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
The Song of Hiawatha performance in 1894. Dvořák's student Rubin Goldmark followed with a "Hiawatha Overture" in 1896 and in 1901 there were performances of Hugo Kaun's symphonic poems "Minnehaha" and "Hiawatha". There were also additional settings of Longfellow's words. Arthur Foote's "The Farewell of Hiawatha" (Op.11, 1886) was dedicated to the Apollo Club of Boston, the male voice group that gave its first performance. In 1897 Frederick Russell Burton (1861 — 1909) completed his dramatic cantata "Hiawatha". At the same time he wrote "Hiawatha's Death Song", subtitled 'Song of the Ojibways', which set native words followed by an English translation by another writer.