The California Gold Rush. The very words evoked the strong reaction of an American populace driven by adventure and a lust for easy riches. Drawn inexorably west in the wake of the Jan. 24, 1848, strike at Sutter’s Mill were argonauts from every walk of life—shopkeepers, former soldiers, fallen women and those willing to parade their talents onstage for bemused hardscrabble miners. Among the latter was the Robinson Family, a husband-and-wife acting duo with four kids in tow. The youngest of the brood would become one of the most celebrated performers in the annals of Victorian theater in the American West. With her onstage portrayals Sue Robinson brought to a viewing public the humor, angst and subtle realities of everyday life in that time and place.

The “Fairy Star”

Born in suburban Chicago on Jan. 14, 1845, Robinson moved west at age 6 with her parents and siblings, who were soon performing for Gold Rush audiences composed primarily of young men starved of family life. The Robinson Family trouped the length and breadth of the mother lode settlements, from northernmost Georgetown south through Coloma, Angels Camp, Murphys and countless other hamlets since lost to history, their names—Bottle Hill, Poverty Bar, Limerick, etc.—reflecting both the struggles and humor of the era.

The touring life held little of the perceived glamour of the entertainment world. On July 4, 1855, the Robinsons found themselves performing atop a giant sequoia stump for a raucous crowd in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Three years later the family drew such a throng to Poverty Bar’s Treadway Hall that its main stringer and floor joists gave way. Even when performances fell short of expectations, Sue in particular garnered flattering notices from the various camp presses, which regularly lauded her as the “jewel” of the family troupe. One reporter ascribed her popularity to a combination of factors:

“She is only 8 years old, yet she appeared to understand all the fascinating qualities of her sex of a more experienced age. This in connection with her sprightly and graceful dancing, as well as her natural beauty and sweet disposition, is sufficient not only to make her a favorite among us, but also to endear her to the hearts of all with whom she is acquainted.”

Recognizing the appealing innocence of their star attraction, Sue’s parents billed her alternately as the “Fairy Star” or “La Petite Susan.” Yet, the endless trouping in the rough-hewn mining camps scarred the young girl’s psyche. At age 8 she was severely injured while exiting a stage in Grass Valley when she brushed past the open flame of a footlight and caught her clothes on fire. Rushing to her rescue, her parents themselves were scorched in the effort. Fortunate to have survived, the Fairy Star was soon back onstage, though from then on she was prone to fleeing the stage at the mere hint of trouble.

From an early age the youngest Robinson recognized the importance even a few coins could mean to the survival of her struggling theatrical family. One evening, as she completed the Scotch lilt for an appreciative audience of Placerville miners, the men showered the stage with coins. Ignoring a bouquet of flowers thrown to her, Sue didn’t exit till she had retrieved every last coin, even filling her shoes with them.

The multitalented young girl’s singing embraced everything from sentimental ballads to grand opera, while her dance specialties included jigs, flings, clogs, the cancan, “La Cachucha” (performed with castanets), “Fisher’s Hornpipe” and a double “Sailor’s Hornpipe” performed with older brother Billy. Among her most popular numbers was a burlesque of Irish dancer and actress Lola Montez, who had reportedly taught both Sue and contemporary child star Lotta Crabtree the infamous Spider Dance, during which Montez would writhe and cavort to rid her flimsy costume of spiders, to the delight of appreciative male audiences.

Tragedy and a Rivalry

Sue was only 10 when her mother fell ill and died on Aug. 22, 1855, while on tour in Diamond Springs, sending the family fortunes into a tailspin. Economic uncertainty was and remains a stressor in the acting profession, but his wife’s death pressured Joseph Robinson to take dire measures to provide for his children. In addition to trying his hand at theater management, Sue’s father opened a dance school in Sacramento, advertising his daughters, “La Petite Susan” and Josephine, as potential dancing partners for gentlemen customers. As survival took precedence over propriety, father Robinson—characterized by one period newspaper as a peripatetic “bilk,” a Victorian-era term for an untrustworthy individual—appears to have abandoned any feelings of paternal responsibility for his daughters’ welfare.

Another formative factor in Sue’s childhood was an ongoing, unspoken competition with Crabtree, who rose to become a nationally known actress and variety star. Both girls experienced insecure childhoods spent relentlessly touring the mining settlements to perform before mostly male audiences. They occasionally crossed paths. Sue played the hand organ in a troupe that supported Lotta’s first professional performance, and in the mid-1850s Robinson performed in a saloon opposite Crabtree in a neighboring saloon. In a painful memory for Sue, the miners abandoned her performance, crossing the street en masse to watch the charismatic, slightly younger Lotta. Dressed in green and wielding a miniature shillelagh onstage, Lotta became the darling of the newly immigrant Irish then fueling the labor force in the camps.

While both girls learned the basics of stage presence, Robinson struggled with less emotional and financial support than that afforded the more celebrated Crabtree. The disparity prompted one contemporary actor to remark that had Sue been given proper theatrical training, she would have equaled any other actress of the time. Yet, the multitalented Robinson persisted in the face of adversity. Celebrated as a “child of extraordinary promise,” she sang, danced, played the banjo and, as she matured, excelled in the genteel comedy pieces and farces that followed the featured melodramas. By age 14 Sue was receiving top billing in show posters promoting the Robinson Family.

Growing Celebrity

In 1859, after remarrying a captivating performer scarcely 10 years older than his oldest child, Joseph Robinson moved his family to the Pacific Northwest, where recent gold discoveries augured a new gold rush. Playing their way through Oregon and Washington by 1860, the family spent a year in Victoria, British Columbia, headquartered in a building Joseph leased and converted into a theater. Trouping back to Portland, Sue appeared onstage with the handsome Frank Mayo, a regional actor and comedian who went on to national fame. Like Sue, he had come West as a young hopeful during the gold rush.

In some ways Sue’s life was typical for a member of an acting family prone to chasing the next theatrical opportunity and dollar. Generally ostracized from polite society, actors were clannishly protective of their own. On May 4, 1862, 17-year-old Robinson married fellow thespian Charles Getzler in Walla Walla, Wash., where she soon gave birth to Edward, the first of their two sons. Though Getzler was 12 years Sue’s senior and not her first love, he professed his adoration for her. Seeking stability and a parental figure to help assuage both the loss of her mother and her father’s veiled exploitation, Robinson almost certainly hoped for a stable married life. Sadly, it was not to be. Much as the Fairy Star had been the breadwinner for her vagabond gold camp family, so Sue shouldered the support of her husband and boys as a young adult.

Complicating matters was her growing status as a celebrity, which carried its own perils. A few months into the couple’s marriage a smitten theater patron approached their home, threatening to kidnap Sue. As Charles wrestled the deranged fan to the ground, a concealed gun in the man’s clothing discharged, killing the would-be kidnapper. On another occasion, when fistfights and gunshots erupted in a theater audience composed of enamored Union soldiers and citizens desiring decorum, a panicked Sue ran offstage. “Susie never seemed quite the same afterward,” recalled one eyewitness to the fray. “A slight commotion in the audience would attract her attention in the midst of her best song, and in her best play she always looked as though she was just a little afraid someone was going to shoot.” That nervous strain hovered just beneath the surface. When an earthquake struck during a performance of The Soldier’s Bride at Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, Nev., Sue bolted from the stage, only returning when the aftershocks had subsided. The tremulous quality of her closing song betrayed her lingering fear.

In her best moments, absent such disruptions, Robinson exuded a calm, professional demeanor—quiet by theatrical standards. Feeling more comfortable onstage than off, her pursuit of acting as an adult after a childhood spent before the footlights was her most logical, if not only, career choice. Empowered by her celebrity status and the ability to earn a living, Sue continued performing even after marriage and the birth of sons Edward and Frederick. As a dramatic actress she often executed men’s “breeches” roles, perceived in that time and place as both sensational and erotic. Clearly, Robinson didn’t feel hemmed in by conventional gender boundaries.

For Victorian-era actresses the theater was a paradox. By entering what was traditionally a male space, they breached societal norms, a transgression that discredited their work. Yet, the theater was a place where women could earn an income equal to that of a man and maintain a degree of autonomy over their lives. The theater also had the power to overturn prevailing gender stereotypes that bound women to domesticity, keeping them indoors, protected, frail and helpless.

Stardom in San Francisco

Sincerity was a hallmark of Victorian ideology, and Robinson’s realistic acting—deemed “finished, truthful and good” by one critic—continued to reap positive reviews. Another critic found the “young but promising actress possessed of far more real talent than many who are lauded before the public as stars of the first magnitude.” Though the charismatic Crabtree had outshone Robinson in childhood, Lotta never grew beyond the song and dance routines that were her bread and butter. Sue attained a higher level of recognition as a legitimate actress in classic dramatic roles opposite the leading male actors of the day.

During her tireless theatrical career Robinson is thought to have played more than 300 different roles and performed before tens of thousands of people. Her first stage appearance in the growing entertainment mecca of San Francisco was at the Union Theater in 1855. Sue was praised for her Ophelia, played opposite the Hamlets of Lawrence Barrett, John McCullough and Edwin Adams, three of the era’s best tragedians. She appeared for almost two seasons as Sacramento’s leading lady, executing Desdemona, Lady Macbeth and Portia in other Shakespearean plays, as well as comedies, melodramas and farce. In December 1868 Sue accepted a one-year contract with Maguire’s Opera House in San Francisco, and by the early 1870s she was regarded as one of the best, if not the best, comedic actresses in the West.

Still, mainstream Victorian mores inevitably seeped into the life of the successful, assertive actress, who was often billed under her husband’s last name. Getzler accompanied his career wife to San Francisco, where in 1869 a domestic dispute led to violence. A year later she filed for divorce. Sue’s accolades may have threatened the insecure, underperforming Charles, whose job as saloonman also may have contributed to alcohol abuse. The divorce papers charged that “without cause or prevarication…he committed a violent assault and battery…by beating and bruising her severely, telling her at the same time that she was only a thing to use for his own convenience.” In colorful testimony Getzler accused Sue of being unchaste, called her a “bitch and strumpet” and insisted “all actresses are whores.” In an era when courts weighed a woman’s chastity, the judge accepted his assertion the couple’s younger son, Frederick, was not his and split custody. Sue kept Frederick, Charles kept Edward.

On the Move

After the divorce, though the loss of the companionship of son Edward grieved her, Sue continued to tour with her own theatrical company. Three women and five men constituted the Sue Robinson Company, which closed its run in Virginia City, packed up a mud wagon and pushed on to Reno. Actors were challenged to find paying customers, and the quest kept them constantly on the move. A ticket speculator in Reno charged theatergoers 75 cents to take in Robinson’s performances and pocketed a tidy profit, while the troupe lost money on the deal, having covered the hall rental. After performances in Truckee and Dutch Flat, Calif., the troupe performed on dusty stages in gold rush towns long past their heyday, out of necessity skipping town with unpaid hotel bills.

The company’s luck changed in North San Juan, a Sierra Nevada hydraulic mining camp where Sue had performed as a child 12 years before. On July 4, 1870, the day of the troupe’s arrival, the settlement suffered a devastating fire. Without hesitation, two of Robinson’s leading men manned a fire hose from the vantage of the hotel roof. Thanks in part to their efforts, the blaze was confined to a small section of town, and that night the company’s performance of Camille set a new theater attendance record in North San Juan. Grateful townsfolk rewarded the troupe with several ovations and curtain calls.

Though Robinson reportedly earned more than $80,000 ($1.5 million in today’s dollars) in the 1860s—largely while touring through Washington, Oregon and Idaho—and though she had announced her retirement on several occasions, each time she was compelled to return to the stage in support of her family. One biographer blamed her “worthless” husband for having forfeited her earnings on faro tables across the West. When not touring, Sue performed menial labor to supplement the family income.

According to friends, such persistent financial concerns, coupled with overwork and continued threats by Getzler that she’d never again see son Edward, contributed to her decline in the summer of 1871. Uncharacteristically, Sue canceled several performances, calling in sick. In early June her vindictive ex-husband sent her sheet music to a song entitled “You’ll Never See Your Boy Again.” Whether the sentiments of the lyrics pushed her over the edge is uncertain. Regardless, on June 17 Robinson succumbed to an unspecified illness while on tour in Sacramento. The epitaph on her tombstone in that town’s New Helvetia Cemetery reads, A fallen rose, the fairest, sweetest but most transient of all the lovely sisterhood, suggesting the fleeting nature of the acting profession and the ephemeral status of the characters she’d portrayed onstage.

Sue’s career had been in ascendance, as she had recently agreed to appear as leading lady at McVicker’s Theater in Chicago, one of the nation’s leading playhouses. Though just 26 at the time of her death, she had already spent 20 years in show business, her career having paralleled the glory years of economic prosperity with professional highs before appreciative audiences.

“Not All Sunshine”

Much of Sue Robinson’s life has been lost to the greater drama of the California Gold Rush and its substantial effect on the settlement of the American West. Forced into a performing life by her parents, she made the best of her significant talents, as both a child entertainer and as a stellar adult comedic and dramatic talent. Her early theatricalities before rough, mostly male audiences provided them welcome respite amid dangerous, demanding lives. She was rewarded with a successful career. Fittingly, her last role was in a play called Ambition, an emotion that had driven her to persist through many trials and setbacks.

Ironically, in their time the Old West figures that today capture the lion’s share of popular interest seldom captured headlines beyond their immediate locales, while the popular actors of the Victorian era were familiar to untold thousands nationwide. The male and female celebrities of their day, such performers informed behavior, fashion, society and politics. Robinson herself often starred in melodramas steeped in morality and devoted to the Irish experience, thus helping homesick immigrants deal with the realities of a new world. Her dramatic choices underscored her fame, earning her the adoration of audience members, though on occasion the latter’s emotions got the better of them. For example, years after Robinson’s death a deranged fan, still distraught over the loss of the cultural icon, tried to dig up her grave in the New Helvetia Cemetery.

Among Robinson’s many mourners was Gold Hill News editor Alf Doten, an ardent fan and returning audience member for many of Sue’s Virginia City performances, who in his notice of her death correctly surmised, “Her path through life was not all sunshine.” On learning of her death, Doten rushed to a local photographer’s studio to purchase three pictures he’d taken of Sue, taking comfort in the images of the actress he’d admired from the flip side of the footlights. His gesture was a fitting tribute to a woman who had been thrust into the challenging life of a performer in the American West and risen to the top of her profession.

California-based writer Carolyn Grattan Eichin adapted this article from her 2020 book From San Francisco Eastward: Victorian Theater in the American West. For further reading Eichin also recommends Troupers of the Gold Coast: The Rise of Lotta Crabtree, by Constance Rourke.

Originally published in the Spring 2024 issue of Wild West magazine.

Fresh from robbing the Deadwood Stagecoach, the Sioux performers of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West changed into loose-fitting Chinese garb and attached long single braids to the backs of their heads, mimicking the clothing and hairstyle of the Boxers then rebelling halfway around the world. Thus was the stage set for the “Western Easterners” to man a wall and defend their position against U.S. Army re-enactors in a scene played out in Cody’s “Rescue at Pekin.”

Pittsburgh was the host city this day in late May 1901, and the big-city crowd did not disappoint. As the action unfolded, spectators stomped their feet so hard as to send vibrations through the grandstand. During the climactic scene, as the Army re-enactors scaled the artificial wall, the jingoistic roar from audience members swelled to ear-throbbing intensity, and they surged over the railings to join performers on the arena floor.

The drama depicted actual events of the ongoing 1899–1901 Boxer Rebellion. Emerging as a violent response to increasing foreign incursion into China, the Boxers (nicknamed for their martial arts skills, though officially known as the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists) sought to eradicate all signs of modern progress (railroads, telegraph lines, etc.) and called for the liquidaton of foreigners, particularly Christian missionaries (and their Chinese converts).

On June 20, 1900, the Boxers besieged foreign embassies in the Legation Quarter of Peking (present-day Beijing), trapping within its walls nearly 500 foreign civilians, 400 military personnel and 3,000 Chinese Christians. Fifty-five days into the siege eight nations, including the United States, sent some 20,000 soldiers to relieve the siege. In battle that August 14 and 15 they defeated the Boxers and then divided the capital city into occupation zones, sending occasional punitive forays into the countryside. Not until Sept. 7, 1901, did representatives of the allied nations and China’s Qing empire sign the Boxer Protocol, officially ending the rebellion.

Ever the savvy showman, Cody was quick to draw a correlation between the Boxers and American Indians. As the rebels had resisted foreign incursion, he reasoned, so Plains Indians had resisted the westward tide of Anglo settlement, cutting telegraph lines, attacking railroad crews and battling U.S. soldiers. Fueled by superstitious ideology, the Boxers believed they could induce spirits to enter their bodies and render them invulnerable to bullets, much like Plains Indian adherents of the “Ghost Dance” movement believed their ceremonial shirts would protect them. The latter movement ended in tragedy on Dec. 29, 1890, with the battle turned massacre at Wounded Knee, S.D., all but ending the American Indian wars.

Buffalo Bill was a stickler for the authentic, wherever possible employing real soldiers, cowboys and Indians performing with real weapons. But as he had no access to real Boxers, the duty fell to those Sioux already in Cody’s employ. They were perfect for the role, one New York Sun reporter quipped, as they were “used to dying” in each show. “They die in the cowboy battles about the emigrant wagon, and they die again in the chase of the Deadwood coach,” he wrote. “They made no objection to…dying the death of Boxers this year.” A New York Evening Sun reporter noted, tongue in cheek, “Some of them seemed a little ill at ease in their Chinese makeup, but they kept themselves entirely in the landscape, positively refused to scalp a single member of the allied forces and never even indulged in so much as the ghost of a war whoop.”

American Indians had long featured in promotions for the Wild West, which urged potential ticket buyers to come see the “horde of warpainted Arapaho, Cheyenne and Sioux Indians” (though after convincing the infamous Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull to tour with him in 1885, Cody had hired only Sioux from the Pine Ridge Agency). Why did Plains Indians who had violently resisted “foreign incursion” agree to perform in the Wild West shows? For starters, those working for Buffalo Bill earned a decent wage, while employment prospects on and around the reservations were limited. In addition, room, board and travel were free. Finally, performers’ immediate families were welcome to join them on tour.

In the fall of 1900, drawn like so many Americans by the dramatic events in China, Cody proposed to his theatrical manager, Nate Salsbury, that they incorporate a reenactment of the allied victory over the Boxers in the forthcoming season of the Wild West. The pair put their heads together and came up with “The Rescue at Pekin.”

On April 2, 1901, opening night, they debuted the Chinese-themed spectacle at New York’s Madison Square Garden. After a fortnight’s run Cody took the show on the road, and by the time the season wrapped in late October the troupe had performed in arenas from upstate New York to the South and across much of the Midwest. In 1902, with few changes to the program, Cody and company performed for audiences in the Western half of the country.

The twice-daily shows were an enormous draw, attracting on average some 20,000 to 30,000 patrons, not counting those turned away at the gate. The audience often exceeded the population of the host cities, as people from surrounding areas packed the stands. The June 4 edition of Pennsylvania’s Reading Herald reported that crowds began to gather in the early morning, by showtime transforming into a “great huddled mass.”

As the battle between the Boxers and the soldiers marked the grand finale of each performance, Cody and Salsbury spared no expense. “It was indeed an enormous and costly undertaking,” author John R. Haddad writes, “requiring 100 horses, large amounts of gunpowder and explosives, the latest in cannons and firearms, and of course the massive wall of Peking that loomed majestically over one end of the arena.” The cast alone, including the braided Sioux “Boxers,” numbered 500.

The performance lacked for nothing. Whether it was authentically cast or accurate in every detail was beside the point. Cody and company were, above all else, entertainers, and whether clad in Western buckskins or Chinese silks, they seldom disappointed the huddled masses. 

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of Wild West magazine.

To the disbelief of gaping onlookers in the packed stands at El Toreo, Mexico City’s largest bullring, American rodeo performer Bill Pickett clung to the horns of a massive Mexican bull ironically named Frijoles Chiquitos (“Little Beans”). Watching from a safe distance in the saddle atop jittery horses were cowhand Vester Pegg and siblings Joe and Zack Miller, proprietors of the Miller Bros. 101 Ranch Real Wild West. Matadors, including the famed Manuel Mejíjas Luján (aka “Bienvenida”), also stood by as Bill grappled with the snorting, gyrating wild beast, which Mexican and Spanish bullfighters alike typically fought from a more dignified distance. Funny thing is, Pickett wasn’t even supposed to be there. Days earlier he’d been working one of the Miller family ranches back in Oklahoma.

It was early December 1908, and the Real Wild West had come off a grueling tour of the United States. Instead of heading home to lick their wounds, however, Joe and Zack Miller took the show south of the border. Though still two years from the onset of the Mexican Revolution, that southern neighbor was already in turmoil. The troupe endured several intrusive (and costly in bribes) searches by customs officials before arriving in Mexico City on December 11. The streets of the heavily populated capital were clogged with Roman Catholic pilgrims preparing for the next day’s Our Lady of Guadalupe observance, marking the 1531 visions of the Virgin Mary to believers in that Mexican city. The observance also marked the start of the show’s two-week run at the circus arena in Porfirio Díaz Park.

Low attendance and gouging fines for Pickett’s failure to appear, though “The Dusky Demon” was prominently featured in advertisements, led Joe to telegram brother George, back at the 101 Ranch, with instructions to have Pickett travel down by train immediately. Shortly after the bulldogger arrived and began performing, Joe and the show’s press agent, W.C. Thompson, stopped in at the Café Colón, a popular eatery among matadors and local reporters, where Joe hoped to gin up publicity for the show. When a table of matadors directed their laughter at the gringos, Joe asked what they found so humorous. They told him they had attended the show that afternoon and were unimpressed with Pickett’s antics in the ring, comparing him to a novice bullfighter. An indignant Miller challenged them on the spot to go toe to toe with Pickett in a bulldogging event. On behalf of the group, Bienvenida accepted and agreed to show up at the circus arena at 10 the next morning. But neither he nor any other matador took up the challenge, claiming the arena promoters forbade them from taking any such foolish risk.

After several days of verbal exchanges, challenges and braying newspaper ads, Miller bet the arena promoters Pickett could remain alone in the ring for 15 minutes with their fiercest fighting bull and spend at least five minutes of that time grappling barehanded with the beast, wrestling it to the ground if possible. If Pickett succeeded, the Millers would collect the gate receipts for the day. Joe also made a 5,000-peso side bet. The publicity from his wager and newspaper coverage led promoters to move the bulldogging spectacle, scheduled for December 23, to the far larger El Toreo. Within days Mexico City’s largest venue had sold out.

On the afternoon of the 23rd Pickett trotted into the arena atop his favorite horse, Spradley, to a cacophony of cheers, boos and hisses from an estimated 25,000 onlookers. As the blare of the opening trumpets faded, the gate to the corrals swung wide, and Frijoles Chiquitos stormed into the ring. When the bull saw Pickett and raced across the arena toward him, Bill saw right off that his terrified hazers would be of no use.

Steering Spradley in close to Frijoles Chiquitos, Bill sought to maneuver into position to leap on the bull’s bulging neck. Each time the rampaging beast gave them the slip. Suddenly, the bull swung around and charged rider and horse from behind. Spradley could not evade the rush, and one of Frijoles Chiquitos’ horns ripped open the horse’s rump, causing it to stumble. Taking advantage of the distraction, Pickett dove from the saddle. Locking on to the bull’s horns, he wrapped himself around its writhing neck and rode Frijoles Chiquitos as the crowd rose to its feet in anticipation. The bull tried everything it could to free itself of Pickett, to no avail. For several  agonizing minutes it wildly shook its great head, slashing with its horns, as the determined bulldogger clung tight, looking for an opportunity to take the animal to the ground.

Likely bemoaning their decision to bet against the do-or-die Yankee, the crowd turned on Bill and began pelting him with whatever was at hand. Fruit, cushions, rocks, bottles, even bricks rained down from the stands. After taking a rock to the side of his face and a beer bottle to the ribs, a bleeding and dazed Pickett released his iron grip on the raging Frijoles Chiquitos and lay on the arena floor grimacing in pain. Rushing in, his 101 Ranch hazers finally distracted the bull long enough to help Bill to his feet and out of the ring.

The crowd’s delight at Pickett’s failure turned to disappointment on learning he’d made it to the 5-minute mark, thus winning the wager. With his seven and a half minute ride the bulldogger had earned the show a whopping 48,000 pesos (north of $450,000 in today’s dollars), not to mention Joe’s side bet. The day after Christmas the show wrapped up its lucrative run in Mexico City and headed back north. Joe canceled a scheduled show in Gainesville, Texas, and as the train arrived in Bliss, Okla., weary troupe members clapped and cheered at being home. The big payday had helped buffer an otherwise tough financial year, and the show’s future seemed bright.

A Working Ranch

Most Western historians cite 1881 as the year 101 Ranch patriarch Colonel George Washington Miller first seared his brand on cattle. A notorious namesake San Antonio saloon is said to have inspired the brand. Whatever the truth, that first bitter wisp of burnt hide launched a story for the ages, as the 101 was destined to become one of the most recognizable names in both ranching and Western entertainment.

A Kentucky native, Miller fought for the Confederacy in his 20s and moved west after the Civil War, initially settling in southwest Missouri and driving cattle from Texas to the railheads in Kansas. Miller later moved his herds to land leased from the Quapaw tribe in Indian Territory (present-day northeast Oklahoma) while residing just across the border in Baxter Springs, Kan. He cultivated a relationship with the Ponca tribe when it was briefly displaced to the Quapaw Agency. Miller suggested the Poncas settle on land farther west in the Cherokee Outlet. After the federal government forced ranchers out of the outlet in 1893, the Poncas did just that, and Miller leased their land for his operations, setting up headquarters near the tribal hub at New Ponca (renamed Ponca City in 1913). The 101 Ranch ultimately comprised 110,000 acres.

After Miller succumbed to pneumonia in 1903, wife Molly had the ranch turned into a trust, with Joe, Zack and George as equal partners and shareholders. From then on the trio ran the whole shooting match. At the time of their father’s death Joseph Carson Miller was 35 years old, Zachary Taylor Miller 25, and the youngest, George Lee Miller, 21. Each brother developed unique interests and skills, enabling them to divide oversight of the 101 effectively and without rancor. Together they remained focused on realizing their father’s dream to build the nation’s largest and most influential ranch.

The rich soil already grew a range of crops, while livestock included cattle, bison, hogs, poultry and several breeds of horse. The brothers continued to experiment with crops and added an electric plant, a cannery, a dairy, a tannery, a store, a restaurant and several mills. Promoted as the “greatest diversified farm on earth,” the ranch prospered well into the early 20th century.

Of course, oil too played a role. Ernest W. Marland, of Marland Oil Co., spearheaded the search for crude deposits on the family spread and helped form the 101 Ranch Oil Co. That highly successful venture substantially increased the Millers’ profit margin.

All-important downtime served to seed the brothers’ entrance into show business.

What became the Real Wild West had its roots in late summer or early fall 1882 in Winfield, Kan., where Colonel Miller, Mollie and their children had recently moved. Miller and hands had just finished a cattle drive up the Chisolm Trail from Texas. Meanwhile, Winfield city leaders were planning an agricultural fair and wanted entertainment. Miller proposed his cowboys put on a roping and riding exhibition, and the event planners enthusiastically accepted his offer. Miller’s “roundup,” as he called it, proved a roaring success.

The business of running a sprawling ranch intervened, and it wasn’t until 1904, a year after Colonel Miller’s death, that the 101 hosted its next roundup. This time it was the Miller brothers’ brainchild.

That year Joe Miller visited the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Mo. While there he and leading Oklahoma newspapermen met with the board of directors of the National Editorial Association, hoping to convince the board to hold its 1905 convention in Guthrie. To sweeten the pot, Joe told the directors the 101 Ranch would host them and put on a big Wild West show in their honor. The board bit and approved the proposal.

The Millers thought it best to prepare for the 1905 event by holding a roundup in the fall of 1904. Pleased with the enthusiastic turnout, the brothers planned the 1905 roundup, which they grandly dubbed the Oklahoma Gala. Dozens of trains were needed to help transport the more than 65,000 people who attended the elaborate opening parade on June 11. It was the largest crowd yet assembled for an event in Oklahoma.

The June gala ended with a reenactment of a wagon train attack by 300 Indians. Gunfire and bloodcurdling screams rose from the arena floor as wagons caught fire and settlers closed with their assailants in mortal combat. More credulous onlookers feared they were witnessing a real massacre. Then, out of nowhere, a posse of cowboys rode to the rescue, guns blazing. As the act drew to a close, the performers gathered at the center of the arena to a standing ovation. The Miller brothers joined the troupe to bask in the crowd’s appreciation.

Over the next two decades the Millers hosted annual roundups at the 101, seating up to 10,000 spectators in an arena just across from ranch headquarters. The program always included roping, riding and bulldogging, as well as Indian dances and other Western cultural offerings. The brothers employed top cowboys from across the region, and Pickett and other well-known 101 Ranch hands went on to stardom in Hollywood Westerns.

The “Show Business Bug”

Planning for the June 1905 Oklahoma Gala had another unexpected offshoot, for Joe caught the “show business bug” in a big way. Looking ahead to the June gala, he and Zack arranged to have some of their performers join Colonel Zack Mulhall and his touring Western troupe in a series of shows that April at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Appearing before packed houses in one the biggest venues of the era gave the brothers an opportunity to learn the production aspects of a touring show. It also afforded their performers rehearsal time for the upcoming gala. Among the Miller hands appearing at the garden was Will Rogers, then a relative unknown. Indeed, Mulhall initially turned down Rogers, who had to enlist the help of the colonel’s wife, Mary, to secure a spot on the program.

It is ironic, then, that while the Madison Square Garden run proved successful for Mulhall, Rogers benefited all the more from his appearance. The turning point came amid the sixth show when a steer got loose and entered the stands. Thinking quickly, Will lassoed the wayward animal and guided it back to the arena floor, saving the day. The publicity generated by his courage, talent with a lariat and wit prompted a shrewd promoter to offer him a starring role, performing his rope acts solo on vaudeville stages in Manhattan.

Meanwhile, Joe, Zack and their well-rehearsed performers returned to Oklahoma to finish preparations for the gala. Taking a page from Mulhall, the Millers generated a marketing blitz, published in newspapers and spread through contacts nationwide, describing what attendees could expect on June 11. The lineup included bulldogger Pickett, trick rider Lucille Mulhall (the colonel’s daughter), expert horseman and crack shot Tom Mix and a supporting cast of almost a thousand performers, many from the local Ponca and Otoe tribes.

The 101 Real Wild West was one step from becoming one of the most popular traveling Western entertainment troupes of its era.

Taking the Show on the Road

Encouraged by their successful 1905 gala, and at the urging of Oklahoma neighbor Gordon W. “Pawnee Bill” Lillie—who’d already made a name for himself as the founder and proprietor of Pawnee Bill’s Wild West—the Millers took their show on the road full time in 1907. Favorable publicity from an early run in Kansas City, Mo., caught the notice of Theodore Roosevelt. The “Cowboy President” was already acquainted with the Millers from prior visits to their ranch. (On his invitation Mix had ridden in the president’s 1905 inaugural parade alongside Roosevelt’s Spanish-American War “Rough Riders,” sparking a rumor the 101 Ranch hand had been a Rough Rider himself.) Roosevelt persuaded the Millers to bring their show to Norfolk, Va., as part of the Jamestown Exposition. At the close of that 100-day run the exposition promoters helped land the Real Wild West a two-week run at the Chicago Coliseum. The publicity from 1907 led to the busy but grueling 1908 tour, starting at Brighton Beach, N.Y. Through 1916 the Millers and their performers were at the top of their game as crowds grew ever bigger, drawn by a spreading fascination with cowboys, Indians and all things Western.

In 1916 the Millers merged their production with Cody’s arena show and toured as Buffalo Bill (Himself) & the 101 Ranch Wild West Combined, though the nation’s growing involvement in World War I put the tour on hold later that year. Cody died soon after, on Jan. 10, 1917. Going back on the road in 1925, the Real Wild West toured throughout the United States and abroad, traveling to Mexico, Canada, Europe and South America.

Through the 1920s, however, the 101 Ranch Real Wild West, Pawnee Bill’s Wild West and other touring shows drew ever smaller crowds, leading to severe financial losses. By then such productions faced stiff competition from the film industry, as well as proliferating circuses and rodeos. Making matters worse for the Real Wild West, Joe Miller died in 1927, followed two years later by the death of brother George. Then came the Great Depression, which drastically cut into profits from the ranch and show. Zack alone could not pull the operation out of its tailspin, and in 1931 the 101 Ranch and its associated businesses went into receivership. A year later much of the land was divided and leased, and authorities auctioned everything of value to cover debts. On Jan. 3, 1952, a nearly destitute Zack Miller died.      

Today one may visit the site of the ranch headquarters, though all that’s left are a few weathered buildings, the foundation of the Miller home (known in its prime as the “White House”) and a few historical markers describing what once was. An excellent nonprofit named the 101 Ranch Old Timers Association continues its work to keep the ranch and show legacy alive. Its members support a wonderful museum housed within oilman E.W. Marland’s Grand Home in Ponca City and host annual events and tours for the public. And so the show goes on.

New Mexico–based E. Joe Brown is an award-winning author of novels, short stories and memoirs. For further reading he recommends The Real Wild West: The 101 Ranch and the Creation of the American West, by Michael Wallis, and The 101 Ranch, by Ellsworth Collings and Alma Miller England.

This article was originally published in the Spring 2024 issue of Wild West.

To this day virtually everyone in the United States has heard of William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Even those not expert or passionate about the Western frontier era recognize him as one of the most iconic figures of American history. Buffalo Bill also remains fairly well known throughout Europe, for the Iowa-born scout turned showman extraordinaire brought his Wild West across the Atlantic Ocean eight times—four times between 1887 and ’92, and four more between 1902 and ’06. In arenas across the Old World honored guests and paying patrons alike filled the stands to thrill at buckskinned cowboys taming wild horses, warbonneted Indians attacking stagecoaches, soldiers on horseback waging mock battles, and eagle-eyed women and men showing off their shooting prowess. Among the countries to embrace Cody was Italy.

Judging by period newspapers, photographs and the surviving statements of spectators, quite a few cities on the Italian Peninsula were afflicted by “fever of the West.” Buffalo Bill’s Wild West came to Italy twice—during his second European tour, in 1890, and during his third European tour, in 1906. The first time his caravan of wagons bearing hundreds of employees and animals made just six stops. Popular demand swelled the second tour to 119 performances in 37 towns. The basic ticket cost 2 lire, or slightly less than $11 in today’s currency. For the best seats one paid 8 lire, or about $45, not a paltry amount. Most venues hosted two shows a day—one in the late morning, another in the evening. Seldom was there an empty seat in the house.

On its first Italian tour Buffalo Bill’s Wild West debuted in Naples on Jan. 26, 1890, for a 22-day run. Journalists were astounded at the appearance of Indians who until very recently had been at war. “That which may seem to the everyday Neapolitan to be a kind of game, an idle display of skill,” one Neapolitan newspaper wrote with a flourish, “is nothing less than a common necessity of everyday life in a country where acrobatic agility, boundless audacity and prowess are conditions for survival.”

The highlight of the tour was the 18-day run in Rome, the “Eternal City,” ancient capital of Italy. Its leading citizens welcomed Cody into the most elegant salons, where he impressed with his gentlemanly manners and “romantic grace.” He set up camp in the Roman meadows, near Vatican City, after reportedly declaring the crumbling Colosseum unfit for his show. Vatican authorities initially rejected Buffalo Bill’s request for an audience with Pope Leo XIII, as his entourage was too large. The showman offered concessions, and on March 3 he and a handful of select employees and performers were granted entrance to the Sistine Chapel and met the pope.

An article in the next morning’s New York Herald described the meeting as “one of the strangest spectacles ever seen within the venerable walls of the Vatican,” adding it took place “in the midst of the scene of supreme splendor, crowded with the old Roman aristocracy and surrounded with the walls immortalized by Michelangelo and Raphael.” American Indians with painted faces, clad in blankets and feathers and carrying tomahawks and knives, must have been an engaging if disconcerting sight as they knelt and made the sign of the cross while the pope blessed them. The newspapers presented Cody’s Indian performers, most of whom were Catholic, as “civilized,” though one Sioux woman reportedly fainted from the excitement as the “medicine man sent by the Great Spirit” passed by. Other accounts had one of the Sioux greeting the pope with a war whoop, kneeling to receive the blessing and then rising again with a whoop, enough to either “make the pope slightly pale” or “wrest an intrigued smile from him.” The parties then exchanged gifts. Buffalo Bill presented Leo a bouquet and a garland of flowers mirroring his coat of arms, while the pope gave Cody rosaries and medals bearing his pontificate. Leo’s gifts may have had the desired effect, as on Jan. 9, 1917, the day before his own death, Buffalo Bill converted to Catholicism.

“It has been a much greater success than we had hoped for,” Cody said of the stopover in the capital. “They said they had not had so great excitement in Rome since the days of Titus.”

On March 12 the Wild West began an eight-day run in Florence, where, despite poor weather, ticket holders from towns as widely scattered as Sienna, Empoli, Livorno, Pisa, Pontassieve, Prato and Pistoia packed the amphitheater. The show also hit Bologna, Milan and Verona. One day in mid-April Buffalo Bill and his top billing sharpshooter, Annie “Little Sure Shot” Oakley, hired a carriage and went to Venice, where an uncharacteristically nervous Oakley balked at riding a gondola. An Indian remained ashore with her as a bodyguard while Cody and others hopped aboard to take in such timeless sights as the 11th century St. Mark’s Basilica (a cathedral housing the remains of the namesake evangelist and gospel writer) and the 14th century Doge’s Palace (a onetime residence for the dukes who ruled Venice between 726 and 1797 and whom Cody compared anachronistically to U.S. presidents). Back ashore the reunited party ate fried fish.

After performing in Paris in 1905, Cody’s globe-trotting show, rebranded as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West & Congress of Rough Riders of the World, opened its second Italian tour in Genoa on March 14, 1906. Other tour stops included Rome, Florence, Milan, Naples, Bologna, Turin, Livorno, Pisa, Parma, Ravenna, Verona, Como and two dozen other towns. For one day only, April 27, the troupe performed in Asti, this author’s small hometown. The tour closed May 11 in Udine (some may argue for Trieste four days later, but that Italian town on the far northeastern border was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until 1918).

Promoters in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast of northern Italy, put up a massive poster to advertise the show’s April 11 tour stop. It worked like a charm, drawing a crowd of more than 10,000 to the two-hour performance. On April 21 the show stopped in the Piedmontese town of Alessandria, again bringing a flood of spectators eager to see the drama of the American frontier come to life. Though Alessandria’s population numbered just 7,000, the two Saturday shows packed the stands with 30,000 ticket holders.

Weeks in advance of the show’s arrival in Turin, capital of the northwestern Piedmont region, local newspapers ran daily dispatches about the Wild West. “Colonel Cody spared nothing to let the people of Turin know that the arrival of his crew and the staging operations constituted an interesting spectacle in themselves,” wrote La Gazzetta del Popolo on April 5. Two weeks later the paper shared another breathless tease:

“The celebrity of the plains, the king of all, will reproduce among us the deeds accomplished across the American continent, will show himself in the ability to kill the Sioux and will end the show with the apotheosis of peace and the dance of the nations.”

When the show finally rolled into Turin on April 22, the wagons, livestock and most performers encamped on a sprawling tract of 40,000 square acres, while Cody himself and other troupe members stayed in town on via dei Pellicciai (“Furriers Street”). The latter district’s delighted residents took to singing a rhyming refrain in Corsican dialect: “Alé, alé, anduma a balé, ch’a j’é l’America an via dij Plissè!” which roughly translated means, “Come on, come on, let’s go dance now that America is in Furriers Street!” Buffalo Bill reportedly liked the tune so much that he sang it during the final performance in Turin.

After wrapping up its tour of Italy in mid-May, the Wild West headed east to Austria, the Balkans, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine before returning through Poland to Bohemia (the present-day Czech Republic), Germany and Belgium. By the time Buffalo Bill gave his farewell performance of the 1906 season in Ghent on September 21, he’d become an international celebrity, and kids on street corners across Europe were playing cowboys and Indians.

Buffalo Bill’s tours of Italy certainly had a profound and lasting influence on the Italian vision of the American West (think “spaghetti Westerns” and replica firearms). Cody himself, however, had only tenuous connections to Italy. On March 6, 1866, the 20-year-old Union Army teamster had married Missouri native Louisa Frederici (1844–1921), but her family had its roots in the Lorraine region of northeastern France. Buffalo Bill did name his favorite Springfield Model 1866 trapdoor rifle “Lucretia Borgia,” but that is thought to have been a lark. The illegitimate daughter of a future pope, the namesake Italian noblewoman rose to prominence during the Renaissance. Rumored to have poisoned several lovers, Lucretia Borgia was both beautiful and deadly. Likely hearing her name in passing, and doubtless regarding his Springfield as beautiful and deadly (at least to elk and bison), Cody had Borgia’s name inscribed on the rifle’s lock plate. (What remains of the rifle is on display at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo.)

When he set out in the entertainment world, Cody appeared onstage with Giuseppina Morlacchi (1836–86), a celebrated prima ballerina and popular dancer from Milan, who made her American debut in New York City in October 1867. By December 1872 she had joined the cast of dime novelist Ned Buntline’s touring Western melodrama Scouts of the Prairie, co-starring Buffalo Bill and fellow scout John Baker “Texas Jack” Omohundro, whom Morlacchi would marry the following summer. Another Italian, Naples-born photographer Carlo Gentile, snapped and sold promotional cartes de visite of cast members, while his adopted Apache son appeared onstage. In 1873 Buntline left the troupe, and Cody enlisted friend James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok to join the aspiring showman, Morlacchi and Texas Jack in a new touring play called Scouts of the Plains. The productions served as a training ground for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and his later success across the ocean blue.

Wild West aficionado and artist Lorenzo Barruscotto hails from Asti, in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy. For further reading he recommends Four Years in Europe With Buffalo Bill, by Charles Eldridge Griffin, as well as the Italian language books Buffalo Bill in Italia, by Mario Bussoni, and Quando Buffalo Bill venne in Italia, by Nicola Tonelli.

This article was originally published in the Spring 2024 issue of Wild West.

Once Italy surrendered to the Allies in September 1943, the Germans moved into the vacuum. Rome was declared an “open city” by the Italian government, meaning it was unoccupied and off limits to attack, but Germany rushed in troops for an occupation that lasted for nine months and subjected the citizens to the brutality of Nazi rule for the first time in the war. The Nazis rounded up Jews and sent them to their deaths in concentration camps, violently enforced curfews, and attempted to crush any opposition.

A story about Italian resistance to German occupation, Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 film Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City) is recognized as the first classic film of what has become known as the neorealist movement. Shot in the city after the Germans had left but before the war was over, the stark black-and-white film remains powerful even as it nears  its 80th anniversary. Wrote novelist Virginia Baily for The Guardian newspaper in 2015, “It was one of the most visceral, gut-wrenching cinematic experiences of my life and I have carried images and sounds from it—the old ladies stalling the Gestapo while the resistance hero escapes across the roofs, the martial music playing as the German regiment marches down a deserted street, the tortured hero slumped in a chair, the priest in his black robes—with me ever since.” 

The film opens as those German soldiers march through Rome to make a nighttime raid on a downtrodden apartment building. They seek Giorgio Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero), a communist and a central figure in the resistance. The apartment dwellers do what they can to divert the soldiers, and Manfredi escapes across the rooftops. While the Germans search, they intercept a call on the communal telephone from Manfredi’s sometime mistress, Marina (Maria Michi), an actress who quickly hangs up when she realizes something is amiss.

One of the building’s residents is Pina (Anna Magnani), a plain-speaking widow with a son, Marcello. She is pregnant, and on the night the Germans arrive she is planning to get married the next day to Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet), a soft-spoken printer. Her spiritual adviser is the priest Don Pietro Pellegrini (Aldo Fabrizi), who also serves as a central figure in the resistance.

In the meantime, the German Major Bergmann (Harry Feist) plots with the manipulative Ingrid (Giovanna Galletti) to stamp out the resistance and capture Manfredi. On Bergmann’s orders the Germans conduct another raid on the apartment building. This time they herd all the residents outside. When Don Pietro hears that one of the children from the building has a hidden stash of bombs and guns, he bluffs his way inside under the guise of giving last rites to a bedridden old man. He manages to hide the weapons before the Germans find them. 

Outside, Pina sees the Germans taking away Francesco. Frantic, she breaks free, and dashes down the street in pursuit of the truck carrying away her fiancé. The merciless Germans gun her down as her son watches. She dies in the street, cradled by Don Pietro. Partisans attack the truck convoy with the prisoners and Francesco manages to escape.

Bergmann and Ingrid have another tool they can use to find Manfredi: Marina. The cynical actress, angry with Manfredi and addicted to her creature comforts—which include drugs that Ingrid provides her—tells the Germans where they can find the resistance leader. The Germans descend as Manfredi and Don Pietro are bringing an Austrian deserter to safety and arrest the three men on the street. Bergmann forces the priest to watch as he has Manfredi brutally tortured, but neither the communist nor the Catholic priest divulge any information. Manfredi dies during his ordeal and Bergmann has the priest executed. Tied to a chair and praying for God to forgive his executioners, Don Pietro is murdered while the children from the apartment look on, horrified, before they trudge back into town, damaged in ways we can only imagine.

Rome, Open City was something of a change of direction for director Rossellini, who earlier in the war had made films for producer Vittorio Mussolini, the son of Il Duce. Even before the Germans had been forced out of Rome, Rossellini had begun thinking about making a movie about the resistance. He wanted “to show things exactly as they were,” he said. One of his collaborators on the story was another up-and-coming Italian filmmaker named Federico Fellini. Rossellini shot the film with little money, on location, and with film stock he scrounged—or even stole—from whatever sources were at hand, including cast-off snippets from other photographers. (The director said he stole stock from the offices of the U.S. Army’s Stars and Stripes news organization.) Most of the actors he used (with the notable exceptions of Magnani and Fabrizi) were nonprofessionals. He even used German prisoners-of-war as extras, including the soldier Pina slaps before making her ill-fated break. The result was a fiction film that looked and felt more like a documentary—in fact, the distributor Rossellini had obtained reneged on the deal, saying Rome, Open City wasn’t a “real movie.” But the film found a distributor in the United States and became a success, launching Rossellini’s international career and putting Italian neorealism—a genre embraced by other directors like Luchino Visconti and Vittorio de Sica—on the cinematic map. 

Center stage in a northern Colorado museum is an unmistakable symbol of the West. Faint lettering on the driver’s box of the historic stagecoach reads U.S. Mail, attesting to its original purpose, while covering nearly every square inch of its woodwork are scrawled signatures, hinting at its raucous second career in Wild West shows. Among the signatures is that of down-home humorist Will Rogers.

While it can prove challenging to chisel facts from Western lore, this coach and its storied past endures, thanks to Frank C. Miller Jr. The sharpshooter turned Wild West showman once described how he acquired the coach:

“In the late ’80s and ’90s it was on the ‘Bill’ show (meaning the Buffalo Bill circus) on his many tours, but as it became so old that it would not stand up under the hard knocks required of ‘Indian holdups,’ it was traded for a more modern model. I fought hundreds of Indian battles from the top of the coach myself on the shows. European royalty rode in the coach, as well as Teddy Roosevelt and President [William Howard] Taft, and I believe you will still find Will Rogers’ name written on the back.…When the new coach was put into use, I bought the old coach from Cody and sent it home and have owned it ever since.”

Built in 1874 by the Abbot-Downing Co. of Concord, N.H., the light coach is more correctly called a mud wagon. A basic, unglamorous conveyance, it was made to transport passengers and mail over rough-hewn trails. Given the lack of a paper trail tying the wagon to either Miller or Cody, it is difficult to verify Frank’s story. He may have glossed over the facts, but a kernel or two of truth remains.

A renowned marksman, trick shooter and roper, Miller claimed to have toured with Cody in Europe, though which tour is unknown. As he was 40 years younger than Buffalo Bill, Frank probably would have been too young to join any but one of Cody’s last European tours, between 1902 and ’06. The mud wagon would have been retired by that time, as period advertising featured the Wild West’s more elegant Concord stage, with its higher profile and oval body. Dubbed the “Deadwood Stagecoach,” the latter is on exhibit at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo.

Franklin Carl Miller Jr. was the third of four children born to immigrant parents. His Danish father and Swedish mother had independently followed the promise of gold to the north-central Colorado mining settlement of Black Hawk, where they married in 1876, later moving to the growing frontier town of Fort Collins, where Frank was born on May 11, 1886. The Millers prospered, running a saloon, a mercantile store and, later, a garage.

Taking a page from Cody, showman Frank became a skilled self-promoter. Local newspapers are peppered with notices of his performances, dinner guests and encounters with notable figures, including a visit to Cody’s foster son, Johnny Baker. Miller worked for Zack Mulhall’s Wild West show and headlined with the Irwin Brothers’ Cheyenne Frontier Days Wild West, which billed him as the “Most Marvelous Marksman in the United States.” When that show closed in 1917, Frank bought a ranch northwest of Fort Collins and married Florence “Peggy” Leedle, a gal who loved the spotlight as much as he did. She performed on horseback, crooning songs, and they adopted a son, Franklin, who went by “Teddy.” Naming their spread Trail’s End, the Millers developed it into a dude ranch, offering fishing, Western entertainment and a menagerie of trained wild animals, including bears and wolves. Newspapers announced regular visits from such celebrities as humorist Rogers, circus performer and actor Fred Stone, sharpshooter Captain A.H. Hardy and novelist Rex Beach.

Miller held performances both on the ranch and in neighboring towns. Central to his show was the mud wagon, which he rode in parades and holdup re-enactments. When the wagon deteriorated, he had it loaded onto a flatbed trailer and performed from atop that.

Just when his show seemed to peak, Miller’s life went into a tailspin. First, wife Peggy left him. Next, at the tail end of the Great Depression, he lost Trail’s End to bankruptcy. Finally, the unthinkable happened. In 1946 son Teddy, who’d joined the Army, was killed in a motor pool fire while stationed in occupied Berlin. He was 19.

It was at that low point the mud wagon, among Teddy’s favorite family keepsakes, took on new meaning. As a memorial to his son and the six other soldiers killed in the fire, a grief-stricken Miller presented the coach to the city. It was initially housed in a small purpose-built brick building with a viewing window.

Today, most of the 150-plus visible signatures on the coach are difficult to read or trace, and many bearing earlier dates are questionable. While there is no way to verify the validity of Rogers’ signature on the upper left rear panel, neither can it be discounted. Miller and the humorist certainly knew each other. Most other signatures appear to be those of tourists or perhaps Trail’s End visitors or show hands. Most date from between the 1910s and ’40s and represent citizens of states across the West and Midwest.

Miller lived out his life in Fort Collins’ Linden Hotel, across the street from the red sandstone building that once housed the family saloon and store. In exchange for his room and board he painted Western scenes and visited schools, regaling young listeners with stories of the Old West and his encounters with Cody and Rogers. On Nov. 21, 1953, Miller, 67, died of a heart attack.

In the mid-1990s Miller’s memorial mud wagon underwent conservation. It has since been housed at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, where it symbolizes the many facets of the Old West. With its ties to mail and passenger service, Wild West performances, and perhaps even showman Cody and humorist Rogers, the mud wagon has gained the celebrity Miller had long envisioned. 

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of Wild West magazine.

Frederick Pabst was captain of a Great Lakes steamer when Maria Best came aboard his ship and caught his attention. He started courting her, the daughter of the owner of Milwaukee’s Phillip Best Beer Company, and they married in 1862. It didn’t take long for his new father-in-law to talk him into giving up the wheelhouse for the brewhouse.  

Just as the German immigrant worked his way up from cabin boy to captain, he rose from the bottom to the top of his new trade and turned Best into America’s largest brewery. In 1889, he renamed the company Pabst, and four years later, his beer was competing head-to-head against its archrival, Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis, at the Chicago World’s Fair. The judges chose Pabst. The captain put his blue ribbon on the label, and it survives to this day as the beer’s instantly recognizable branding.  

If Pabst became America’s king of beers that year, he already had his castle. In 1890, he had hired an architect to design him a mansion, a building that took shape with an exterior fashioned in the Flemish Renaissance Revival style to complement a Neo-Rococo and Neo-Renaissance interior. When construction wrapped in 1892, the family moved in.  

You could say the mansion was more than what one family needed. The 20,000-square-foot, three-story building featured dozens of well-appointed large rooms and a dozen bathrooms. Priceless works of art and furniture filled the interior. Expert craftsmanship and ornate detailing were everywhere. The home boasted the city’s first central heating and electrical systems.  

Family members lived here until 1908, when they sold the property to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. “The Pabst Residence on Grand Avenue is one of the most handsomest in the city,” Yenowine’s Illustrated News had written of the building that was now home to Milwaukee’s five archbishops. “It is a model of what wealth, luxury and good taste can secure.”       

Brewhouse and Home  

Pabst brewed beer in its hilltop facility northwest of downtown Milwaukee until 1997. The complex was purchased in 2006, and residential units, offices, storefronts, and the like popped up alongside a tavern and event facility called Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery. A statue of Frederick Pabst stands watch in one of the courtyards. Best Place offers a beer history tour that tells what happened on these grounds during a century-and-a-half of beer production.

When the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee sold the Pabst Mansion in 1975, it was almost torn down to put in a parking lot for a hotel. A crusade to save the historic building ended with its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. The doors were opened to the public in 1978. The renovated site is open for tours as efforts continue to restore the house to its 19th-century glory.

This story appeared in the 2024 Spring issue of American History magazine.

Picture the colorfully costumed members of the Western quartet Riders in the Sky, and you may catch yourself humming the melody of “Woody’s Roundup,” from the 1999 Disney/Pixar film Toy Story 2. But there’s far more to the Grammy-winning band and its founder, Douglas “Ranger Doug” Green. The Chicago-born musician, arranger, songwriter, singer and yodeler holds a master’s degree in literature from Vanderbilt University and is the author of two music histories, Country Roots: The Origins of Country Music (1976) and Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy (2002). (His article “Sing, Cowboy, Sing!” a history of the singing cowboy, appeared in the October 2018 Wild West). The tireless 78-year-old performer is also the host of the Sirius XM radio program Ranger Doug’s Classic Cowboy Corral, centered on vintage cowboy music. Often compared to the Sons of the Pioneers, albeit with a whimsical twist, Riders in the Sky [ridersinthesky.com] has been touring for five decades, released more than 40 albums, performed for radio and film, and won two Grammy Awards. Green recently spoke with Wild West from his home in Brentwood, a suburb of Nashville, Tenn.      

Was the singing cowboy of the Old West a real figure or a myth?

Real in the sense that any time men are stranded in isolated situations they will sing and compose. There are lumberjack songs. There are sailor shanties. So, yes, some of the cowboys did sing at the time. Some of them played the fiddle. I don’t know if they played the guitar, but I imagine a few did. It existed. But, yeah, it wasn’t as romantic as played on-screen.

What led you to write Singing in the Saddle?

My interest in singing cowboys. Nobody had ever written a book on the phenomenon. There had been a couple of articles, but nobody had done a detailed study.

Do you have a favorite singing cowboy from the golden era of Western film?

As a kid I liked Tex Ritter, in that he seemed just a little bit more authentic. But, of course, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers have been huge inspirations to me. The Sons of the Pioneers more than anyone. That harmony just tore me up, and I still love it.

Do you have a favorite Western song?

If I had to pick one, I’d say “Woody’s Roundup,” because it’s made me so much money [laughs]!

Points for honesty! What about a classic like “Streets of Laredo”?

That’s an old Irish tune, I understand, and an unforgettable melody. It’s long been one of my favorites to sing.       The song I like, “Green Grow the Lilacs” (Ritter made a hit record of it), is also based on the Irish melody “Green Grows the Laurel.” It’s very sentimental to me because my mom used to sing it. All my kids and all my grandkids have grown up with it as their lullaby song.

What spurred your interest in Western music?

My mother’s family were Finnish immigrants, and their amusement was listening to the National Barn Dance [a precursor of the Grand Ole Opry], out of Chicago. My mother played a little bit of piano, but she sang beautifully. Two of my uncles—Hank and Arvid—played guitar, and I still have Hank’s guitar. First guitar I ever played. I was hoping it would be a pearly Martin, but it turned out to be a ’37 Montgomery Ward.

Whose idea was it to form Riders in the Sky?

Mine. I tried a couple of times with a couple of guys, but they either didn’t have the passion for this kind of music or weren’t the finest singers. But “Too Slim” [Riders in the Sky bassist Fred LaBour] and I had been friends for years and played in folk and bluegrass and junk bands that put a few dollars in our pockets and had fun. He and I started the group on Nov. 11, 1977.

You mix old songs with new ones. Why?

We didn’t want to be a historical throwback. We wanted to add to this tradition. Most of our records have two, three or four original songs.

What’s the future for Riders in the Sky?

Well, obviously this career is going to come to an end sometime. As long as the four of us [Green, LaBour, fiddler “Woody Paul” Chrisman and accordionist Joey “Cow-Polka King” Miskulin] stay healthy—we’re all in our 70s—we just don’t see any reason to stop. Our voices aren’t like when we were young, but we’re coping with that. I’m one of the most blessed guys on earth. 

Anyone who explores Civil War–era history should pay close attention to how people at the time understood and used key words. “Freedom” ranks among the most important of such words. Americans of the 21st century almost always address questions relating to freedom within a context of slavery and emancipation. This approach often yields insights regarding mid–19th century people, across racial lines, who found themselves challenged by the war’s life-changing events. Yet such assumptions about how the White population in the free states used “freedom” also can lead us astray. For a broad spectrum of the loyal citizenry of the United States, including almost all Democrats, the word could have conjured images not of ending slavery but of guaranteeing and extending their own liberty and freedom in a nation where, politically and economically, the cards were not stacked irrevocably against common people.

George F. Root’s song The Battle-Cry of Freedom offers an opportunity to explore this phenomenon. Among the most popular compositions for loyal soldiers and civilians, its sheet music sold more than 500,000 copies in the 19th century. Root’s lyrics not only shed light on what mattered to those who sang and listened to them, but they also demonstrate the importance of ascribing contemporary meanings to language deployed by the Civil War generation. “Freedom” is the key word in the song’s title. A reasonable conclusion might be that Root, writing in the summer of 1862, authored a call for White men to enlist and end the practice of human bondage by force of arms. After all, Congress already had outlawed slavery in the District of Columbia and the Federal territories (on April 16 and June 19, 1862, respectively), and discussion of more general emancipation grew increasingly heated inside and outside Congress.

However plausible, such an interpretation fails to account for the origins of the song and its great appeal in the United States. “I heard of President Lincoln’s second call for troops one afternoon while reclining on a lounge in my brother’s house,” Root recalled in his memoirs. “Immediately I started a song in my mind,” he continued, “words and music together: ‘Yes, we’ll rally round the flag, boys, we’ll rally once again, / Shouting the battle-cry of freedom!’” Root thought about the piece through the rest of the day and finished it the following morning. “From there the song went into the army,” he remembered with obvious pride, “and the testimony in regard to its use in the camp and on the march, and even on the field of battle, from soldiers and officers, up to generals, and even to the good President himself, made me thankful that if I could not shoulder a musket in defense of my country I could serve her in this way.”

Emancipation almost certainly did not preoccupy Root as he composed what he termed a “rallying song.” Lincoln’s call for the governors of loyal states to supply 300,000 3-year volunteers, dated July 1, 1862, and released to the press the next day, sought to boost volunteering across the United States. National conscription lay many months in the future, as did large-scale recruitment of African Americans, so anything that might help place more White men in uniform during the summer of 1862 would assist the Lincoln administration and the war effort.

For the song’s targeted audience, “Union” provided the hook, with preservation of existing American freedom as one of the obvious benefits of vanquishing the Rebels. The chorus conveyed the principal message: “The Union forever, Hurrah, boys, Hurrah! / Down with the traitor, Up with the star; / While we rally round the flag, boys, / Rally once again, Shouting the battle-cry of Freedom.” Echoing Daniel Webster’s famous call for “Liberty and Union, now and forever,” the chorus supported the idea of a perpetual Union so dear to Lincoln and countless others.

The second verse tied prospective volunteers to White men who had enlisted earlier and suffered casualties that left military units shorthanded: “We are springing to the call / Of our brothers gone before, / Shouting the battle cry of Freedom; / And we’ll fill our vacant ranks / With a million free men more, / Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.”

The third verse invited all classes of men to step forward with a promise of rights within the Union: “We will welcome to our numbers / The loyal, true, and brave, / Shouting the battle cry of Freedom, / And although he may be poor, / Not a man shall be a slave, / Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.” The last verse spoke to a national effort uniting geographical sections: “So we’re springing to the call / From the East and from the West, / Shouting the battle cry of Freedom, / And we’ll hurl the rebel crew / From the land we love the best, / Shouting the battle cry of freedom.”

Root’s lyrics brilliantly engaged the pool of military-age White men in the loyal states—“free men” who, by taking up arms, would guarantee continued “freedom” and prevent their domination by southern slaveholders. These words appealed on the basis of a free labor vision of the American nation with a Constitution and representative form of government designed, as Abraham Lincoln put it, “to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.” Many in the North believed that slaveholding oligarchs denied such a path, and thus real freedom, to non-slaveholding White people in the South, and that the Slave Power’s inordinate influence in the antebellum federal government had presented a continuing obstacle to greater expansion of political and economic opportunity.

Root translated Webster’s soaring rhetoric into a paean to Union with an infectious melody and well-crafted lyrics that spread through army camps and patriotic gatherings on the civilian front. As the war progressed, emancipation joined restoring the Union as a stated national goal, and Black men entered the army in significant numbers. Those striking changes meant that Root’s memorable song could summon thoughts of both preserving freedom long enjoyed by White Americans and expanding freedom to millions of African Americans who had suffered under the tyranny of slavery.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of Civil War Times magazine.

War Movie: The American Battle in Cinema (on DVD and Blu-ray, five-part documentary, 315 minutes), Cantilever Films, written and directed by Steve Summers, $24.99–$34.99, 2023

What is a war movie? Is it a faithful restaging of an actual historical event? Or is it a fictional morality play set against a well-known historical background? Is it solely a story of a battle, of soldiers in combat? Or can it portray wider themes of war, such as the home front; veterans returning to the real world; or higher-level commanders far from the front lines wrestling with excruciating strategic and leadership decisions? Is a classic John Ford cavalry picture a Western, or a war movie, or both? What about war comedies? POW films? Science fiction films like Ender’s Game and Starship Troopers? As this fascinating five-part documentary series makes clear, a war movie can be all these things.

War films cast a long shadow over American popular culture of the last 100 years. Nineteen of the 95 Oscars awarded for best picture have gone to war movies, starting with the first such award, the 1927 silent movie Wings, and followed closely by All Quiet on the Western Front, in 1930. War Movie explores this film genre, starting with the earliest-known example, Tearing Down the Spanish Flag. This rather primitive and short silent movie made in 1898 was the start of the long line that runs in a very wide pattern, but straight to 2014’s American Sniper and 2019’s The Outpost.

The five-part series is organized chronologically: 1. “The Camera and the Gun, 1900–1938”; 2. “The ‘Good’ War, 1939–1949”; 3. “The Shifting Tide, 1950–1975”; 4. “Into the Jungle, 1976–2000”; and 5. “Brave New World, 2001–2020.” Interspaced between clips from many of the most influential war movies, the series offers commentary from noted film critics, film historians, and most important, technical advisers who have been real soldiers. Those advisers who know war up close and personal include retired Navy SEAL Kevin Kent and the legendary former U.S. Marine Corps Captain Dale Dye.

This compelling series ends with just as many questions as it answers: Can a soldier’s story be heard as a life of lived experience and not just another plot device? We can learn about what happened in the war; but then once we step out of the movie theater, what do we do about that? As viewers can we transcend these repeated storylines of conflict and violence and try to evolve beyond our own repeated history? Questions to ponder, indeed.

The Boeing B-17—or its computer-generated likeness—appears front and center in the AppleTV+ series Masters of the Air. The story of the 100th Bombardment Group of the Eighth Air Force in World War II, MOTA is based on the book by Donald L. Miller. The 100th flew the B-17 Flying Fortress and some of its missions over Europe provide harrowing sequences in the series.

Here are a few classic films that feature the B-17 and are worth searching out.

Air Force (1943). Directed by Howard Hawks. Starring John Ridgely, Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy, Charles Drake, Harry Carey, George Tobias and John Garfield.
While B-17s are known primarily for their role in the European Theater, they flew in the Pacific as well. Howard Hawks’ Air Force tells the story of one such Fort, Mary Ann. After flying into the attack on Pearl Harbor, the airplane and its crew proceed to Wake Island and then on to the Philippines to take action against the Japanese. The production used real B-17B, C and D models, supplemented by model work when necessary.

The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944). Directed by William Wyler.
Director William Wyler left Hollywood to document the war for the U.S. and received permission to film an account of a B-17 crew on a mission over Germany. He ended up flying five missions with pilot Robert Morgan of the 91st Bombardment Group, two of them in Morgan’s regular plane, Memphis Belle. Wyler used his footage to create a composite twenty-fifth mission for Morgan and the crew of Memphis Belle. (While not the first bomber to complete 25 missions, Memphis Belle was the first to return to America after having done so and earned much public attention as a result.) Released on April 15, 1944, the New York Times called the film “a perfect example of what can be properly done by competent film reporters to visualize the war for people back home.” (The real Memphis Belle is on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.)

Memphis Belle (1990). Directed by Michael Caton-Jones. Starring Matthew Modine, Eric Stoltz,
Tate Donovan, D.B. Sweeney, Billy Zane, Sean Astin, Harry Connick Jr., John Lithgow and David Strathairn.
The fictionalized film based on Wyler’s (and co-produced by his daughter) also tells the story of the titular B-17’s 25th mission but suffers from a willingness to embrace cliché as the crew faces a familiar litany of threats (bandits, flak, cloud cover, engine loss).

Command Decision (1948).Directed by Sam Wood. Starring Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson, Brian Donlevy, Charles Bickford, John Hodiak and Edward Arnold.
Where MOTA focuses on what the B-17 crews endured during the war, Command Decision focuses on the commanders who sent them on their missions in what Brigadier General “Casey” Dennis (Gable, who actually flew some missions over Europe) calls “the weirdest kind of war on earth.” Watching B-17s and their crews head out on a mission, he says, “In a few hours from now they’ll be fighting on oxygen five miles above Germany. Tonight some of them will be dancing at the Savoy. Some of them will still be in Germany.” The film can’t escape its roots as a Broadway play (adapted from a novel) and remains mostly set-bound. A scene where Dennis has to talk down a B-17 bombardier flying for his wounded pilot suffers from some obvious model work that stands out in comparison to the actual combat footage used elsewhere.

Twelve O’Clock High (1949). Directed by Henry King. Starring Gregory Peck, Hugh Marlowe, Gary Merrill and Dean Jagger.
Twelve O’Clock High covers some of the same ground as Command Decision but does it much better. The focal point is General Frank Savage (Peck) who takes command of the snakebitten 918th Bombardment Group after its previous commander got too close to his men and efficiency suffered. Savage plans to whip the unit into shape even if it means the crews will hate him. The 918th does improve, but the stresses of command eventually take their toll on Savage. B-17 fans will especially enjoy a legendary stunt sequence when stunt pilot Paul Mantz performs a belly landing in a real Fortress. The film later inspired a television series.

The War Lover (1962). Directed by Philip Leacock. Starring Steve McQueen, Robert Wagner, Shirley Ann Field, Gary Cockrell and Michael Crawford.
This adaptation of John Hersey’s novel tells the story of a pilot (McQueen) and co-pilot (Wagner) of a Flying Fortress and the woman one of them loves (Field). The pilot, “Buzz” Rickson, is the war lover of the tile, a man who treads the “fine line between the hero and the psychopath” in the words of the squadron doctor. Filmed with three actual B-17s (and footage, including Mantz’s belly landing, borrowed from Twelve O’Clock High), the film boasts a strong performance by McQueen but is weakened by the romance in which Field’s character is used to explain the movie’s themes. “You are on the side of life,” she tells Wagner’s character; to Buzz she explains, “You can’t make love.… You can only make hate.”

Target for Today (1944) is also of interest. This wartime documentary provides a detailed nuts-and-bolts look at what it took to plan and fly B-17 missions over Europe. Cast with real military personnel and filmed largely on location, it will provide viewers with some key background for the events of MOTA.

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress has found itself back in the spotlight after the January 26 debut of the AppleTV+ miniseries Masters of the Air. Produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman—who were also behind the series Band of Brothers and The Pacific—and based on the book by Donald L. Miller, the nine-part series tells the story of the 100th Bombardment Group—the “Bloody 100th”—during World War II. The group flew the B-17 , and the big four-engine Boeings should share top billing with human stars Austin Butler, Callum Turner and Barry Keoghan, even if most of the airplanes are the product of computer-generated imagery (CGI), along with three modern replicas. (The series should include a disclaimer that state, “No real B-17s were harmed during the making of this series.”)

The United States produced nearly 13,000 B-17s during the war. Today only 45 remain and only a handful of those are in flying condition. Two have crashed in recent years, the Commemorative Air Force’s Texas Raiders destroyed after an inflight collision with a P-63 Kingcobra at an airshow in 2022 and “Nine-o-Nine,” owned and operated by the Collings Foundation, in 2019.

The B-17 flights in MOTA, as it’s known, are brutal, violent and intense. That’s not at all the experience I had when I got to fly in a B-17 some years ago. I flew in Yankee Lady, the B-17G operated by the Yankee Air Museum of Belleville, Michigan. This B-17 was one of the last built, too late to see combat. It flew for the Coast Guard for a while after the war and then was converted for fire-fighting. The museum received it in 1986, when it needed a complete nine-year restoration before it could return to the air. It was briefly grounded in the spring of 2023 when the Federal Aviation Administration issued an airworthiness directive regarding an issue with wing spars but has resumed flying.

My flight went off without incident. There was no flak, no fighters, no blood, no worries about hypoxia or frostbite, no spent shell casings littering the fuselage interior. But I did experience the ear-pounding noise generated by the four Wright R-1820-97 engines. On the runway they idled with a loud throaty purr, but when the pilot pushed the throttles forward and Yankee Lady began its takeoff run, the entire airplane vibrated to the roar of the engines. I was sitting in the bombardier’s station in the nose of the bomber, watching as the trees as the end of the runway got closer and closer…and then we lifted up and soared over them.

It was a thrill to fly in the venerable Boeing. Maybe I didn’t get a sense of air combat, but I did get a sense of the airplane, which was not nearly as big—at least from the inside—as I expected. I’m sure it felt even more cramped for aircrew wearing bulky heated suits to protect them from the subzero temperatures at altitude.

I’m glad I got my chance to fly in a B-17 but I’m even happier that I didn’t have to experience what their crews did during the war.

Michael Shannon (“Nocturnal Animals”) is to play assassinated President James A. Garfield with Matthew Macfadyen (“Succession”) as his killer Charles Guiteau in a new series, “Death by Lightning” for Netflix, Deadline was first to report.

Based on historian Candice Millard’s book, “Destiny of The Republic,” the series is set to follow Guiteau, a failed evangelist, insurance salesman, attorney, and one-time admirer of President Garfield whose obsession turned deadly.

After stalking Garfield in the capital for weeks, Guiteau found his opportunity to strike on the morning of July 2, 1881, after a newspaper article tipped off the soon-to-be-assassin of the president’s whereabouts.

Guiteau shot Garfield twice in the back with a .442 Webley, nicknamed the British Bulldog revolver for its large-caliber capacity.

Garfield’s doctors were unable to remove the bullet, which was lodged in the president’s pancreas. On Sept. 19, 1881, 80 days after the shooting, Garfield died of blood poisoning, “

Continuing his stunning run of audaciousness, the imprisoned Guiteau — who had previously castrated himself — placed an advert in the local newspaper stating: “I am looking for a wife and see no objection in mentioning it here. I want an elegant Christian lady of wealth, under 30, belonging to a first-class family. Any such lady can address me with the utmost confidence.”

He told The Herald that he had “shot the president without malice or murderous intent.”

“Death By Lightning” comes from the mind of Mike Makowsky, the “Bad Education” screenwriter, and is directed by Matt Ross (“Captain Fantastic”) with the “Game of Thrones” duo David Benioff and D.B. Weiss producing, according to Deadline.

No word yet as to when this historical drama will be released, but it will surely attract history and “Succession” fans alike.

Donald L. Miller’s massive book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany came out in 2007 and provided the basis for the new series on AppleTV+. In 2019 Aviation History had contributing editor Stephan Wilkinson look back at the then 12-year-old book in light of the announcement that HBO was going to turn it into a series. Now that the series has begun (but not on HBO), we thought it would be interesting to revisit a review of a book we had already agreed was a classic.

The epic of the Eighth Air Force during World War II is fertile ground thoroughly plowed by aviation historians. A search of Amazon’s e-shelves elicits nearly 200 such books, and several writers have made entire careers of covering the Mighty Eighth.

The best of them all is Donald Miller’s Masters of the Air. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg apparently agree, as they are basing their proposed 10-part HBO project, “The Mighty Eighth,” on this book. If—and that’s a big if—the miniseries comes to fruition, it will be the third in the trio that includes “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.” No release date has been specified, and filming has not begun.

The Eighth’s bombing campaign has been called the Children’s Crusade, for the crews were made up of young men in their early 20s, even teenagers. The horrors they suffered are incomprehensible to anybody (like me) who hasn’t gone to war.

Some of the most gripping chapters of Miller’s book are those that describe the conditions into which bomber crews were thrust in 1943 and ’44, when B-17s and B-24s were sent into stratospheric winds and temperatures minimally understood by the aeromedical professionals of the time—ill-equipped flight surgeons whose resources dated back to the 1920s. Nor did the vaunted Norden bombsight come anywhere near living up to its PR-stoked reputation, and the minimally trained gunners who supposedly made their aircraft “flying fortresses” might just as well have been firing .50-caliber garden hoses.

Miller’s book is not without minor faults. He believes that contrails are created by an aircraft’s propellers and repeats the myth of the crushed ball-turret gunner who died when his B-17 had to land gear up—a tale traced back to famously creative reporter Andy Rooney. Most are irrelevant except to rivet-counters. The comprehensiveness and well-written grace of this book vastly outweigh them and simply make it plain that nobody knows everything.

The first official trailer for director Guy Ritchie’s action-packed World War II film, the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” has arrived.

Based on author Damien Lewis’ book of the same name, the movie recounts the origins of British special forces — stood up at the direction of Winston Churchill — as a clandestine military banditi assembled as the Special Operations Executive, or SOE. Using “ungentlemanly” methods, the group’s mission is to turn the tide of the war.

Judging by the trailer, the film resembles a heist movie layered with all the quirks familiar to fans of Guy Ritchie’s films. The irreverent killing of Nazis using unconventional — if not gruesome — tactics also feels somewhat similar to “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” though the choreography of action scenes may not be as elaborate.

The film stars Henry Cavill (”Man of Steel”) as the band’s leader, Gus March-Phillipps. Alan Ritchson (“Reacher”) and Eiza González (“Baby Driver”) co-star, with Jerry Bruckheimer (“Top Gun”) producing.

“The “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” hits theaters on April 19.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

The B-17 was known for its ability to take extreme punishment and stay airborne. A fact that is driven home in the first episode of “Masters of the Air,” as Maj. Gale “Buck” Cleven, played by Austin Butler, stares in disbelief as light pours in through the flak-riddled holes of his bomber.

After a decade of delays, the highly anticipated third installment to Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks trilogy of sorts premiered on January 26th on Apple TV+ to much fanfare.

“Masters of the Air” follows the crew of the now famed “Bloody 100th” as they conduct daylight strategic bombing raids over Nazi-occupied Europe — at great personal sacrifice.

After its two-episode premiere, the show will be rolled out weekly until March 15.

Based on the book by Donald L. Miller, the series is loosely narrated by Lt. Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle), a navigator who ultimately served 22 months with the unit — an impressive feat considering casualty rates in 1943 hovered around 30 percent.

“Of the 40 men from my flying class that went to the 100th Bomb Group, only four of us managed to complete a tour. That gives you an idea of how inadequately trained we were and how unlikely it was that we were going to survive,” pilot John Luckadoo recalled to HistoryNet in 2019.

The first two episodes follow the cocky, hotheaded Maj. John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) and his buttoned-up best friend Cleven as they each go through baptisms of fire over mainland Europe.

“Why didn’t you tell me? You’ve been up… you didn’t tell me it was like that,” Butler’s character Cleven later accuses Egan after an aborted bombing run over the Nazi submarine pen at Bremen.

“You’ve seen it now,” comes Egan’s retort.

Fans of “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific” will certainly appreciate the similar strengths of “Masters of the Air” as the previous two offerings.

Helmed once again by screenwriter John Orloff, the miniseries manages to encapsulate a broad range of themes: from thrilling missions, their impact, to the banalities of life in between.

Yet it is the small details that historians, military aficionados and veterans alike can appreciate.

After the aborted Bremen bombing run, “Buck” is taken back to see his ball turret gunner who was badly injured. But it wasn’t flak or bullets that caused the damage — it was the elements.

In 1943 the B-17 was unpressurized, and at high altitudes the crew could experience temperatures of -50 to -60 degrees. Even the briefest exposure could cause severe frostbite, which is made clear in the opening episodes.

“The only spot that’s worse [than a tail gunner] is the ball turret, where the gunner is wrapped around his gun like an anchovy or a fetus in a womb too small,” Elmer “Benny” Bendiner, a B-17′s bombardier, wrote in his wartime postscript, “The Fall of Fortresses.”

Locked into their ball turrets over enemy territory for hours on end, gunners “urinated in their clothing, freezing their back, buttocks, and thighs so badly muscles sloughed and bones were exposed,” came Miller’s similar assessment.

While “Masters of the Air” certainly delivers in showcasing the intensity and brutality of war, the series shines with quick, one-liners that show that these men are after all, really just boys.

“You’re a navigator, Crosby,” Capt. John D. Brady scolds Crosby after the young lieutenant almost delivers his B-17 to the coast of France. “You should be able to, I don’t know, find England?”

If the rest of the series is anything like the first two episodes, viewers are in for a spectacular and educational treat, worthy of those who fought and died over the European skies.

“These hours of television are like the Army Air Forces’ missions themselves,” writes NPR. “They’re such intense experiences, it’s nice to have a little time between them to reflect … and to breathe.”

There’s an element of truth to the maxim “the hat makes the man.” In the 19th century West, for example, certain headgear served to identify their wearers at a glance. Soldiers had the shako, firefighters the leatherhead, Indians the warbonnet and vaqueros the sombrero. But perhaps no other topper in history has symbolized a people and their region in such a defining way as the cowboy hat. See it stamped on a box, in neon outside a storefront or in a popular present-day email “emoji,” and one immediately thinks of the American West.

Yet, the cowboy hat wasn’t the most prolific lid of its time or place. In a 1957 editorial headlined The Hat That Won the West, in Salt Lake City’s Deseret News, writer-historian Lucius Beebe disputed that the cowboy hat was ubiquitous out West, a notion he deemed an invention of artist Frederic Remington. “The authentic hat of the Old West,” Beebe wrote, “was the cast-iron derby, the bowler of Old Bond Street and the chapeau melon of French usage.” He then pointed to such derby wearers as lawman Bat Masterson, stagecoach robber Charles E. “Black Bart” Boles, Wells Fargo chief detective James B. Hume and, tellingly, “Remington and his imitators” as proof of his assertion.

Regardless, the cowboy hat remains the iconic symbol of the West. And the name that has become synonymous with it is Stetson. Ironically, John B. Stetson was an Easterner, and the factory that initially steamed, shaped and shipped tens of millions of hats bearing his name was in Philadelphia, though the company that produces them under license today is, fittingly, in Texas.

Stetson (1830–1906), the son of a New Jersey hatmaker, was diagnosed with tuberculosis as a young man and resolved to close up the family shop and venture West for the climate and to see its vaunted beauty before dying. In 1861 news of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush drew him and fellow hopefuls to the Colorado goldfields. Stetson arrived, so the story goes, amid heavy downpours and so crafted a beaver felt hat of his own design to keep dry. It featured the trademark wide brim, high crown and waterproof lining since associated with his name. The style proved so popular among the Western outdoorsmen Stetson encountered that the emboldened entrepreneur returned East in 1865 to resume hatmaking.

The first design off the line in his Philadelphia factory was the “Boss of the Plains” (see above). It proved instantly popular and dominated the market for the next couple of decades. As Stetson owners took to adding personalized touches—a dent here or a curved brim there—the company took note and rolled out additional styles.

Stetson got a big boost in the 1880s with the advent of international celebrity in the person of William Frederick Cody. Cody was already a fan of Stetsons, custom versions of which he wore onstage in the early 1870s in touring productions organized by dime novelist Ned Buntline. Within a few years of launching his own Wild West arena shows in 1883, Buffalo Bill was plastering his Stetson-capped image on signboards from San Francisco to Saxony. The hatmaker couldn’t buy better advertising.

The birth of the silver screen and its Western stars further amplified the popularity of the Stetson, one of which the company named for the actor who made it popular—the Tom Mix.

Today the cowboy hat endures, and scores of hatmakers big and small continue to craft styles that symbolize the Old and New West. We trace its history below.

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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The quest by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg to bring World War II to television screens began in 2001 with the premiere of the thrilling HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” a story that was followed by the duo’s Marine Corps-centric follow-up “The Pacific” in 2010.

The pair’s much-anticipated third installment, “Masters of the Air,” debuts Friday on Apple TV+ and centers on the actions of the U.S. Army Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group, also known as the “Bloody 100th.”

As with the earlier series, “Masters of the Air” presents camaraderie as a primary driving force behind the Allied victory. The cast, as a result, had to not only work within the historical framework of the Bloody 100th’s actions, but also needed to step into the shoes of the larger-than-life pilots and crew members who took to the skies in B-17 bombers — oftentimes without fighter escorts — on some of the most hazardous missions the U.S. military has ever seen.

One such figure was that of 1st Lt. Harry Crosby, a navigator who began as an airsick and chronically nervous crew member before rising to the rank of major and completing a full 22 months deployed with the 100th.“I just fell in love with Harry Crosby,” actor Anthony Boyle told Military Times. “I thought he was the most incredible, unique, bizarre human being that I’ve ever seen on screen. I just thought, ‘God, I’d love the play him. I would just love to spend a year with this person.’”

Crosby, who after the war went on to become a prolific writer and the eventual director of the Harvard University Writing Center, serves as the loose narrator throughout the series.

To prepare for the role, Boyle watched available footage of Crosby, who passed away in 2010, and was able to speak to his surviving family members.“The last few jobs I’ve done have been real people,” Boyle said. “It’s interesting when there’s a limited amount about them. When I played Crosby, there was a book, some chatter about him and a video that I could go off.”In the show, Crosby develops a close bond with highly decorated pilot Maj. Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal, played by Nate Mann. The duo’s sharing of heartwarming support during some of the darkest moments in the 100th’s history is part and parcel for all three of the Spielberg-Hanks WWII series.

The bond that truly carries the show, however, is one between Maj. Gale “Buck” Cleven and Maj. John “Bucky” Egan, played by Austin Butler and Callum Turner, respectively. The duo’s on-screen chemistry is electric, with Butler’s portrayal of the buttoned-up Cleven often tempering the hot-headed, somewhat reckless Egan so perfectly depicted by Turner.

“We had two weeks of boot camp that started us off that really built camaraderie with about 120 of us,” Butler told Military Times. “We’ve learned a lot about each other through that process, going through the physical aspects of that, and also being in the classroom together.”

Cleven and Egan, who were roommates in flight school, were two of the 100th’s most experienced pilots. Both were shot down during separate missions in October 1943, however, and ultimately spent the rest of the conflict together as prisoners of war at the German POW camp Stalag Luft III.

“It was easy with Callum, because he’s one of the greatest guys I’ve ever met,” Butler added. “We became friends really quickly, and that helped with Cleven and Egan.”

The POW experience for Cleven and Egan, which was tensely portrayed on screen, would further solidify their lifelong friendship.Egan stayed in and eventually served in the newly-formed U.S. Air Force, deploying later in the Korean War. Egan sadly died from a heart attack in 1961. He was just 45. Cleven also remained with the Air Force, serving in Korea and Vietnam before retiring as a colonel in 1955. He died in 2006.

Speaking with Military Times, show producer Gary Goetzman noted the importance of bringing the unbreakable bonds of World War II to the screen eight decades after they were forged.

“You have a story, and you have these great people you’re representing, and you try to give them great representation by your casting, by the settings, by the words, and you try to honor them — [that] is what we really tried to do,” he said.

For Goetzman, this particular portion of the Spielberg-Hanks WWII trilogy was all heart.

“It’s a big story,” Goetzman said. “These are the guys who tenderized the mainland in Europe so our troops could land. We didn’t know what we were doing; we were losing the war. We didn’t get over there until 1943, which is quite astounding.”

“Masters of the Air” premieres Jan. 26 on Apple TV+.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

In 1942, British authorities in Cairo arrested an Egyptian dance superstar for espionage. Her name was Hekmet Fahmi. Allegedly a nationalist with connections to Anwar el-Sadat, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and members of the Egyptian revolutionary Free Officers Movement, Fahmi had gained access to top secret intelligence from a well-informed British lover who worked at GCHQ and had passed this information to a pair of German spies who had managed to infiltrate Cairo.

At least, that was what Fahmi stood accused of. The espionage threat was credible enough for British authorities to put Egypt’s most famous dancer behind bars for more than two years. Her career would never recover. Yet Fahmi’s story remains a captivating part of World War II history, not only because of her alleged espionage but because of the talent that likely worked to her advantage as a spy: Egyptian cabaret belly dancing. 

An Elusive Art

Egyptian belly dance, known as raqs sharqi, has a history stretching back thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian temple reliefs from the days of the pharaohs contain strikingly similar imagery to modern Egyptian belly dancing, such as women dancing wearing hip scarves to the accompaniment of clarinets and drums. While belly dancing expressed itself in different forms over time, including group dancing and male dancing, female belly dancing proved the most enduring and popular incarnation of raqs sharqi. Historically seen as a desirable trait for wives, brides-to-be were taught the art of belly dancing so that they could dance for their husbands. Some women became professional dancers to entertain primarily male audiences. 

Belly dance is a highly disciplined dance style comparative to a sport. It is a full body exercise that requires dancers to move different muscle groups independently. Essential to Egyptian-style belly dance, a scarf worn around the hips accentuates isolated hip and waist movements and adds flair to performances. Aside from complex hip, waist and chest movements, the dance also incorporates fluid arm and finger movements. To gain the amount of flexibility, precision and rhythmic grace to belly dance successfully takes rigorous practice. Once the essential basic movements are mastered, a dancer may weave together endless combinations and improvisations to form complex choreography. The dance can be performed to any type of music and also be highly dramatized if desired. Special types of belly dance performances can include candle dances, sword dances, floor dancing (performed on one’s knees and sometimes bending backwards), and the ever-popular veil dances, all of which require finesse.

Appeal to Foreigners

Foreigners who visited Egypt were captivated by belly dance performances they witnessed. Although Western paintings and illustrations from the 19th century often portrayed “oriental dancers” with colorful garb and bare stomachs, religious convictions saw female belly dancers in Egypt cover up more over time. The essential hip scarves were still worn but bare waists became less common and dance movements became more restricted as time passed. 

Belly dance experienced a Renaissance in the 1920s thanks to the creative genius of Badia Masabni, popularly known as Madame Badia. Originally from Syria, Badia spoke five languages and traveled in many countries throughout the world. Drawing inspiration from French cabaret performances, Badia realized how to create an elegant and exciting new dance style fusing the best of Egyptian belly dance traditions with Western flair.

Cairo’s Favorite Casino

With innovation and entrepreneurial skills, Badia set up a nightclub in Cairo called the Casino Opera, also known as the Casino Badia: an exclusive venue that also functioned as a training school to teach her new style of dance to adventurous young local women. Egyptian cabaret style belly dance was born.

Badia revolutionized belly dance. She introduced sweeping changes to dance costume, modeling her dancers’ costumes on two-piece French cabaret outfits with decorative brassieres, short hip scarves, and plenty of sequins. The dancers performed in high heels and sometimes barefoot. Badia developed new signature moves in the dance; she also allowed the dancers a wider field of movement and mixed signature Egyptian techniques with Latin dance styles and ballet. Badia also upended music, blending Western orchestral instruments like violins, cello and accordion with Egyptian traditional instruments such as clarinets and tabla drums to create powerful and enchanting background music for performances. The results were fantastic. Badia’s new cabaret dance style became all the rage in Cairo and influenced other schools of dance. 

Cabarets offering belly dance performances became magnets for British troops garrisoned in Cairo both before and during World War II. Badia’s Casino Opera was one of the most popular hotspots. Egypt’s King Farouk was a patron as was Randolph Churchill and many other famous personages. Many British soldiers in Cairo were eager to enjoy the company of attractive Egyptian females in nightclubs as well as to drink and socialize. Cabarets like Badia’s Casino Opera in Cairo were great places to mix—and to spy.

During World War II, many Egyptians were sympathetic to the Germans due to a general dislike at living under a de facto British occupation. We will probably never know how many Egyptian women who gained access to influential military and government officials through nightclub entertainment passed information they learned to German intelligence operatives, spurred by a desire to further the cause of Egyptian independence.

Accused spy Hekmet Fahmi herself was trained at the Casino Opera and was one of Madame Badia’s star pupils. Badia herself was rumored to have engaged in espionage, although for whom she may have been spying remains a mystery.

What is clear is that the special dance style that Badia and her proteges wielded to enchant their audiences has had staying power. The Casino Opera debuted many famous Egyptian belly dancers and movie stars, such as Samia Gamal and Taheyya Kariokka,  icons of 1950s Egyptian cinema. These talented and graceful women remain an inspiration for practitioners of Egyptian cabaret belly dance, a style which spread from Cairo all over the world and remains popular today.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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As it is today, entertainment was an important part of life in the 19th century—and for soldiers stationed far from home, even the smallest distraction from homesickness was essential. Limited options were readily available, however. Antebellum audiences in some regions, for example, could enjoy a visit by the traveling Zouaves of Inkerman—French Zouaves who had teamed with their British allies during the Crimean War to defeat Imperial Russian forces at the November 1854 Battle of Inkerman. Those Gallic troops donned exotic uniforms patterned after ones worn by French Algerian soldiers, a style of dress that found immediate favor among military forces on both sides in the upcoming Civil War.

In early 1861, a newspaper in Memphis, Tenn., touted the arrival of the Zouaves of Inkerman in a newly built theater, enticing audiences with notice that the shows were to run for only two days and would be a “grand military spectacle in five and seven Acts Tableaux,” that the performance would “commence with the French Vaudeville of La Corde Sensible” and that “Zouave Frederick” would perform La Marseillaise. At the time, such live-action shows involving military drill, fancy costumes, and historical recitations by dramatic actors were cutting-edge entertainment.

Prior to the Civil War, technology known as “polyoramas” catapulted to fame as a feature at Niblo’s Garden in New York City. Founder William Niblo had emigrated from Ireland to New York in the early 19th century, and after a short stint working at a small tavern, he bought his own facility and dubbed it Bank Coffee House, eventually expanding his empire to include the Columbian Gardens, an all-weather entertainment facility. Both locales would host plays, concerts, and eventually polyoramas.

Polyoramas enjoyed increased exposure as the century progressed. Often called “Moving Panoramas,” they were 360-degree panoramic paintings to be shown in cylindrical buildings constructed specifically for that purpose. Special equipment would maneuver the painting in a circle before a seated audience.

What caused the medium’s popularity to grow was an owner’s ability to transport the apparatus to other cities across the nation, and innovations that eliminated the need to operate only in a round structure. Replacing the larger viewing area was a box-like window behind which the canvas would rotate. Long strips of painted canvas would be moved across the stage horizontally using a cranking mechanism, visible through the “window” opening. To not be distractions, the device and musicians were secreted away. 

Initially, polyoramas portrayed signature battles from across the ocean, such as Waterloo or the 1805 naval battle of Trafalgar. Wagons would transport the large paintings and corresponding hardware, along with a small crew, to each venue. Because of Niblo’s widespread name recognition, each traveling group would tout a partnership with him, whether real or not. Viewings in a particular city would usually last about a week.

A New View of War

Once the Civil War began, the subject matter of the polyoramas increased substantially. The variety of battles available for display with a war in their backyard allowed viewers more opportunity to learn what had really transpired at the event. As one such demonstration beginning May 11, 1863, in Cleveland, Ohio, was advertised:

“This is the Most Complete Exhibition Now Before the Public! Accurate, Authentic & Comprehensive, from the First Dread Signal at Sumter to the Battle of Fredericksburg, Profuse with Dioramic Effects, entirely new and on a scale magnificent and surprising The Thunder of Artillery and The Din of the Battle Field are realized with a vividness so nearly approaching Reality that the audience seem to realize the work of carnage as if the scene of life and death was Actually Before Them.”

The group would play “popular and appropriate music” that would accompany each painting, in addition to a “Patriotic Descriptive Lecture” delivered by “Mr. John Davies (late of the Boston Museum) whose delineations of these pictures have won for him the appreciation of many thousands in the cities of New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Chicago, where they have been exhibited with great success and pronounced unrivaled and unapproachable.” This particular polyorama company would occasionally be accompanied by Miss Viola, the “highly celebrated Patriotic Ballad Singer” and Mrs. Hattie Pomeroy, the “Popular Songstress.”

Traveling shows were a success across the nation and beyond during the war. In January 1864, for example, “Honolulu residents learned about the Civil War by viewing J.W. Wilder & Co.’s Polyorama depicting ‘The Terrible Rebellion.’ Narration and music accompanied a series of interlocking painted images drawn across the stage of the Royal Hawaiian Theater.”

Advertisements promised a survey of the war, east to west, land and sea, including the “Great Naval Combat between the Iron-Clad Monsters, The Monitor and The Merrimac!” Viewers would be informed of “key political figures, comic scenes in camp life, and sad and mournful events, all for just $.50.”

Some portrayals made a strong impression on the audience. One such individual was Lewis Josselyn, a shoemaker-turned-private in the 38th Massachusetts Infantry stationed in Baton Rouge, La., who wrote a letter to his mother after seeing a polyorama presentation in town. The 21-year-old Josselyn provided a wonderful blow-by-blow account of the legendary March 9, 1862, naval battle at Hampton Roads, Va:

“Last night Butt and I went to a show that is now here for a few nights. It was a Poly[o]rama (they call it) of the war from New York. It was paintings the same as a panorama or I could not see any difference in it. It was the best show of the kind that I ever saw. The paintings were as natural as life. One of the pieces was a fight between the Monitor and Merrimack. It first showed the Cumberland (the one that Hugh was in) and Congress in the Hampton Roads rocking in the water. The waves looked as if it was the sea itself. Then in steamed the Merrimack, going up to the Congress as if to run into and sink her, but the Congress then was aground and she dare not venture up to her, so she turns upon the Cumberland and runs into her, and then runs back and tries it again, this time making a hole in the Cumberland, and she sinks, with her colors still flying at the mast.

“The Monitor now comes in, and engages the Merrimack. She finally finds the Yankee cheese box too much for her and she has to retreat. As she does so, she fires a shell at the Congress and sets it on fire and is destroyed. This was done the best of anything of the kind I ever saw. I go to the theater every few nights. They now have it closed to us and our boys go as guard. I could go every night if I wanted to, but I don’t want to go every night unless they are going to play something pretty good – better than generally is for it is a poor theatre.”

Some shows became semi-permanent fixtures in large cities. Cutting’s Polyorama of the War was so popular in New Orleans that the manager of the St. Charles Theatre announced that Mr. Cutting would be giving presentations there “until further notice.”

Not all the viewers, however, were enamored with these shows, such as this mixed review in the Tunkhannock, Pa., newspaper in 1865:

“Hasty & Twombly spread what they called a Polyorama of the War, before a crowd of the curious, on Wednesday and Thursday evening last. It was evidently meant to represent a fight of some kind, but whether some of the great battles of our civil war, of the Crimean war or a Tunkhannock plug muss, we could not determine. Their closing scene, ‘Unnamed Heroes,’ was good, and worth the price of admission; the rest was a bore.”

While polyorama shows like the one Private Josselyn saw in Baton Rouge were captivating, others were duds for assorted reasons, or only partially interesting like the aforementioned Tunkhannock presentation. To offset potentially dull shows with poorly skilled narrators, uninspiring music, or ineffective paintings, additions were sometimes included to augment interest—though some demonstrations echoed a P.T. Barnum sideshow. For example, Morton & Co.’s “Polyorama of the Rebellion” offered viewing of “The Famous Little Zouave Twins”—an infant drummer and fifer “who led the decisive and immortal charge of the 19th Illinois at Murfreesboro, Tenn. They appear in full costume and go through the Zouave drill at the bugle call. Bayonet, small broad-sword exercise, and at one time play upon the instruments which compose a full band…” This presentation in Red Wing, Minn., was promoted heavily by the local press as “highly spoken of” and urged citizens to “Go and see it!” Viewings in a particular city would usually last about a week.

Rise of the Cycloramas

After the war, audience attendance waned as people grew tired of seeing reminders of the hardships of war. The lull did not last too long, however, with a resurgence in the 1880s. New and old companies rose to the occasion and started traveling the country again. Traditional round buildings also reappeared, but now audiences would stand at the center as the painting rotated before them.

The basic premise of the display slightly changed along with the name of polyorama being switched to cyclorama, although they were very similar in nature. A cyclorama did have the addition of dioramas of the contested battle areas to bolster the visual effects.

In 1885, the Philadelphia Panorama Company constructed a cyclorama of the Battle of Chattanooga in both Philadelphia and Kansas City, Mo. A few years later, a cyclorama was constructed and painted of the devastating 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn focusing on the loss of George Armstrong Custer and his command.

Over the next decade, hundreds of cycloramas were created, of which only about 30 survive today. The most realistic cyclorama was probably the re-creation of the classic story of Ben-Hur, written by former Union Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace. Real horses and chariots were used within the background of a cyclorama painting. This method exceeded all previous incarnations to the medium and allowed the pubic to experience the best example in lieu of actually being at the dramatic fictional event written in the book.

Two cycloramas depicting Civil War events still exist today and are open to the public: one representing the monumental July 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, the other the July 1864 Battle of Atlanta. The painting of the Gettysburg conflict was the work of French artist Paul Dominique Philippoteaux, who concentrated his efforts on the climactic Confederate attack famously known as Pickett’s Charge. Once the Frenchman finished his artwork, the painting stood 22 feet high and 279 feet in circumference.

Among veterans of the battle whom Philippoteaux interviewed to provide more realistic scenes were Union Generals Winfield S. Hancock, Abner Doubleday, O.O. Howard, and Alexander S. Webb. For further detail, Philippoteaux also took photographs of the terrain upon which the charge took place. Realism was considered essential, as the cyclorama included artifacts and sculptures, including stone walls, fences, and trees. Recently restored, it is currently on display at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitors Center.

The Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama, 49 feet high and more than 100 yards long, was also recently restored. Augmented by modern technology, it is on display at the Atlanta History Center.

The American Panorama Company of Milwaukee hired 17 German artists with a penchant for beer to create the painting. It took the painters nearly five months and many cases of beer to complete the detailed painting. It debuted in Minneapolis in 1886. Due to its initial location in Minnesota and the efforts to attract Northern tourists, the focus of the events during the Battle of Atlanta concentrated on the Northern perspective, with highlighted Union military personnel and the Confederate side painted a bit more shadowy and vague. When the massive painting was relocated to Atlanta, it was billed locally as “the only Confederate victory ever painted” to appeal to audiences in its new Southern venue, although the original battle was certainly not victorious for the boys in gray. 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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Richard H. Holloway is a frequent ACW contributor. Check out his article on George Custer at historynet.com/east-west-rivalry-civil-war.