El Indio

Mexico's movie industry, buoyed up by its success in Latin America, was all set to invade the big U.S. market. John Steinbeck's La Perla (The Pearl), in English and Spanish versions, was shot and cut. RKO would soon distribute it throughout the hemisphere.

Spectacularly filmed in the brilliant light of Mexico's West Coast, La Perla is the simple story of a fisherman who finds a tremendous pearl, is beset by sharpers and thieves who would do him out of it, and, discovering that the pearl brings him no happiness, hurls it into the ocean. These doings involve a heady quota of drinking, amorous women, killings, gun-toting chases over desert and mountains. That the action is reasonably accurate as well as artistic is attributable to tall, broad-shouldered Director Emilio ("El Indio"--The Indian) Fernandez, who knows what he is shooting off his cameras about: he has been over much of that country himself.

Even by the rough & tumble standards of Mexican revolution, El Indio's life story is amazing. When his father left to join one of the revolutionary armies, Emilio, at nine, became head of the family. Practically at once he shot and killed a man for molesting his mother. Hustled into a reform school, he escaped and joined the revolution himself. He fought under General Carranza against Pancho Villa, was captured, sentenced to die at dawn and escaped from a drunken guard. Later he fought with Obregon against Carranza, then against Obregon for General de la Huerta. Jailed again, he blew up his cell with smuggled dynamite, appropriated a horse and galloped north to the border.

Lifesaver. In San Antonio he worked by day and studied English at night school. He picked cotton, herded sheep, stuck pigs. The pig smell was a drawback at Saturday night dances, so Indio went to work in a foundry.

One day the sharp-eyed Emilio saved a girl from drowning off a Chicago beach. She turned out to be an Earl Carroll dancer. Indio was picked up by the Edgewater Beach theatrical crowd, and his proficiency at Latin dances attracted the attention of Rudolph Valentino, who became his friend. After Valentino's death, Indio rode the funeral train to Los Angeles, landed there broke and jobless.

In Hollywood, Indio worked as an extra, later got "heavy" parts in westerns. But a woman was his undoing. A Los Angeles husband believed that the romantic Mexican was making a fool of him and, according to Indio had him deported because he was in the U.S. illegally.

Crass Coincidence. Back in his homeland, Indio shot up rapidly in Mexican movies, was soon a leading actor. From a friendly, peripatetic U.S. script writer, with whom he became buddies, Indio learned story technique. In time he became the country's leading director, turned out the enormously successful films that Dolores del Rio made in Mexico after leaving Hollywood. For three years, Indio and Dolores were always seen together. Now they are only socially polite.

For some months now, Indio has had a new, a dream girl. In her honor, he even had the name of the street he has built on changed to "La Calzada de la Duke Olivia" (The Street of the Sweet Olivia). That he had never seen Olivia only heightened the poignancy of the romantic situation. But in August his old U.S. script-writing buddy, Marcus Goodrich, married Emilio's dream girl, whose name is Olivia de Havilland.

This week Director Fernandez expected to fly to Hollywood (if the U.S. would forgive & forget his deportation record) to talk over plans for another U.S.-Mexican collaboration--this time with Director John Ford. He also wants to see Mrs. Goodrich about a part in a new Fernandez film. Said Indio: "If I see Goodrich I will say, 'This is nothing but a business proposition--my mind is clean.' "

Replied Marcus Goodrich: "If that son of a gun comes up here, I'll pull an old Latin custom on him--bolt the windows and lock in the women. That's what he did to me in Mexico."

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