William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, star of the American West, began his journey to fame at age twenty-three, when he met writer Ned Buntline. The pulp novels Buntline later penned were loosely based on Cody’s scouting and bison-hunting adventures and sparked a national sensation. Other writers picked up the living legend of “Buffalo Bill” for their own pulp novels, and in 1872 Buntline produced a theatrical show starring Cody himself. In 1883, Cody opened his own show, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, which ultimately became the foundation for the world’s image of the American frontier. After the Civil War, new transcontinental railroads aided rapid westward expansion, fostering Americans’ long-held fascination with their western frontier. The railroads enabled traveling shows to move farther and faster, and improved printing technologies allowed those shows to print in large sizes and quantities lively color posters and advertisements. Cody’s show team partnered with printers, lithographers, photographers, and iconic western American artists, such as Frederic Remington and Charles Schreyvogel, to create posters and advertisements for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Circuses and other shows used similar techniques, but Cody’s team perfected them, creating unique posters that branded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West as the true Wild West experience. They helped attract patrons from across the nation and ultimately from around the world at every stop the traveling show made. In Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Michelle Delaney showcases these numerous posters in full color, many of which have never before been reproduced, pairing them with new research into previously inaccessible manuscript and photograph collections. Her study also includes Cody’s correspondence with his staff, revealing the showman’s friendships with notable American and European artists and his show’s complex, modern publicity model. Beautifully designed, Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West presents a new perspective on the art, innovation, and advertising acumen that created the international frontier experience of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

Beautiful full color litho cover, stagecoach under attack from Indians, cameo portrait of W.F. Cody.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West presents a fascinating analysis of the first famous American to erase the boundary between real history and entertainment Canada, and Europe. Crowds cheered as cowboys and Indians--and Annie Oakley!--galloped past on spirited horses, sharpshooters exploded glass balls tossed high in the air, and cavalry troops arrived just in time to save a stagecoach from Indian attack. Vivid posters on billboards everywhere made William Cody, the show's originator and star, a world-renowned figure. Joy S. Kasson's important new book traces Cody's rise from scout to international celebrity, and shows how his image was shaped. Publicity stressed his show's "authenticity" yet audiences thrilled to its melodrama; fact and fiction converged in a performance that instantly became part of the American tradition. But how, precisely, did that come about? How, for example, did Cody use his audience's memories of the Civil War and the Indian wars? He boasted that his show included participants in the recent conflicts it presented theatrically, yet he also claimed it evoked "memories" of America's bygone greatness. Kasson's shrewd, engaging study--richly illustrated--in exploring the disappearing boundary between entertainment and public events in American culture, shows us just how we came to imagine our memories.

No theme in history has captured the imagination like the American West, and no presentation of the drama surpassed the original Wild West shows. In this unparalleled theater, the cast of characters were themselves authentic heroes: Buffalo Bill Cody, Texas Jack Omohundro, Wild Bill Hickok, Captain A. H. Bogardus, Annie Oakley, Doc Carver ("Evil Spirit of the Plains"), Lillian Smith, Captain Jack Crawford ("Poet Scout of the Plains"), Sitting Bull and hordes of Indians, Pawnee Bill, and May Lillie. These pioneer stars and superstars were predecessors to the Western film and television personalities of later times, and to the troupe in the contemporary extravaganza at Disneyland/Paris. Buffalo Bill's Wild West is a panoramic celebration of these colorful characters, who created the image of the West for Americans, and for the world. The book also celebrates the exciting and often flamboyant accoutrements and costumes, which were part and parcel of the stars' public appearance, and honors such characters as William Mathewson, recognized even by Cody himself as the "original Buffalo Bill." The lavish illustrations feature the Michael Del Castello Collection of the American West, with portfolios of treasures from the Buffalo Bill Museum (Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming) and the Autry Museum of Western Heritage (Los Angeles). Cody and his contemporaries made the West come alive to millions through their Wild West show tours of Europe and America. Lavishly illustrated and unsurpassed in its authenticity, Buffalo Bill's Wild West is a collector's item for anyone interested in the most fascinating array of all objects of Americana, and in the uniquelycolorful saga of the West. From the original Wild West shows of P. T. Barnum in Hoboken, New Jersey, to the spectacular entertainments of such headliners as Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley, see the arms and accessories of the adventurers who charmed the crowned heads of Europe and brought America's Wild West culture to the world--in the process helping to make Colt, Winchester, Wells Fargo, and the West into American legends. In this unique volume, the authors have produced the most spectacular, lavish, and detailed illustrated tribute ever to Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show-business originals. Buffalo Bill's Wild West is an unmatched chronicle drawn upon decades of research and collecting, augmented with images by master photographers Peter Beard and Douglas Sandberg, and period photo-graphs and archival material from museums and private collections, particularly that of Michael Del Castello--featured at the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, in the summer 1999 loan exhibition "Buffalo Bill's Wild West." In over 225 color plates and 160 black-and-white illustrations, with in-depth text and captions, the colorful arms, posters, photo-graphs, costumes, saddles, accoutrements, stagecoaches, and, for the first time, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Winchester Ammo Wagon, are brought to life. The extraordinary, exquisitely detailed illustrations include more than 50 posters and advertising broadsheets, over 100 rare cabinet card photographs, innumerable historic firearms, advertising art and trade cards, and show-business memorabilia. All the renowned exhibition shooters are presented: Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley, Frank Butler, Doc Carver, Johnny Baker, Pawnee Bill, Lillian Smith, Captain A. H. Bogardus and sons, Captain E. E. Stubbs, Curtis Liston, Arizona Joe, and many more--all of them sports and entertainment luminaries of their day. Designed as a companion volume to the bestselling Colt: An American Legend; Winchester: An American Legend; The Peacemakers; Steel Canvas; and Ruger & His Guns, this new work covers a fascinating period in history and entertainment that will never be seen again.

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was the most famous American of his age. He claimed to have worked for the Pony Express when only a boy and to have scouted for General George Custer. But what was his real story? And how did a frontiersman become a worldwide celebrity? In this prize-winning biography, acclaimed author Louis S. Warren explains not only how Cody exaggerated his real experience as an army scout and buffalo hunter, but also how that experience inspired him to create the gigantic, traveling spectacle known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. A dazzling mix of Indians, cowboys, and vaqueros, they performed on two continents for three decades, offering a surprisingly modern view of the United States and a remarkably democratic version of its history. This definitive biography reveals the genius of America’s greatest showman, and the startling history of the American West that drove him and his performers to the world stage.