The Vanishing American (1925)

Directed by George B. Seitz. With Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, Noah Beery, Malcolm McGregor. History, as portrayed in this film, has been a succession of conquests of stronger races over weaker ones. As played out on the stage of Monument Valley, long ago, tribes of Indians defeated the ancient cliff dwellers; then came the Europeans to conquer the Indians. Now, in the early 20th Century, a tribe of Navajo live on a reservation overseen by an Indian-hating agent, Booker. He and his men ...

The Vanishing American (1925) is a silent film western produced by Famous Players-Lasky in the United States, and distributed through Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by George B. Seitz and starred Richard Dix and Lois Wilson, recently paired in several screen dramas by

A Native American man returning from college meets racial intolerance upon returning to his reservation.

The Paramount team of Richard Dix and Lois Wilson starred in this top-notch silent western in which a Native American is the protagonist. The early silent era devoted many films to the depiction of American Indians, but that trend had not carried over into the screen's third decade, where Indians almost always played villains or were merely background dressing. Based on a Zane Grey novel and filmed partially in Monument Valley, The Vanishing American presented Dix, in what might very well have been his best performance until Cimarron (1930), as a college-educated Native American who only meets with racial intolerance when he returns to a reservation now lorded over by a villainous Bureau of Indian Affairs agent (Noah Beery). Today considered

This DVD edition, that shows its age a bit, has been mastered from a very-good 35mm print that flickers a bit with slight exposure fluctuations in this nearly full-frame video transfer from 1999. Image details are clear enough, and the disc is satisfying viewing (aside from the f

A tribe of Navajo live on a reservation overseen by an Indian-hating agent.