The Squaw Man (1931)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Cecil B. DeMille

Writers:

Edwin Milton Royle (play)
Lucien Hubbard (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

5 September 1931 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Western

Plot:

Jim Wyngate, an English aristocrat, comes to the American West under a cloud of suspicion for embezzlement actually committed by his cousin Lord Henry...

Plot Keywords:

Cattle | Embezzlement | Fox Hunt | Polo | Dance

Cast

Warner Baxter	...	James 'Jim' Wingate, aka Jim Carston
Lupe Velez	...	Naturich
Eleanor Boardman	...	Lady Diana Kerhill
Charles Bickford	...	Cash Hawkins
Roland Young	...	Sir John 'Johnny' Applegate
Paul Cavanagh	...	Henry, Earl of Kerhill
Raymond Hatton	...	Shorty
Julia Faye	...	Mrs. Chichester Jones
DeWitt Jennings	...	Sheriff Bud Hardy
J. Farrell MacDonald	...	Big Bill (as J. Farrell McDonald)
Mitchell Lewis	...	Tabywana
Dickie Moore	...	Little Hal Carston
Victor Potel	...	Andy
Frank Rice	...	Grouchy
Eva Dennison	...	Dowager Lady Amy Kerhill, Henry's Mother

Also Known As:

The White Man (UK)

Runtime:

107 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Passed (National Board of Review)

Filming Locations:

Agoura Ranch, Agoura, California, USA

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

The play opened in New York City, New York, USA on 23 October 1905 and closed 1 April 1906 after 222 performances. William S. Hart was the title character, and the cast also included George Fawcett and Mitchell Lewis who was also in this film version. The play had several revivals, the last in 1926.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Private Screenings: Child Stars" (2006)

Old fashioned for Depression tastes

As all film buffs know Cecil B. DeMille's first version of The Squaw Man was the very first film done in what we now call Hollywood. He did a second silent version and for his third film on his MGM hiatus from Paramount he did it once again.

Third time was not the charm. Although the actors, especially Warner Baxter as the disgraced English Earl who goes to the American west and meets, weds, and beds an Indian maiden, Lupe Velez are competent and sincere the film is terribly dated. Depression audiences simply were not interested in a Victorian morality tale with a dose of the British stiff upper lip.

It all sounds so quaint and ridiculous. Baxter is accused of embezzlement and he knows who the culprit is, but won't inform because he doesn't want to disgrace the other guy's family. So with admirable rectitude he heads west and make a new life in America.

He also manages to make an enemy of Charles Bickford who was another rancher who covets his land. But Baxter finds love with Lupe, as did most of Hollywood in real life, and he has a son who will in fact inherit his title.

Cecil B. DeMille was a child of his time. Melodramas like The Squaw Man was the stuff that the legitimate theater did when he grew up and learned his trade from David Belasco.

But audiences weren't buying it in 1931, people had real issues about where the next meal was coming from and could they find work. A story about some Victorian honor code just wasn't marketable.

It's a sincere film though and it might be worth a look to judge what public tastes were at the turn of the last century and before the Roaring Twenties.