After living a full and prosperous tribal life, Chief Dan George took up acting in his 60s and scored a historic Oscar nod for Little Big Man. We recommend a few of his greatest screen performances.
When it came to acting, you could say Chief Dan George — the first Native American ever nominated for an Academy Award in an acting category — was a late bloomer.
Born Geswanouth Slahoot on July 24, 1899, as a member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in North Vancouver, British Columbia, he was employed as a longshoreman in Vancouver Harbor for 27 years, served as chief of his people from 1951 to 1963, and traveled extensively throughout British Columbia with his children and other family members while performing as Dan George and His Indian Entertainers. At age 60, he was cast in the Canadian Broadcasting Company series Cariboo Country.
Although he was a complete novice in his new gig, George impressed critics and audiences with his portrayal of an elderly Indian named Ol’ Antoine, a role that had been originally cast with a white actor. (According to You Call Me Chief: Impressions of the Life of Chief Dan George, a memoir he co-wrote with Hilda Mortimer, George required “four or five hours” of aging makeup each day he was on camera.) Not long afterward, he inspired playwright George Ryga to expand the role of the title character’s father in The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, his work-in-progress about an Indian girl who comes to regret moving from her village to the big city. In the completed version of the play, the father tries — in vain — to convince his daughter to come home to her family. “For me,” Ryga said years after the Vancouver Playhouse’s acclaimed premiere production, “the inclusion in the play of the character of Rita Joe’s father was the inclusion of the man Dan George.”
He never had any formal acting training, but what a storyteller! I’d just say the lines with him several times, and then start the camera without him knowing it! He’d get his dialogue 90 percent right, and the rest would be improvised and sometimes it’d be great.
— Clint Eastwood on Chief Dan George
One thing led to another. He reprised his performance as Ol’ Antoine in Smith! (1969), a Walt Disney production based on a novel that had in turn been based on a Cariboo Country episode, then landed his career-defining role as the sage Cheyenne tribal leader Old Lodge Skins in director Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man. For his work as the elderly Native American who “adopts” the title character — Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman), a white man repeatedly torn between two civilizations — George received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, and Best Supporting Actor awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. (Fun fact: Before George was cast, Marlon Brando, Paul Scofield, and Laurence Olivier were approached to play Old Lodge Skins, but each declined the offer.)
George continued to appear in movies and TV shows, and author bestselling books of essays and poetry, until he passed away in 1981. These are some of the films that best represent his legacy.
Smith! (1969)
Glenn Ford is the nominal star of this family-friendly contemporary drama, authoritatively playing the title character, a rancher sympathetic to Native Americans in general and Gabriel Jimmyboy (Frank Ramirez), a young Indian wrongly accused of murder, in particular. But George steals every scene that isn’t bolted to the floor as Ol’ Antoine, Smith’s “blood brother,” who effectively testifies for the defense at Jimmyboy’s trial by extensively quoting the “I Will Fight No More Forever” surrender speech given by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe of Idaho. Ford reportedly was so deeply affected by George’s performance in this scene that he missed his own cue, and a retake was required.
The movie poster for Smith!
Little Big Man (1970)
A journalist asked director Arthur Penn in 2007 which of his movies other than Bonnie and Clyde he would want screened at any film festival tribute. “I think Little Big Man,” he immediately responded. “It was a hard film to make. It was not responded to well by the studios when I shopped it around — it took me six years to get it made — so there’s a lot of passion in that one.” There is indeed much passion, as well as humor, excitement, and a healthy tweaking of western movie cliches, in Penn’s adaptation of Thomas Berger’s 1964 novel — along with an Oscar-worthy supporting performance by George as the aforementioned Old Lodge Skins. George and Hoffman share the film’s finest and most affecting sequence, as Lodge Skins tells Jack Crabb after a victory at Little Big Horn that he’s ready to simply lie down and die, “Because there is no other way to deal with the White Man, my son. Whatever else you can say about them, it must be admitted: You cannot get rid of them.” The old man is bitterly disappointed when he opens his eyes and realizes he is still alive. “I was afraid of that,” he groans. “Well, sometimes the magic works. Sometimes, it doesn’t.” Fortunately, Chief Dan George always made his magic work, no matter the size of his role.
Chief Dan George’s career-defining acting role came as the sage Cheyenne tribal leader Old Lodge Skins in director Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man.
Harry And Tonto (1974)
Art Carney received a well-deserved Academy Award as Best Actor for his gruffly poignant performance in writer-director Paul Mazursky’s picaresque comedy-drama as Harry Coombes, an elderly New York widower who travels cross-country with his beloved cat Tonto. Along the way, he interacts with a variety of folks, including Sam Two Feathers (George), a Native American medicine man with whom he briefly shares a Las Vegas jail cell. It’s not a huge role, but George makes every moment count. “I practice good medicine on good people,” he promises. “Bad medicine on bad people.” So can he cure bursitis? “I cure anything. What is bursitis?”
With Art Carney in Harry and Tonto.
The Oulaw Josey Wales (1976)
Clint Eastwood had already directed four features before scoring his true breakthrough as a filmmaker with this much admired drama about a former Confederate guerrilla who refuses to lay down his guns after the Civil War and reluctantly assumes responsibility for a makeshift community of outcasts while trying to avoid dogged pursuers. Among the outcasts: Lone Watie (George), an old Cherokee man whose droll comebacks and commentary provide welcome comic relief as he rides with the taciturn Wales. The latter, it should be noted, is reluctant to make new friends of any sort. “Whenever I get to likin’ someone,” Wales complains, “they ain’t around long.” To which Lone Watie, having seen some striking examples of Wales’ quick-draw prowess, replies with a resolutely straight face: “I notice when you get to dislikin’ someone, they ain’t around for long neither.” It’s a typical exchange for the unlikely allies, suggesting Eastwood and George might have teamed for a successful comedy act during the vaudeville era. “He never had any formal acting training,” Eastwood told Roger Ebert in a 1976 interview, “but what a storyteller! I’d just say the lines with him several times, and then start the camera without him knowing it. He’d get his dialogue 90 percent right, and the rest would be improvised and sometimes it’d be great.”
With Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Shadow Of The Hawk (1976)
The rent must be paid, groceries must be purchased, and sometimes an actor signs on to do a lot more for a movie than it ever does for them. Case in point: This borderline ridiculous supernatural thriller — which sporadically leaps over the line — gets more mileage than it deserves from George’s stoically dignified portrayal of Old Man Hawk, a modern-day shaman for a small village who needs someone to take over his medicine man duties and battle an evil spirit threatening his people. He travels to the big city to prevail upon his “half-breed” grandson Mike (Jan-Michael Vincent), a junior executive for a computer company, to fill the position, which entails doing everything from fighting a stunt man posing in a none-too-convincing bear suit to avoiding evildoers cruising around in a mysterious ’58 Pontiac. (To be fair, the scene in which the Pontiac gets magically demolished is pretty cool.) Marilyn Hassett plays a freelance reporter who goes along for the ride, and delivers cringe-worthy lines like, “Mike, I’m scared! Someone’s trying to kill us!” George fares better dialogue-wise, and even manages to flash a twinkle in his eye whenever he compliments his grandson while using his favorite nickname for the younger man: “Well done, Little Hawk.”
George in Shadow of the Hawk.
From our August/September 2024 issue.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Getty, Alamy
