Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here

the first time i saw this movie i was a pre-teen, and it always haunted me. i think it should have gotten a much higher rating also.

yes, it raises all the cross-culture misunderstandings, thats what makes it so tragic and so good. it makes you stop and think before you make that next assumption about someone you don't know....whose culture your only vaguely familiar with..not a bad thing to do today, then or anytime.

I consider Robert Blake's performance in this movie to be one of his best, and this comes from someone who has always thought he was a fine actor. Robert Redford, too, shines here as the sheriff, and almost all the supporting cast keeps up with the two male leads.

Blake's character is a Paiute Indian who is the object of a manhunt which is sensationalized by the press because of its concurrence with a visit by President Taft. The sheriff is pressured into hunting down the Indian and the girl he loves but whose father has forbidden the match.

It's a good solid early-1900s Western with much better-than-average acting. But it's not so much an action film as it is a character study -- of Blake's character and, to a lesser degree, Redford's. It brings to life the racism and exploitation that white Europeans brought with them to America.

In southern California at the start of the twentieth century, a young indian man gets into a violent dispute over a girl. This triggers a manhunt.

Director Abraham Polonsky was making his comeback to mainstream cinema with this film, eighteen years after being blacklisted by the UnAmerican Activities Committee. He also wrote this screenplay, which strikes a defiant note in favour of the lone hero against the forces of intolerance and repression. It is not too fanciful to see the indians, with their alternative sensibility and distinct code of values, as a metaphor for artists and free thinkers. Minorities are always in danger, suggests the film, from the urge to hound and victimise manifested by some elements in society.

Polonsky skilfully uses the camera to tell his story. We follow the complex movements of the various characters around the fiesta fairground without the need for spoken dialogue. The silent meeting of Coop and Willie tells us everything about these two men, and their mutual rivalry and respect.

The wonderful topography of the Mojave Desert is superbly captured in Panavision. In particular, the showdown on Ruby Mountain offers some gorgeous images. The film's four leads are excellent: Robert Redford is a wise and humane Coop, the sherriff obliged to lead the inappropriate manhunt: Robert Blake is perfect as the nihilistic, elemental Willie: Doctor Elizabeth Arnold is played by Susan Clark, developing nicely the ambivolence of a woman who needs Coop sexually but despises herself for it: Katharine Ross is the spry, athletic Lola, the young indian girl who becomes Willie's 'wife by capture'.

This lesser known Redford film has been recently, exploitively unearthed in the wake of co-star Blake's real-life arrest and trial for murder. Blake plays a Peyote Indian in 1909 who kills in self defense and is tracked all over the desert by a small posse led by sheriff Redford. Notable as the return to directing by a man who was blacklisted for 18 years prior, it has strong social commentary and the characters really represent aspects of a more contemporary society (namely the one that went on a Communist witch-hunt in the 1950's!) The film, though the plot line is fairly straightforward, isn't always easy to understand because many of the characters' traits and motivations are blurry. No one in the entire film, except possibly Lipton, is a sympathetic character. Everyone is either violent or stupid or manipulative or a combination of the three. There is some degree of suspense and tension in the film, but it doesn't really come off as wholly successful. Redford is an anti-hero, this time on the side of the law after previously playing a fugitive himself in "The Chase". Blake is a highly troubled soul who can't fit in to either the world of the reservations or white man. As his love interest, Ross is hilarious. With her anachronistic hair and slathered on redface make-up, she is the least likely Indian imaginable unless they had put Mamie Van Doren in the role. Why they bothered to cast her and give her second billing is a mystery anyway because one can not see her face in this movie!!!!!! Her hair in CONSTANTLY over half her face, she is photographed through brush and tall grass, behind hanging clothing, with wet hair all over her forehead and eyes, head hanging down, etc...to the point of hilarity. Clark's character is very enigmatic...sharing a lust/hate relationship with Redford. They strike some interesting notes, but their story isn't fleshed out properly. This is worth checking out for the occasional tension, the cat and mouse aspects of the chase and for it's camp value concerning the Indian characters, but the overall impact is not what was intended.

Here is the true account of this story as told by posse member Law-man Ben de Crevecoeur in 1941.

Willie Boy was a 25 or 26 year old Paiute Indian. Isoleta Boniface was a 15 year old Paiute Indian girl. Isoleta's father, Old Mike Boniface was a Paiute Indian.

Willie Boy had an unrequited interest in Isoleta. Her father didn't like Willie Boy. Willie Boy kidnapped Isoleta the first time from the family's camp at Twenty-nine Palms, Ca. Her father found them, took her back and told Willie Boy that if he came near her again he would kill Willie Boy.

Some days later, after drinking with a White friend, Willie Boy went to the Gillman Ranch, near Banning Ca., where the Boniface family was working and crept up on Old Mike, his wife and their 7 children where they were sleeping under a Cottonwood tree. Willie Boy shot Old Mike in the head as he slept.

Willie Boy kidnapped Isoleta again and headed into the desert. He used her as a pack animal to carry whatever supplies he had. The posse, some of which were Paiute Indians, came upon a message scrawled in the dirt from Isoleta that read, "My heart is almost gone, I will be dead soon". When she couldn't go any further, Willie Boy shot her in the back and killed her.

Lawman Ben Crevecouer said, "The sight of that girl's body was something a person would want to forget, but couldn't. We came on it while it was still warm. Her clothes were just rags, she was welts and bruises all over, and there were cactus spines in her flesh. She had worn through her thin little shoes and her feet were raw and bloody".

The posse eventually discovered Willie Boy's body after chasing him for 11 days and 500 to 600 miles in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties in Ca.. Willie Boy killed himself with his last bullet.

Willie Boy was just a scumbag who murdered two of his own people but ,of course, this director, Abe Polonsky, turns the story into another anti-White Hollywood propaganda film.

Info from interview of Ben de Crevecouer in "Desert Magazine", Nov. 1941.