Larry41OnEbay-2 Review of The Half-Breed

The Half-Breed (1916)

FOUND! RESTORED! Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s early outdoor western The Half-Breed (1916) used to be a mostly lost film.

[7/10 · 4 November 2013]

But now, because of much labor and love by Robert Byrne and his team including the Cinémathèque française, the Library Of Congress and Lobster Films, it is nearly complete. I just saw it this past Saturday, 11/2/2013 at the Packard Campus theater in Culpeper, VA. In what might have been an early movie first, the lead character is sympathetically shown despite having native blood. Living as an outcast, young Lo Dorman (Fairbanks) is welcomed back into society by pretty preacher's daughter Nellie (flirty Jewel Carmen), who cares not a whit about his mixed parentage. SPOILER ALERT: But Dorman's presence in town proves uncomfortable for Sheriff Dunne (Sam DeGrasse) -- who, unbeknownst to anyone himself, is Lo's father. The sheriff does his worst to discredit Lo in the eyes of the townsfolk. Our hero joins with another "outcast," dance-hall girl Teresa (Alma Rubens). Now with the merged sources from three prints (and months of labor reassembling each shot, scene) it has a beginning, middle and end. In an interview with Kevin Brownlow, director Allan Dwan revealed that The Half-Breed almost didn't get made, thanks to the interference of Fairbank's then wife, who didn't want her husband to appear as an "unwashed" half-breed. To circumvent this, Dwan inserted a scene showing a nearly nude Fairbanks taking a "bath" in a river, then thoroughly scrubbing himself and his clothes with sand. "He was a washed Indian, not a dirty Indian," Dwan explained. "I only put the scene in to satisfy Mrs. Fairbanks."