The usual suspects -- star Doug Fairbanks, writers Anita Loos and John Emerson and director Allan Dwan -- try something different from their usual light-hearted romp with social commentary, working from a story by Bret Harte.
Unfortunately, the copy screened by the Museum of Modern Art is in poor shape. Only about twenty-five minutes of the one-hour feature could be screened, and the print showed a lot of damage. The titles, when possessed of any humor, are dour and there isn't much of Doug's usual stuntwork -- he clambers around the redwood forests of northern California for a bit and bends a young conifer double a couple of times to spring from one place to another. We do get a bit of beefcake in an early scene, where he is shown, stripped to the waist, but that's about it.
The rest is an open attack on racism. Doug, the titular half-breed is trapped in a small, nasty town full of racists who dislike him solely because he is an Indian. Of course, Jewel Carmen and Alma Rubens have yens for him, but besides showing jealousy when Doug is not present, do nothing about it. The genially corrupt individuals who inhabit most of Harte's better known works are not present. Instead, they are selfish, nasty and smug
It's difficult to judge the impact of this movie almost a hundred years after it was produced, but over all it looks like an earnest work with some good production values: an attempt to expand Doug's range as a movie star. Judging by the fact that he went back to his usual mode of movie until 1920s' THE MARK OF ZORRO, it almost certainly didn't take. Nor, judging by what remains, should it have.