Anthony Earl Numkena
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anthony Earl Numkena (born on August 20, 1942 in Culver City, California) is a Native American (Hopi/Karok) film and television actor and is the first of five children to Anthony (Hopi) and Margaret (Karok). In 1952, Anthony became the first Native American child film actor in motion picture history to have played a major role in a major film production.
Anthony began his career in the entertainment industry at the age of 7 working as an extra in the Tim McCoy Show working with Colonel Tim McCoy and Iron Eyes Cody on KTLA channel 5 Los Angeles. He worked with his brother, Ronald, who was already playing a major role as Little Sitting Bull on the show.
As a condition of being extras for the show, Anthony and Ronald acquired working permits from the City of Los Angeles. Because of those permits, Anthony and Ronald were contacted by various movie studios to work as extras throughout the Greater Los Angeles area. At the time, a significant number of Native Americans worked as extras in motion pictures.
Anthony continued to work as an extra until at the age of 9 he landed his major role in the 20th Century Fox production of Pony Soldier which starred Tyrone Power and Cameron Mitchell. Anthony played the role of Comes Running, a young Native American boy adopted by a Canadian Mountie.
Anthony continued to appear in television shows and movies, such as Strange Lady in Town, Escape to Burma, Alaska Seas, Red Garders, Westward Ho the Wagons and episodes of Wagon Train, Broken Arrow, The Loretta Young Show, Readers Digest, Fireside Theater, Lone Wolf, The Sheriff of Cochise and the Mickey Mouse Club. He was a main character, in the role of Keena, in the Brave Eagle television series 1955/1956 appearing in all 26 episodes. His last acting role was in the Wagon Train episode “A Man Called Horse” with Ralph Meeker in 1958.
Throughout his movie/television career and until 1962, Mr. Numkena lived in Redondo Beach, California.
For a number of years on the web including Wikipedia, references to the name Anthony Earl Numkena led to Earl Holliman. According to some articles, the name Anthony Earl Numkena was alias or an original name to Earl Holliman.
In reality, Numkena and Holliman are separate individuals. Holliman did not carry the Numkena name. Coincidently, Anthony Earl Numkena and Earl Holliman did appear in the same movie, Destination Gobi (1954).
Mr. Holliman has been aware of the confusion for more than 20 years when he learned that Leslie Halliwell’s book “Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion” put the two names together. Subsequently, it was picked up by television/movie guides and the Internet. It took Mr. Holliman six years to have the Filmgoer’s Companion corrected. Regardless, the statement that Numkena and Holliman were the same person stuck for a number of years and still persists.
In April 2008, Numkena and Holliman spoke over the phone to clear this issue up.
Present Day
Anthony now resides in Arizona. He is married to Nora. He is retired from Indian Health Service but continues to work in the field of medical imaging.
