Making the White Man's Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies

By Angela Aleiss

Book Overview

The image in Hollywood movies of savage Indians attacking white settlers represents only one side of a very complicated picture. In fact sympathetic portrayals of Native Americans stood alongside those of hostile Indians in the silent films of D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, and flourished during the early 1930s with Hollywood's cycle of pro-Indian adventures. Decades later, the stereotype became even more complicated, as films depicted the savagery of whites (The Searchers) in contrast to the more peaceful Indian (Broken Arrow). By 1990 the release of Dances with Wolves appeared to have recycled the romantic and savage portrayals embedded in early cinema. In this new study, author Angela Aleiss traces the history of Native Americans on the silver screen, and breaks new ground by drawing on primary sources such as studio correspondence, script treatments, trade newspapers, industry censorship files, and filmmakers' interviews to reveal how and why Hollywood created its Indian characters. Behind-the-scenes anecdotes of filmmakers and Native Americans, as well as rare archival photographs, supplement the discussion, which often shows a stark contrast between depiction and reality.

The book traces chronologically the development of the Native American's screen image while also examining many forgotten or lost Western films. Each chapter will feature black and white stills from the films discussed.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0313361339
• ISBN13: 9780313361333
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A history of Hollywood and the Indians

"Making the White Man's Indian..." as a title, borrows from Fergus M. Bordewich's 1998 book title "Killing the White Man's Indian" which he borrowed from a historical quote. Aleiss does a very scholarly but readable review of Hollywood's fascination with American Indians. There are only one or two books of this genre available to college film classes so this is a very welcome addition. It is one of the better, if not the best, of such books. Aleiss knows Hollywood better than her literary predecessors and it shows in her use of box office data. It's one thing to say Hollywood's interest in Indians, as a film subject, has ebbed-and-flowed and quite another to give real economic detail for this. Hollywood studios make movies on topics that sell or they try another topic. In the early days of movies the Indian was a "cool" topic until people quit buying tickets. When big box offices returned with the "Duke-type" aka "John Wayne" westerns and their portrayal of "western Indians" the genre was hot again. Aleiss points out that Indian movies that star Indian actors have been around longer than contemporary memory would suggest and this is a real contribution on her part. She mixes in a lot of good "back story". This reviewer learned a lot about James Young Deer and questions about his own heritage that other writers had missed or had not reported. His escapades with his female actors were discussed as one reason Hollywood cooled toward his work. Such details are what make "Making the White Man's Indian..." both fun-to-read and scholarly at the same time - a difficult task for any history book.