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Post by bravomailer on Jun 6, 2019 20:16:18 GMT
There were a lot of movies in the 50s and 60s that featured characters who had one Native American parent and one white one. Alternately, there were white characters who'd been raised by Native tribes. In the first category, we have Jeff Chandler in The Searchers and Nevada Smith. In the second, Hombre, The Last Wagon, Little Big Man, and Debbie in The Searchers.
Other examples and thought as to why there were so many such characters are welcome.
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Post by mattgarth on Jun 7, 2019 0:09:56 GMT
BROKEN LANCE (1954) -- Tracy and Jurado's son Robert Wagner
THE HALF-BREED (1952) -- Jack Beutel as the title character
(oh -- and it was Jeffrey Hunter and not Chandler in THE SEARCHERS)
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Post by bravomailer on Jun 7, 2019 0:39:01 GMT
(oh -- and it was Jeffrey Hunter and not Chandler in THE SEARCHERS) I always mix their names up, so I shoulda checked it.
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Post by mattgarth on Jun 7, 2019 0:43:36 GMT
I share your pain, Bravo -- I frequently confuse Diane Lane with Diane Ladd
(or is it Diane Ladd with Alan Ladd?)
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Post by mikef6 on Jun 7, 2019 0:50:30 GMT
Elvis is a "half breed" who has to choose which side he is on in Don Siegel's "Flaming Star" (1960). EDIT: To give a partial answer to your question - about this particular movie anyway - Flaming Star is a plea for racial and cultural justice – a trend that was just beginning and went a long way toward establishing the movie industry’s status as “liberal.” At one point a character says, "It’s just plain hate now and everybody ready to kill anybody who isn’t just like him.” ANOTHER EDIT: To bring Flaming Star up to date and make it more relevant, we might look at it like this - Although Pacer (Elvis) was born and raised in mainstream U.S. society, his ancestral ethnic identity lay outside “white” culture. Pacer is contacted by a terrorist leader from his ethnic heritage. The leader, who is very articulate and plainly sets forth some very legitimate grievances, wants to wage war on civilian society. Pacer, being sympathetic to the cause and because of other events, is radicalized and joins the terrorist army. But when the family who had raised him is put in danger, Pacer has to rethink what he is doing.
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Post by bravomailer on Jun 7, 2019 0:55:39 GMT
So what was Hollywood's interest in "half-breeds"? Was it a way of presenting Native Americans as more human than in the past?
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 7, 2019 1:25:58 GMT
Edit: I guess half-breed is specifically in reference to Westerns much of the time but:
one of the earliest must be the mulatto in BIRTH OF A NATION 1915, but that is very different from the intent of something like: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_(1936_film) --James Patterson was the biracial child. Interesting that this film was the prioritized social policy message around the time of the Ukrainian famine. I understand that Cheyenne in ONE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is described as a half-breed in some articles but I don't recall anything in the movie that supports it? Harmonica seems to be a Mexican or Indian based on the flashback of him and his brother. Almost forgot: John Rambo.
"Rambo, John J. Born 7-6-47 in Bowie, Arizona. Of Indian-German descent - that's a hell of a combination."
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Post by cynthiagreen on Jun 7, 2019 7:02:39 GMT
This one leads the pack for me
As to why it important she a "half breed"....well any woman who dallies with Lewt McCanles down the sump so shamelessly couldn't possibly be fully Caucasian.... at least not in 1946 ...
....and with her hubbie producing the wildly successful* movie too.!
* with the paying public anyway, if it divided the critics. It has been described as "an enormous piece of dustbin", but I'd say your cinematic education incomplete until you've seen it. I think at one point it trailed only GWTW and TBYOOL as number one box office success ever.
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Post by cynthiagreen on Jun 7, 2019 7:27:00 GMT
Here's another distaff example - not from a western but an old school stage adaptation of a revenge melodrama (THE SHANGHAI GESTURE)
The character of Poppy is originally depicted as a straight laced Colonial debutante enjoying an evening's slumming it at Mother Gin Sling's "Gambling House" (a whorehouse in the original play- and the sets in the movie are quite astonishing):
In the later stages of the movie - after she has discovered that she is half Chinese - she is shown looking like this - her trollop levels increased immensely - now not at all incongruous to her surroundings:
Here's some of those sets
and here is Ona Munson as Mother Gin Sling herself
and here is Victor Mature in his best ever role as Omar the poet procurer (Publicity still with Gene Tierney and Phyllis Brooks - who certainly seem interested in what he has to say)
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Post by teleadm on Jun 7, 2019 16:32:48 GMT
I don't wan't to be the boring guy, but Jeff Chandler had been dead for a couple of years when Nevada Smith 1966 came out. The character was played by Steve McQueen. It's still a good movie, so I'm glad you mentioned it! In Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing 1955, Jennifer Jones once again played a half/half, this time an Euroasian. As a sidenote, actress Merle Oberon was blackmailed throughout her life she was blackmailed by a half-sister who threatened to reveal that she was half-Indian/half-British if she didn't pay, something that could have been scandalous in yesteryears. Merle Oberon, who did her best to keep any biographies out of print, the blackmailing didn't become known until after her death.
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Post by cynthiagreen on Jun 7, 2019 16:45:16 GMT
Laurence Harvey as Biracial (Russian-Japanese I think) opportunist in A GIRL NAMED TAMIKO, planning to marry "fur coat no knickers" Colonial Club Princess Martha Hyer for the green card that will come with marriage.
Must say he looks about as Japanese as Bugs Bunny , but aside from that he is well cast as yet another manipulative, unpleasant character... and the lush score and travelogue values are definite plus points, as is Hyer.
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Post by bravomailer on Jun 7, 2019 16:51:55 GMT
Chato's Land. Bronson was part Tatar.
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Post by london777 on Jun 8, 2019 2:34:12 GMT
We will know that we have overcome racial prejudice when white actors can play Native Americans without causing resentment. As my dear friend BAT always says "It is called acting!"
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Post by bravomailer on Jun 8, 2019 2:37:44 GMT
Then there was Iron Eyes Cody.
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Post by bravomailer on Jun 8, 2019 4:30:46 GMT
Apparently, Iron Eyes Cody (né Espera Oscar de Corti) was Italian.
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Post by OldAussie on Jun 8, 2019 5:22:26 GMT
Anthony Mann's excellent 1957 movie The Tin Star includes a sub-plot of Henry Fonda boarding with a local woman (Betsy Palmer) who is a pariah due to having a son fathered by an Indian.
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Post by kijii on Jun 8, 2019 5:50:08 GMT
We will know that we have overcome racial prejudice when white actors can play Native Americans without causing resentment. As my dear friend BAT always says "It is called acting!"It's just not the same, not at all as effective, regardless of how good the acting is. And I believe the same is true when a white actor plays any other race. Unless it's a comedy, it always takes me out of the movie.
One of the strangest roles I remember seeing was when Ricardo Montalban played Nakamura in Sayonara..which helps to make your point. Another one that helps make your point was Burt Lancaster in Jim Thorpe -- All-American.(I could never quite believe that he was a native American in that movie.) Still, on the other hand, Marlon Brando was quite effective as Zapata in Viva Zapata! (Jean Peters was less effective as a Mexican for some reason.) But, when he played Sakini in The Teahouse of the August Moon it was more in a comic-type role. How many nationalities did Anthony Quinn play? ...and how often did he "take you out of a movie" for playing those nationalities? He was nominated for four Oscars, all playing different nationalities only one of which was Mexican, ( Viva Zapata.) IMO, Paul Muni was not effective as Wang in The Good Earth, but was a little more effective as Benito Juárez in Juárez.
It is a shame that the Perl Buck novel-based movies could not have been made up by Chinese casts, because they were great movies in their own right. Yet, there were hard to watch with white casts.
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