The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (29 page)

Read The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley Online

Authors: Glenda Riley

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

BOOK: The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley
7.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

 

Page 164
tacles as Cleopatra dancing and Julius Caesar fiddling, pictured in its advertising a woman charioteer whipping her four white horses as she competed against a male charioteer and his four black horses. She continued the race despite a lost wheel while spectators in the royal box waved and cheered.
Still other Wild West posters advertised shows that women owned and operated. As early as 1896, the Kemp Sisters Wild West entered the growing competition for audiences. In 1903, Luella Forepaugh-Fish's Wild West appeared, followed by Lone Star May's Wild West in 1909 and Prairie Lillie and Nebraska Bill's Wild West in 1912. Apparently, some of these women had risen from the ranks of Wild West performers into that of entrepreneurs.
In addition to handbills and posters, the rapidly growing number of Wild West shows gave away booklets called "couriers." Designed to attract customers, couriers often featured colored ink and line drawings. In 1899, Buffalo Bill's Wild West issued a sixteen-Page, magazine-sized courier called the
Rough Rider
. As the annual editions of the
Rough Rider
continued into the 1900s, they grew longer in format and more elaborate in illustration and included more and more information about the acts and stars. Then, in 1909, the Buffalo-Bill/Pawnee Bill Wild West, called the Two-Bills' show, put out a thirty-page courier reproducing posters and other artwork, including Frederic Remington's
Buffalo Bill on Horseback
.
Advance agents gave stacks of these couriers to merchants and newspaper offices and sometimes distributed them house to house. If a person had somehow avoided Wild West images in handbills and posters, he or she could now peruse at leisure these extremely attractive and free couriers. Also, if a person attended a Wild West show, he or she could buy a souvenir program to study further at home and to pass around to family and friends.
Cody began selling such programs in 1883 for ten cents and soon added color-lithograph covers. For the first command performance in London, he and Salsbury ordered the programs with covers printed on silk. By the time the Wild West reached Paris in 1889, the program numbered forty-eight pages. When the Wild West returned to the United States from its second European tour

 

Page 165
in 1893, most Wild West programs used halftones rather than line drawings, were printed on good paper, and ran to sixty-four pages. In 1893, one program devoted a sizable segment to Annie Oakley:
The first two years before the public she devoted to Rifle and Pistol Shooting, and there is very little in that line she has not accomplished. At Tiffin, Ohio, she once shot a ten-cent piece held between the thumb and forefinger of an attendant at a distance of 30 feet. In April, 1884, she attempted to beat the best record made at balls thrown in the airthe best record was 984 set by Dr. Ruth. Miss
OAKLEY
used a Stevens' 22 cal. rifle and broke 943. In February, 1885, she attempted the feat of shooting 5,000 balls in one day, loading the guns herself. In this feat she used three 15-gauge hammer guns; the balls were thrown from three traps 15 yards rise; out of the 5,000 shot at, she broke 4,722; on the second thousand she only missed 16, making the
best
1,000 ball record, 984. Besides the thousands of exhibitions she has given in Europe and America, she has shot in over 50 matches and tournaments, winning forty-one prizes; her collection of medals and fire-arms, all of which have been won or presented to her, is considered one of the finest in the world.
If a viewer had not already learned a sufficient amount, he or she could also purchase a book featuring the various stars of the show. Cody started selling
Story of the Wild West and Camp-Fire Chats
in 1888 and even sent hawkers through the audience with stacks of the book. In 1893, John M. Burke added
"Buffalo Bill" from Prairie to Palace
to the books for sale, and in 1899, Cody's sister Helen Cody Wetmore released
Last of the Great Scouts
, sold on street corners for one dollar, with a ticket to the show included. During the 1910s, the Young Buffalo Show sold a ten-cent pamphlet of twenty-four pages titled
A Great White Indian Chief
.
The only such booklet that seems to have appeared about Annie was published in London in 1887. Titled
The Rifle Queen
, it ran sixty-four pages and sold for the bargain price of two cents.
The Rifle Queen
described Oakley's supposed childhood in Kansas (rather than Ohio), including her trapping wolves, foiling train robbers, riding out a blizzard, shooting a bear, and defeating a desperado. Many readers took the booklet as the truth, as did many reporters, who then reported Oakley's fictional exploits as fact.

 

Page 166
By the turn of the century, courtesy of Buffalo Bill's Wild West and its far-reaching publicity, Annie Oakley had become the western woman and cowgirl par excellence.
Because Annie Oakley and Frank Butler had to earn an income during the Wild West's off-seasonthe late fall, winter, and early spring monthsthey sometimes tried to capitalize on her western image by taking it on the stage, much as Cody himself had starred in western melodramas during the 1870s and 1880s. Because western melodrama was a stock feature of theater offerings, Annie's efforts as an actress earned some money and lent additional credence to her reputation as a western woman.
Oakley first took to the boards in 1888 when she opened in
Deadwood Dick; or, The Sunbeam of the Sierras
in Philadelphia on Christmas Eve to less-than-enthusiastic reviews. "Bombastic" and "unreasonable" were among the terms applied to the show's plot. Other, kinder critics lauded Annie's dramatic ability and predicted a brilliant future for her or heaped high praise on the troupe, who played the roles of what some called "denizens of that far region,'' the American West, with realism and deftness.
Deadwood Dick
closed at the end of January 1889 after manager John Keenan decamped with the show's receipts.
Annie later claimed that the backer had guaranteed the play would be "first class." He had offered Annie good money, but she soon discovered that he was gambling on her reputation to clear a profit. She felt grateful that reviewers "abstained from vegetable throwing" and frequently gave her good reviews. Obviously, Annie and Frank recognized the appeal of western themes. As one reviewer sagely remarked, "Western drama never fails to find a sympathetic and appreciative audience." Annie and Frank simply needed to discover a workable formula for putting her western persona on the road and keeping it there.
During the fall of 1894, Annie and Frank tried again. The vehicle,
Miss Rora
, tried to capitalize on the nation's raging interest in the American West as well the growing allure of the Old South. Advance publicity described
Miss Rora
as a drama "illustrative of life on the frontier." Annie would star in the role of a "wild, wayward Western girl." Guaranteed to incorporate both

 

Page 167
pathos and humor, the story began at a silver mine in Arizona. Here the heroine, Aurora Blackburn, played of course by Annie, lived with her two "Daddies," miners who had rescued her after she survived an Indian attack that not only killed her parents but destroyed the entire party with whom they had traveled westward. At the urging of an itinerant minister who argued that the two miners might be doing Rora inadvertent harm by keeping her secluded in a mining camp, the men advertised in newspapers and located Rora's rich Louisiana grandfather, who duly appeared and took her back to his vast and prosperous plantation. Once Rora was in Louisiana, her two cousins attempted to destroy her, kill her grandfather, and break his new will, written in her favor, but she foiled all their attempts while winning the love of a handsome young planter.
Annie may have resented negative images of Native Americans, but she was unaware of other stereotypes. This play featured a "Chinaman" in the mining camp portion, as well as black servants who sang, danced, and played the banjo during the plantation scenes. Annie herself represented the West, wearing what one viewer termed "picturesque North American attire," shooting at glass balls and a variety of other targets, and riding her horse, Gipsy, on the stage, even though the horse's hoofs sometimes broke through the stage floor. Audiences seemed especially to appreciate the finale, in which Annie rode in a fox hunt with a pack of trained hounds and even jumped her horse over a hurdle.
Reviewers generally liked
Miss Rora
and judged Annie a good actress and a marvelous shooter. Still, many houses were sparse. The effects of the Panic of 1893 had hit with full force in 1894, with violent labor strikes helping to keep people at home. Also,
Miss Rora
had stiff competition for limited entertainment dollars. Among the year's attractions were Victor Herbert's first comic opera,
Prince Ananias
; Vesta Tilley, a celebrated male impersonator from England on her first American tour; and the opening of B. F. Keith's elegant vaudeville house, Boston's Colonial Theatre.
A final blow to
Miss Rora
in the United States came in November when the
New York Sunday World
caricatured Annie Oakley as a buxom woman wearing a dress with huge polka-dotted sleeves. She held her rifle in her hands and perched precariously atop a

 

Page 168
wooden rocking horse. Its caption read, "Annie Oakley, Late with Buffalo Bill, as Miss Roarer."
After the Christmas holidays, Annie and Frank took
Miss Rora
to England, where it did well throughout the winter and spring of 1895, generally playing to full houses. In her role of Rora, Oakley proved herself a poised actress, and her shooting exhibition usually brought down the house. When
Miss Rora
reached Nottingham, reviewers agreed that the play was "fun," but they criticized its slight plot, which would collapse without Annie's shooting exhibitions. In Wales, reviewers also loved Oakley's shooting, as well as the fox hunt finale.
Miss Rora
traveled through Great Britain for ten weeks, but because of the depression that prevailed there as well as in the United States, the company made only enough to cover expenses. Annie ended her English tour at the Alhambra Theater, where she performed between acts of the ballet
Ali Baba
while stagehands moved the heavy, unwieldy scenery.
Given the outcome of
Deadwood Dick
and
Miss Rora
, Annie understandably limited her stage appearances to vaudeville and refrained from acting in another western drama for several years. Then, in November 1902, Annie opened in
The Western Girl
, written by the prolific and popular Langdon McCormick. She wore a curly brown wig to cover her white hair, and she appeared stouter. According to Frank, Annie had gained weight and now weighed 138 pounds, considerably more than usual.
The advance publicity, mostly newspaper advertisements and posters, employed terms similar to those used by Buffalo Bill's Wild West. It described
The Western Girl
as a portrayal of "the days of the Old West as never before attempted on the dramatic stage." Many notices featured Annie, one picturing her in a floor-length dress, with a Mexican style sash tied rakishly around her waist and a tilted sombrero on her head. Another showed a woman, presumably Annie, in the uncharacteristic position of riding astride, with her revolver pointed in the air.
Posters and other advertisement also announced that the play would feature Annie's own horses, especially Little Bess, "A Rocky Mountain Pet." Much like Cody's Wild West, the stage properties would include "The Old Historic
MAIL COACH
Pro-

Other books

Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire
Arizona Cowboy by Jennifer Collins Johnson
Dead Game by Kirk Russell
Murder for the Halibut by Liz Lipperman
Love Bites by Barbeau, Adrienne