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Special Features The Community Players present
Chapter 1 Just when you thought you’d seen the limits of marksmanship, Annie Oakley would prove you wrong. Annie Oakley was a 5-foot-tall, 110-pound athlete. She could shoot targets while standing on the back of a galloping horse. She could shoot a dime tossed in midair from 90 feet, or from between a man’s fingers. She could shoot the flames off candles as they spun around a rotating wheel. She shot cigarettes from her husband's mouth and potatoes from her dogs' heads. With the thin edge of a playing card facing her at 90 feet, Annie could hit the card and puncture it with five or six more shots as it settled to the ground. She could shoot while standing on her head, or backward, looking into a handheld mirror. When other shooting acts duplicated the mirror shooting, Annie topped them by using the reflection in her bowie knife. Anything they could do, she could do better.
Chapter 2 We still say it: “It’s all about making connections.” Annie’s self-employment as a wildlife sharpshooter not only paid off the family debt, but made her an important contact: Mr. Jack Frost. Frost was a hotel owner in Cincinnati, where Annie sold her quail and pheasant catches. He invited her to participate in a sharpshooting contest against a “feller” by the name of Frank Butler. Annie hit 25 out of 25 targets, while Butler missed one. Butler lost that time, but eventually he “won the whole shooting match.” He and Annie starting courtin’, and were married in 1876.
Chapter 3 Through the dust rode the horsemen of the Pony Express. Through the burning deserts of summer and the unforgiving blizzards of winter; through brutal terrain, Indian attacks, and self-doubt and fear, the Pony Express riders rode on. The Pony Express postal business was started by William Hepburn Russell in 1860. This enticing ad for his mailmen reportedly ran in a California newspaper: "Wanted. Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred." One of the original riders was a 15-year-old named William F. Cody, later to be known as Buffalo Bill. It was the Wild West of the middle 1800s. Indians, cowboys and settlers battled for the land that would one day be called America. Pony Express riders were taught to “run, not fight.” They had to travel light and fast. Their ponies were swift; if one wasn’t swift enough, the rider would die. Letters had to be written on the thinnest paper possible to lighten the load. It cost 10 dollars to send a 1-ounce letter.
Chapter 4 In 1883, William F. Cody capitalized on his fame by organizing Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. With himself as the star, and with other talented marksmen and riders, such as Annie Oakley and (very briefly) Chief Sitting Bull, the show toured America and Europe. The Wild West Show presented heroic cowboys and villainous horse-riding Plains Indians re-creating shootouts, stagecoach attacks and other battles. Cody's production was the first of many numerous Wild West shows that became the inspiration for film Westerns of a later era. In its heyday, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was a huge financial success. It finally met its end in 1913 because of mismanagement and financial difficulties.
Chapter 5 The musicians, 27 of them by all accounts, wore wide brimmed hats, chaps, western boots, long-sleved shirts and studded holsters. It's unlikely that any of them had ever rounded up cattle or shot someone, but they dressed the part. William Sweeney, leader of the Cowboy Band, wrote or arranged all the band's tunes. Their music was an indispensable element of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, accompanying the performers, filling in "dead spots" between acts and charging up the audience. The band smoothed the often rough or unfamiliar edges of folk, ragtime, Indian and other music to make it culturally acceptable and thrilling to the millions of people they played for in America and Europe. Fifty years before it became the national anthem of the United States, The Wild West Show's Cowboy Band opened every show with "The Star Spangled Banner."
Chapter 6 Part of Annie's sharpshooting routine was the "Ace of Hearts" trick. Frank Butler would hold up the playing card and Annie would shoot the heart out of the centre. The stunt was a sure crowd-pleaser. It also created the expression "an Annie Oakley," meaning a free ticket. In those days a complimentary ticket was identified by the holes punched in it. Did oyu personally pay for your ticket today? If it was a gift, then you received and Annie Oakley.
Chapter 7 "He was the simplest of me, as comfortable with cowboys as with kings." William Cody's reputation as a frontiersman we truly earned, in spite of the eventual commercialization of his story. A the height of the Plains Indians Wars in the 1870's he was a respected scout for the U.S. Fifth Army, becoming one of only four civilian scouts to win the Congressional Medal of Honor (although the awarding of a military medal to a civilian was controversial at the time). In part to improve the public image of the Army, Buffalo bill would act as a scout on the hunting expeditions for international dignitaries, such as the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia. These excursions were full-scale press events, glamourizing both the military and Cody. By the turn of the 20th century, William F. Cody was reputed to be the most famous American in the world. He symbolized the Wild West for Americans and Europeans, and was consulted on western matters by every American president from Ulysses S. Grant to Woodrow Wilson. He was honoured by royalty, praised by military leaders and feted by business tycoons. In a time before television, telephones or the Internet, becoming world-renowned was a world-class feat indeed!
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