Read The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley Online

Authors: Glenda Riley

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Women, #History, #United States, #19th Century, #test

The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (12 page)

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with the show and with the West. Instead of women watching men perform magic tricks with the assistance of a comely woman or throw knives at objects in a woman's hand or on her head, they could instead admire a woman, Annie Oakley, shoot things out of men's hands and utilize men in other ways as assistants in her act. In addition, Oakley's presence in the Wild West show reassured women viewers that women existed in the West and that they contributed a good deal to western development.

Annie also assured women that, although independent and perhaps employed, they could still show dependence on men. She always worked with male assistants; she even chose male dogs for her act. Of course, she depended primarily on Frank Butler, who supported and encouraged her. Frank frequently related his reaction to the first notice Annie ever received. "We were down in Jersey," he recalled, "and the Butler treasury was not in bond-buying condition." Yet he spent his last few dollars to purchase copies of the newspaper that had "treated her so kindly.'' When Frank finally had enough money to buy stamps, he ''scattered those papers over the land." He quickly learned how to establish excellent relations with reporters and even made friends with writers for sporting journals. In 1897, a reporter for
Shooting and Fishing
stated that he knew of "no better advertising agent than Frank Butler."

Annie relied on Frank in numerous other ways. He arranged gun licenses, issued press notices and photos, penned articles under the pseudonym "A Wandering American," wrote letters under his own name, handled correspondence and contracts, arranged to get arms and ammunition through customs, and served as their financial manager. Butler also earned additional income by working as a representative for the Union Metallic Cartridge Company and the Remington Arms Company. In 1902, Annie told an interviewer that the financial part was always in her husband's hands. She stated: "I owe whatever I have to his careful management. . . . I am not accustomed to looking after money matters, and am not a very good manager in that regard."

Annie also leaned on Frank's splendid sense of humor and stock of funny stories. For instance, when in 1893 Annie and Frank visited an English lord's hunting park, the servants treated Annie

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like royalty but scorned Frank. When Annie and Frank discovered that the servants thought Frank Butler was Annie's butler, he burst into laughter.

In addition to admitting her dependence on Frank, Annie projected a family image in her act and her life. Shortly before proclaiming the "closing" of the frontier, the U.S. Census Bureau had announced that somewhere between one out of every fourteen to sixteen marriages in the United States ended in divorce, the highest divorce rate in the world. Of the regions of the United States, the West had the highest divorce rate, a finding that horrified numerous Americans. Annie assuaged fears concerning the changing American family and underwrote traditional values by regularly including Frank and their current dog in her act. As her family, Frank and the dog helped establish a domestic aura and sent a message of family unity. When Annie shot a coin out of Frank's fingers or an apple off a dog's head, she demonstrated the trust that should exist between family members.

Annie and Frank also emphasized their close ties with her family in Ohio. The 1892 notice that she was to "pay a somewhat extended visit to her mother in Darke County" was typical. Then, Annie's mother visited the Wild West for the first time on July 4, 1895, when it played in Piqua, Ohio, and again in Greenville in 1900. On both occasions, Susan appeared with her three daughters, all in Quaker dress. Unintentionally, they emphasized Annie's highly moral and domestic background.

Audiences showed their appreciation for Annie and her clean-cut image in several ways. In July 1893, for example, when the Ohio building at the World's Fair in Chicago sponsored Annie Oakley Day, one visitor expressed his pleasure by noting, "This honest and simple little woman is a favorite all over the shooting world." In July 1900, a huge crowd turned out for the Wild West's performance in Greenville; afterward the Honorable C. M. Anderson and Will F. Baker of Greenville gave Annie a silver loving cup inscribed "From Old Friends in Greenville, O." Anderson praised Annie for the accuracy of her shooting as well as for her ''unsullied life."

Annie herself regularly acted in a sensible and kind way. Over the years, she befriended almost everyone in the troupe, including

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the numerous Native Americans who lived in their own separate camp. Annie also treated people outside the troupe well. When an African-American man informed her that he had named his new twin daughters after her, Annie I and Annie II, she responded by sending birthday presents to the two Annies for years afterward.

But Annie and Frank also realized that a truly laudable hero also had a foible or two. To increase her appeal, they allowed her to reveal the odd traits and eccentricities of any good hero. When Annie missed a shot, she stamped her foot on the ground and pouted in full view of the audience. When she hit, she gave a satisfied little kick. At the end of her act, Annie blew kisses to the crowd and gave a distinctive jump-kick as she exited.

Apparently the strategy worked; viewers flocked to Annie's performances, cheered her, and shouted her name. Critics too seemed universally enthralled. One reviewer stated that Oakley was the "crowning charm of the whole show," as was "nightly testified by the ringing cheers" that greeted her appearance. Another called Annie a "magnetic lady" and maintained that such human touches constituted "half her performance.''

Unlike Oakley's heroism, the fourth component of her actthe presence of villainylay latent and implied. For instance, although Annie did not use her guns as instruments of violence, except perhaps when shooting live pigeons, an element of potential violence always existed. She could easily shoot anyone who threatened her family, her friends, or herself. In addition, Annie obviously possessed power. Frequent explosions of gunfire, smoke and fire, and glass shards drifting from above convinced audiences that she, the hero, could defeat any villain who challenged her.

The fifth factorthe Westwas especially important because it united the other four into a coherent package. Guns, horses, heroes, and villains appeared in everything from circuses to melodramas, but in the arena the West unified them and gave them a twist that other shows and exhibitions lacked. Annie incorporated the western motif by wearing a cowboy-style hat and dresses that, as one viewer observed, "reminded one very forcibly of the wild West," by using western tack and western-style guns, often ornamented with tooled silver, and by allowing publicity that identified her with the American West.

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The total of these five factorsguns, horses, heroes, villains, and the Westin Oakley's act and in her life effectively imparted larger messages to her audiences, fans, and the public in general. In an era of economic depression, labor strikes, and war, Oakley presented positive American characteristics. She seemed to stand for the virtue of western expansionism, the possibility of family stability, and the triumph of good over evil.

During the 1890s, Annie and Frank's success and popularity soared. Yet, sometime late in the decade, they began to reassess their priorities and goals. Life on the road and in the camps, regular appearances before audiences filled with high expectations of her, and never-ending interviews, receptions, and photograph sessions were beginning to take their toll on Annie. In addition, she was now a mature woman who had both experienced the thrill of success and recognized its costs. Annie had fought to overcome what she termed "prejudice" against women in show business and in sports. Her own breakthrough and stardom had opened the way for other women performers in the arena as well as women contestants in rodeo. Still, although nineteenth-century restraints on women in general, and on show-women in particular, often challenged and motivated Annie, they wore on her as well.

By the mid-1890s, Annie began to reveal signs of her changing perspective. In 1896, she observed that her work often proved less than fascinating. "It is hard work like everything else." About a year later, Annie's friend, reporter Amy Leslie remarked that Annie was tiring of the rigors of the business and had said, "It used to be fun, but I don't believe I care so much for it nowadays." Then, in 1899, Annie told a Tennessee reporter, "I have thought several times I would not go with the show another year, but I always do."

Oakley's statements may have also reflected some disgruntlement with developments within the Wild West company. In 1894, when Nate Salsbury fell ill and James A. Bailey replaced him as manager, Bailey brought in trick animal acts and sideshows. With profits down that year, Bailey also reinstituted one- and two-day stands to avoid playing against other shows and increase quick

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gate receipts. At the same time, both Cody's drinking and his domestic turmoil increased, and he began talking about retirement. In June 1897, Cody mentioned 1900 as a possible retirement date. When the date arrived, the aging showman remained in place but acted increasingly cranky. He snapped at a reporter and even said he hated his long hair and retained it only to please the public. "Long hair is business and not art with me." The next year found Cody deep in debt because of his various projects, including the town he named after himself in Wyoming, and full of talk about divorcing his wife, Louisa.

Given such internal upheaval in the Wild West, Annie and Frank had to think of their own futures. As astute as they were, they must have also realized that new trends in the world of entertainment and leisure would soon bring to an end the heyday of big arena shows. For instance, Thomas Edison's experiments with the phonograph, and later the radio and motion pictures, offered tremendous possibilities for changing the nature of entertainment. More specifically, the year 1892 marked the invention of basketball and the building of the first Ferris wheel for the Chicago World's Fair. In 1893, Florenz Ziegfeld entered show business. In 1895, Nate Salsbury staged
Black America
, the epitome of the black minstrel show, on Staten Island, and David Belasco's
Heart of Maryland
, a Civil War melodrama, opened. The following year, William Gillette starred in the Civil War melodrama
Secret Service
. By then, New York City alone had seven vaudeville theaters; to one, Ziegfeld brought the steamy European singer Anna Held. Then, in 1898, the first musical written, produced, and performed by African Americans, and a black revue written by Will Marion Cook, opened on Broadway.

At the same time, events of the 1890s made many Americans desperate for an avenue of escape, however temporary, from their many problems. Beginning with one of the worst depressions in history in 1893, Americans suffered through widespread labor strikes and violent repression in 1894, the Spanish-American War in 1898, and the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901.

During the Wild West's 1901 season, Cody depended on Oakley, now a well-established old-timer, to draw crowds. He issued a

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splendid poster featuring "The Peerless Wing and Rifle Shot" wearing some of her medals, surrounded by vignettes of her Ohio loving cup and such moments in her personal history as her shooting from a bicycle and hunting with her dogs. Unfortunately, accidents bedeviled the company all season. One Bear's tepee burned down, an artilleryman lost his right hand when a cannon discharged prematurely, the wagon carrying the electric-light plant crashed after its brakes failed, and one section of the show train ran into another in a heavy fog. Even dexterous Annie slipped in the arena during one of her performances.

Then, on October 28, 1901, after the troupe had boarded its three-unit train in Charlotte, North Carolina, to head for their last performance of the season in Virginia, came the final accident. The engineer of a southbound freight moved to a siding as the first unit of the Wild West passed and then, assuming it was a one-unit train, returned to the main track. At 3:20
A.M.
, he and his crew saw the lights of the second unit approaching. Both crews jumped to safety.

Annie and Frank slept in that second section in their private compartment. The crash threw Annie out of her bed and slammed her back against a trunk. At first, newspapers reported only slight injuries to her hand and back, but further examination showed damage to her spine. Doctors at St. Michael's Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, who performed five operations on Oakley's spine, said they had "never seen such fortitude displayed by any previous patient."

Soon after the accident, Frank Butler announced his and Annie's departure from the Wild West exposition. Although most biographers have assumed that they left because of the accident, Frank's letter of resignation, which is unfortunately undated but mounted with other items from 1901 in Oakley's scrapbook, suggests the existence of long-standing plans, perhaps even known to Cody before the accident. Its text omitted any mention of the accident. Instead, Frank wrote, "It is like giving up a big fortune to leave the dear old wild west, but a better position influences us and we must go." Butler planned to replace Jack Hollowell as northeastern representative for the Union Metallic Cartridge Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and give Annie a chance to try her hand at enterprises other than those in the arena.

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