The Yaqui (1916)

Interesting facts

The Yaqui is a 1916 American silent Black and white Melodrama directed by Lloyd B. Carleton and starring Hobart Bosworth, Gretchen Lederer and Emory Johnson. The film depicts Yaqui Indians entrapped by nefarious elements into enslavement for a wealthy plantation owner. They struggle in captivity, eventually rebelling against their owner's oppression.

Production

According to the book - The Universal Story, Carl Laemmle (c. 1867-1939) produced around 91 feature movies in 1916.

Lloyd B. Carleton (c. 1872–1933) started working for Carl Laemmle in the Fall of 1915. Carleton arrived with impeccable credentials, having directed some 60 films for the likes of Thanhouser, Lubin, Fox, and Selig.

Between March and December 1916, 44-year-old Lloyd Carleton directed 16 movies for Universal, starting with The Yaqui and ending with The Morals of Hilda. Emory Johnson acted in all 16 of these films. Of Carleton's total 1916 output, 11 were feature films, and the rest were two-reel shorts.

Hobart Bosworth became afflicted with tuberculosis (TB) early in his career. After a relapse in 1906, he decided to head to the dry climes of the Southwest. He ended up recovering in Tempe, Arizona. A stage actor with a deteriorating voice would find little work on Broadway. Silent movies provided the perfect venue for the next stage of his acting career. By 1916, Bosworth was a well-known actor in silent films.

Two Yaqui-themed photoplays preceded Universal's "The Yaqui." The first film was an American short, The Yaqui Girl. The film was released on December 31, 1910. The film is directed by James Young Deer and starred Virginia Chester. "The Yaqui Girl" was filmed in New Jersey and Santiago Canyon, California. The movie is about a beautiful young Indian maiden who falls in love with a Mexican cavalier.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.