1949: "It took two days, braids, moccasins, beads, red paint and 10 costume changes to change Vitale from a native of Manhattan to a native of the tepee. ..

Hollywood Picks 'Indian' Right out of Times Square 

by Patricia Clary

1949, Oct 6 Daily Capital Journal 

     Hollywood - There are plenty of Indians hooting around away out west here. But for a movie Indian, they pick a New Yorker who's never been off the Times Square Reservation.
     "Until I began playing Indians in movies," Joe Vitale said, "I'd never been outside a Broadway cigar store."
     Vitale was a full dress city slicker from the Toots Shor tepee until Bob Hope called him westward ho! on the heap-big Chief. He played a redskin in "The Paleface" and made such a good one that Hope asked him to repeat in his current Paramount western, "Fancy Pants."
     "Hope told me they'd love me at the Lambs club," Vitale grunted, wagging his feather headdress, "I'm sure my performance will turn even the reddest redman's face red.
     "Please don't scalp me, fellows. It's all done for laughs."
     "It took two days, braids, moccasins, beads, red paint and 10 costume changes to change Vitale from a native of Manhattan to a native of the tepee.

     "And the moccasins hurt my feet," he added. "How could the Indians stand these things?"
     Vitale, who plays a Taos Indian, met an Apache Indian tending horses when "Fancy Paints" was on location. The Apache, wishing to be friendly, addressed Vitale in an Indian tongue.
     "I kept saying "how," Vitale said. "The Indian gave up in disgust. When I hear he was on the level, I apologized and told him I was an ersatz Indian.
     "Well, what do you know!" the Apache said. "You wouldn't expect an Apache to day that."
      As soon as he finishes chasing settlers in covered wagons, Vitale is hopping a fast train back to Broadway where he used to play in "Hold On to Your Hats" ....