Osage murders depicted 100 years before “Killers of the Flower Moon” – The Hollywood Reporter

Osage Hills TragedyBilled as “the most sensational film of its time,” the film opened on May 11, 1926 at the American Theater in downtown Cushing, Oklahoma. Produced by Native American filmmaker James Young Deere and his partner, Oklahoma hotel owner Frank L. Thompson, the film is a drama about an Osage reign of terror interwoven with a “tender love story.” It was said that there is.

Osage murder story to be the subject of Martin Scorsese’s next film Murderers of the Flower Moonbased on the 2017 best-selling book of the same name by David Grann.

But Young Deer’s version of the Osage tragedy is such that William King Hale, Ernest Burkhart, and John Ramsey, played by Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Tay Mitchell, respectively, in Scorsese’s film are accused of gruesome murders. The story began just four months after his arrest in January 1926. More than a dozen Osage Indians fought over oil rights.

Young Deere, vice president and general manager of the Thompson Moving Picture Corporation in Cushing, shot approximately 8,000 feet of film (approximately 80 minutes) and starred hundreds of Native Americans in his films. Ta. Osage Hills Tragedy It boasted an all-star cast, including Lillian A. King, who played Young Deer’s wife and Prairie Flower’s little princess, and Toodles, the film’s youngest actor.

by cushing daily citizenthe fictitious final scene was of friendship between Native Americans and white people under the American flag.

Young Dear’s dramatic thriller, with its romantic subplot and fairytale ending, was in sharp contrast to the real-life story. Years of exploitation, shootings, poisonings and explosions have rocked the community and left it drenched in blood.

Nevertheless, local newspapers boasted that his film was “based on true facts of a brutal murder in the Osage region” and encouraged all Oklahomans to see the film.

The film drew such large audiences that additional screenings were held at theaters in small-town Oklahoma. One of his, in Edmond, capitalized on the tragic event by directly featuring three of the film’s stars and displaying wax figures of the accused murderers, Hale and Ramsey.

but Osage Hills Tragedy He faced his own tragedy. In September 1926, Young Deere obtained five prints of the film and sued his partner Thompson for stealing the proceeds. Four months later, Thompson died and all of his prints were lost.

This movie seems to be one of the last movies The story of a talented but elusive filmmaker whose prosperous career in Hollywood ultimately collapses amid deception and scandal.

As one of Hollywood’s pioneering directors, Young Dear’s track record was impressive. From 1911 to 1914, he served as general manager of Frères West Coast Studios and oversaw the production of over 150 of his one-reel silent Westerns. Pathé, headquartered in France, was the world’s largest production company, with American studios located along Calle Alessandro (now Glendale Boulevard) in the Edendale neighborhood of Los Angeles. Edendale, near Echo Park, was Southern California’s first major film production area.

Young Dear enjoyed a great deal of artistic freedom. At Pathé, he was able to significantly control the studio’s representation of his Native Americans, and in early Hollywood, especially when sympathetic Native American characters were a popular subject, he was introduced from 1910 to 1912. I was fortunate to be able to be active during this time. At the time, movie studios were producing about 12 to 15 of his one-reel and two-reel movies a month with Native themes. These stories were diverse and had no consistent thematic pattern. Many depicted the archetypal “savage warrior” fighting westward expansion, while others harshly denounced white encroachment on Native Americans.

Young Dear held the honor of being Hollywood’s first Native American filmmaker. He married Lillian St. Cyr of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Known as her “Princess Red Wing,” she was most famous for her role in the 1914 classic film. squawman, the first feature film made in Hollywood, was directed by Oscar C. Apfel and Cecil B. DeMille. Red Wing was a graduate of Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian Technical School, the first off-reservation boarding school for Native Americans. Young Deer also boasted purebred Winnebago blood and claimed to have attended Carlisle.

But none of that was true. The Young Deer legacy is instead hidden within a small triracial Mid-Atlantic community of whites, African Americans, and Native Americans known as the “Delaware Moors.” Includes the nationally recognized Nanticoke Indian Tribe. His real name was James Young Johnson, and he was born around April 1, 1878 in Washington, D.C., to George Durham Johnson and Emma Margaret Young.

James was far from the image of a matinee idol. According to military records, he was 5 feet 3.25 inches tall, had brown hair and brown eyes, and had “defective” lower teeth. He craved adventure and joined the U.S. Navy in 1898, embarking on an expedition during the Spanish-American War.

But his Their mixed black/white and American Indian ancestry meant that, as “people of color,” they could only work as landhands or menial men who prepared meals for sailors. His commanders complained that he was insolent, so they sent the young man to a cell and fed him bread and water. (The Navy later overturned this decision.) Fed up with this, James later vowed never to serve in the Navy again.

The experience was a wake-up call, and James soon shed his African American roots. “Going Indian” may open the door to other opportunities, especially in the era of dime novels and Wild West shows. With his dark skin, braided wig, feathered military cap, and surname Young Deer, he was unmistakable as a Plains Indian and could entertain audiences with thrilling tales of the Wild West. Ta.

Young Dear and his wife, Red Wing, captivated audiences as they performed in spectacle dramas at New York City’s massive Hippodrome Theatre. In the summer of 1909, his D.W. Griffith at Biograph Company hired the couple as actors and technical advisors for two of his Western-themed stories. restored lute and indian runner romance.

The couple also appeared in a one-reel short film directed by Fred J. Balshoffer, playing characters named after them. In November 1909, Young Deer and Red Wing traveled with Balshofer and his small bison company from New Jersey to sunny Los Angeles.

Young Deere got his big break as a director when he returned to New Jersey in the spring of 1910 to join Pathé-Frères. As an aspiring filmmaker eager to make a name for himself, he created his own Western-themed stories. His directorial skills blossomed under French film pioneer Louis J. Gasnier, who oversaw production when Pathé decided to consolidate the American market.

White Fawn Devotion: A play performed by America’s Red Indian tribesThe film, Young Dear’s first directorial opportunity, was released by Pathé in June 1910. The up-and-coming filmmaker decided to inject some farcical elements into his 1905 Broadway play by Edwin Milton Royle. squawman. Instead of Royle’s tragic story of an American Indian woman who commits suicide after being abandoned by her white husband, in The Devotion of the White Fawn, the woman only pretended to be dead, leaving her husband to become her husband. The story depicts him reappearing to save the tribe from revenge.

A few months later, Pathé sent a promising director to Edendale to head his West Coast studio. Thanks to The Young Deer, Pathé’s Westerns, previously labeled as unrealistic and inaccurate, gradually received positive reviews under his productive reign. Ta.

As general manager of Pathé, Young Deere enjoyed his newfound social status. The filmmaker, who once catered to naval officers, now owned a luxurious 60-horsepower Thomas Racer and attended dinner parties with celebrities in Los Angeles.

But in May 1913, his prolific career came to a screeching halt. Young Dear was suddenly caught in the middle of Hollywood’s first major sex scandal, eight years before the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle scandal. The issue arose when the local Hearst newspaper claimed that Evelyn Quick, later known as actress Jewel Carmen, was introduced by Young Deer to two co-conspirators in a sex trafficking ring that forced young women into prostitution. It started with the report.

George H. Bixby, the organization’s millionaire leader and prominent Long Beach citizen, had been indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury on charges of “complicit in the delinquency” of numerous young women. Months of testimony ultimately led to a sensational trial involving bribery, prostitution and extortion.

Mr. Bixby managed to avoid conviction, but six months later a young woman came forward with another accusation that Mr. Young Deere had taken money “with false promises of providing work.”Then Los Angeles Times A 15-year-old girl has accused the filmmaker of statutory rape. Young Dear jumped his $1,500 bail and fled to England. He then promised Judge Fred H. Taft that he would try again.

Good luck for the young deer, The Santa Monica judge was sympathetic to his heritage. “When Indians make promises, they keep them,” Taft declared.

Young Deer found work as a director and writer at the British Colonial and Kinematograph Company in London’s sleepy East Finchley suburb, where he soon traded his skills for westerns and began producing two-reel films. produced an urban thriller.

Two years later, the women who accused him left Los Angeles and the case against him died.

Young Dear returned to Hollywood, but her lucrative film career fizzled out. Pathé sold his American properties and moved into distribution, while feature films began to replace his short, quirky stories.

This famous producer was in and out of film studios. Although her marriage to Red Wing broke down, her family records indicate that the couple did not divorce. Nevertheless, in 1920 he married Lillian A. King, granddaughter of a Creek Indian chief from Oklahoma, changed his name to James Y. Deere and changed his place of birth to Oklahoma. did. Under the banner of Young Deer Film Corporation, he planned to produce the following films: Watusca King is the star. But Young Dear’s assistants sued Young Dear and his wife for underpayment and for selling stock certificates without authorization. A court later issued a $2,000 judgment against his company.

The filmmaker and his wife went out of business. Watusca Then he flew out of Los Angeles. They sailed from Montreal to Glasgow, where Young Deer disguised himself as an Anglo-Saxon and sent several non-Western men to England under the new name Edward R. Gordon. In 1924, the couple traveled to Oklahoma and founded the Arrowhead Film Company in Pawfuska, the seat of the Osage Nation tribal government. Once again, the filmmaker assumed a Native American identity and renamed himself James Gordon Young Deer.

his next movie, unknown man, premiered in 1925 in Pawhuska to an enthusiastic audience. The film tells the story of an unscrupulous lawyer determined to steal a valuable oil lease from the daughter of a wealthy Southern man, and once again features his wife and Osage Chief Bacon Lind. ah, unknown man It became a lost movie.

Continue legal consequences are over Osage Hills Tragedy, young deer I bounced around from one studio project to another. He briefly opened an acting school in San Francisco, then flew to Arizona to get married. again. Sadly, his third wife died of cancer in 1937.

With little money and a declining career, Young Dear retired to New York City and died of stomach cancer on April 6, 1946, at Bellevue Hospital. The former producer at Pathé’s West Coast studio was buried peacefully at Long Island National Cemetery as James Young Johnson. , a veteran of the Spanish-American War. His contributions to Hollywood were largely forgotten until the Library of Congress added him in 2008. white fawn dedicationone of the few surviving photographs of Young Deer, was entered into the National Film Registry.

but Osage Hills Tragedy It was one of the thousands of silent features shot on nitrate stock that did not survive. Like most Young Dear films, this film was lost and remains unknown to today’s moviegoers.