This month marks the 107^th birthday of Bob Hope, who was an icon of the entertainment industry for almost nine decades.  From vaudeville to radio to movies to television to video/DVD releases of his films, Hope’s comic style and persona were remarkably consistent and adaptable from one arena of entertainment to another.

Anyone who knows Hope from his television specials and his stints at hosting the Academy Awards remember his breezy monologues, one-liners, and ad libs. Those who are fans of his films enjoyed his comic persona as the cowardly smart-mouth or likable cad, who could crack wise with exquisite timing. He could spray jokes with astonishing rapidity, or slow the momentum down with a calculated pause or double take. Hope’s talent was primarily verbal, but he was also adept at donning ridiculous costumes, handling a prop with comic aplomb, taking a decent pratfall, and reacting with just the right expression to his costars’ dialogue or actions. Even the way he strolled into a comic sketch or sidled onto a film set could be funny. Like many a former vaudevillian, he knew the comic value of making an entrance.

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As it’s Mother’s Day, it seems fitting to kick things off with a Mother Goose children’s song that goes like this:

“Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,

Apple seed and apple thorn,

Wire, briar, limber lock

Three geese in a flock

One flew East

One flew West

And one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” READ MORE

Meet Gojko Mitic, DEFA’s all-purpose Native American from Yugoslavia.           READ MORE

If you grew up anywhere in the continental United States, you were raised in Indian territory.  Or land that was once Indian territory.  That fact wasn’t lost on me as I came of age in New England, where every third town was named for some long forgotten Native American brave or tribe, from Moosup to Attawaugan, from Uncasville to the Quinebaug River.  As a kid, I capered under the towering pines of Mashamoquet State Park and splashed in the icy swells of Misquamacut Beach in Rhode Island.  The mascot of my high school was a Red Indian, with the feather headdress and tomahawk, and our game day chant was “Redmen on the war path/Ooh ahh!”  But did I know any Indians ?  No.  I knew them from the movies, of course: those ripped, red clay colored Adonises in their buckskins and bear claw necklaces, with elemental names like Running Water and John Big Tree.  I just never met any Native Americans personally – I don’t think there any were left in Windham County by the time my family staked a claim there.  As kids, none of us ever wanted to be the Indians in games of Cowboys and–.  It wasn’t prejudice so much as that we didn’t really sabe where Indians were coming from – why they raided covered wagons and besieged forts, why they were loco for firewater and white women, why they favored repetitive chanting over spirited yodeling.  Cowboys dressed cool, in jeans and leather belts with wide-brimmed hats and vests; they had the cool guns, while the Redskins were stuck with crude tools, like arrows and spears and the occasional buck knife.  And Indians talked funny, we thought… kind of like Charlie Chan, dropping their articles and muffing the past tense.  If I’d have known any Original People, I’d have known that the Hollywood Indian was as much of a construct of the film industry as the Mummy or James Bond, but I didn’t and thus helped perpetuate the stereotype.  In penance, my contribution to TCM’s month-long Race & Hollywood: Native American Images on Film festival and the associated Movie Morlock’s blog-a-thon will be to discuss, in four weekly installments, the inclusion of Native American characters in my favorite film genre, the horror movie.  READ MORE

Few film genres have captured the imagination of movie audiences with the same kind of power and persuasiveness as the American western. For decades Hollywood mixed facts with fiction and created a kind of celluloid mythology that made heroes out of cowboys, would-be settlers and the U.S. Cavalry. Unfortunately this myth-making led to the vilifying of Native Americans who experienced incomprehensible suffering and losses that went undocumented in our history books and were unseen in our movies. Occasionally Hollywood would offer up subtle suggestions of the injustices and racism that Native Americans experienced but the limited scope of these films often marred our general understanding of the people who once populated this beautiful country. In 1970 that all changed.

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TCM’s month-long series, RACE & HOLLYWOOD: NATIVE AMERICAN IMAGES ON FILM, begins tonight with a trio of John Ford Westerns (Stagecoach, The Searchers, and Cheyenne Autumn). We’ll be following the program back here at Movie Morlocks with a week-long group of posts related to the topic. Suzi Doll kicked things off yesterday with an inquiry into Anthony Mann’s DEVIL’S DOORWAY, and now I’ll be looking at Kent Mackenzie’s recently rediscovered The Exiles, which screens on Thursday May 27th at 9:30PM (it shows again on June 23rd at 1:15AM).

The Exiles follows a Native American husband and wife, Homer (the Hualapi Homer Nish) and Yvonne (the Apache Yvonne Williams), as they separately navigate an aimless night in the Bunker Hill area of Los Angeles. Having left the reservation for the city, they are slowly adapting to their new surroundings. Homer opts for the easy camaraderie of the Native American immigrant community, rolling from bar to bar with a group of debauched loners, led by the highly strung Tommy (Tommy Reynolds). Yvonne, visibly pregnant and left to her own devices, goes to the cinema to see The Iron Sheriff, and then wanders down the main drag, daydreaming about her uncertain future.

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This month on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, TCM will offer “Race in Hollywood: Native American Images on Film,” a series that has culled the archives to spotlight both positive and negative images of American Indians. The films will be hosted by Robert Osborne and Professor Hanay Geiogamah, the director of the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA and the editor of American Indian Culture and Research Journal, among other accomplishments. The series begins tomorrow, May 4, with “The Westerns of John Ford,” continues throughout the month, and then concludes on May 27, with “Films about Native Americans from Outside Hollywood.” Much like a museum exhibition of photographic stills or fine art, the series offers a window into American history and culture as well as a showcase of craftsmanship and artistry. To support this unique, well-curated series, the Movie Morlocks will blog this week on topics related to American Indians on film. Please check back each day this week for a thoughtful, engaging article by my knowledgeable and insightful colleagues.

On May 20, three films are scheduled to illustrate “Indians Dealing with Racism.” The evening opens with one of my favorite westerns, Devil’s Doorway, a 1950 black-and-white western directed by Anthony Mann starring Robert Taylor as a Shoshone who loses everything because of the racism inherent in the coming of civilization. Taylor plays Broken Lance, whose white name is Lance Poole; his dual name signifies his status as a man stuck between two worlds. Lance has returned to his home near Medicine Bow, Wyoming, after serving honorably in the Civil War and earning the Congressional Medal of Honor.  Lance finds that civilization has been encroaching on Medicine Bow in his absence, with lawyers settling in town, homesteaders looking to stake claims, and residents working to make Wyoming a territory. Based on his experiences back East, Lance also has progressive ideas to bring to the territory, particularly in regard to his family’s land, which is the richest in the region. But, with civilization comes laws and social institutions designed to protect and reward the dominant culture, which is that of white men.  The new laws have made Lance’s land vulnerable to homesteading, because his father didn’t have a deed to the land, like most of the original generation of ranchers who settled the West.  He seeks the help of a woman lawyer to work within the system to obtain a legal right to his own land, but the laws were not designed to help him. Instead, the new laws designate Indians to be wards of the government and, therefore, non-citizens with no rights.

IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE FILM, LANCE WEARS ATTIRE ASSOCIATED WITH WHITE COWBOYS. AS WHITE LAWS WORK AGAINST HIM, HE RETURNS TO NATIVE DRESS.

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Today, I did something rare; I met a deadline. Okay, technically, it was a day late – but I was still the first, of six, to submit my nominations for titles that I’d like to see included in an upcoming collection of short films from the last Sundance Film Festival. These films will then be assembled into a package that will go on a tour through participating theaters nation-wide. Kudos to Lisa Ogdie and Todd Luoto (both from Sundance) for culling through over a hundred shorts to bring the number down to 32 – these then being spread over four DVD’s. From these 32 titles, I picked seven films whose total running time would account for a comfortable 95-minute program.  READ MORE