The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America

This book is presented in true McMurtry style showing careful research, painstaking attention to facts vs. fiction, identifying what could be fictional about the people being discussed, and the wonderful McMurtry style we all expect with each publication. Having visited Buffalo Bill's gravesite and the small museum there, this book rounds out the images I have of the man, the performer, and the first superstar of North America.

If you are a fan of the old west or not, this book will entertain you and make you one. I now know more about buffalow bill and annie oakley along with a deeper understanding of that last period of the wild west and the characters that made it such a wonderful exciting time in america.

I like Buffalo Bill. Among my treasured possessions is an 1898 "Wild West Show" programme, and a cabinet card of his photograph. I am still hoping to get an actual autograph but that's another story. This is the first biography of Buffalo Bill to be published in many years, unless one counts the beautiful pictorial by R. L. Wilson, "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show", which essentially was more of a catalog of Wild West show items than a full-length Cody biography. The gifted McMurtry of "Lonesome Dove" and "Buffalo Gals" fame (one of his books provided the name for one of my favorite bands - "Desert Rose")has not only given us a new biography of Buffalo Bill but sensibly combined it with one of Annie Oakley as well. For the most part, McMurtry's skills as a captivating, gripping, novelist works well here. The chapter on Bill's efforts to try and save his good friend Sitting Bull at the time of the Ghost Dance Uprising is an extremely dramatic one, even though readers familiar with the subject know what the dreadful end will be. He also provides an balanced, easy to follow narrative on the Indian Wars, and what made the Wild West Shows so extremely popular (of course centered around the personalities of the "Colonel", the Little Queen, and the Cowboys and Indians who joined them) Buffalo Bill Cody is also presented as the larger-than-life persona he was - warts and all. Hard drinking, womanizer, frontier hero and valiant scout...and failed businessman at the end. Ironically though, it is McMurtry's consummate skills as a novelist that is my only problem with his fine work. This technique can sometimes be just as distracting as it is meant to captivate the audience. For example, are his meandering into non-sensible quotes by Ned Rorem, and taking novelist's liberties with this dual biography. Another novelist, Michael Korda, sensibly avoided this, though barely with his concise biography of U.S. Grant - perhaps McMurtry should have been more concise, stayed on the historical track, but maintained his rich, high quality writing in that sense. He cannot nor should be faulted for giving us a fine work on a great man - or for his open admiration for both Bill and Annie.

Mc Murtry gets back to his first love --the Old West.It's obvious he has a great interest in the two people he considers the first super stars.No doubt there is a ton of stuff that has been written about the period after the Civil War,1865 and the end of the 1890's.Some of it is factual,and much is embellished.The whole country and much of the world had an appetite that was boundless for stories about the Old West.This didn't happen a lot of years after it was all over;the stories and books appeared as soon as the people started to "open the West."This thirst is still alive today as evident from Mc Murtry's novels such as Lonesome Dove,the Berrybender Narratives and other series like Longarm,The Trailsman,Lone Star and Louis L'Amour. McMurtry tries to sort out some of the fact from fiction about Cody and Annie Oakley.What he really does is to show how important Cody was in taking the subject of the Old West and bring it to life and then bring it to people across America and Europe. Without a doubt, his was a major impact.Try as McMurtry may,he finds it fairly easy to sort out Cody;but he ends up showing that Annie was a much more secretive person. \I found the book a great read and gave a good insight into the origin of the Wild West Shows,though Cody never considered his productions just a show.It is good to remember that McMurtry is first of all a storyteller and observer of historical life;and not a detective.He makes a good effort in showing how all the people got along with one another.I think the one thing that really comes through in this book is that all these characters are real flesh and blood people despite all the exaggerations and legends. McMurtry includes a list of 41 Western Heros, Heroines and Villians and how long they lasted.What this list does is remind us that these people did not live that long ago;in fact many continued to live into the 1910's,20's,30's, 40's, and 1950. One thing about McMurtry is how much his books differ;and this one is certainly different from anything else he has done. Don't overlook the Bibliography of excellent books about Cody,Annie Oakley, Wild West Shows as well as some other good western resources.

According to Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize winner and Western authority, Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley were the first superstars in America. And, he's probably right. Queen Victoria came out of mourning to see Cody's Wild West show; he was the central figure in more than 1700 dime novels, and his face was recognizable the world over. It was a handsome face which he used to his advantage in promotion and indulging his penchant for drink and women. Personality wise Annie Oakley, a crack shot, was probably his polar opposite, a small, sometimes self effacing young woman from Ohio who was happily and faithfully wed to sharpshooter and businessman Frank Butler. She was brought to more recent prominence with the hit Broadway show "Annie Get Your Gun." Nonetheless, their pairing of Cody and Oakley was huge box office in the 1880s and 1890s as railroad cars carried the Wild West show into 130 cities a year. Obviously, McMurtry has a fondness for these two iconic figures as he remembers his uncles reminiscing about seeing Buffalo Bill in person. Nonetheless, the author candidly describes both subjects of this dual biography - warts and all. The pair toured in their show for 16 seasons; she called him Colonel and he dubbed her Missie. Evidently, the two were compatible despite the difference in personalities. He was a bit like a bull in a China shop, and frequently drunk. Annie, while ebullient on stage, was frugal and reserved in private, so modest that she even requested a female embalmer. Necessary for their success were the services of a competent manager and press agent as the Show employed over 500 people and carried hundreds of animals with them. At one time their manager was James Bailey of Barnum and Bailey fame. Complete with 16 pages of black and white photos "The Colonel and Little Missie" is a fascinating chronicle of American history and an unlikely partnership that brought fame and fortune to both. - Gail Cooke