Braveheart | |
---|---|
Directed by | Alan Hale Sr. |
Screenplay by | Mary O'Hara |
Based on | Strongheart by William C. deMille |
Produced by | Cecil B. DeMille |
Starring | Rod La Rocque Lillian Rich |
Cinematography | Faxon M. Dean |
Distributed by | Producers Distributing Corporation |
Release date |
|
Running time | 71 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | Silent (English intertitles) |
Braveheart is a 1925 American silent contemporary Western film directed by Alan Hale Sr. and starring Rod La Rocque. The story focuses on members of a tribe of Indians who are being intimidated by the owners of a canning company seeking to violate a treaty protecting the tribe's fishing grounds. [1] [2] Braveheart is a remake of the 1914 film Strongheart directed by James Kirkwood Sr. and produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
As described in a film magazine review, [3] Braveheart of the Yakama Indians falls in love with Dorothy Nelson, daughter of Hobart Nelson who is disputing certain fishing rights with the tribe. Braveheart goes to college and obtains fame as a member of the football team. He ends up being expelled after voluntarilly shielding Dorothy's brother from disgrace after attempting to throw a football game for some gambling interests. Ki-Yote kidnaps Dorothy and her father. Braveheart fights Ki-Yote and rescues Dorothy and her father, but comes to understand fully the problems and sorrow any potential union with Dorothy would entail. He renounces any interest in Dorothy and marries Sky-Arrow.
Uncredited is Nipo T. Strongheart as the Medicine man. [4]
Braveheart was directed by Alan Hale Sr. and produced by Cecil B. DeMille's production company DeMille Pictures Corporation. [5] [6] The movie was initially named "Strongheart" after a play written by Cecil's brother William C. deMille and produced on Broadway in 1905. Stage actor Robert Edeson had portrayed the leading role in deMille's Broadway play. [7] [8] However, as the success of the play continued, a remake of the 1914 film was undertaken. Nipo T. Strongheart, early in his work with Native American topics, was hired as a technical adviser, and he included elements referring to the Yakima Nation and had the hero succeed in preserving Indian fishing rights, [6] a topic of recent interest to the tribe. [9] The original movie was 30 min long, and the revised movie was 71 min. However, as the project neared completion, the name Strongheart had already appeared in film for a canine star. [10] [11] Subsequently, the Alan Hale film was retitled and released as Braveheart. Nipo T. Strongheart played a small role in the film as a Medicine Man. Strongheart suggested to the movie's screenwriter Mary O'Hara additions of Yakima history to the story (which were not in the 1905 original play). Braveheart's initial treatment was credited to C. Gardner Sullivan, a prolific screenwriter who had worked with producer Thomas H. Ince. [12] American author and playwright Elmer Blaney Harris was a contributing writer and suggested numerous changes for Braveheart. Advertising for performance-lectures of Nipo Strongheart would occasionally have him in Indian costume as well as in a scene from the movie where he was dressed in normal attire. [7]
The leading character of the movie was not dressed up in Indian costumes because it was a contemporary story (which was also in the original play). The lead role was performed by Rod La Rocque. [5] [6] [7] [8]
One scholar said had said that:
The court sequence is heavily and multiply textualized… conveying legal arguments and judgments that refer to treaties.… the judge's decision parses the meaning of the treaty text itself: "We have examined the Federal treaty with the Indians and find that it gives them the right to fish where and when they please, without limitation by State tax or private ownership." [13]
Braveheart was restored by the "Washington Film Preservation Project" and shown at the Yakama Nation Native American Film Festival in 2006 [14] and 2007. [15]
White Swan is a census-designated place (CDP) in Yakima County, Washington, United States. The population was 789 at the 2020 census.
The Yakama are a Native American tribe with nearly 10,851 members, based primarily in eastern Washington state.
The Yakama Indian Reservation is a Native American reservation in Washington state of the federally recognized tribe known as the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. The tribe is made up of Klikitat, Palus, Wallawalla, Wenatchi, Wishram, and Yakama peoples.
United States v. Washington, 384 F. Supp. 312, aff'd, 520 F.2d 676, commonly known as the Boldt Decision, was a legal case in 1974 heard in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case re-affirmed the rights of American Indian tribes in the state of Washington to co-manage and continue to harvest salmon and other fish under the terms of various treaties with the U.S. government. The tribes ceded their land to the United States but reserved the right to fish as they always had. This included their traditional locations off the designated reservations.
The Squaw Man is a 1914 American silent Western film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and Oscar C. Apfel, and starring Dustin Farnum. It was DeMille's directorial debut and the first feature-length film to be shot in what is now Hollywood.
The Yakima War (1855–1858), also referred to as the Plateau War or Yakima Indian War, was a conflict between the United States and the Yakama, a Sahaptian-speaking people of the Northwest Plateau, then part of Washington Territory, and the tribal allies of each. It primarily took place in the southern interior of present-day Washington. Isolated battles in western Washington and the northern Inland Empire are sometimes separately referred to as the Puget Sound War and the Coeur d'Alene War, respectively.
The Battle of Four Lakes was a battle during the Coeur d'Alene War of 1858 in the Washington Territory in the United States. The Coeur d'Alene War was part of the Yakima War, which began in 1855. The battle was fought near present-day Four Lakes, Washington, between elements of the United States Army and a coalition of Native American tribes consisting of Schitsu'umsh, Palus, Spokan, and Yakama warriors.
The Klickitat are a Native American tribe of the Pacific Northwest. Today most Klickitat are enrolled in the federally recognized Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, some are also part of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon.
The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, was an Act of the United States Congress that declared Indigenous persons born within the United States are US citizens. Although the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution says that any person born in the United States and subject to its laws and jurisdiction is a citizen, the amendment had previously been interpreted by the courts as not applicable to Native peoples.
Ray Mala was a prominent Alaska Native actor. He was one of Hollywood's Native American movie actors along with Lillian St. Cyr, Jesse Cornplanter, Chief Yowlachie, William Eagle Shirt, and Will Rogers who also had successful careers during that time. Mala's career peaked in the 1930s and he was best known for his lead role in Republic Pictures' 14-part serial Robinson Crusoe of Clipper Island (1936) following his feature role in MGM's Eskimo, directed by Woody Van Dyke. He was named a "Top Ten Alaskan" by TIME Magazine in 2009.
James Young Deer, also known as J. Younger Johnson or Jim Young Deer, was actually born James Young Johnson in Washington, D.C. Although he was identified in the early Hollywood trade paper Moving Picture World as of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, his ancestry is of the Nanticoke people of Delaware. He became an early film actor, director, writer, and producer. He is believed to be the first Native American filmmaker/producer in Hollywood. Together with his wife and partner Lillian St. Cyr, Winnebago, the couple were labeled an "influential force" in the production of one-reel Westerns during the first part of the silent film era. Their films, along with several others of the silent era, were notable for portraying Native Americans in a positive light.
United States v. Winans, 198 U.S. 371 (1905), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that held that the Treaty with the Yakima of 1855, negotiated and signed at the Walla Walla Council of 1855, as well as treaties similar to it, protected the Indians' rights to fishing, hunting and other privileges.
Pony Soldier is a 1952 American Northern Western film set in Canada, but filmed in Sedona, Arizona. It is based on a 1951 Saturday Evening Post story "Mounted Patrol" by Garnett Weston. It was retitled MacDonald of the Canadian Mounties in Britain and The Last Arrow in France, Spain, and Italy.
Nipo T. Strongheart was an American performer in Wild West shows, technical advisor to Hollywood film producers, and lecturer on the Chautauqua circuit. Throughout his life, which spanned several careers, he was an advocate for Native American issues. He spoke on religious issues several times, and late in life he became a member of the Baháʼí Faith.
Red Wing was an American actress of the silent era. She and her husband James Young Deer have been dubbed by some as one of the first Native American Hollywood "power couple(s)" along with Mona Darkfeather and her actor/director husband Frank E. Montgomery. St. Cyr was born on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska.
Lucullus Virgil McWhorter was an American farmer and frontiersman who documented the historical Native American tribes in West Virginia and the modern-day Plateau Native Americans in Washington state. After living in West Virginia and Ohio, in 1903 he moved to the frontier of Yakima, Washington, in the eastern part of the state. He became a rancher and activist, learning much from his Yakama Nation neighbors and becoming an activist for them. In 1914 he was adopted as an honorary member of the Yakama, after helping over several years to defeat a federal bill that would have required them to give up much of their land in order to get any irrigation rights. They named him Hemene Ka-Wan,, meaning Old Wolf.
The Last Frontier is a 1926 American silent Western film directed by George B. Seitz and starring William Boyd, Marguerite De La Motte, and Jack Hoxie. The plot of this film was later reused in the 1948 Columbia Pictures serial Tex Granger.
Washington v. Confederated Bands and Tribes of the Yakima Indian Nation, 439 U.S. 463 (1979), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the State of Washington's imposition of partial jurisdiction over certain actions on an Indian reservation, when not requested by the tribe, was valid under Public Law 280.
Don't Call It Love is a 1923 American silent romantic comedy film directed by William C. deMille and written by Clara Beranger and Julian Street based upon the play Rita Coventry by Hubert Osborne. The film stars Agnes Ayres, Jack Holt, Nita Naldi, Theodore Kosloff, Rod La Rocque, and Robert Edeson. The film was released on December 24, 1923, by Paramount Pictures.
Strongheart is a 1914 American silent Western black and white film directed by James Kirkwood Sr., produced by Henry B. Harris, written by Frank E. Woods and starring Henry B. Walthall, Lionel Barrymore, Blanche Sweet and Antonio Moreno. The film was supervised by D.W. Griffith.