Hiawatha (1952 film) Hiawatha (1952 film) Hiawatha is a 1952 American film based on the 1855 epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, centering on Native Americans in pre-Columbian times. Directed by Kurt Neumann, with stars Vincent Edwards and Yvette Dugay, it became the final feature produced by the low-budget Monogram Pictures, a mainstay of Hollywood's Poverty Row. Hiawatha, a member of the Ojibway tribe, is on a peace mission to the Dakotah tribe. He meets and falls in love with Minnehaha. The romance is obstructed by a threatened war between the two tribes, instigated by a hot-headed Ojibway tribe
Hiawatha (1913 film) cast smeared with bronze paint" was a target for ridicule. Laemmle's story ended with Hiawatha and Minnehaha happily embracing, but Moore's "Hiawatha" follows Longfellow's poem in which Minnehaha dies and Hiawatha welcomes the arrival of the missionary, who converts the Indians to the Christian faith. In 1910, Laemmle followed up his 1909 version of "Hiawatha" with the sequel, "The Death of Minnehaha". "Hiawatha" opened at New York City's Berkeley theater where it achieved "splendid sales", according to the "Moving Picture News". Moore distributed "Hiawatha" selling the film by states rights to 12 states. A review in "Moving Picture World" praised