The Real Wild West: The 101 Ranch and the Creation of the American West

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Description

Cowboy theatrics and rich American history are revealed in this chronicle of the famous Wild West review that brings together Geronimo, Buffalo Bill, Will Rogers, and many others to explore the grandeur, and the tragedy, of the American West. 25,000 first printing. Tour.
Even though not as renowned as Buffalo Bill Cody, Joseph Miller and his brothers were in many ways as impressive as impresarios. Their Wild West shows, which competed with Cody’s show and the Ringling Brothers’ circuses, featured talent like Will Rogers and Tom Mix and significantly influenced American mass entertainment. In The Real Wild West, Michael Wallis makes a case that the Millers didn’t just invent the romantic West but lived it as well.

Like Cody before them, the Millers took their cues from the frontier, in large part because they played a significant part in its conquest. The family’s rambunctious Kentuckian patriarch, George Washington Miller, abandoned the bluegrass of his home state to raise cattle on the greener pastures of the plains. His sons followed suit, but in 1905, a rodeo at the 101, their 100,000-acre-plus Oklahoma ranch, for the National Editorial Association led to a new career in popular entertainment. Within a decade, film producer Thomas Ince had set up shop nearby, utilizing talent from the 101 for his westerns. (It used to be Ince’s mysterious death, combined with revelations of financial chicanery, that in the long run destroyed the enterprise in the 1920s.)

Wallis doesn’t sugarcoat accusations of murder and illegal financial maneuverings on the a part of the Millers, instead making interesting parallels between their ruthlessness and business acumen and the romantic vision of the West they presented to early-20th-century audiences. His account may be notable for its a large number of biographies of 101 performers–people like Princess Wenona, the Native American rival to Annie Oakley, and Bill Pickett, an African American cowhand who founded the various events on the professional rodeo circuit–and conveys the enthusiasm many will have to have felt all the way through the Wild West shows’ heyday. –John M. Anderson

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