Jim Varney’s Ernest Goes to Camp has been locked away in the Disney vault alongside Song of the South:
If an out-of-touch portrayal of Native Americans was the only mark against Ernest Goes to Camp, it would be streaming today; after all, Ernest Goes to Africa, is on AppleTV. The problem isn’t how the film depicts Native Americans, it’s who is playing Chief St. Cloud that’s the problem. Iron Eyes Cody, a veteran of Hollywood Westerns going back to the 1940s, plays camp owner Chief St. Cloud, and the controversy over him has doomed the film to obscurity.
Ernest Goes to Camp was far from the first film to cast Iron Eyes Cody as a Native American, and chances are, you know him from the famous “Crying Indian” commercial about littering. A close friend of Walt Disney, Iron Eyes Cody was Hollywood’s go-to for Native American roles, but in 1996, it was revealed that his real name was Espera Oscar de Coti, and he was Italian. This was after he spent decades living as a Native American, wearing “traditional” outfits in his daily life, and fooling everyone, including Disney. Espera denied this claim until he passed away in 1999, despite his family producing a baptismal certificate with his real name.
For some reason, I want to congratulate Iron Eyes Cody for pulling off his impersonation. He seems like a good guy. Unlike Buffy Sainte Marie, that other Italian who played Indian, whose unmasking gave me tremendous satisfaction.
Funny reaction. New Flash: Hollywood personality caught portraying another individual. I thought that was the business model for the whole industry.
Please don’t tell me Sean Connery wasn’t a retired Commander in the Royal Navy and that he wasn’t licensed to kill.
I can take only so much.
A good test for “peak woke” claims would be whether any media withdrawn from circulation, sale, or publication during the purportedly “that’s all in the past now” bad times is restored to its former status. Will Disney soon put Song of the South on Disney+? Will anyone stream PCU? Will the Dr Seuss estate soon reauthorize publication of “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and the others? I’m not holding my breath. If peak woke just means much less new purging and cancelation but, ratchet- like, holding the line on everything taken up to now, then it’s like a tidal wave that never goes out. I mean, sure, could be worse, it’s nice the river isn’t rising so fast anymore, but everything that got flooded stays flooded.
Firewire 7 says:
(Flash forward) Meet the black Knights of the Round Table.
“Espera denied this claim until he passed away in 1999, despite his family producing a baptismal certificate with his real name.”
What a stud. Notwithstanding his Italian origin, he went out like a true American.