Western Showdown In Hollywood Film

393 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Features of western film genre

All of us can agree that the only Western shootouts that we have ever seen were on the big screen in a Hollywood movie. The very first real Western shootout might just have been between Wild Bill Hickok and Dave Tutt. Hickok shot Tutt dead in Springfield, Missouri right in the market square. No matter what Hollywood movies tell us a real classic western showdown or walkdown occurred only rarely in the American West. Most of the time men were shooting each other in hot heated arguments or drunken brawls. What southern emigrants did bring to the Wild West was a crude form of the “code duello”. This was a means for gentlemen to solve disputes between them using guns or swords that had its origins in European chivalry. The western code required

Show More
Related

  • In what ways did three of the following affect the development of the West: Barbed Wire, Railroads, McCormick Reaper, and the End of the Indian Wars?

    886 Words  | 2 Pages

    The West is a very big part of American culture, and while the myth of the West is much more enticing than the reality of the west, it is no doubt a very big part of America. We’re constantly growing up playing games surrounded by the West such as cowboys and Indians and we’re watching movies that depict the cowboy to be a romanticized hero who constantly saves dames in saloons and rides off into the sunset. However, the characters of the West weren’t the only things that helped the development of America; many inventions were a part of the development of the West and helped it flourish into a thriving community. Barbed wire, the McCormick reaper and railroads—for example—were a large part of the development in the West—from helping to define claimed land boundaries, agricultural development and competition, and even growth of the West.

    Read More

  • Biography of Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp

    4050 Words  | 9 Pages

    Ellsworth was mean, and it was ugly. The stench of the its streets fell second to the odor of the unbathed saddle tramps who had just delivered 150,000 cattle from San Antonio to its freight yards. Adding to these smells were the blends of whisky, tanning leather, kerosene and carved carcasses, a revolting combination. Gunfights were spontaneous, either over a woman or a card game. When Wyatt crossed the Smoky Hill River into Ellsworth in 1873, he may have remembered the "rules of the gunman," but had no intention of employing them. The two main “rules of a gunman” were to take his time and always be armed. Although many people had warned him that it would be naive to go westward without being properly armed, Wyatt didn’t own a gun. All he hoped for was to find a peaceable job. But, only hours after hitching his horse in town he began to wonder if perhaps everyone was right. The most boisterous spot in town was Brennan’s Saloon, off Ellsworth Square; its faro and poker tables buzzed 24 hours, bartenders tapped beer and ...

    Read More

  • Little Bighorn Mission Command Analysis

    1599 Words  | 4 Pages

    McMurtry, Larry. 2005. Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846-1890. 10th Ed. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.

    Read More

  • Contested Plains by Elliot West

    1191 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough knowledge of what came before the white settlers; “I came to believe that the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” .

    Read More

  • Biography of Wyatt Earp

    402 Words  | 1 Pages

    The gunfight at the ok Corral started and ended in thirty violent seconds, but, it must have felt like thirty minutes to the fighters. Eight people were ready to fight. On one side were Wyatt, his brothers and Doc Holliday. On the other side were the Clantons and their gang of Cowboys (horse thieves and cattle rustlers of the time). They all had no intention of being disarmed. Frank McLaury, a Cowboy, had the best aim of the group. He was shot by Wyatt and was the first to die. Everybody started fighting. In the end, almost all the cowboys died, Ike Clanton begged for his life and was thrown in jail. Morgan Earp was shot in the shoulder. Virgil Earp was shot in the leg. Doc was shot in the hip. Only Wyatt came out unharmed.

    Read More

  • Echoes In The City Of The Angels Analysis

    1230 Words  | 3 Pages

    The setting of the essay is Los Angeles in the 1800’s during the Wild West era, and the protagonist of the story is the brave Don Antonio. One example of LA’s Wild West portrayal is that LA has “soft, rolling, treeless hills and valleys, between which the Los Angeles River now takes its shilly-shallying course seaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, added to the limitless bloom of the plains and the splendor of the snow-topped mountains, must have made the whole region indeed a paradise” (Jackson 2). In the 1800’s, LA is not the same developed city as today. LA is an undeveloped land with impressive scenery that provides Wild West imagery. One characteristic of the Wild West is the sheer commotion and imagery of this is provided on “the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles volunteers to repel the intruders” (15). This sheer commotion is one of methods of Wild West imagery Jackson

    Read More

  • The Frontier As A Place Of Conquest And Conflict By Patricia N. Limerick

    800 Words  | 2 Pages

    This historical document, The Frontier as a Place of Conquest and Conflict, focuses on the 19th Century in which a large portion of society faced discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Its author, Patricia N. Limerick, describes the differences seen between the group of Anglo Americans and the minority groups of Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics Americans and African Americans. It is noted that through this document, Limerick exposes us to the laws and restrictions imposed in addition to the men and women who endured and fought against the oppression in many different ways. Overall, the author, Limerick, exposes the readers to the effects that the growth and over flow of people from the Eastern on to the Western states

    Read More

  • The Frontier as a Place of Ethnic and Religion Conflict by Patricia Nelson Limerick

    1414 Words  | 3 Pages

    "Chapter 2 Western Settlement and the Frontier." Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays. Ed. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, and Jon Gjerde. 3rd ed. Vol. II: Since 1865. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 37-68. Print.

    Read More

  • The Clanton Gang

    1304 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gunfights were common and took place regularly. The earliest gunfighters, or gunslingers, were born in the early 1800’s, and most men got recognition as slingers in the 1850’s. The founder of gunfighting was “Old Man Clanton”, or N. H. Clanton. In 1816, Newman Haynes "Old Man" Clanton was born in Davidson County, Tennessee. On January 5, 1840 Newman Clanton married Mariah Sexton Kelso in Callaway County, Missouri and together they had five boys and two daughters. John Wesley, Joseph Isaac, Phineas Fay, William Harrison, Alonzo Peter, Mary Elise and Ester Ann made up the Clanton Gang. He did not participate in many gunfights though he instigated many of them. Old Man Clanton took care of business swiftly. If he did not like somebody, he would simply point them out, and one of his sons would provoke an argument and shoot the man down in “self defense”. Old Man Clanton had formed a “cowboy party” which consisted of some of the deadliest men in the West. Curley Bill, John Ringo, Tim and Frank McLaury, Joe Hill, Pony Deal, Jim Hughes, Frank Stillwell and many other lieutenants, who had over four hundred frontier outcast under them, formed this group. He stole over $100,000 from ranchers in the south, and anyone who opposed was quickly exterminated. Old Man Clanton’s final days ended with a stolen-cattle drive. While he was passing through Guadeloupe Canyon, he and six other men were ambushed and shot dead out of their saddles. "Old Man" Clanton was buried where he fell in Guadalupe Canyon, New Mexico.

    Read More

  • The Virginian, by Owen Wister

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    While the western frontier was still new and untamed, the western hero often took on the role of a vigilante. The vigilante’s role in the frontier was that of extralegal verve which was used to restrain criminal threats to the civil peace and opulence of a local community. Vigilantism was typical to the settler-state societies of the western frontier where the structures and powers of government were at first very feeble and weak. The typical cowboy hero had a willingness to use this extralegal verve. The Virginian demonstrated this throughout with his interactions with Trampas, most notably in the interactions leading up to the shoot out and during the shoot-out itself. “Others struggled with Trampas, and his bullet smashed the ceiling before they could drag the pistol from him… Yet the Virginian stood quiet by the...

    Read More

  • The Gunslinger Hero

    2224 Words  | 5 Pages

    Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.

    Read More

  • The Myth of the Old West

    2022 Words  | 5 Pages

    Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.

    Read More

  • The American West

    1215 Words  | 3 Pages

    The story of the American West is still being told today even though most of historic events of the Wild West happened over more than a century ago. In movies, novels, television, and more ways stories of the old west are still being retold, reenacted, and replayed to relive the events of the once so wild and untamed land of the west that so many now fantasize about. After reading about the old west and watching early westerns it is amazing how much Hollywood still glorifies the history and myth of the old west. It may not be directly obvious to every one, but if you look closely there is always a hint of the Western mentality such as honor, justice, romance, drama, and violence. The most interesting thing about the Old West is the fact that history and myth have a very close relationship together in telling the story of the West.

    Read More

  • Similarities, Differences and Connections between two Western Movies: Rio Bravo and El Dorado

    1525 Words  | 4 Pages

    Few Hollywood film makers have captured America’s Wild West history as depicted in the movies, Rio Bravo and El Dorado. Most Western movies had fairly simple but very similar plots, including personal conflicts, land rights, crimes and of course, failed romances that typically led to drinking more alcoholic beverages than could respectfully be consumed by any one person, as they attempted to drown their sorrows away. The 1958 Rio Bravo and 1967 El Dorado Western movies directed by Howard Hawks, and starring John Wayne have a similar theme and plot. They tell the story of a sheriff and three of his deputies, as they stand alone against adversity in the name of the law. Western movies like these two have forever left a memorable and lasting impressions in the memory of every viewer, with its gunfighters, action filled saloons and sardonic showdowns all in the name of masculinity, revenge and unlawful aggressive behavior. Featuring some of the most famous backdrops in the world ranging from the rustic Red Rock Mountains of Monument Valley in Utah, to the jagged snow capped Mountain tops of the Teton Range in Wyoming, gun-slinging cowboys out in search of mischief and most often at their own misfortune traveled far and wide, seeking one dangerous encounter after another, and unfortunately, ending in their own demise.

    Read More

  • The History Of Criminal Justice

    1016 Words  | 3 Pages

    As the American landscape began to broaden its horizons, its administration of justice had to expand to accommodate new situations and environments. In the early nineteenth century, due to lack of law enforcement, the frontier presented itself as heavenly to outlaws and bandits (Schmalleger 139). Many citizens took up the task of protecting others in a form of vigi...

    Read More

More about Western Showdown In Hollywood Film

Open Document