The Buffalo Bill Wild West is rehearsing at their base in Nebraska. Nate Salisbury (Joel Grey) is everywhere, directing the various acts, giving direction, and making plans. Annie Oakley (Geraldine Chaplin) is clearly a big draw, shooting items from the hands of her shaking husband, Frank Butler (John Considine). Ned Buntline (Burt Lancaster) lectures everyone in the saloon regarding how he discovered Buffalo Bill and, through his writing, made him a star; Nate makes it clear that Ned is persona non grata, but Ned ignores him. Finally, we meet Buffalo Bill Cody (Paul Newman), a hard drinker who spends much of his time in his office.
An opportunity arises to have Sitting Bull join the show. Soon, Major John Burke (Kevin McCarthy) returns with Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) and William Halsey (Will Sampson). Everyone mistakes Halsey - who is six and a half feet tall - for Sitting Bull. In fact, he is Sitting Bull's interpreter. Sitting Bull agrees to join the show only because he wants to meet the Great Father (i.e., the President of the United States), who he says will come to see the show. Though Bill would like to stage the Little Bighorn as a sneak attack slaughter by the Indians, Sitting Bull refused. Instead, Sitting Bull only consented to ride around the arena and be seen. Eventually, President Cleveland (Patrick McCormick) and his new bride (Shelley Duval) arrive to see the show. Sitting Bull seeks to ask the Great Father a question but Cleveland refuses to listen. Soon after, Sitting Bull leaves.
Buffalo Bill comes across as a pompous oaf. Whatever business acumen there in in the show comes from Nate Salisbury, and Annie Oakley is the true star. Repeatedly, Bill is embarrassed by Sitting Bull. His claim that the nearby river cannot be crossed is proved wrong. His efforts to track Sitting Bull's party show he can't track. Moreover, the canny Sitting Bull exposes the underhanded trick to Bill's sharpshooting. It certainly appears that Buntline's claims that he plucked Bill from obscurity and made him famous are true. In fact, there is some truth to that. Buntline had been seeking Wild Bill Hickok, who didn't like Ned's forwardness and ordered him out of town in 24 hours. Wisely complying he went looking for another hero for his novel and stumbled upon Bill Cody soon after.
Sitting Bull had met Annie Oakley in 1884 and became a fan of hers. She was likewise impressed with him. In 1885, Sitting Bull was allowed to leave the reservation and joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West. He remained for 4 months. President Cleveland married Frances Folsom on June 2, 1886. The movie timeline does not work.
Kevin McCarthy affects a Paul Harvey voice as the MC of the show. Normally an immaculaty-groomed actor, he was almost unrecognizable with a rugged fur coat, wide-brimmed hat, wild long hair, and immense walrus mustache.
The big problem with this movie is that it fails to entertain. It's a boring slog that paints Buffalo Bill as an incompetent fool. You can have an incompetent fool as the protagonist in a comedy, but this isn't a comedy. Of course, the 70s was a time when many of the Western heroes of old were torn down. Where Errol Flynn had played Custer as a noble hero in They Died with Their Boots On (1941), Richard Mulligan played him as a pompous oaf who richly earned his fate in Little Big Man (1970). Of course, the truth is somewhere between those two extremes.
Despite an impressive cast, take a hard pass on this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment