Iron Eyes Cody

[W. Gray]

Someone mentioned Iron Eyes Cody on a different thread and I thought I would comment because the man impressed me similar to the way Roy Rogers and Gene Autry did.

He was my all time favorite Indian actor and he died in 1999.

He played Indians on the screen and on television (particularly chiefs), starting as an Indian extra when he was age 12.

He was the crying Indian in the 1970s "Keep America Beautiful" television public service ads, which has to be one of best advertisements ever made. The camera follows him wearing an Indian outfit, a feather in his hair, and riding a painted horse toward a pristine countryside area littered with garbage and old tires. He stops to survey the trash and then he turns toward the camera. A big tear is running down his cheek.

It might come as a shock to a lot of people familiar with him that he was not an Indian.

He was born in Louisiana to an Italian couple and his birth name was Espera de Corti. Something that America (and I suppose the Indians) did not find out about until 1996.

The family moved to California around 1916 and he passed himself off as an Indian and became a movie extra. All his life, he portrayed one hundred percent Indian roles, represented himself as an Indian, and crusaded for Indian causes.

He did marry an Indian woman and all of his children are adopted Indians.