Keep America Beautiful: The Crying Indian (1971) User Reviews

The Most Powerful Advertisement Ever Made

[DKosty123 · 10/10 · 22 November 2019]

Known as the "Crying Indian" this has to be the most effective advertisement ever made. Iron Eyes Cody, an Italian born actor who played an Indian most of his acting career is the only star here. This ad released on Earth Day in 1971 (the first Earth Day) became the first marching order for the environmental movement. The music to start this is a great drum instrumental

The ad starts with Cody paddling a canoe past a bunch of factories on a stream polluting the air and dumping chemicals into a stream. There is also images of trash floating in the stream.Then he paddles to shore. Once he gets out of his canoe, the shore is littered with a lot of trash. Then someone comes along and dumps more of their trash at Cody's feet.

William Conrad's (Cannon) voice then comes on with this great narration- "Some people have a deep residing respect for the natural beauty that was once this country, and some people don't (car going by dumping more trash). People start pollution, people can stop it." Then you see the tear on Codys face.

All of this in less than 60 seconds. The people who put this together made a great moment in the history of Environmentalism, and you can find it on you tube and judge for yourself.

A tear is worth a thousand words

[dtucker86 · 10/10 · 12 September 2023]

This was actually the first commercial I really remember watching as a child and I remember it well because William Conrad's deep voice really scared me! It was this special voice that made Conrad a legend in radio where he appeared on over seven thousand shows, in fact he was the original Matt Dillon when Gunsmoke began on the radio. In addition, Conrad also narrated The Fugitive and Rocky And Bullwinkle cartoon show (he also starred on Cannon and Jake And The Fat Man). Pollution is an issue that affects all of us and it is still a problem today. Iron Eye's Cody's tear when that garbage is thrown at his feet is worth a thousand words.