This story compresses many years, many lives and widely separated events into one narrative. It is mainly, if vaguely, based on the life and death of Wild Bill Hickok, 1837-1876, known in Harper's New Monthly Magazine as Hitchcock, and as having killed "hundreds of men". No relation. Hickok is portrayed by Gary Cooper. He checks in to a barbershop, where the barber tries to get him to cut his hair. He says he doesn't believe in getting his hair cut. Oddly, it's already quite short, in a style suitable for 1936. There are nevertheless many photographs of the real Wild Bill, in all of which he is shown with hair tumbling well below his shoulders. Not Cooper's favoured style.
Is there any message in this mash-up of a movie ? Could it be that while he inspires calamitous fandom from the fair sex, the true gunman, and noble he-man, is essentially misogynistic ? This doesn't save him, though. He's fated for aces and eights, the dead man's hand, and gets shot in the back. The reason Buffalo Bill survives is because he weds a little woman, and intends, improbably, to run a civilised hotel, and do the washing up. Actually, I thought he ran a Wild West Show. No matter.
This film is designed to entertain, and it does. It features an interesting antique mechanical cocktail shaker. Those were the days when America was great, but tragically undermined by internal political corruption and proliferating guns. Seems familiar. All the prominent Indians, except Irish-Mexican Anthony Quinn, were white men in war paint, and spoke with forked tongues, especially when setting out to trap the cavalry.
Is there any message in this mash-up of a movie ? Could it be that while he inspires calamitous fandom from the fair sex, the true gunman, and noble he-man, is essentially misogynistic ? This doesn't save him, though. He's fated for aces and eights, the dead man's hand, and gets shot in the back. The reason Buffalo Bill survives is because he weds a little woman, and intends, improbably, to run a civilised hotel, and do the washing up. Actually, I thought he ran a Wild West Show. No matter.
This film is designed to entertain, and it does. It features an interesting antique mechanical cocktail shaker. Those were the days when America was great, but tragically undermined by internal political corruption and proliferating guns. Seems familiar. All the prominent Indians, except Irish-Mexican Anthony Quinn, were white men in war paint, and spoke with forked tongues, especially when setting out to trap the cavalry.