The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America

by Larry McMurtry

Overview

From the most prolific author to write on all things Western, Larry McCurtry follows the rise of international celebrity "Buffalo" Bill Cody, tracker, part-time Indian scout and showman, and his most famous and celebrated star, Annie Oakley, the gifted woman sharpshooter, and how they became the first of America's great superstars.

From the early 1800s to the end of his life in 1917, Buffalo Bill Cody was as famous as anyone could be. Annie Oakley was his most celebrated protégée, the 'slip of a girl' from Ohio who could (and did) outshoot anybody to become the most celebrated star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

In this sweeping dual biography, Larry McMurtry explores the lives, the legends and above all the truth about two larger-than-life American figures. With his Wild West show, Buffalo Bill helped invent the image of the West that still exists today—cowboys and Indians, rodeo, rough rides, sheriffs and outlaws, trick shooting, Stetsons, and buckskin. The short, slight Annie Oakley—born Phoebe Ann Moses—spent sixteen years with Buffalo Bill's Wild West, where she entertained Queen Victoria, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, and Kaiser Wilhelm II, among others. Beloved by all who knew her, including Hunkpapa leader, Sitting Bull, Oakley became a legend in her own right and after her death, achieved a new lease of fame in Irving Berlin's musical Annie, Get Your Gun.

To each other, they were always 'Missie' and 'Colonel'. To the rest of the world, they were cultural icons, setting the path for all that followed. Larry McMurtry—a writer who understands the West better than any other—recreates their astonishing careers and curious friendship in a fascinating history that reads like the very best of his fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743271721
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	06/05/2006
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	706,705
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Larry McMurtry (1936–2021) was the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, three memoirs, two collections of essays, and more than thirty screenplays. He lived in Archer City, Texas.

Hometown:

Archer City, Texas

Date of Birth:

June 3, 1936

Place of Birth:

Wichita Falls, Texas

Education:

B.A., North Texas State University, 1958; M.A., Rice University, 1960. Also studied at Stanford University.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Kings and potentates, and their queens and lovers, someday die and have to be entombed, interred, or consumed on splendid pyres.

So too with performers — even the greatest among them, the true superstars. Elvis died, and Garbo, and Marilyn Monroe, and Frank Sinatra. Elvis at least left us Graceland, his Taj on Old Man River; of the others we have merely records and movies, recorded performances that allow us at least distant glimpses of their gaiety, their beauty, their gifts. Show business imposes its own strict temporality: no matter how many CDs or DVDs we own, it would still have been better to have been there, to have seen the living performers in the richness of their being and to have participated, however briefly, in the glory of their performance.

When I was eight years old, I was sitting in a hot pickup near Silverton, Texas, bored stiff, waiting for my father and two of my uncles, Charlie and Roy McMurtry, to conclude a cattle deal. I was reading a book called Last of the Great Scouts, by Helen Cody Wetmore, Buffalo Bill Cody's sister. At the time I was more interested in the Lone Ranger than in Buffalo Bill Cody, but when my father and my uncles finally returned to the pickup, my Uncle Roy noticed the book and reminded Uncle Charlie that they had once seen Cody. This had occurred in Oklahoma, near the end of Cody's life, when he had briefly merged his Wild West with the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch show. Both agreed that Cody, an old man at this time, hadn't actually done much; mainly he just rode around the arena on his white horse, Isham, waving to the crowd.

Still, there was Buffalo Bill Cody, one of themost famous men in the world, and they had seen him with their own eyes.

Sixty years have passed since that hot afternoon in Silverton. I mainly remember the heat in the pickup — but it was true that two of my uncles, not men to veer much from the strict path of commerce, did perk up a bit when they remembered that they had actually seen Buffalo Bill Cody ride his white horse around an arena in Oklahoma. And like millions of others, they had made a trip precisely for that purpose, such was Cody's fame.

Copyright © 2005 by Larry McMurtry

Table of Contents

Superstardom

Book One

The Tropes

Book Two

The Troupes

Annie

Grandmother England

Western Heroes, Heroines, and Villains

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"McMurtry has done his research well and presents a history that is well written, entertaining, and informative. The subtle humor and many ironies in the text are superbly read by Michael Prichard. He is understated without being flat."—-AudioFile

Editorial Reviews

"A compelling look at two phenoms of the late 19th century, by Mr. Wild West himself. McMurtry knows his territory.... The author of the Pulitzer-winning Lonesome Dove is ever fascinating and knowledgeable.... All in all, earnestly winning, old-fashioned storytelling."
— Kirkus Reviews

"The book's aim, to separate fact from folklore, is beautifully accomplished....This book's a delight."
— Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

The book is loaded with fun facts (Queen Victoria gushed over good-looking Sioux Indians), but the whimsical tone suggests that McMurtry chose to retell these familiar stories because he enjoys them so much. And if his thesis — that Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley were Madonna's predecessors — gets lost amid the Indian wars and European show tours, that's not a bad thing.
— The New York Times

Suzy Hansen

If Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley were, as McMurtry contends in this odd but interesting book, "the first American superstars," then it is primarily because "their images were recognized the world over" because of the posters that depicted their exploits in melodramatic fashion and the photographs that made them come alive to people who never had the opportunity to see them in person.
— The Washington Post

Jonathan Yardley

As is McMurtry's wont in works of nonfiction (e.g., Crazy Horse), this dual bio reads more like an extended elegy than biography. Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley, the demigods of western mythology, hold particular personal appeal for McMurtry. In a diner in his hometown of Archer City, Tex., McMurtry writes, "[T]here is a Cody poster that I sometimes study if I happen to land in the right booth," and as a child he heard his uncles recollect having seen Cody perform. This personal attachment doesn't obscure the quality of McMurtry's observations, and the book's aim, to separate fact from folklore, is beautifully accomplished. The Wild West show-and all of its mytho-historical components, such as riding the Pony Express, hunting bison, killing Tall Bull, scalping Yellow Hair-both distorted and magnified western heritage to a level of fantasy that captivates readers, including McMurtry, to this day. He smartly analyzes Cody's genius for PR, evidenced in such tactics as continually announcing that his next tour would be his last and seeing that cowboys' informal roping competitions could be turned into money-making rodeo shows. It's jarring when McMurtry tries to explicate Cody and Oakley's unprecedented fame by comparing them to today's pop stars, as in analogizing Annie Oakley's prima donna stage behavior to that of Martha Stewart and Courtney Love. Regardless, this book's a delight. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. Agent, Andrew Wylie. (June 7) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

A slapdash, repetitious but nonetheless compelling look at two phenoms of the late-19th-century, by Mr. Wild West himself. McMurtry (Loop Group, 2004, etc.) knows his territory, and though he takes some time here working up a thesis separating Buffalo Bill Cody's and Annie Oakley's legends from the facts, the author of the Pulitzer-winning Lonesome Dove is ever fascinating and knowledgeable. He does not purport to give a biography of Cody, who grew up in "bleeding" Kansas and worked briefly as a Pony Express guide, Army scout and buffalo hunter before embarking on a 30-year show-biz career that ended with his death in 1917. But the facts of Cody's romantic story keep pulling him in, especially the "tropes," as McMurtry calls the legendary set pieces by which Cody defined himself. These included his first killing of an Indian when he was 11 and his scalping of Yellow Hair in 1876. Cody's scouting for the Army allows McMurtry free reign on the subtleties of the Indian Wars, a subject he evidently relishes. Having distinguished the facts of Cody's glamorous life (fodder for something like 1,700 dime novels), McMurtry moves into his work as a showman. By 1882, Cody had organized some of the first rodeos and hired Indians to help stage such dramatic mock-historical scenes as the attack on the Deadwood stage and battles between settlers and Indians. One of his most successful acts was sharpshooter Annie Oakley, a poor girl from Ohio who made an honorable living by her gun and was the first woman to be admitted to British shooting clubs. McMurtry explores Oakley's own "creation myth," involving the shooting of a squirrel on a fence with her father's too-big rifle when she was a girl: "She alwaysclaimed that it was one of the better shots she ever made." No spectacular or sexy revelations here, just a curious excursus into Cody's successful performance for "Grandmother England" during the troupe's 1887 tour for Victoria's Jubilee. All in all, earnestly winning, old-fashioned storytelling.

Kirkus Reviews

McMurtry, Western author, historian, and Texan, presents the stories of the Buffalo Bill, William F. Cody, and his most famous star, Annie Oakley. Seemingly polar opposites in temperament, they were both world-famous in their day and became icons of the Wild West, then and now. McMurtry has done his research well and presents a history that is well written, entertaining, and informative. The subtle humor and many ironies in the text are superbly read by Michael Prichard. He is understated without being flat, and his tempo has a slight staccato quality that goes well with this story. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

FEB/MAR 06 - AudioFile