Like 85 million other viewers, Rosalind Cruz didn’t expect to see her sister onstage at the 1973 Oscars when Marlon Brando won Best Actor for “The Godfather.”
“Hello, my name is Sacheen Littlefeather. I’m Apache and I’m president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee. I’m representing Marlon Brando this evening and he has asked me to tell you … that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry … “
Rosalind was 15 years old when her sister Marie Louise Cruz, who was 26 at the time, did the most important 75 seconds of her acting career.
It had one problem. “She lied,” says Rosalind, 65, of Lake County, Montana.
Now, weeks after Littlefeather died of breast cancer at 75, Rosalind reveals what really happened and who “Sacheen Littlefeather” was.
Before Marie left for the Oscars, she said to us, “Watch it. “I can’t say more, but watch.” My older sister started her acting career at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, but she was still struggling.
When Marie called herself “Apache,” my grandparents and I were amazed. We stared at each other in awe.
The shocking moment was the first time my oldest sister said she was part of a tribe. She did this on purpose while wearing a buckskin dress she had borrowed from a friend.
My sister Marie, who tried to kill herself at 19, assumed a fake image for nearly 50 years. Her elaborate ruse insults our late parents, Manuel Ybarra Cruz and Geroldine Marie Cruz, both native Californians with no ancestral tribal ties.
Our family has no known Native American heritage, including links to Arizona’s White Mountain Apache and Yaqui tribes, as Marie claimed. Dad’s Hispanic ancestors are from Mexico, while Mom’s are French, German, and Dutch.
My two older sisters, Marie and Trudy, were born and raised in Salinas, where we lived in a two-bedroom home. Not the rickety shack “Sacheen” described in the 1970s. The house was behind our parents’ saddlery in Santa Rita, where we kept Zurc.
In rural California, we grew our own fruit and vegetables. Marie loved figs. We sewed our own clothes, which Trudy and I think inspired Marie’s Native American persona. We used Sasheen Ribbon Company thread and ribbon then. She swapped the second S for a C. That’s all she did to live her dream.
I’m not sure what inspired Marie to choose “Littlefeather,” a surname she adopted after high school to “reflect her natural heritage.” But many of the dramatic stories she told over the years were baloney, like our deaf father giving her that name as she danced around him with a feather in her head or claiming he was a violent alcoholic.
These tales of torment or abuse came years after Dad died of cancer at 44 in 1966. They became increasingly vicious, like when Marie claimed he tried to run her over. But they were lies from a pathological liar.
Mom developed dementia in 1978 and couldn’t defend herself. Died in 2009 While Marie was manipulating everyone with her American Indian act, Trudy and I couldn’t keep up with her lies. But Marie’s uncontested accounts never mention her sisters. We weren’t here.
We lived in the country and had few visitors, so no one shamed our family. Marie appeared in Playboy seven months after the Oscars to embarrass the Cruzes forever. We were conservative and went to Catholic school; we weren’t ready for this.
Marie’s fake Native American heritage was a way for her to break into Hollywood. While living in San Francisco, she spotted “The Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola moving into an old Victorian house in Pacific Heights. Marie made friends with him.
She took advantage of Brando’s growing interest in Native American advocacy by writing him a letter claiming to be an activist. Always an opportunist, Marie convinced the movie star that she was someone else. She realized that Brando had backed the Black Panthers and was now backing American Indians. Yes, she knew.
When I saw my sister in an unfamiliar dress on Hollywood’s biggest stage, I was mortified. Now we’re Indians? Nobody does that. But Marie saw it as a way to advance her career and join the industry.
I first tried to reveal this nasty secret 15 years ago, even contacting “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” I wanted to expose Marie as a mentally unstable person who was deceiving our family again. But who’d listen? She sold tickets like a saint.
On Oct. 3, a day after Marie’s death, a friend texted me to check the news. Trudy and I had lived with her mental illness our whole lives, and I was done. Over the years, Marie’s hurtful slander hurt our family to feed her fraudulent persona. She never mentioned that her two sisters aren’t Native Americans like her.
Marie claimed she was “red-listed” for her Oscars speech on J. Edgar Hoover’s orders. Again, my sister’s narcissism blinded her. Hoover died in May 1972, 11 months before “Sacheen” debuted.
Apparently, Hoover gave orders from the grave. Do you see her logic? She wasn’t challenged by a single person on that.
When I heard last month that the Academy apologized to Marie for blacklisting her after her Oscar stunt, I thought they were duped. And funny? The Academy Museum honored her as Native American, though she’s not. Our family isn’t native. How stupid do those guys look?
Marie kept her plan going until the end, telling the Los Angeles crowd how she took the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage in 1973 with dignity, grace, and humility. In the past, she insisted on “speaking the truth.”
Marie, who had stage 4 breast cancer, accepted the academy’s mea culpa and asked Native Americans to stand. She praised “our people” as survivors and insisted that standing for the truth would keep her voice alive.
At the “Evening of Conversation, Healing, and Celebration,” my sister said, “I am Sacheen Littlefeather.” Why give up a 50-year-old role?
My goal is to restore my parents’ honor and tell the truth. So, I’ll reveal my deceased sister. White Mountain Apache tribal leaders have no record of “Sacheen Littlefeather,” the character Marie created because she didn’t like herself. May she rest in peace, but I hope she realizes how much her lies have hurt my family.
