Deane H. Dickason

Deane H. Dickason (23 June 1898, Granada, Colorado, USA — 12 Nov 1953, Hong Kong, China) was a movie producer, director and actor, known for Castilian Memories: Manila (1934), the hugely controversial Virgins of Bali (1932), In Maori Land (1936) and Down Singapore Way (1946).

Starring Balinese teenage girls Ni Wayan Tagai and Ni Wayan Ubamgo, Virgins of Bali — labeled as a ​“Love Lyrical Adventure on the Island of Bali — has been deemed as ​‘quasi pornographic’ and ​‘an early sexploitation film’. At that same time, Charlie Chaplin filmed bare-breasted girls in Bali. The vogue for ​“exoticized, eroticized” Balinese dances in the 1930s was part of what triggered anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson to spend two years in the island. 

Married to Sarah Crawford Rorer (1907−1986) and then to Mary Monica Walsh (1910−1993), Dickason was an avid traveler. He filmed and narrated ​‘Jungle Bound’: Angkor, Cambodia in 1936, and published a smart guidebook, Wondrous Angkor, the following year.