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 (2 page)

 

Page v
For Bess Edwards,
Annie's guardian angel,
who is generous of time and spirit

 

Page vii
Contents
List of Illustrations
ix
Series Editor's Preface
xi
Acknowledgments
xiii
Introduction: A Heroine for All Time
xv
1. "We Managed to Struggle Along"
3
2. "The 'Show' Business"
27
3. "The Birds Were First Class"
63
4. "To Be Considered a Lady"
112
5. "Girl of the Western Plains"
145
6. "Why Did I Give Up the Arena?"
176
7. The Legend
206
Conclusion: Who Was Annie Oakley?
231
Note on Sources
237
Index
243

 

 

Page ix
Illustrations
Annie Oakley, Frank Butler, and poodle George
95
Annie Oakley with shotgun, ca. mid-1880s
96
Annie Oakley with some of her early guns, medals, and a loving cup
97
Buffalo Bill Wild West lithograph advertising Annie Oakley
98
Annie in 1896 at age thirty-six in New York City
99
Annie and Frank's home in Nutley, New Jersey
100
Annie Oakley, ca. 1900
101
Annie's husband, Frank Butler, in New Jersey in 1902
102
Annie as star of
The Western Girl
in 1902
103
Annie Oakley breaking five targets thrown in the air at one time
104
Annie with lariat
105
Dave holds an apple for Annie Oakley
106
Annie and friend Eddie Hoff, age seven, of New York, 1922
107
Annie shooting with her left hand, probably in 1926
108
Letter written by Annie Oakley in 1923
109
Annie's and Frank's graves near Brock, Ohio
110
Painting showing Annie Oakley shooting from a sidesaddle
111

 

 

Page xi
Series Editor's Preface
Glenda Riley's well-researched, smoothly written biography of Annie Oakley accomplishes three large goals. In addition to providing an illuminating story of an intriguing person, Riley uses Oakley to comment provocatively on gender roles of her times. The author also demonstrates how Annie becameand remainsa central figure in illustrating the Wild West.
More convincingly and more interpretively than any previous biographer, Glenda Riley details the mythos Annie Oakley created
of
herself
for
her audiences. Summarizing Annie's adroit uses of guns and horses, her avoidance of villainy and her assumption of heroism, her modesty and femininity, and her symbolic marriage to a lively and adventuresome West, Riley supplies a pioneering work of one individual's participatory role in molding and epitomizing the Old West. Dozens of earlier biographers achieved this goal in treating Buffalo Bill Cody, General George A. Custer, and Wild Bill Hickok, but Riley's work is the first scholarly biography to do so for a female figure.
Equally noteworthy is the author's use of Annie Oakley to clarify gender roles in the decades surrounding 1900. Annie opened the tightly shut door of respectability for women as users of guns. After her, the handling of weapons, hunting, and shooting became more acceptable activities for women. Indeed, over time Riley's Annie Oakley became an oxymoronic character: a feminine-gunman and lady-marksman, skilled at men's occupations without abandoning her Victorian gentility.
Obviously Annie greatly enlarged the meaning of Buffalo Bill's Wild West when she became a vivacious metaphor for a lively but nonetheless domesticated frontier. As Riley makes clear, Annie was no stereotyped "Wild Woman of the West," as were Calamity Jane and Belle Starr. Instead, the showman Buffalo Bill gradually relied on Annie to help draw crowds of women and families to his exhibitions, which otherwise displayed scene after scene of mas-

 

Page xii
culine violence. By midcareer Annie became for Buffalo Bill what such women as Eleanor Roosevelt, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, for example, have become for later times: authentic, skilled women who inspire men and women with their talents and thereby enlarge women's roles in American society and culture.
Like all of Glenda Riley's many essays and books, this appealing biography is impressively clear, thorough, and well organized. Her work palpably fulfills the goals of the Oklahoma Western Biographies series in supplying the life story of a captivating woman whose life and career illuminate American history and western mythmaking.
RICHARD W. ETULAIN
UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO

 

Page xiii
Acknowledgments
This study of Annie Oakley and the enduring West has benefited from the energy of many people. Historian Richard Etulain inspired it, Oakley's grandniece and president of the Annie Oakley Foundation, Bess Edwards, nurtured it, and archivist Jeanne Van Steen of the Nutley Historical Society enriched it.
At the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, numerous people pushed the project on its way. Special thanks go to curator Paul Fees, who opened his memory and his files to me, as well as applying his critical abilities to the manuscript; to Lillian Turner, who screened some rare movie footage for me; and to librarian-archivist Christina Stopka and librarian Joan Murra, who dutifully searched, retrieved, and photocopied.
At the Garst Museum in Oakley's hometownGreenville, Ohiodirector Toni Seiler supplied both information and copies of unusual photographs.
In Hollywood, producer William Self shared his own research and provocative ideas about Annie Oakley, and the staff and crew of the Time/Warner documentary "The Wild West" urged me to think, talk, and hypothesize about Annie Oakley and the meaning of the Wild West. Producers Jamie Smith and John Copeland especially asked questions and offered suggestions.
Here at Ball State University, Ray E. White lent his expertise on western movies and memorabilia. Research assistant N. Jill Howard worked hard and long to locate sources, make suggestions, and help fill gaps in the manuscript.
Along with many others, including William Edwards of the Annie Oakley Foundation, Larry Jones of the Winchester Club of America, and Christine Marín of Arizona State University Library, these people can take pride in the book's strengths. I take full credit for its weaknesses, with hopes that they are few. Among us, we have tried to follow the spirit of Annie Oakley's motto:

 

Page xiv
Aim at a high mark and you will hit it.
No, not the first time, nor the second and maybe not the third.
But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect.
Finally, you will hit the bull's eye of success.
GLENDA RILEY
MUNCIE, INDIANA

 

Page xv
Introduction
A Heroine for All Time
The incredible woman who called herself Annie Oakley overcame poverty, prejudice, physical setbacks, and her own inner shyness to become a star shooter and a durable legend. Beginning in 1885, her shooting and riding skills helped draw standing-room-only crowds to open-air arenas, to Madison Square Garden, and to sites throughout Europe. Billed as ''The Rifle Queen,'' "The Peerless Lady Wing-Shot," "Little Sure Shot," and "The Western Girl," she thrilled audiences at home and abroad. She also burned into the public mind a vision of the archetypal western womandaring, beautiful, and skilled.
Was Annie Oakley really a press agent's dream or simply a press agent's creation? The answer is more the former than the latter, for Annie had the makings of a star even as a very young woman. She quickly learned how to combine talent, skill, beauty, femininity, and humility in one very appealing package. Throughout her career, critics rated her shooting ability as superb and her personality as sweet and unassuming. First the American public, then European audiences, idolized Annie Oakley; they admired her skill as a shooter and respected her attempts to remain a "lady." During an age of accelerating industrialization, war, divorce, and fear of moral decline, people evidently appreciated a shooting star who covered her ankles and calves with pearl-buttoned leggings, set riding and shooting records from a sidesaddle, and did fancy embroidery between shows.
But Annie Oakley was also a creation. Although she grew up on an Ohio farm long after the frontier had moved west of the Mississippi River, show-business hyperbole turned Annie into a gun-toting woman who hailed from the Old Wild West. Rifles, western-style dresses, boots, and saddles soon became her trademarks. Oakley's fans readily accepted this public persona; their fascination with the American West, their growing nostalgia for open spaces and simpler times, and their fear that the values Annie

Other books

Kiss Her Goodbye (A Thriller) by Robert Gregory Browne
Royal Secrets by Abramson, Traci Hunter
Mad River Road by Joy Fielding
City of Swords by Alex Archer
The Book of the Beast by Lee, Tanith
False Horizon by Alex Archer
The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran
WashedUp by Viola Grace
Beyond Redemption by Michael R. Fletcher


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024