April 3, 1904 The Crying Indian

In the motion picture business, the term “silent film” is a retronym, a description coined after the fact to distinguish the genre from “talkies”. The Jazz Singer produced in 1927 was the first feature length picture featuring synchronous recorded music and lip-synchronized singing and speech. Within a decade, widespread production of silent films, had ceased. The era of the modern motion picture, was born.

For Iron Eyes Cody, a career spent in motion pictures reads like a history of the industry itself. This self-described son of a Cherokee father and Cree mother and born with the name “Little Eagle” began a long acting career, in the early 1930s.

To read the man’s Wikipedia page is to learn “He appeared in more than 200 films, including The Big Trail (1930), with John Wayne; The Scarlet Letter (1934), with…