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Volume 1, Issue No. 5                                           (Web Edition)                                                    July 2003

Page 3

The reel West, the real West and the West of our imagination

THE REEL WEST

Buckskin Bravadoes

Alan Ladd

     Alan Ladd was a little feller who made a number of movies, most of which weren’t Westerns.  But he made a few Westerns, two of which were very good and one was excellent.  In WHISPERING SMITH, Alan played Whispering Smith, a railroad trouble-shooter who was tall in the saddle and quick on the draw.  Well, quick on the draw is more like it.  The movie was good enough that another short feller played the part in a short-lived TV Western series:  Audie Murphy.  The other very good Western that Alan did was BRANDED.  In that movie, he played a gunslick who started out to swindle a rancher, but fell for his daughter and reformed.   The excellent Western that Alan did      

Alan Ladd in buckskins as Shane

 was SHANE .  recognized as one of all time classic

Western movies.  In that movie, Alan wore buckskins, a gun belt adorned with silver conchoes, and carried a white handled, 7 ½ inch Colt.  Trying to hang up his six-gun, he hung up his buckskin outfit and tried his hand at farming.  But in the end, he put the buckskins and six-gun back on and saved the day by shooting all the villains.  Then, “he road back into the heart of the great and glowing west from whence he had come.  And he was Shane.”  With those words, that’s how the book ended. Most folks still remember Alan Ladd as Shane. All 5 feet 6 inches of him. After all, a person makes an impression on others, and size has nothing to do with it …. In reel life or in real life.  

  

THE WEST OF OUR IMAGINATION
Dead Beat
     Dead Beat is a Cowboy Action Shooter who took a page from the scripts of the many Western movie heroes who wore buckskins.  There were the Ranger Rider, and TV’s Wild Bill Hickok, and Kit Carson, and Shane, and the list goes on.  When you look at ol’ Dead Beat in his buckskin shootin’ outfit, he’s a little like these cowboys.  He doesn’t talk much.  He has that steely stare of the gunfighter, but his gray hair makes him a little different.  Shucks, in the real West, most of the gunfighters were dead before they were 40.   The real shootists used black powder when they did their shootin’, and so does Dead Beat.  

If you visit a Cowboy Action Shoot with the Ocoee Rangers

Dead Beat in buckskins

or with the Smoky Mountain Shootists Society (the Knoxville cowboys & cowgirls) and you see a big cloud of smoke and you follow it to its source, it just might be that ol’ Deat Beat is shootin’ his guns and playing the cowboy shootin’ game. Say, “Howdy”, if you see him.  He’s a friendly sort of feller.

THE REAL WEST

James Butler Hickok

 

      James Butler Hickok was one of the most legendary figures of the Old West, and he still is. In his adventurous life, he was a scout for the Yankees in the War of Northern aggression against the South, an employee of the pony express company, a cowtown marshal during the cattle drive days, a gambler, a prospector – though mostly at the card tables, a stage performer with Buffalo Bill Cody, and a man of the American West. Jim dressed sorta fancy, no matter what his role. In the cowtowns, he wore long dress coats, dress trousers, and a wide brimmed hat. In the stage productions in which he appeared, playing a genuine hero of the plains, he often wore buckins, and a wide brimmed hat. Sometimes, he wore holsters, and sometimes a red sash. 

James Hickok as Wild Bill Hickok

 But no matter how he dressed, he carried two Colt .36 cal.
Navy revolvers with ivory handles.  At the end of his life, his eyesight was waning.  For
you cowboys who ain’t read nothin’ for some time, that means his eyes didn’t see so good.  But he continued to roam and to ply his trade at the gambling table.  He met his end in Deadwood, South Dakota at the No. 10 Saloon.  Jim was holding 2 black aces and 2 black 8’s, (so they say) when Jack McCall sneaked up behind him and shot him through the back of the head, killing him instantly.
     Jim became famous and remains so as “Wild Bill Hickok”.  No one really knows how he got that name, although there are several stories about it.  The hand of cards that he was said to be holding when he was killed became famous as “the dead man’s hand”. He was 39 years old when he was killed.  Jim died there in Deadwood, but “Wild Bill” Hickok will live in legend and Old West history forever.

Till next month...happy trails.

Newletter Editors:  Deadman & Mesquite Millie                  Website Editor:  Tennessee Justice

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