Her Indian Hero (1912) User Reviews

Hollywood Movies Began Right Here

[springfieldrental · 5/10 · 21 March 2021]

The Centaur Company, situated in Bayonne, NJ., was the first independent movie business created in 1909 by a successful bicycle shop/pool parlor owner and his brother. The company owned an improvised movie camera (to go around the Edison patents), which they used to film outdoors while its Bayonne, N.J. shop developed and edited the movies.

Because Centaur filmed all its movies outside and didn't operate an interior studio, the owners became frustrated by a lack of consistent sunshine required for exterior shooting. Looking towards California, the company discovered the quaint small village of Hollywood, CA., where Biograph Studio's D. W. Griffith had visited and filmed several movies the previous year. Centaur found a tavern in Hollywood that would be perfect to convert into a movie studio. The Blondeau Tavern became the first permanent motion picture studio in Hollywood. Centaur changed its name to Nestor Motion Picture Company after it bought the tavern, on today's corner of Sunset Blvd. and Gower St. Soon after Nestor built the first movie stage in Hollywood behind the converted building.

The Hollywood studio would film all the company's movies in and around the area and ship the unedited shot celluloid to its Bayonne, NJ, facility to be processed into a final picture and then distributed to theaters. Other movie studios would soon follow Nestor Company's lead and establish their film companies in the Hollywood neighborhood. The following year Nestor Company would merge with the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, soon to be known as Universal Pictures. "Her Indian Hero" was the first movie to be filmed and produced by he Nestor Company, making it a first in Hollywood's illustrious cinematic history. Jack Conway, who co-directed and is a co-star in the movie, would go on to have quite a productive career behind the lens, especially for MGM. The studio loved his direction since he was always under budget and his films always produced a tidy profit. He directed such films as "A Tale of Two Cities (1935)," "Libeled Lady (1936)," and "Boomtown (1940)" with Clark Gable.

Her Indian Hero review

[JoeytheBrit · 6/10 · 2 July 2020]

This Nestor short has a place in movie history as the first to be produced at a Hollywood studio. There's little else that stands out about this tale of a flirtation between a white woman (Dorothy Davenport) and a Red Indian (George Gebhardt) that appears to go badly awry, especially as a last-minute twist takes much of the sting out of what has gone before. It does at least contain a progressive message about the stupidity of our pre-conceived notions of other races.

Dorothy Davenport is Much Taken With Wooden Indians

[boblipton · 5/10 · 10 November 2018]

Jack Conway takes his fiancee, Dorothy Davenport, to see a tribe of Indians. She is taken by George Gebhardt in his native regalia. She invites him to visit her if he's ever in her neighborhood. One day, she gets a note saying he is about to call.

It's one of the earliest Christie movies shot in California after they set up shop there; some sources claim it is the first. Over all, I found it a bit stiff and slow.

Jack Conway not only starred in this short film. It was his first credit as a director, co-directing with Al Christie and Milton Fahrey. He would go on to a long career behind the camera, eventually settling in at Metro-Goldwyn Mayer in 1925, where he would become a reliable handler of a wide variety of subjects, from adventure to comedy. He retired in 1948 and died four years later.

It was to have a savage struggle, primitive man fashion

[deickemeyer · 29 October 2016]

Miss Dorothy Davenport plays, in this picture, a society girl who visits an Indian village with friends, and flirts with a young chief, played by Mr. Gebhart. This chief's head is turned and he falls in love. She foolishly encourages him. He follows her to the city and calls, in war feathers, he a Carlisle Indian. This was audacious in the producer; it was, we at first thought, commendably subtle, but as it turned out, the picture needed it; it was to have a savage struggle (primitive man fashion, a present day fad) between the Indian and the girl's fiancé, played by Jack Conway. The picture is interesting, it is well acted, doesn't drag and presents the sharpest kind of contrasts. The struggle,and what followed, doesn't convince. The photographs are good. The film is likely to be popular. - The Moving Picture World, April 27, 1912

A Swiss-born Indian!

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 14 December 2021]

According to IMDB, "Her Indian Hero" is thought to be the first movie made in Hollywood. I have no idea if it's true but at the very least it's one of the first.

The story is about an American Indian named Silver Water who is quite taken by a white lady, Veda. The feeling is mutual but tragedy strikes....and then, well, everything is just fine. Confusing? See the film...you'll see what I mean.

The actor playing the American Indian was born in Switzerland and back in the day, real American Indians rarely played leads in films. Despite this, it's a reasonably well made film and uses a plot device that would soon be seen as a cliche...but since it was made in 1912, it's not a cliche at all but a reasonably good plot device. Worth seeing...particularly by film historians.