Laughing Boy

"Laughing Boy" 1934 directed by W.S. Van Dyke was adapted by John Colton and John Lee Mahin from the 1929 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Oliver La Farge, an anthropologist who worked with Navajo Indians in the southwest. The result is much stilted language and Lupe Velez as Slim Girl/Lily, is shown to be more hip as she grew up with white people. Thus, she introduces Laughing Boy to everything from whiskey to kissing and she is dismissed from the dance because she "dances like a snake". Several Native American Indians were hired for the film only making the two leads stand out more. It is not as bad as I expected considering it was a huge box office disappointment upon its release on April 13, 1934. Ramon Novarro had been cast in several ethnic roles since sound came in with varying degrees of success. His singing is fine in this but some back projection in a race sequence and sped-up film in a wrestling match give it a cheap look despite some gorgeous on location in Arizona. Novarro would have only one more film at MGM where he had been under contract since the company's formation in 1924.