In the South Seas he found a new career as an explorer and ethnologist. He secured a roving commission from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, the leading museum in the world in Polynesian research, to make miniatures and gather artifacts of various Polynesian Islands and spent fourteen years traveling from island to island. During this time, Schenck also contributed to the National Geographic and other magazines.
Returning to his homeland after twenty years of wandering, Schenck won success in still another field as a lecturer on the South Seas and, during the war, served the U.S. Navy Department in planning bases in the Southwest Pacific. For nine months, he also worked with the U.S. Maritime Commission as a government speaker in shipyards and factories to speed up production.
He returned to his career as a motion picture actor with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1943, on an "actor-writer" contract.
After suffering from several strokes, Schenck retired to Tahiti where he died in 1962 at the age of 72.
^Langman, Larry (1998). American Film Cycles: the Silent Era. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 268–269. ISBN0-313-30657-5. Earl Schenck portrays the Kaiser's illegitimate son... This was one of Warner Brothers' first entries in the burgeoning film industry and helped launch the studio into its eventual success.
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