Navajo 1952
Navajo was one of a group of intelligent “chamber” westerns turned out by Lippert productions in the 1950s. Technically, it’s not a western at all, but what would later be termed a “docudrama.” Shot on location at a Navajo Indian Reservation, the film features nonprofessional Native Americans in the major roles. Francis Kee Teller plays Son of the Hunter, a young Navajo boy who is separated from his family so that he may be given his government-dictated mandatory education. Disdaining the “white” world, Teller runs from his instructors. The two tenderfeet find themselves in a perilous situation, from which the savvy Teller must rescue them. One of the teachers is played by Hall Bartlett, the producer of Navajo (and, parenthetically, the then-husband of actress Rhonda Fleming).
