A Century Earlier than ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ a Lengthy-Misplaced Movie About Osage Murders Was Billed as “The Most Sensational Image of the Age”
Tragedies of the Osage Hills, billed as “essentially the most sensational image of the age,” was launched Could 11, 1926, on the American Theatre in downtown Cushing, Oklahoma. Produced by Native American filmmaker and his accomplice, Oklahoma lodge proprietor Frank L. Thompson, the film was described as a drama concerning the Osage Reign of Terror interwoven with a “tender love story.”
The story of the Osage murders is now the topic of Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming film Killers of the Flower Moon, based mostly upon the best-selling 2017 e-book of the identical identify by David Grann.
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However Younger Deer’s model of the Osage tragedies opened simply 4 months after the January 1926 arrests of William King Hale, Ernest Burkhart and John Ramsey — performed by Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tay Mitchell, respectively, in Scorsese’s movie — for the horrifying murders of a number of dozen or extra Osage Indians over their oil headrights.
Younger Deer, vp and common supervisor of the Thompson Transferring Image Company in Cushing, shot practically 8,000 ft of movie (roughly 80 minutes) and solid tons of of Native People in his manufacturing. Tragedies of the Osage Hills boasted an all-star solid that included Younger Deer’s spouse, Lillian A. King, who portrayed Little Princess Prairie Flower, and Toodles, the youngest actor within the film.
In response to the Cushing Each day Citizen, the fictional final scene was one in every of friendship between Native People and whites below the American flag.
Younger Deer’s dramatic thriller, with its romantic subplot and fairy-tale conclusion, contrasted sharply to the real-life story. Years of exploitation, shootings, poisonings and explosions had rocked the neighborhood and left it soaked in blood.
Nonetheless, native newspapers boasted that his movie was “based mostly on actual details of the atrocious murders dedicated within the Osage nation” and suggested each citizen of Oklahoma to see it.
The film’s giant crowds prompted additional screenings in Oklahoma’s small-town theaters. Certainly one of them, situated in Edmond, capitalized on the tragic occasions by that includes three of the movie’s stars in individual, together with wax figures of accused killers Hale and Ramsey.
However Tragedies of the Osage Hills confronted its personal tragedy. In September 1926, Younger Deer sued his accomplice Thompson for taking possession of the film’s 5 prints and stealing its earnings. 4 months later, Thompson died, and all of the prints disappeared.
The film seems to be one of many final of the proficient however elusive filmmaker whose affluent Hollywood profession finally crumbled amid deception and scandal.
As one in every of Hollywood’s pioneer administrators, Younger Deer’s credentials have been spectacular. He was common supervisor of Pathé Frères West Coast Studio from 1911 to 1914 and oversaw the manufacturing of greater than 150 one-reel silent Westerns. The French-based Pathé was the world’s largest manufacturing firm, with an American studio within the Los Angeles space of Edendale alongside Allesandro Road (now Glendale Boulevard). Edendale, close to Echo Park, was the primary main moviemaking space of Southern California.
Younger Pricey loved an amazing quantity of inventive freedom. At Pathé, he was capable of train a lot management over the studio’s Native American representations and was lucky to have been energetic throughout Hollywood’s early years, particularly from 1910 to 1912, when sympathetic American Indian characters have been well-liked topics. Again then, film studios produced roughly 12 to fifteen one- and two-reel Native-themed motion pictures a month. These tales have been versatile with no constant thematic sample. Many confirmed the stereotypical “savage warrior” who thwarted westward growth, whereas others delivered a pointy indictment towards white encroachment upon Native People.
Younger Deer held the dignity of being Hollywood’s first Native American filmmaker. He was married to Lilian St. Cyr from the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Often known as “Princess Pink Wing,” she was most well-known for her function in the 1914 basic The Squaw Man, the primary feature-length movement image made in Hollywood and directed by Oscar C. Apfel and Cecil B. DeMille. Pink Wing was a graduate of the Carlisle Indian Industrial Faculty in Pennsylvania, the primary off-reservation Native American boarding faculty. Younger Deer additionally boasted of a full-blooded Winnebago heritage, and he, too, claimed that he attended Carlisle.
However none of it was true. Younger Deer’s heritage as an alternative lay hidden inside the small mid-Atlantic triracial neighborhood of whites, African People and Native People often called the “Moors of Delaware,” which incorporates the state-recognized Nanticoke Indian Tribe. His actual identify was James Younger Johnson, born about April 1, 1878, in Washington, D.C., to George Durham Johnson and Emma Margaret Younger.
James was hardly the picture of a matinee idol. Navy data reveal that at 5 ft, 3.25 inches, he had brown hair and brown eyes with “faulty” decrease tooth. He yearned for journey, and in 1898, enlisted within the U.S. Navy to start his tour through the Spanish-American Conflict.
However his combined Black/white and American Indian ancestry meant that as a “coloured individual,” he might serve solely as a landsman or mess attendant, cooking meals for the ship’s firm. His commanding officers complained that he was insolent, so that they despatched the younger lad to solitary confinement with a weight-reduction plan of bread and water. (The Navy later overturned the sentence.) Disgusted, James later swore that he would by no means reenlist within the Navy.
The expertise was a wake-up name, and James promptly shed his African American roots. “Going Indian” may open the door to different alternatives, particularly in an period of dime novels and Wild West exhibits. With darkish pores and skin, a braided wig, a feathered battle bonnet and a surname of Younger Deer, he might simply go for a Plains Indian and entertain audiences with thrilling tales of the Outdated West.
Younger Deer and his spouse Pink Wing dazzled audiences whereas performing in spectacle dramas at New York Metropolis’s monumental Hippodrome Theatre. In the summertime of 1909, D.W. Griffith of the Biograph Firm employed the couple as actors and technical advisers for 2 of his Western-themed tales, The Mended Lute and The Indian Runner’s Romance.
The couple additionally appeared in Fred J. Balshofer’s one-reel shorts, enjoying characters named after them. In November 1909, Younger Deer and Pink Wing traveled with Balshofer and his small Bison firm from New Jersey to sunny Los Angeles.
Younger Deer received his huge directing break when he returned to New Jersey within the spring of 1910 to affix Pathé Frères. As an formidable filmmaker desirous to make a reputation for himself, he created his personal model of Western-themed tales. His directorial expertise blossomed below French cinema pioneer Louis J. Gasnier, who oversaw productions when Pathé determined to strengthen its American market.
White Fawn’s Devotion: A Play Acted by a Tribe of Pink Indians in America, Younger Deer’s first directing alternative, was launched by Pathé in June 1910. The budding filmmaker determined to inject a number of farcical components into Edwin Milton Royle’s 1905 Broadway play, The Squaw Man. As an alternative of Royle’s tragic story about an American Indian girl’s suicide when her white husband abandons her, White Fawn’s Devotion exhibits that the girl solely feigns dying after which reappears to save lots of her husband from the tribe’s vengeance.
Months later, Pathé despatched its promising filmmaker to Edendale to go up its West Coast Studio. Due to Younger Deer, Pathé’s Westerns, beforehand labeled unrealistic and inaccurate, progressively obtained extra favorable evaluations below his productive reign.
As common supervisor at Pathé, Younger Deer basked in his newfound social stature. The filmmaker who as soon as served meals to Naval officers now owned a flowery 60-horsepower Thomas Racer and attended dinner events with the who’s who of Los Angeles.
However in Could 1913, his prolific profession got here to a screeching halt. Younger Deer out of the blue discovered himself in the course of what would change into Hollywood’s first main intercourse scandal, previous the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle affair by eight years. The difficulty started when a neighborhood Hearst newspaper introduced that Evelyn Fast — later often called actress Jewel Carmen — claimed that Younger Deer launched her to 2 co-conspirators of a sex-trafficking ring that pressured younger ladies into prostitution.
The ring’s millionaire chief and distinguished Lengthy Seashore citizen, George H. Bixby, had been indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury for “contributing to the delinquency” of many younger girls. Months of testimony finally exploded right into a sensational trial of bribery, prostitution and blackmail.
Bixby managed to flee conviction, however six months later a younger girl stepped ahead with one other accusation that Younger Deer took cash “below a false promise to offer her work.” Then, the Los Angeles Occasions reported {that a} 15-year-old woman accused the filmmaker of statutory rape. Younger Deer jumped his $1,500 bail and fled to England. He later promised Choose Fred H. Taft that he would return to face trial.
Fortunate for Younger Deer, the Santa Monica choose sympathized together with his heritage. “When an Indian pledges his phrase, he retains it,” Taft declared.
Younger Deer discovered work as a director and author within the sleepy East Finchley suburb of London with the British Colonial and Kinematograph Firm, the place he promptly traded his expertise with Westerns for two-reel city thrillers.
Two years later, his feminine accusers left Los Angeles, and the case towards him disappeared.
Younger Deer returned to Hollywood, however his profitable film profession pale. Pathé offered its American services and moved into distribution, whereas function movies started to switch his quick, quirky tales.
The famed producer drifted out and in of film studios. His marriage to Pink Wing fell aside, though her household data reveal that the couple by no means divorced. Nonetheless, in 1920, he wed Lillian A. King, granddaughter of a Creek Indian chief from Oklahoma, and altered his identify to James Y. Deer and his birthplace to Oklahoma. Beneath the banner of his Youngdeer Movie Company, he deliberate to supply Watuska with King as its star. However Younger Deer’s assistants sued him and his spouse for lack of cost and for promoting inventory certificates with out a allow. The court docket subsequently slapped a $2,000 judgment towards his firm.
The filmmaker and his spouse shut down Watuska and bolted from Los Angeles. They set sail from Montreal to Glasgow, the place Younger Deer assumed an Anglo-Saxon guise, and below his new identify, Edward R. Gordon, made a number of non-Westerns in England. In 1924, the couple traveled to Oklahoma and opened the Arrowhead Movie Firm in Pawhuska, the headquarters of the Osage Nation tribal authorities. Once more, the filmmaker took on a Native American id and rechristened himself James Gordon Youngdeer.
His subsequent movie, The Unknown Man, premiered in Pawhuska in 1925 to enthusiastic crowds. The film was a few crooked lawyer decided to steal a helpful oil lease from the daughter of a rich Southern man and as soon as once more featured his spouse, together with Chief Bacon Rind of the Osage. Alas, The Unknown Man grew to become a misplaced movie.
Following the authorized fallout over Tragedies of the Osage Hills, Younger Deer bounced from one studio mission to a different. He quickly opened an performing faculty in San Francisco, then skipped to Arizona to marry but once more. Tragically, his third spouse died of most cancers in 1937.
With little cash and a fading profession, Younger Deer retired to New York Metropolis and died of abdomen most cancers in Bellevue Hospital on April 6, 1946. The previous producer of Pathé’s West Coast Studio was quietly buried within the Lengthy Island Nationwide Cemetery as James Younger Johnson, a veteran of the Spanish-American Conflict. His contribution to Hollywood was principally forgotten till 2008, when the Library of Congress added White Fawn’s Devotion, one in every of Younger Deer’s few surviving footage, to its Nationwide Movie Registry.
However Tragedies of the Osage Hills grew to become one of many 1000’s of silent options shot on nitrate inventory that didn’t survive. Like most Younger Deer movies, it stays misplaced and unknown to film followers at the moment.
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