About
Series Editors' Forward
The William F. Cody Series on the History and Culture of the American West, a collaboration between the University of Oklahoma Press and The Papers of William F. Cody at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, encourages interdisciplinary scholarship on the regional, national, and international influence of William F. Cody’s life and enterprises, including Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Cody’s extraordinary rise as impresario of one of the most popular traveling exhibitions in entertainment history reflects the forces shaping American national consciousness in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Encompassing an era that began with U. S. attempts to secure a continental empire and ended with the nation’s emergence onto the global stage in the years leading up to World War I, the works appearing in this series will generate new perspectives on the dramatically changing world that Cody inhabited. Although the man and his international legacy have long been a subjects of scholarly and popular interest, the scholarship in this series will benefit from the ever-growing documentary record detailing the material history and cultural impact of the Buffalo Bill phenomenon. An expanding archive, along with new research methodologies and critical perspectives, will continue to shape our understanding of the American West.
The Papers of William F. Cody endeavors to document the historic evolution and idealization of the American West through the eyes of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody in both digital and print publications. This book series is supplemented by The William F. Cody Archive (www.codyarchive.org), a scholarly digital archive that provides researchers and online visitors a rich array of primary materials documenting Cody's interactions with individuals ranging from statesmen and royalty to noted military and literary figures who reflect his Wild West celebrity. In addition, materials from his lesser-known roles as a community founder, businessman, rancher, and investor speak to the larger political, economic, and environmental policies affecting western development during his lifetime.
Cody Archive provides access to a wide range of archival material drawn from the resources of public and private collections from across the United States and Europe: memoirs and autobiographies, correspondence, business records, published and unpublished writings, photographs, video and audio recordings, promotional and Wild West materials, and newspaper and magazine articles. All documents are digitized and transcribed from original sources, encoded and edited—many enhanced with annotations and translations—to provide metadata that allows for associations across the archive and interoperability with digital objects from other repositories. Each title in The William F. Cody Series on the History and Culture of the American West will have a companion digital module, available at the Cody Studies website (www.codystudies.org), compiled and annotated with the book’s author and includes links to digital materials relevant to the publication’s theme. Readers with electronic access will be able to explore the available sources for each monograph and will have open access to original dynamic visualizations, author interviews, and other interpretive content, along with social media tools to foster communities of scholars and history aficionados who share interests in the monograph’s topics.
The first volume of this series, Sandra Sagala’s Buffalo Bill on the Silver Screen, provides readers a detailed account of how William F. Cody worked with the emerging American film industry to promote America’s frontier past and its legendary western characters, particularly himself. Cody’s fascination with film reflected a long-held interest in using new technologies to bring his vision of the Wild West to the American public with ever-greater theatrical flair. Giving credit to Thomas Edison, Cody proclaimed the phonograph provided the public “more entertainment and pleasure than any invention in the history of the world,” and he would come to view Edison’s film technology with similar appreciation. For William F. Cody, film was yet another invention to promote the Wild West – an invention that extended his ongoing use of railroads, mass-publishing, lithographic posters, electric lights, and sound recordings to publicize and enhance the performances of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Sagala examines Cody’s quest to authentically recreate his life experiences but also, driven by his business instincts, heighten the drama to stir his audiences. Cody hoped the revenue from his movies would cover past debts and secure his retirement from show business. Yet, as Sagala demonstrates, his hopes for quick financial gain eroded due to various legal claims to protect his name and image from competing film companies and vacillating audience demands.
From Joel McCrea’s positive portrayal of the frontier hero to Paul Newman’s negative depiction of the blowhard showman, “Hollywood” continued to present conflicting visions of William F. Cody’s life and legacy long after his death. Sandra Sagala’s book reintroduces readers to the complex relationship between Cody and his public persona, “Buffalo Bill,” as it played on, and behind, the silver screen.
Jeremy M. Johnston, Buffalo Bill Center of the WestFrank Christianson, Brigham Young University
Douglas Seefeldt, Ball State University
Credits
Buffalo Bill on the Silver Screen: The Films of William F. Cody, A Digital Companion, created by:
Douglas Seefeldt, Associate Professor, Ball State University, Senior Digital Editor, The Papers of William F. CodyAssisted by: Anna Kinnen, Graduate Research Assistant, Ball State University, Fall 2017-Spring 2018
Aly Caviness, Graduate Research Assistant, Ball State University, Fall 2013-Spring 2014
Janna Soeder, Graduate Research Assistant, Ball State University, Summer 2013
Laura Weakly and Erin Pedigo, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Linda Clark and Deb Adams, The Papers of William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill Center of the West
Special thanks to the Dellenback Family Foundation for summer Graduate Research Assistant funding.