Call Her Savage
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Call Her Savage is a 1932 pre-Code drama film directed by John Francis Dillon and starring Clara Bow. The film was Bow's second-to-last film role. It is also one of the first portrayals of homosexuals on screen, including a scene in a gay bar.
Plot
A wild young woman, Nasa Springer (Clara Bow), born and raised in Texas by well-to-do parents, rebels against her father. She is sent to school in Chicago, where her disruptive behavior marks her as a troublemaker. She marries a rich playboy, who then declares the marriage a ploy and abandons her. She is renounced by her father, who tells her he never wishes to see her again. She discovers she is pregnant and bears a child. Reduced to poverty, she moves into a boardinghouse with her infant, and struggles to pay for the baby's basic needs. Unaware that her grandfather in Texas has died and left her a $100,000 fortune, a desperate Nasa dresses up as a prostitute and goes out in the neighborhood hoping to earn some quick cash to purchase medicine for her child. While she is out, a drunken lout at the boardinghouse drops a match and accidentally sets the building on fire. Nasa's infant is killed in the blaze.
Upon learning that her mother is dying, she hurries home to Texas. There she learns that she is a "half-breed", half white and half Indian. The assertion is made that this explains why she had always been "untameable and wild." This knowledge of her lineage would supposedly allow her the possibility for happiness in the arms of a handsome young "half-breed" Indian named Moonglow (Gilbert Roland), a longtime friend who has secretly loved her.
Cast
- Clara Bow as Nasa Springer
- Gilbert Roland as Moonglow
- Thelma Todd as Sunny De Lane
- Monroe Owsley as Lawrence Crosby
- Estelle Taylor as Ruth Springer
- Weldon Heyburn as Ronasa
- Willard Robertson as Pete Springer
- Anthony Jowitt as Jay Randall
- Fred Kohler as Silas Jennings
- Russell Simpson as Old Man in Wagon Train
- Margaret Livingston as Molly
- Carl Stockdale as Mort
- Dorothy Peterson as Silas' Wife
- Marilyn Knowlden as Ruth (as a girl)
- Douglas Haig (uncredited) as Pete (as a boy)
