Hello everybody. I hope you are all doing well. I have gathered many excellent articles for this month's newsletter. I hope you enjoy them.
On a side note, there are still eleven reduced-cost premium tickets available (for Reel Cowboy members only) for the upcoming Silver Spur Award Show. Don't delay, get yours today.
Also, the 2019 Silver Spur DVD sets are now available. Robert and I put in a lot of hours to build this. Please support the Reel Cowboys by purchasing your set for only $25 at any Reel Cowboys meeting.
Lastly, I am continuing the clothing drive for the Reel Cowboys. Bring me all you old clothes, freshly washed please, and I will distribute them to other 'Cowboys and Cowgirls' in need. What does not get used will be donated the the Hope of the Valley Rescue Mission in Northridge, California to be given the the San Fernando Valley homeless community.
~The Editor
FEATURED ARTICLE
The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp ~ by Casey Tefertiller
The Wyatt Earp everyone knew has gone away. More than once. Perhaps no figure in American history has endured such an odd ride through fame. He has been portrayed as a magnificent hero and a lowly villain; a glory-seeking braggart and humble introvert avoiding the spotlight.
Writers have created and debunked mythical Wyatt Earps, time after time. It is only in the last couple of decades that we are growing to understand Earp himself and the many controversies of his life.
This is part of what makes Earp and his adventures so enduring—he is a mass of contradictions amid a stew of controversy. Since those gunshots went off in the street outside the O.K. Corral, the debate has raged whether he was a murderer or a brave lawman saving his town from outlaws.
CHRONICLE OF THE OLD WEST
Mickey Free ~ by Dakota Livesay
If there's such a thing as a person with no redeeming qualities, Mickey Free may have been one such person. He has been described as ugly, dirty, unreliable and dishonest.
Wherever Mickey Free went, death seemed to follow. Even when he was a kid.
On January 27, 1861, at the age of 12, Apache Indians kidnapped Mickey. A Lt. Bascom led a command to find him, and he came across Cochise and some of his braves. Although Cochise knew nothing about the kidnapping, Lt. Bascom accused Cochise of stealing Mickey...
March 21
Reel Cowboys Meeting CANCELLED due to the Coronavirus
March 21
Reel Cowboys Movie Night
5-9pm CANCELLED due to the Coronavirus
Where the West Comes Alive
~ by Leo W. Banks
The West is still where Americans go to find a new life, and the risks can be huge. The woman who cashes out her retirement to rebuild a ramshackle mercantile in a lost mountain town is taking a chance.
So is the bespectacled gent from that strange land east of the Hudson who throws it all away to run a small museum, or a hotel where Buffalo Bill slept.
But by showing the frontier spirit in the 21st century, they’re keeping the towns of the West alive and thriving. We salute them here, and wonder, if you have a working car and a good pair of boots, why aren’t you...
Getting to Know John Wayne
~ by Ed Gross
Today, Scott Eyman is a journalist, adjunct professor and author of numerous biographies covering actors and filmmakers from the Golden Age of Hollywood, but in 1972, at the age of 21 and armed with only the knowledge that he wanted to “write about the movies," he found himself sitting with legendary Western star John Wayne. That meeting would lead, over 40 years later, to his writing the biography John Wayne: The Life and Legend.
“If I hadn’t met him," Scott, who was born March 2, 1951, muses, “I probably wouldn’t have written the book. Over the couple of hours I...
The University of Wyoming raised hackles with this fall’s new advertising slogan: “The world needs more cowboys." Perhaps not surprising, the objection was to the use of the “stereotypical image of a cowboy" as an image identified with the university.
Faculty said the image is “racist, sexist and counterproductive to recruiting out of state students." The stereotypical cowboy, cultural specialist Darrell Hutchinson argues, is nothing more than “a white man with a wide-brimmed hat riding the range on horseback," a la John Wayne or the Marlboro man...
African American Cowboys
~ by Patricia Grimshaw
When one imagines the “Wild West" of the 19th century, it is probably the stereotypical imagery of “Cowboys and Indians". And those cowboys in your head are likely white. But African-American cowboys of the 19th century actually accounted for about one quarter, or 25 percent of workers in the cattle industry between the 1860s and 1880s.
According to SmithsonianMag the term “cowboy" is believed to have been a pejorative referring to black workers, while white workers were called “cow hands." Over time, however, all ranch workers became known as cowboys...
Myths About the Wild West
~ by The Vintage News
There is hardly a movie genre that captivated so many for so long the way ‘Western’ did; bringing back to life some of the lost traditions of the frontier along with its ruggedness and outlaws. Americans especially loved the old west, for its gunfights, cowboys, stagecoach robberies, and clashes with Indians.
The flurry of western movie production perpetuated the American romance with the Wild West and doing so went off course with fewer facts and more fictional conjuring. Regardless of the vision of the Wild West one may have, the old west was nothing like...
