Classic Zane Grey Western! Full Movie! THE VANISHING AMERICAN

Описание: Zane Grey’s THE VANISHING AMERICAN, from Republic Pictures in 1955, looks like a straight B-Western on the surface, then quietly swerves into something with more depth and commentary on the times. It’s a forgotten film that needs to be reevaluated.
The plot has an Eastern heiress, film noir’s tough-as-nails Audrey Totter, arriving to claim an inheritance that turns out to be the prize in the territory. Her land is tied to water and grazing rights—land the local Navajo believe is rightfully theirs. Totter quickly finds herself boxed in by a smiling, untrustworthy, trader, Forrest Tucker, and Gene Lockhart a crooked “Indian agent.” Forrest Tucker also has a couple of gunmen at his disposal---Jim Davis and Lee Van Cleef. Don’t worry, though, Audrey is a gun-toting, hard as nails leading lady.

The wild card for Totter is meeting Scott Brady. He’s either a true blood Navajo or a white man raised among them. He knows both worlds but doesn’t fully belong in either . Brady is very good, underplaying and adding credibility to a very difficult part. It was a time when Hollywood still routinely used non-Native leads for Native parts, even in “sympathetic” stories and the film flirts with “Indian reform” themes. Where this version of THE VANISHING AMERICAN earns extra points is for being sympathetic without preaching and for casting Native Americans Jay Silverheels and veteran character actor Charles Stevens. Others in the cast include James Millican, Glenn Strange, Fred Graham & Hank Worden.

The on location shooting enhanced the production values. The company was based in St. George, Utah, where the landscape gave this better than average Republic film, the look of a classic western.

In comparison, the 1925 Paramount silent version of Zane Grey’s THE VANISHING AMERICAN, starring Richard Dix, was a big, prestigious production with major location work on the Navajo Nation/Monument Valley region and a reform-era sting that caused real controversy when the story was first published. Republic’s 1955 version eliminates most of the politics and uses the “corrupt trader + corrupt agent” plot, which was safer for the Production Code era of the fifties.

Alan Le May wrote the screenplay for this version. His credentials are strong. He also wrote the novel THE SEARCHERS, which drew inspiration from the real-life Cynthia Ann Parker story. It was directed by Republic’s western specialist Joseph Kane.

In THE VANISHING AMERICAN, Zane Greyu aimed sharp criticism at U.S. policy abuses and exploitation on reservations, enough to trigger organized backlash when it was originally published back in the 1920s. So the work carries both the period’s blind spots and a reformist punch that filmmakers kept trying to tap.  Next to RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, this may be his most popular novel. Let’s take a look at this exceptional, forgotten version starring Audrey Totter, Jim Davis and Scott Brady as THE VANISHING AMERICAN.