A 19th-Century Forrest Gump

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"I was an honored guest so they gave me a special treat: boiled dog. Now I will admit, dog is greasy, but you'd be surprised how downright delicate the flavor is — especially when you're starving."

Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman)

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The last time I watched Arthur Penn's "Little Big Man" — which premiered on this day in 1970 — it occurred to me that Little Big Man (Dustin Hoffman) was the 19th–century version of Forrest Gump.

He was always where big things were happening in the West — just like Forrest Gump kept showing up at the White House ... after he showed up on the infamous occasion when George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door in an attempt to block the integration of the University of Alabama.

Forrest Gump was always rubbing elbows with the big names of 20th–century history, with presidents and would–be presidents, often in the news footage of the day. Little Big Man wasn't around too many big names. He was almost always around the practically anonymous Indians who tried without success to resist the invasion of the white Europeans.

The only big name I can think of who encountered Little Big Man was Gen. George Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan).

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Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that "Little Big Man" was "an endlessly entertaining attempt to spin an epic in the form of a yarn." He was right.

"It mostly works," Ebert observed. "When it doesn't — when there's a failure of tone or an overdrawn caricature — it regroups cheerfully and plunges ahead. We're disposed to go along; all good storytellers tell stretchers once in a while, and circle back to be sure we got the good parts."

In "Little Big Man," they were all good parts.

"Hoffman, or Little Big Man, gets around pretty well," Ebert wrote. "He touches all the bases of the Western myth. He was brought West as a settler, raised as a Cheyenne, tried his hand at gunfighting and medicine shows, scouted for the cavalry, experimented with the hermit life, was married twice, survived Custer's Last Stand and sat at the foot of an old man named Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George), who instructed him in the Cheyenne view of creation."

And that, in a nutshell, was Little Big Man's character — except he answered to Jack Crabb when he came West as a settler or when he found himself among other whites.

The "yarn," as Ebert put it, was told by Hoffman's character at the age of 121. Yes, you read that right. And it worked quite well. Extremely well.

"The yarn is the most flexible of story forms," Ebert observed. "Its teller can pause to repeat a point; he can hurry ahead 10 years; he can forget an entire epoch in remembering the legend of a single man. He doesn't capture the history of a time, but its flavor. 'Little Big Man' gives us the flavor of the Cheyenne nation before white men brought uncivilization to the West."

It would be hard to pinpoint what kind of movie it was. It was a comedy, a drama, a satire, a tragedy. Sometimes it was just one; at other times, it was a mix of two or more.

One thing it was not was literal history.

And Ebert observed that the story was circular. "All the characters who appear in the early stages of the film come back in the later stages, fulfilled. The preacher's wife (Faye Dunaway) returns as a prostitute. The medicine–quack, already lacking an arm, loses a leg (physician, heal thyself). Wild Bill Hickok decays from a has–been to a freak show attraction. Custer fades from glory to madness. Only Old Lodge Skins makes it through to the end not merely intact but improved."

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The really ridiculous thing about "Little Big Man" is how it was all but overlooked by the Oscars.

Chief Dan George was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (which he lost) — and that was it. Even the schmaltzy "Love Story" got seven nominations.

Well, it wasn't the first time that a more deserving movie got snubbed by the Oscars.

Forget It, Jake

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There was a saying when I worked in newsrooms that I presume still has some value even though many years have passed since I worked in a newsroom.

Essentially, the idea was that the deaths of prominent people come in threes. The logical extension of that, I suppose, would be that the deaths of prominent people in the same business come in threes.

If that is true — and, in my newsroom experience, it usually was — the motion picture industry exceeded its quota this week.

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It started last Sunday when Gloria Stuart, the actress who played the elderly version of Kate Winslet's character in "Titanic," died at the age of 100.

Stuart had quite a career long before she made "Titanic," but she earned her only Academy Award nomination for playing the 101–year–old "Rose." The film won 11 Oscars, but Stuart lost to Kim Basinger.

I suppose it is inevitable that, when you are Stuart's age and you are nominated for an Oscar for a film you made when you were in your 80s, that is what you would be remembered for. There wouldn't be many people left who would remember the early years of your career.

And that is a shame because she really was an attractive young woman, svelte and sultry. Even decades later, when Stuart was in her 80s and her skin was wrinkled with age, you could still see some of that young beauty in her eyes and her face.

"Wasn't I a dish?" she asked her granddaughter in the film. It wasn't just a line in a movie. She was a dish in her youth.

Then, two days later, Arthur Penn, the man who directed "Bonnie & Clyde," passed away at the age of 88.

It is, primarily, for "Bonnie & Clyde," I suppose, that Penn will be remembered, and I guess that is fitting. It was a movie that really changed the motion picture landscape in its presentation of both sexuality and violence.

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But as much as I admire what Penn accomplished with "Bonnie & Clyde," my favorite of his films had to be "Little Big Man."

It would be a mistake to think that everything Penn touched in his life turned to gold. He enjoyed great success with some groundbreaking films, but he had his share of misses as well.

"Penn’s later movies seemed to confuse people," wrote Bruce Eder for the AllMovie Blog, "[a]nd his last movies ... were more noted by critics than the public."

Well, as Chief Dan George's character said in "Little Big Man," "Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't."

If you want to see some of the magic of which Penn was capable, Turner Classic Movies will be showing "Bonnie & Clyde" at 7 (Central) tonight.

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Then, the following day, actor Tony Curtis died at the age of 85.

He is being remembered, as he should, for his performances in Billy Wilder's classic comedy "Some Like It Hot" and Stanley Kramer's drama "The Defiant Ones."

But I really think more of Jack Lemmon when I think of "Some Like It Hot," and I tend to think of Sidney Poitier when I think of "The Defiant Ones." That doesn't mean I don't recognize the contributions Curtis made to both films. He just isn't the person I associate with either one.

The film I do associate with him is "The Boston Strangler," which was based on the true story of the murders of several women in the Boston area.

It wasn't the best film he ever made. It probably wasn't his best performance. But it was a departure from the norm for him. And I liked that.

Curtis readily acknowledged that — in his early years, at least — he got by on his looks. "But behind the pretty–boy looks was a dramatically potent combination of naked ambition and deep vulnerability," wrote Dave Kehr of the New York Times.

In "The Boston Strangler," I think he used that vulnerability to tap into the character of Albert DeSalvo. The film acted on the assumption that DeSalvo was guilty, but his confession has been vigorously disputed, and there were times in the movie when I felt Curtis' portrayal reflected the ambiguity that surrounds DeSalvo long after his death just as it surrounded him in life.

Some would argue that was symptomatic of DeSalvo's alleged multiple personality disorder, but he was never diagnosed with that illness to my knowledge.

Well, anyway, that's three.

But there was a fourth this week. The same day that Curtis died, an actor named Joe Mantell died at the age of 94.

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Mantell's was not a household name, even though he had a lengthy career as a supporting actor in the movies and on television.

But, as Bruce Weber wrote for the New York Times, he had the distinction of delivering two of the most memorable lines ever uttered by a movie sidekick.

In the mid–1950s classic "Marty," as Ernest Borgnine's best friend Angie, there was a running dialogue between the two, Weber observed.

"Angie began almost every conversation with the same question — 'What do you feel like doin' tonight?' — and always got the same answer: 'I don't know, Ange. What do you feel like doin'?' "

The second line was delivered at the end of "Chinatown," when Jack Nicholson's character is recoiling from the story's unsatisfying conclusion. Mantell, in a small role as a private investigator, encourages Nicholson to go home and try to put the matter behind him.

"Forget it, Jake," Mantell's character said. "It's Chinatown."

I guess that's a fitting eulogy for this week in the motion picture industry.

None of the four people who died in the last seven days was younger than 85 so their deaths can't be said to have been tragic in the way the loss of a young person is believed to be tragic. All four lived longer than most of us probably will.

All four probably earned more money than most of us will, and their names, even Mantell's, will be remembered after most of us are gone. They were not denied the fame and fortune that most of us are denied.

And, yet, something of value seems to have been lost to us — inexplicably, perhaps.

Forget it, Mantell might say. It's life.

Taking Aim at History

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"There is an endless supply of White Men, but there has always been a limited number of Human Beings."

Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George)

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Forty years ago, a film hit the theaters that was, in many ways, a departure from movies to which American audiences were accustomed.

In "Little Big Man," a 139–minute comedy/drama, 121–year–old Jack Crabb (played by Dustin Hoffman) tells his life's story, in which he was raised as an Indian and resisted numerous attempts to re–assimilate into the white world — and, in so doing, tells the story of the American West.

But it's not a literal history, although it does speak of actual events, like Custer's Last Stand and the killing of Wild Bill Hickok. It is a revisionist history that is not as racist in its handling of native Americans as were the actual soldiers of the 19th century. But it is typical, in many ways, of films of that period, which often expressed in subtle, symbolic ways opposition to American military policy, particularly in Vietnam.

Vietnam, of course, was never mentioned in "Little Big Man," but the film's racial portrayals represented a stark reversal from the past — and, in so doing, made statements about America's foreign policy and its treatment of non–Caucasians. The Indians, for example, were given a much more favorable treatment than was common in previous films — while the soldiers (and other whites) were treated as antiheroes.

The film told a tale that contradicted the concept of Manifest Destiny, the doctrine that permitted Americans to justify expansion into the West. Director Arthur Penn said that the depiction of the slaughter of native Americans was intended to evoke comparisons to the Holocaust.

That is not to say, however, that "Little Big Man" fails to teach viewers any little–known facts from North American history. The accuracy of the depictions of Custer's Last Stand and Wild Bill Hickok's killing may be disputable, but the movie, in its own way, introduces modern audiences to the "contrary," which was the name given to those Indians who chose behavior that was intentionally opposite the behavior of others in their tribes.

A contrary, for example, might choose to speak in a way that expressed the opposite of what he meant, or he might ride his horse backwards. One of the characters in "Little Big Man" lived as a contrary for awhile.

In many ways, the movie was like "Dances With Wolves," the Academy Award–winning film that came along a generation later — although, in my opinion, "Little Big Man" was a much better film.

And you can see it this Thursday on Turner Classic Movies at 8:30 p.m. (Central).