Eskimo Star: From the Tundra to Tinseltown: The Ray Mala Story
The blazing marquee of the plush Astor Theater in New York City billed the 1933 premier of "Eskimo" as "THE BIGGEST PICTURE EVER MADE," propelling a 27-year-old Inupiat Eskimo from Candle, Alaska, to overnight stardom. The handsome actor was not only the first Alaskan to become a Hollywood movie star but also the first non-white actor to play in a leading role.
This is the story of Ray Wise Mala, the talented and enterprising son of an itinerant Russian trader and an Eskimo mother. Mala became part of the white man's world but for most of his life struggled to find a place in it, discriminated against because of his mixed race and his father's Jewish faith. At age 16, Mala got his break in Alaska in 1921 when hired to help film "Primitive Love" in which he was given a role. Mala appeared in more than 25 films over the next three decades, playing Hawaiians, South Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and other "exotics."
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"Morgan is writing the only non-Palin histories of Alaska that regular people might actually read, so good on her."
--Alaska Ear, Anchorage Daily News
"Mala's story is a saga of remarkable determination and survival, a story that Morgan dedicates 'for those who, despite hard times, have the courage to dream that life might be fair.'"
--Margaret Bauman, First Alaskans
"Lael Morgan brings to life the grit, pluck, and drive that enabled Ray Mala to become the most famous indigenous actor and cameraman in Hollywood. Despite poverty and racism, Mala succeeded in an profession far from home."
--William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, author of Fifty Miles from Tomorrow
"He had recently run cameras for Les Miserables and was being considered for a role in The Ten Commandments among other parts. Television, in its infancy, needed adroit cinematographers and photogenic actors who did not look their age. In Mala's case, the cliché is fact: He really died too soon."
--Mike Dunham, Anchorage Daily News
