything I was saying about the chimps was corroborated,” Goodall added. “He really, really helped to share the knowledge that chimpanzees really are like us.”
A year after the infamous cover, My Life Among the Wild Chimpanzees, Goodall and van Lawick got married. They were together for a decade and had a son, Hugo, before divorcing in 1974. Van Lawick died decades later, in June 2002.
Looking back on the relationship, Goodall said that it “ended gradually,” after National Geographic stopped paying him to be with her in Gombe, Tanzania.
“He had to go on with his career and he got some money to do films on the Serengeti, and I couldn’t leave Gombe,” Goodall explained. “I had to stay… So it slowly drifted apart. And it was sad.”
Goodall has been featured in National Geographic several times since the 1963 article, in addition to becoming one of the most influential conservationists of all time. In 2017, her time observing chimpanzees in Tanzania was revisited in the documentary Jane, featuring restored footage from the original shoot with van Lawick.
Watch Goodall’s full conversation with Cooper above.
