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.
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.