Laughing Boy (1934)

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I enjoyed this excursion into a different time and place in America's history.It was novel to have Indians as the main players in this dusty Western drama, and the characterizations of Slim Girl (the sultry Lupe Velez), Laughing Boy (Ramon Novarro),and several bit players were unusual.The language here is often quite interesting, as if translated from another tongue, i.e., "With you or without you, my life will be the same." Such cruel words...The climactic scene is bizarre, in that Laughing Boy shows none of the anger one might expect -- or did he? Macho man Hartshone (William B. Davidson) shows his true colors and runs. (I had to rewind several times to discern the detail in this sequence.) Adding to the poignancy of this film for me is knowledge of the real-life fates of the two stars. Look them up on Wikipedia and weep.

I finished watching the film last night. It's REALLY interesting. The original novel by Oliver LaFarge won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929. He was a Harvard anthropologist who made several trips to Arizona to study the Navajos and actually learned their language and was one of the ones who created a system of writing it. The film is very interesting -- taking place in the 1910s, it's about a young girl (Slim Girl) who has left the tribe and become the kept woman of a white rancher in town. She fall is in love with Laughing Boy -- a traditional Navajo cattle herder who marries her. She doesn't fit in with Indian tradition and the "white man" treats her like a prostitute -- she's been raised in White-run Indian schools so she's torn between two culture and demeaned by both. The film definitely has a pre-Hays code sensibility because there's some premarital sex, adultery, alcohol abuse, miscegenation, a kept woman -- the film is more a study of Slim Girl than of Laughing Boy. It's really quite amazing that MGM ever made this film! The unfortunate aspect of it is the acting and casting of Ramon Novarro and Lupe Velez. The two Latin spitfires are just all wrong for the characters although Novarro is very sweet in the role.

The combination of the two dynamic Mexican actors Ramon Novarro and Lupe Velez should have guaranteed a dynamite movie.But someone at MGM, in their wisdom, cast them as Native Americans - a disastrous decision that doomed this film to failure even before it was begun.Both struggle to make their characters even slightly believable, as they try to curb their Mexican passion into some sort of wise aboriginal spirituality. The spitfire in Lupe just can't help but surface, and all Ramon can do is try to maintain some dignity under that terrible wig. His singing is nice but anachronistic, and there is far too much of it.Hard to believe this disaster was directed by Woody Van Dyke, who had made one of Ramon's best silent movies "The Pagan". Novarro was deeply ashamed of this film, and it's no wonder. What is saddest of all about it though is the way it wastes what could have been one of the most exciting star combinations of all time. Just imagine if Novarro and Velez were playing a pair of violently passionate Mexican lovers - what fireworks we would have seen!Shame, MGM, Shame!

LAUGHING BOY loves Slim Girl, but she has lived too long among the white man and cannot fit in with her new husband's traditional Navajo family. What will happen when he discovers she has returned to being a prostitute to make them some extra money?Ramon Novarro & Lupe Velez do the best they can with somewhat embarrassing material. Their performances alone elevate the film above the mundane.Director W. S. Van Dyke, known for his vivid on-location films, tries to interject footage shot in the Southwest to lend authenticity to the plot, but the rear projection backgrounds only detract and annoy the viewer.