Read The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley Online

Authors: Glenda Riley

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

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BOOK: The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley
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Page 73
A week later in Easton, Pennsylvania, Oakley met Graham for a second round. Annie's fans also showed up; according to her, they still felt "optimistic for the second shoot." Because Easton lay buried in snow, optimism was probably difficult to muster. Then an outcry erupted when Annie's fans learned that she was staying in Room 13 at an Easton hotel. "You should have heard the howl," she wrote. ''The old hands at the traps threw up their hands and said it was all off, unless I moved at once." She refused to move. After all, she pointed out, her birthday fell on the thirteenth, and she had joined the Wild West on the thirteenth. When Annie finally arrived at the grounds, she saw horses with scoops and men with shovels clearing paths and areas around the score and traps. Although Graham wanted to postpone the match, Annie felt "ready and anxious to shoot." She defeated Graham handily, twenty-four to nineteen, even though her fans retained their superstitions.
Weather bedeviled Annie on numerous other occasions. In 1893, she shot an entire match in a gale-force wind that carried many birds out of bounds. Despite the storm, Oakley won the match by downing fifty out of seventy birds while her closest competitor killed forty-five and missed twenty-five.
Controversy sometimes assailed her as well. During the mid-1880s, for example, a dispute erupted about the cruelty and inhumanity of killing live birds. After a match, gun clubs sometimes gave the dead pigeons to hospitals and orphanages; other times, they allowed dealers to gather up pigeon carcasses and sell them to hotels and to merchants who packed them in brine and sold them again. In an era increasingly attuned to conservation issues, these actions seemed insufficient to many people. In 1902, the organizers of the annual Grand American Handicap, held that year in Kansas City, announced that they would not use live birds in future meets. Other organizers followed their lead haltingly. Yet match reports from 1903, as well as subsequent years, indicate that live birds continued to serve as targets. In 1907, Oakley, who disliked controversy, agreed to shoot in a match using live birds, the Fourteenth Annual Target and Live Bird Tournament in Betteron, Maryland. Either Annie felt the conflict had not yet created insurmountable problems or, more likely, she felt the need

 

Page 74
to prove herself against men by shooting the most difficult targets of alllive birds.
Annie relied heavily on Frank to help her face such difficulties. But Frank had his special concerns as well. He seemed almost possessed by a fear that the numerous impostors who claimed to be Annie would undercut her reputation with their flawed performances. As early as 1887, when Annie and Frank left for Europe, Frank tried to foil impostors by running an advertisement in the April 2 edition of the
New York Clipper
: "Don't Forget This. There is only one
ANNIE OAKLEY
. And she leaves for Europe with the Wild West."
Then, while in England, Frank developed an intense dislike of music-hall shooters. Frank thought England "over-flowed" with these "humbugs." He sneered, "Bells are rung, balls are broken, [all with] blank cartridges." Of course, in a country where gunowners had to pay license fees and hire game preserves for shooting, music-hall audiences, composed largely of non-gun owners, could be easily fooled. "There are," Frank snapped, "a great many so-called champions tolerated in England that would not last long in America.''
Frank tried to retain his composure regarding phonies, but in September 1891, after hearing of a match-shooter in Connecticut who traded on Annie's reputation by calling herself "Little Sure Shot," he lashed out "I hope the sportsmen of Wilmantic or any place else where this bogus party may appear, will not think they have seen Annie Oakley." Frank noted that he usually paid little attention to such people, but this case seemed to push his forbearance to its limits. This usually gentle manwho one observer in 1895 described as "an athletic, good-natured man" and to whom others extended the courtesy titles "Colonel," "Sir,'' and even "Dr."felt compelled to condemn such impostors.
Obviously, phonies continued to pose a problem for Frank Butler, if not for Annie Oakley, who seldom mentioned the matter. During the late 1890s, Frank condemned a dime-museum impersonator. He had come across a man and woman, who would "never starve for the want of a hard cheek," posing in a dime museum, the man as a long-haired cowboy and western bad man, the woman as "Little Sure Shot." Frank explained that museums

 

Page 75
were "full of long-haired humbugs," but he did not want anyone to think that Annie Oakley had to stand posing eleven hours a day in a cheap museum.
To avoid contact with such impostors and humbugs, Frank refused to apply the term "champion" to Annie. In an 1898 letter, Frank explained that using the title "champion" drew challenges from hundreds of shooters, many of them little more than "dime museum freaks." He added, "Since Annie Oakley first went before the public I think she has received at least one hundred so-called challenges; I say so-called because not one of them ever had a dollar back of it.'' One female challenger, Frank maintained, had a soiled personal reputation and three living husbands, whereas another had killed her partner while shooting an apple off her head and, after being acquitted because it was an accident, billed herself as ''The Woman Killer."
In 1890, Frank declared that Annie shot "to please the public and the company" she worked for. Despite her numerous wins in private matches and tournaments, she never claimed any championship. If Annie had used the title "champion," Frank continued, she would have had to shoot against every so-called champion in the world. "There are several she would not care to have her name used in connection with."
Frank Butler also worked diligently to protect Annie's reputation as a lady. "No women with a shady past or doubtful reputation," he asserted, "can ever enter into a personal contest with Annie Oakley while I am managing her, as she values her personal reputation far more than her shooting one." In this regard, in 1891 he accused some of Annie's challengers of wanting free advertising. He added that Annie already had more engagements than she could fill in the next three years.
The matter of impostors had obviously become a sore spot with Frank over the years. As Annie's manager and press agent, he had worked to maintain her shining reputation and image; thus imitators clearly exasperated him. Annie, however, appeared more concerned about false press reports. In 1894, she admitted that the press helped make her famous, but she also accused reporters of dreaming up some ridiculous stories. One was the report of her supposed engagement to an English noble. "Think of the feelings

 

Page 76
of my husband," she said. Another time, the press announced that she had been arrested for carrying deadly weapons in Queenstown, although she was in New York City at the time.
Oakley's biggest run-in with the press, and one of the most traumatic events of her adult life, began on August 11, 1903, when the
Chicago American
and the
Chicago Examiner
, both William Randolph Hearst newspapers, ran unverified headlines in the best yellow journalism tradition: "Annie Oakley Asks Court for MercyFamous Woman Crack Shot . . . Steals to Secure Cocaine." The report claimed that Annie lay in a cell at the Harrison Street prison as a result of stealing a pair of trousers from an African-American man, Charles Curtis, to pay for her drug supply. Supposedly, police officers had taken Annie to Justice Caverly's Harrison Street police court, where she plead guilty and received a fine of forty-five dollars and costs. The judge sentenced her to twenty-five days for care and treatment.
Ernest Stout, the reporter who wrote the story, said that police officers had sworn that they had arrested the real Annie Oakley. They had also described her "shattered condition" as "pitiful" and had deplored her "destitute" state. Stout apparently further embroidered the story. He wrote that Oakley's "striking beauty" was now gone. "Although she is but twenty-eight years old,'' he continued, ''she looks almost forty."
When Stout's shocking story went out on the Publishers Press telegraph wire, other newspapers picked it up without checking its accuracy. The
Rochester Times
ran the headline "Annie Oakley, Famous Rifle Shot Is Destitute," and a New Jersey paper informed its readers that Annie Oakley was a cocaine victim. Annie wrote to many of the papers with an angry denial. On August 12, 1903, she informed the
Brooklyn Union Standard
that the woman posing as Annie Oakley was a "fraud" and that she, the genuine Annie Oakley, had not been in Chicago since last winter. Annie demanded that the newspaper contradict the story. Then, on August 13, Oakley ordered the
Philadelphia Press
: "Contradict at once. Some one will pay for this dreadful mistake."
Publishers Press immediately sent out a retraction, and newspapers apologized in print and sometimes in letters to Annie. One

 

Page 77
editor assured Oakley, "As the
Daily News
was the least in offence, I mean to make it the greatest in atonement, so far as correct publicity is concerned." Several newspapers also initiated investigations as to the root of the story. Some claimed that the arrested woman had given the name Elizabeth Cody, posing as Buffalo Bill's daughter-in-law. Somehow this Cody connection turned into Annie Oakley, although Oakley was not related to Cody. Another group believed that the imposter was a vaudeville performer, Maude Fontenella, who had once appeared in a burlesque Wild West show as "Any Oakley."
None of this appeased Annie, who said that the "terrible piece" nearly "killed" her. "The only thing that kept me alive," she recalled, ''was the desire to purge my character." Those who accused her of overreacting or wanting to garner huge monetary settlements failed to understand her long climb from the backwoods of Ohio; she was not about to let some careless error destroy her image and perhaps even her employability. Even if the story was an error and not malicious libel, she knew that people believed what they read. Retractions and apologies would go largely unnoticed. Annie believed that she had to create an issue to make the truth of the matter stick in the public record and the public mind. Unlike P. T. Barnum, who reportedly said he preferred press abuse rather than silence, Annie wanted the truth or nothing.
Still, it is difficult to explain Annie's single-mindedness in pursuing legal action against the offending newspapers, most of whom apologized and retracted the story. For nearly six years, Annie set aside her own career and personal life, traveled widely at her own expense, and appeared in courtrooms under great duress. Since she was never an opportunist, it seems unlikely that Annie expected to garner great financial rewards from her quest. A more likely explanation is that she felt she had lost control of her life and career. For a woman who maintained equanimity by controlling her immediate environment, this loss would have represented a disaster. The only way to bring her life and career back into balance would have been to regain control, through legal action if necessary.
Clearly, Frank encouraged Annie in the belief that her integrity

 

Page 78
had received one too many challenges. Given his near-preoccupation with denouncing all impostors and maintaining the purity of Annie's reputation, Frank understandably supported, or perhaps even goaded, her. From impostors and fakes to false press stories, he had fought, almost compulsively, to maintain her unblemished reputation. After all his efforts, the taint of a drug charge would destroy Annie's clean-cut image for all time.
Oakley's friends also rallied, many sending letters and telegrams urging her to sue. One wrote to her in 1903 saying that he would take great satisfaction in seeing "the guilty parties punished" and would regard victorious lawsuits as another trophy in the enormous collection she already had "in the eyes of the American Sportsmen." That same year, reporter Amy Leslie, Annie's old friend, advised her, "Make those people pay you big money." Leslie thought fifty thousand dollars "a small enough sum to demand.'' She noted, "They have heaped every disgrace on you.'' Leslie added, "Every decent paper will applaud you."
Furthermore, Oakley was far from alone in her complaints about the sensationalized journalism of the time. During late November of the same year, President Theodore Roosevelt lashed out at the
Boston Herald
after it reported that the Roosevelt children had chased a terrified Thanksgiving turkey around the White House grounds, plucking at it and yelling while their father laughed at their antics. Roosevelt reacted with outrage, especially because the story was one in a long series of "malicious falsehoods"; he cut
Herald
reporters off from "all facilities of information."
Oakley had no similar recourse available to her. Instead, she decided to sue the newspapers involved in maligning her. Annie lodged twenty-five libel suits for twenty-five-thousand dollars each, then gradually initiated more for a total of fifty-five suits. Since each libel case was fought as a separate action, Oakley's suits took her all over the United States between 1904, when the first trial began, and 1910, when the bulk of them ended. In the largest libel episode to that date, Oakley sued such newspapers as the
Chicago American
and the
Chicago Examiner
, the
St. Louis Star
, the
Brooklyn Citizen
, and the
New Orleans Time-Democrat
for the publication of several false, scandalous, and malicious libels injurious to the good name, fame, credit, and reputation of Oakley.
BOOK: The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley
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