1934 - Hollywood producers hire dark-skinned actors to play Indians because the average Indian "does not look like the Indian the motion picture public expects to see."
Leeway: In Hollywood there is a new club - the War Paint Club. Chief Standing Bear is chief counselor. White Bird is managing the club affairs, but die to an ancient Indian custom she is not allowed to sit on the council meetings. Sorta gives 'em absent treatment, or sumpin. This is an organization made up of members of fourteen tribes - Navajos, Hopi, Sioux, Cherokee, Apache, Bannock, Mission, Iroquois, Kaw, Sac and Fox, Blackfoot, Pueblo, Cree and Osage. The purpose of the club is to band together a group of some seventy Indians equipped with costumes for work in moving pictures - both for the protection of the Indian in pictures and for the protection of the studios - to enable the studio casting directors to have authentic, picture-broke Indians - to keep the Indian character from defamation or ridicule, as often is the case when white men, who don't know what it's all about, are dressed up to represent Indians. There will also be social functions, dances, etc, in true Indian fashion.
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| image from 1932 article |
From now on, thanks to Jim Thorpe, whenever you see an Indian in the movies, you can be pretty sure he is an Indian. That is, of course, except in prominent roles.
Indians in and around Hollywood, a thousand or more of them, finally have the leader they long needed. Jim, who used to be just a little better authentically than the next fellow, has become the big chief of a newly formed casting bureau, the aim of which is to obtain movie extra work for Indians. Its services are entirely free.
"It isn't my idea to tell directors how to cast their pictures," Jim explained to me, "but I think they should use bona fide Indians as extras and in atmosphere scenes. For a long time almost every nationality has represented us, often to the discredit of the Indian, on the screen.
They're Backward
"Indians aren't so very aggressive, so I decided to do something about getting work for a lot of these fellows." He pointed toward a group of stolid, peaceful-looking Indians who, he said, were chiefs.
Their faces were covered with grease paint, their heads adorned with sprightly hued feathers - traditional, but unconventional, dress for them.
Jim also plays extra occasional small parts and frequently he is a technical director. He knows how certain tribes dress and the kind of adornments they wear. Jim says he had to argue for a half hour once to convince a director that Indians didn't wear war paint and carry tomahawks to a peace conference.
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| 1933, April 2. The Indianapolis Star |
The Indians are on the warpath.
Chief Many Treaties, six-foot Blackfoot from Montana, and Jim Thorpe, world-famous athlete, who originated from the Sauk and Fox tribe in Oklahoma, both of whom learned perfect English at Carlisle university, are dusting off their war bonnets.
Said Chief Many Treaties today: "This business of motion picture companies casting Mexicans, Hawaiians, Arabs, Negroes and Chinese as American Indians in their productions has got to stop.
"It's getting so the 500 real Indians of the film city can't get a job in Hollywood any more. The Mexicans and Hawaiians are better organized and they get the jobs. The real Indians are getting shoved out of the pictures."
The chief revealed he and Thorpe have asked Sol Rosenblatt, national recovery administrator for the motion picture code, if the Indians couldn't be organized as a separate unit under the code to insure them equal representation with other races in Hollywood.
Motion picture producers explained they employ Mexicans, Arabs, Hawaiians, and other dark-skinned races to portray Indian roles because the average Indian living here "does not look like the Indian the motion picture public expects to see."
"Most local Indians," one producer explained, "are small in statue, while the film audience likes his Indian tall, husky and well-proportioned. Very few Indians living here fit this description."
1934, March 25 - The Courier Journal (see below)
Hollywood Indians demand a special code prohibiting producers from using anyone but Indians for portraying Indian roles. The fault of that idea is tat movie fans want all their heroes of whatever race, nationality or period, to look like their favorite moving picture actors dressed up for a masquerade ball.
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| 1934, March 25. The Courier Journal. |
