|
Search over 100 encyclopedias and dictionaries: |
Research categories | Follow us on Twitter |
Research categories
View all topics in the newsView all reference sources at Encyclopedia.com |
|||
Cody, William Frederick (1846-1917)
William Frederick Cody (1846-1917)Scout and showman Varied Career. William Frederick Cody, known as “Buffalo Bill,” was born in LeClaire, Iowa, but moved with his family to the Kansas Territory in 1854. He was a Pony Express rider (1860), served in the Union army with the Ninth Kansas Cavalry (1863), and joined federal forces in Tennessee and Missouri (1864-1865) as a teamster. After the war he tried various jobs in the West until he became a buffalo hunter (1867-1868) to supply meat to the Kansas Pacific Railroad. Cody claimed he killed 4,280 buffalo by his own count and thus earned the nickname “Buffalo Bill.” He scouted for the U.S. Cavalry (1868-1872), fighting against the Sioux and the Cheyenne. E. Z. C. Judson (Ned Buntline) soon began to write about Cody in a series of dime novels. Judson also encouraged him to appear in the author’s popular play, The Scouts of the Prairie, a fictionalized account of Cody’s exploits that opened in Chicago in 1872. Other dime novels starring Cody appeared, many by the lurid novelist Prentiss Ingraham, all of which kept Cody’s name alive to the public imagination. Yet throughout his life Cody was always his own best publicist. Personalizing the West. After these ventures Cody went back to the plains to raise cattle and to scout for the military; he allegedly killed and scalped the Cheyenne warrior Yellow Hand in a July 1876 duel. In 1883 he decided to profit from his fame by organizing “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show” in Omaha, Nebraska, with himself as the star and with other talented marksmen and riders to support him. The show toured throughout the United States and Europe for thirty years. By 1902 it began to lose money and finally closed in 1916. Active Decline. Cody continued performing almost until his death. During the unrest involving the U.S. Army and the American Indians after the 1890 murder of Sitting Bull, who had performed in the Wild West Show, Cody offered his services to Gen. Nelson A. Miles, commander of the Military Division of the Missouri. He spent much of his last years on a ranch he received from the state of Wyoming in the Bighorn Basin (later the site of the town of Cody). His various “autobiographies,” many of them written by novelists, are not accurate. He died in Denver, Colorado, on 10 January 1917 and was buried on nearby Lookout Mountain. Dime novels on the life of Cody continued to appear as late as the 1950s. SourcesBuffalo Bill and the Wild West (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn Museum, 1981); Joseph G. Rosa and Robin May, Buffalo Bill and the Wild West: A Pictorial Biography (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989); Henry B. Sell and Victor Waybright, Buffalo Bill and the Wild West (Basin, Wyo.: Big Horn Books, 1979). |
|
|
Cite this article
"Cody, William Frederick (1846-1917)." American Eras. 1997. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "Cody, William Frederick (1846-1917)." American Eras. 1997. Encyclopedia.com. (February 10, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2536601775.html "Cody, William Frederick (1846-1917)." American Eras. 1997. Retrieved February 10, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2536601775.html |
|
Cody, William Frederick
Cody, William Frederick (1846–1917), actor. Better known as “Buffalo Bill,” the Iowan served as a pony‐express rider and as a Civil War and Indian scout. A play called Buffalo Bill, recounting his exploits, appeared in 1871. To capitalize on his renown, he himself began to act in dramas purporting to recount his adventures, such as The Scouts of the Prairie, The Knight of the Plains, and Buffalo Bill at Bay. Cody toured in these for nearly a decade before founding his Wild West Show in 1883. Played in the open air, these entertainments allowed him to re‐create vividly the old Indian skirmishes and show off his shooting and riding skills. The Wild West Show took on a major attraction when the great sharpshooter Annie Oakley joined the company in 1885. The show prospered for many years as it toured the entire country, but eventually competition, the need to outspend that competition, and dwindling returns from a public tired of his style of entertainment forced him to merge with his major rival, Pawnee Bill's Historic Far West and Great Far East Show, in 1909. But the combined show continued to run up debts and was closed by bankruptcy in 1915.
|
|
|
Cite this article
Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Cody, William Frederick." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Cody, William Frederick." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. (February 10, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-CodyWilliamFrederick.html Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Cody, William Frederick." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Retrieved February 10, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-CodyWilliamFrederick.html |
|
Cody, William Frederick
Cody, William Frederick (1846–1917), American showman, better known as Buffalo Bill. Born on a farm in Iowa, he was at the Colorado gold-mines as a boy, and then became a Pony Express rider and a Civil War scout. He appeared between 1872 and 1883 in more than a dozen plays written for him, the theatrical equivalent of Western dime novels. In 1883 he embarked on the Wild West show which made him famous all over the world. For 18 years the show starred the sharpshooter Annie Oakley (1860–1926), and the pair provided the basis for Irving Berlin's musical Annie Get Your Gun (1946).
|
|
|
Cite this article
PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Cody, William Frederick." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Cody, William Frederick." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. (February 10, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-CodyWilliamFrederick.html PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Cody, William Frederick." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Retrieved February 10, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-CodyWilliamFrederick.html |
|
Cody, William Frederick
Cody, William Frederick (1846–1917), known by his sobriquet Buffalo Bill, served as a frontier scout during the Civil War, and again from 1868 to 1872, as well as in the battles against the Sioux. In 1883 he started his famous “Wild West” show, the prototype of many later ones, and he had previously acted in Western melodramas. The dime novels of Ned Buntline and Prentiss Ingraham are partially responsible for his popular reputation. He acted for two years in Buntline's play The Scouts of the Plains (1873). His autobiography (1904) is unreliable.
|
|
|
Cite this article
James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Cody, William Frederick." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Cody, William Frederick." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. (February 10, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-CodyWilliamFrederick.html James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Cody, William Frederick." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Retrieved February 10, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-CodyWilliamFrederick.html |
|
William Frederick Cody
William Frederick Cody see Buffalo Bill . |
|
|
Cite this article
"William Frederick Cody." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "William Frederick Cody." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. (February 10, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-X-Cody-Wil.html "William Frederick Cody." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2008. Retrieved February 10, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-X-Cody-Wil.html |
|
Search over 100 encyclopedias and dictionaries:
HighBeam™ Research, Inc. © Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.
The Encyclopedia.com advertising network includes:
