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 (39 page)

Page 222


Chief Sitting Bull was her good friend Upon her word he could depend The bow of friendship he did bend With "Little Sure Shot"right to the end AnnieAnnie Oakley, Queen of the wild frontier.

During the closing years of the 1950s, juvenile literature regarding Annie Oakley continued to give its readers a much stronger character than the one their parents and other adults watched on stage and screen. In 1958, Shannon Garst's
Annie Oakley
, which perpetuated many fabrications and included fictitious conversation, represented Oakley as a woman who exhibited a good deal of true grit, and Ellen Wilson's
Annie Oakley: Little Sure Shot
offered a fictionalized account of an Oakley who was strong and purposeful, even as a child.

During the 1960s, some of the nation's thinking about women was resolved, perhaps by some of the very young people who had grown up with the strong Annie Oakley portrayed on television, in comic books, and in young people's literature. Early in the decade and alongside the conflict in Vietnam came a host of reform causes: civil rights, antiwar, poverty, environment, sexual behavior, and contemporary feminism. Many people gradually turned away from traditional definitions of femininity to wider ones that allowed women to demonstrate nondomestic skills and achievements. In 1960, Esther Peterson, head of the Women's Bureau, stated that "homemaking chores" were "no great challenge" to competent women. Three years later, Betty Friedan enlarged on Peterson's warning in
The Feminine Mystique
.

The growing belief in women's capabilities allowed a more authentic Annie to reappear from the welter of images ranging from Stanwyck to Hutton. Oakley's legend moved toward an Annie Oakley who provided a model well worth emulating. As early as 1961,
Annie Oakley: The Shooting Star
, by Charles P. Graves, showed evidence of a revised message. Graves told his young readers that because Oakley excelled in her profession and also did good for others, she was exemplary. Then, in October 1964, the annual Annie Oakley Trapshoot began in Pinehurst, North Carolina, to recogNize Oakley as an athlete rather than a show business star.

Page 223

But Broadway and Hollywood proved tough adversaries. Ever since 1946,
Annie Get Your Gun
had experienced numerous revivals. Although such productions probably intended to honor Annie's memory, the gave their audiences fanciful images of westerners and of Annie rather than the genuine article. Each version took its own liberties. An English production arrayed Annie in a bustle outfit with high-top boots while it made Cody a virtual caricature, Sitting Bull a cigar-store Indian, and Pawnee Bill a mountain man. A German company cast Annie as a dirty, ragged, blond urchin and Frank as a handsome, mustachioed, devil-may-care fellow. When, in 1966, Ethel Merman revived
Annie Get Your Gun
in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the play's first run, twenty-nine-year-old Bruce Yarnell, wearing a fringed shirt and a white Stetson hat, played Frank opposite the aging Merman's Annie.

Would the truth about Annie and her life triumph, or would the romantic, conflict-based western fantasy hold sway?

During the early 1970s, American views of both women and the West altered significantly. In particular, the feminist movement cast women as assertive, capable beings while historians started to rethink customary interpretations of the West. Scholars began to reject famed historian Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 description of western settlers as men; they came to recognize that women played significant roles in the West as well. The mid-seventies marked the beginning of a virtual outpouring of books and articles concerning the roles and contributions of women in the Old West.

Hollywood was in turmoil as well. With feminists demanding newer, stronger images of women, directors and producers had to revamp their films. Westerns especially had to change. Critics scoffed at old stereotypes of good and bad women, ladies of the night, civilizers, and strong women. As they called for fuller, more complex characters, male and female directors began to respond. As early as 1971, Julie Christie in
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
portrayed a capable heroine. But the era still seemed confused about a strong woman's ability to sustain a relationship; thus Christie's character had to forgo the affection of Warren Beatty's character because she was the stronger of the two.

Page 224

Then, in 1976, a turning point occurred in
Buffalo Bill and the Indians; or, Sitting Bull's History Lesson
. This Robert Altman film, based on the Arthur Kopit play
Indians
, starred Paul Newman as Buffalo Bill Cody, Geraldine Chaplin as Annie Oakley, and Burt Lancaster as Ned Buntline. By spoofing Wild West shows, Altman attempted to totally debunk hero-worshiping Westerns. He called the film a "Bicentennial gift to America," presumably meaning that it gave Americans a chance to reassess their history, especially western history.

Instead, Altman remythologized the West, generally in a negative manner. He painted Cody as an inept manager, as well as an egomaniac, coward, and drunkard. Chaplin, as Annie, accidentally shot Frank through the shoulder at close range at about the same time that a female troupe member informed Frank she was carrying his child. Burt Lancaster, as Buntline, acted, according to one critic, "like an unemployed mortician." Although the reviews of
Buffalo Bill
were generally favorable, the audiences were scant.

Along with such other films as
Soldier Blue, Little Big Man, The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy
, and Clint Eastwood's westerns, Alt-man's film seemed to provide a necessary low point of disillusionment with American institutions, heroes, and values. Hollywood appeared to regroup and grasp at a more balanced view of the past, resulting in more authentic women characters than the civilizers and femmes fatales that had dominated the screen in the past. In 1978, for example, Jane Fonda played an independent woman in
Comes a Horseman
; the following year, Conchata Ferrell in
Heartland
met challenges with bravery and stamina.

The way was at last open for the genuine Annie to emerge. In 1973, author Isabelle S. Sayers's well-researched and factual pamphlet-sized
The Rifle Queen: Annie Oakley
appeared. Then, in 1979, Clifford Lindsey Alderman, author of
Annie Oakley and the World of Her Time
, won the distinction of being the only Oakley biographer to link the woman to her era. Alderman maintained that Oakley's life and career reflected the nation's fascination with westward expansion and prosperity. He concluded that Oakley's story of "struggle and triumph," as well as her spirit of energy and ambition, mirrored "America's golden era."

Page 225

By the early 1980s, Annie Oakley began to attract increasing interest, and her legend started to gain more authenticity. Gradually, many Americans had come to esteem career women and those who entered male-dominated fields. Thus, Americans of the 1980s could admire the original Anniethe woman who defeated a man in a shooting match, handled firearms better than most men, and built a successful career yet bore no children. At last, they could also respect Frank Butler, the man who managed his wife's career. Frank's choice of vocations was no longer atypical and suspect.

Because Annie and Frank fit 1980s expectations of women and men, their lives could be celebrated rather than revised. Thus, Annie soon became an example for aspiring girls and women. In 1981, Isabelle Sayers's
Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill's Wild West
presented, in text and 102 illustrations, a woman of courage and conviction. In 1985, Ideals Publishing Corporation published Jan Gleiter's and Kathleen Thompson's
Annie Oakley: Great Tales
. Intended for young readers, the slim book described Annie Oakley as a modern-day Abraham Lincolnhonest and hardworking as a child and therefore successful and famous as an adult. In both text and illustrations, Annie emerged as a contemporary heroine who had "shot straight for twenty-five years and never hurt a living soul."

Also in 1985, actress Jamie Lee Curtis starred in a one-hour version of Oakley's life story. As part of the series
Tall Tales and Legends
, this rendition offered an accurate, fully developed picture of Annie from girlhood to later life. In response, the theater journal
Variety
described Curtis's Oakley in modern terms indeed: a "media superstar" and an "independent, strong-willed woman who never forgot her roots."

In 1989, in
True West
magazine, historian R. Douglas Hurt similarly took a contemporary, straightforward approach. In "Annie Oakley: An Enduring Western Legend," Hurt described Oakley as an honest entertainer who never employed trickery. Although not born in the West, Oakley showed the world "a glimpse of American life as it once was." Because Oakley established her reputation at a time when the Wild West was becoming the New West, she herself came to represent an ''America of a bygone age."

Page 226

Also in 1989, a book for young readers debunked the usual Annie Oakley myth. Ellen Levine tried to tell Oakley's true story in Scholastic Press's
Ready, Aim, Fire! The Real Adventures of Annie Oakley
. Levine explained that writers and producers had thought that audiences might not like Annie if they knew she outshot Frank. They also might dislike Frank if they realized that he married the woman who had defeated him. But, Levine concluded, Frank loved Annie for herself. In fact, "Frank was more interesting than the writers pictured him, and Annie was true to herself."

Granted, the genuine Annie achieved recognition during the 1980s, but the mythical West continued to exert an influence. For many, Annie Oakley still symbolized the Old Wild West. Typical of the materialism of the 1980s, some people even began to use Oakley's image and memory to sell western products. In an advertisement for Justin Boots, John Justin proclaimed, "When Annie Oakley began performing sharpshooting tricks in 1885, my grandfather had been making boots for 6 years." Another representative advertisement appeared in 1988 in
Guns & Ammo
. Below a picture of Annie and her guns it declared, "Used To Be Only Legends Could Nail a Rattler At Ten Paces." But now any upstart could hit a rattlesnake with CCI ammunition. The advertisement refused to guarantee that readers would become legends like Oakley but did assure them that they would "sure shoot like one."

In addition to advertisements, a number of writers also continued to associate Oakley with the mythical West In 1988, Robert Quackenbush's
Who's That Girl with the Gun? A Story of Annie Oakley
, one of Prentice-Hall's Books for Young Readers, described Annie as a wonderful product of the "frontier," where "pioneer life was hard." The author concluded that Annie ranked among "America's real-life folk heroes," including Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and other famous "frontier" people. Still, Quakenbush probed for Oakley's true story, which he believed captured the ''American spirit."

More recently, in 1991, a publication for children,
Cobblestone
magazine, devoted an entire issue to Annie Oakley. One author pointed out that Oakley "brought the excitement and romance of

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