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| Directed by: Riva Freifeld |
Original Broadcast Date: 2006
DVD Release: 2006
Released by: PBS Home VideoDolby
Digital 2.0 stereo
Widescreen |
Oh, to see Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show
circa 1880, a spectacle of cowboys, Indians, horses, stagecoaches, and a five-foot-tall
female sharpshooter born Annie Moses but better known as Annie Oakley. In the late 1800s,
shooting was immensely popular, a gun being the symbol of personal independence. Shooting
well was an especially prized skill, and there was no more renowned crack shot than
Oakley, her small physical stature and ladylike demeanor drawing admirers from all
classes, including royalty.
She was an Ohio-born Quaker who was sent away as a child so
there would be one less mouth to feed. This instilled in her a determination that
transcended circumstances and gender. She shot against male sharpshooters and beat them,
eventually marrying one of those she bettered. She was wrongly smeared in the press, and
she sued over 50 newspapers to get her good name back. She performed all over the US, in
London for Queen Victoria, and in Paris. She even upstaged the Columbian Exposition of
1893.
Annie Oakley is an ideal subject for the PBS series The
American Experience. She was a product of her time who was also ahead of her time.
Through period photographs and posters and some early film footage, Oakley comes to life,
not just because of her prowess with a gun, but also her abiding relationship with her
husband, Frank Butler, and the way she always knew, and demanded, what she was worth, not
unlike professional athletes 100 years later. Some of the most interesting images are from
very early film footage of Oakley shooting, with the grandstands always filled. The DVD's
image is filmlike -- saturated with color and soft around the edges. The only extra is a
very small gallery of posters for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, a pity given the
historical significance of the film's subject.
As America industrialized, the West captured the country's
imagination, making lawmen and gunfighters famous, even if the stories told about them
were more tall tale than truth. But as one of the experts in the film proclaims, Oakley
"had to be real, because you couldn't create her." She was the first American
woman to become a superstar. |
