Little Big Man (1970)

For many years in Hollywood, Native Americans were not allowed to portray themselves in films. One director commented, they neither know how to play Indians, nor can they act. Once this absurd idea was quashed and Native Indians were allowed to portray their own people, not only was the myth crushed, but some of them received the highest tributes the film industry could honor them with. Such was the case with this unusual story which was touted as the most forgotten hero of the southwest. Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) plays a white boy who landed smack dab in the emerging historical west at the start of the colonization period. Through his own fanciful narrative, we journey along as he survives an Indian massacre, adopted into the native culture, then re-acculturated into the White world near emerging townships, and then through several high frontier adventures which culminates with, The Battle of The Little Big Horn. Chief Dan George is Old Lodge Skins a native American who made himself memorable to American Audiences plays tutor and mentor to Jack Krabb. Faye Dunaway plays Mrs. Louise Pendrake who is both step-mother and temptress to the maturing Krabb. Martin Balsam plays Mr. Merriweather who literally goes to pieces throughout the film. Jeff Corey befriends Crabb as Wild Bill Hickok. Finally there is Richard Mulligan who plays Gen. George Armstrong Custer, both as a serious military man and then as a lunatic officer. The entire film is destined for classic status, depending on history's eventual reflection of modern Native Americans. ****