and the oscar goes to...
White Shadows in the South Seas isn't the easiest of Rose Wilder Lane's books to read. Ghost-written by Lane for Frederick O'Brien, White Shadows was published by The Century Company in 1919. It records "one happy year spent among the simple, friendly cannibals of Atuona valley, on the island of Hiva-oa in the Marquesas." When the "friendly" natives wanted to go on the warpath, they grew their hair long on one side, and when it was long enough, the man-eating began. It's nice to finally know what Kate Gosselin's former hairstyle was all about.

Rose Wilder Lane's relationship with Frederick O'Brien was a rocky one. In 1924, she sued him in New York supreme court, charging that O'Brien owed her $14,300 for collaboration on the book.

In 1928, MGM released a movie very loosely based on White Shadows in the South Seas. In the movie, alcoholic Dr. Matthew Lloyd (played by Monte Blue) sails to an island untouched by "white shadows," where he falls in love with a native girl, Fayaway (Raquel Torres). When white men invade the island with their seductive trinkets, the doctor is killed trying to stop the invasion, and his lover mourns at graveside.

Filmed in Tahiti, White Shadows in the South Seas was originally conceived as a documentary, but a change in directors turned the prodution into a drama. As MGM's first sound picture, the mostly silent 88-minute movie had awkward talkie sequences that were added later in the studio. In 1929, Clyde De Vinna won the Oscar in cinematography for his work on White Shadows in the South Seas.

You can see the opening credits for the movie HERE. The entire movie is available on DVD. An interesting bit of trivia is that this movie was the first one in which the audience actually heard the MGM lion roaring!
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:04 PM