Little Big Man (film) - Production

Production

To obtain the hoarse voice of a 121-year-old man, Hoffman sat in his dressing room and screamed at the top of his lungs for an hour. The makeup for the ancient Crabb was created by Dick Smith from foam latex and included revolutionary false eyelids that could blink along with the actor's. Due to editing, and much to Smith's chagrin, no blinks were visible in the finished film. Of the makeup, Hoffman was quoted in Life as saying, "I defy you to put on that makeup and not feel old". The role of Chief Old Lodge Skins was initially offered to Marlon Brando, Paul Scofield and Laurence Olivier, all of whom turned it down. The Little Bighorn battle scenes were filmed on location in Montana near the actual battle site. Some of the town scenes were filmed in Nevada City, Montana -- a town that by 1970 consisted predominantly of historic nineteenth-century buildings brought from elsewhere in Montana.

The old Indian chief dies at the end of the novel but not in the film. In an interview Arthur Penn explained the change: "We thought long and hard about this and in the first draft of the script he does die, but this death would have introduced an element of sadness into the film and we didn't want this. The film would have become dramatic, even melodramatic, instead of being picaresque. I also wanted to show that not only were the Indians going to be destroyed, but they were also condemned to live. On the whole, audiences like their entertainment dramatically compact and homogenous, but I want the opposite. A film should remain free and open, not with everything defined and resolved."