Hollywood celebrities haunted by ghostbusting
The past comes back to haunt Sacheen Littlefeather and Bill Murray
It’s been a bad entertainment news week for the ghost of a once-revered Native American activist, an ageing 80s-era comedian and of course there’s the continued Greek tragic downfall of ye who shall not be named.
First up is Sacheen Littlefeather, most famous as the Native American rights activist who in 1973 appeared at the Academy Awards to refuse Marlon Brando’s best actor Oscar on his behalf in protest at the treatment of Native Americans by Hollywood and the US.
Shortly before her death early in October, Littlefeather received an apology from the academy for the way its members had treated her at the time — John Wayne was reportedly so upset he had to be restrained from attacking her and Clint Eastwood was less than gentlemanly in his response.
At the time of the apology, Littlefeather said in a statement: “We Indians are very patient people — it’s only been 50 years! We need to keep our sense of humour about this at all times. It’s our method of survival.”
Those words may now be coming back to haunt Littlefeather’s posthumous reputation though as her estranged sisters have told San Francisco Chronicle journalist Jacqueline Keeler, that their sister’s claims of Native American ancestry are false.
They told Keeler their family comes from Mexico and their father was born in Oxnard, California. Her sister Rosalind Cruz said Littlefeather’s claims of Native American heritage are a fraud. “It’s disgusting to the heritage of the tribal people. And it’s just insulting to my parents,” she told Keeler.
According to Keeler, Littlefeather was in fact born Marie Louise Cruz and the journalist was unable to find any evidence of her father Manuel’s Native American ancestry.
The sisters also said Sacheen’s claims that she grew up in poverty and was abused by her parents are untrue. Rather these are false or appropriated memories taken from stories that her father told them of his difficult childhood and abusive alcoholic uncle.
The news has led to outraged calls for the academy to address the issue and perhaps take back its apology, but there are also concerns about Littlefeather’s long recorded history of mental illness, including schizophrenia, which may have affected her decision to spin a story of Native American roots.
That embracing of a culture that might not have been hers was also the result of her interactions with a San Francisco Bay area Native American community in the late 1960s, whose struggle for land rights saw them occupy Alcatraz Island and attracted Littlefeather with its strong sense “of tribal togetherness”. Soon after her involvement in that protest, she was contacted by Marlon Brando and the rest is history — or fake news.
Now it’s up to the academy to decide whether it believes Littlefeather or whether she was just Marie Louise Cruz, battling her own demons and desperately seeking attention.
Attention seeking also landed Saturday Night Live alumnus Bill Murray in increasingly hot water in recent months. Earlier in 2022 the production of comedian and director Aziz Ansari’s forthcoming film Being Mortal was shut down after reports emerged that its star, Murray, had behaved improperly towards a female cast member who reported the incident.
Now the details of that incident have been revealed and, while some may argue that the ‘80s bad boy was just engaging in old-school risqué joking, it’s easy to see how it’s a problem. According to reports Murray “straddled and kissed [an unnamed] much younger cast member” without her consent and after production was shut down, he paid out $100,000 to settle the complaint.
That incident opened the door to a slew of public allegations against Murray, going back decades. During production on their 1990 film Quick Change, actress Geena Davis complained about Murray’s insistence on using a massage machine on her, in spite of numerous protests, and screaming at her in front of a crew of 300 people. While participating in an interview to promote the film on the Arsenio Hall Show, Murray made Davis deeply uncomfortable when he kept stroking her arm and trying to pull down the strap of her dress.
Comedian and actor Seth Green added to Murray’s woes when he told a story about an appearance the two made on Saturday Night Live when Murray was 31 and Green was just nine years old. According to Green, Murray “made a big fuss” about the boy sitting on the arm of a couch and, when ignored, Murray promptly picked Green up by the ankles and dangled him over a dustbin while he screamed and cried. That’s certainly bad behaviour but how much sympathy you have will greatly depend how much you can stand Seth Green.
Whether these stories will lead to a ghostbusting of the grumpy but nice persona Murray has enjoyed for decades remains to be seen. But what’s certain from both his recent troubles and the long-hidden secrets of Littlefeather is that in Hollywood no-one forgets and your past can come back to bite you, even if you’re not around to experience the pain.