The Squaw Man (1914)

Shortly after checking in at the Alexandria Hotel, DeMille leased a barn on the corner of Selma Avenue and Vine Street in a small rural town called Hollywood. Filming began on 29th December 1913, and was shot in three weeks. During the shoot, agents of the Trust destroyed the negative. Fortunately, DeMille had filmed everything twice after noticing how easily film caught fire. They also delivered anonymous threatening messages and even took potshots at the director as he rode home from work on his horse. Money was so tight that DeMille had to play the role of a faro dealer in a saloon to save on the $3 it would have cost to pay an actor.

Farnum played Captain Jim Wynnegate, a chivalrous British officer who heads west after taking the blame for his cousin’s embezzlement of charity funds. After buying a ranch, he becomes involved in a feud with a rustler, Cash Hawkins (William Elmer), who would have succeeded in killing Jim had Nat-U-Rich (Red Wing) an Indian girl, not saved him. Jim marries Nat-U-Rich, and they have a son together. Meanwhile, moments before dying after falling off a mountain, Jim’s cousin signs a confession exonerating Jim of his crime. His cousin’s wife, whom Jim loved, sets out to find him, hoping to rekindle their love.

The Squaw Man is a rough piece of work, no doubt about it. Even with Apfel’s help, the novice film director’s inexperience is unmistakable. Despite its length, it harks back to the primitive filmmaking and pantomime acting of earlier films. Dustin Farnum’s stage experience manifests itself in his repeatedly punching the air to express emotion. Frustration, determination, anger, triumph: he expresses them all with that one-size-fits-all punch. His performance is simply wretched compared to the natural acting of performers under D. W. Griffith’s direction. DeMille also struggles to denote the passing of time: one second Farnum is shipwrecked at sea, the next he is in a New York hotel. An equally jarring transition comes in the wedding scene. One moment Jim and Nat-U-Rich are exchanging vows, the very next they are playing with their son on a horse. In DeMille’s defence, it is possible that existing prints are missing a few seconds – after all, in one scene, Jim’s cousin’s mother simply vanishes from the screen!

Although it seems crude today, The Squaw Man was an enormous hit upon its release – although, for a short, panic-stricken time, its producers feared it would never reach the screen. In his autobiography, DeMille recalled arranging a gala screening for the executives, cast and crew. An expectant hush fell over the audience as the lights dimmed. But, to DeMille’s horror, the film kept vertically rolling so that, as he put it, “the film skittered off at the top of the screen.”

The disconsolate partners faced not only ruin, but possible imprisonment because Goldfish had sold the film’s exhibition rights for cash. They had ploughed that money back into production, meaning they couldn’t pay refunds. In desperation, Goldfish sent the film to Siegmund Lubin. No-one knew more about film than the Polish immigrant so genial everyone knew him as ‘Pop’. The only problem was that he was a member of the Trust, the very organisation that had tried to destroy the film.

Left with no choice, an armed DeMille took the film to Lubin. To his relief, not only was Lubin amenable to investigating the problem, he was quick to resolve it. To cut costs, DeMille had purchased a second-hand British-made machine for punching sprocket holes in the film, not realising that it punched out 65 sprockets per foot of film, whereas the projector was sprocketed at 64 holes per foot. Fixing it simply required pasting a thin strip of film over the negative and re-perforating it.

The film eventually grossed $244,700 for the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. One producer impressed by the first feature-length movie produced in Hollywood was Adolph Zukor, head of the Famous Players Film Company. Zukor sent Lasky a telegram offering his congratulations, then invited him to lunch. But his admiration wasn’t merely appreciation of Lasky’s achievements. Zukor had done his homework and realised that Lasky’s company and his were a good fit, each making films aimed at the same demographic. Sam Goldfish selling the entire national states’ rights for The Squaw Man in just three weeks also impressed him. These were people Zukor would rather have working for him than competing against him. Lasky felt the same way about Zukor, and advised Sam Goldfish that they should cultivate the Hungarian immigrant as a contact. Eventually, this mutual appreciation of two pioneers of the industry would result in the creation of one of Hollywood’s major film studios.