Sources for advertising and marketing history at the McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Center of the West

Purpose This paper aims to describe written and visual data sources useful for researching the history of advertising and marketing that are held in the collections of the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. Design/methodology/approach Knowledge of the McCracken collections has been acquired over several years of online searches and subsequent data analyses, communications with Library staff and from a personal visit to Cody in September 2021. Findings Several digital collections are surveyed. The Roy Marcot Firearms Advertisement Collection visually documents industry practices and also speaks to larger issues in American gun culture. The Winchester Publications provide insights via company magazines into product and management strategies, hardware retailing and visual merchandising tactics during the 1920s. The Schuyler, Hartley and Graham archive of business correspondence illustrate business-to-business marketing from the nineteenth through the early 20th century. The Buffalo Bill Collection reveals how the culturally important Wild West shows were promoted and experienced. Originality/value This paper familiarizes advertising and marketing historians with the primary sources in the McCracken Research Library and suggests some potential areas for study.

The Winchester Repeating Arms Company’s Exports to Foreign Powers During the First World War

During the First World War, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company was one of a number of American small arms manufacturers that played a key role in the Entente’s war effort. Winchester provided not only rifles, but also ammunition and munitions materials to all three of the major Allied nations—Britain, France, and Russia. This article was written following a fresh survey of the available documentation from the period which survives in the Winchester archives, now held by the McCracken Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, in Cody, Wyoming. As may be expected, the available documentation is incomplete and thus the conclusions contained herein are necessarily limited. Nonetheless, it is clear from the magnitude of Winchester’s work—both before and after the United States’ entry into the war—that the company played a significant role in arming the Entente powers during a period when European industrial capacity was at its limits. This article explores the scope of the company’s work and identifies several of the key items supplied to their European customers. The author also sheds new light on some of the difficulties and challenges Winchester faced in carrying out their wartime production.

Buffalo Bill and Patriotism: Criticism of the Wild West Show in the Polish-Language Press in Austrian Galicia in 1906

The article juxtaposes two perspectives guiding the perception of ethnographic shows, namely, a contemporary and an earlier one. The article uses the example of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, staged in 1906 in the Polish territories under Austrian rule. Deriving from present criticisms of ethnographic shows and their interpretation through the prism of colonial studies, the author examines the types of reception of such performances met in places in which the inhabitants did not identify with colonialism. Analyzing reactions to the Wild West shows published in the Polish-language dailies, the author offers an interpretation of these performances as foreign, distant from the local social context, and evoking antipatriotic acts. While presently, criticism of ethnographic shows inspires reflection on human rights and equality, the article looks at how the philippics directed against Buffalo Bill’s performances contributed to the promotion of patriotic attitudes by the intellectual elites of the time.

The Circus: Geraldine Chaplin in the cinemas of Robert Altman and Alan Rudolph

In many of her American films, Geraldine Chaplin is figured in self-reflexive stories about stardom and self-image, particularly in the films directed by Robert Altman and Alan Rudolph in the 1970s and 1980s: Altman’s Nashville (1975), Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976), and A Wedding (1978); and Rudolph’s Welcome to L.A. (1976), Remember My Name (1978), and The Moderns (1988). In these films, as discussed in this chapter, Chaplin develops a distinctive presence, tapping into her already established persona from the 1960s but in now frequently ironic and self-reflexive ways. Perhaps the best example of this intriguing development in her persona is Chaplin’s role as Opal in Altman’s Nashville, its massive ensemble cast suggestive of a kind of performative circus. Opal, this chapter argues, is a thoroughly ironic variation of the kind of privileged character Chaplin played in some of her 1960s films.

Simulated authenticity: Storytelling and mythic space on the hyper-frontier in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Westworld

This article explores how the mythic, nineteenth-century American frontier is authenticated by postmodern forms of storytelling. The study examines accounts of William Cody’s extensive 1902–1903 Buffalo Bill’ s Wild West tours in the United Kingdom and the futuristic television series, HBO’s Westworld (2016–), which is set in an android-hosted theme park. Comparing the semiotics of the two examples indicates how over a century apart, the authentication of the myth involves repeating motifs of setting, action and character central to tourist fantasies. The research illustrates how some elements of the myth seem to remain fixed but are negotiable. It is suggested that both examples are versions of a ‘hyper-frontier’, a nostalgic yet progressive, intertextual retelling of the American West and its archetypal characters, characterised by advanced technology. The implications for tourism are that simulating the authenticity of the frontier myth creates doubts in its veracity paradoxically due to its lifelikeness.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and English Identity

This chapter examines the image of the Indian put across by William Cody in his Wild West Show. The ethos and implications of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show have recently received a good deal of thoughtful academic attention. But understanding the ways in which Buffalo Bill's show was received in Britain, not just in 1887 but on its subsequent visits, involves exploring not only what British spectators might be encouraged to internalize about the American-ness from the shows themselves, but also what is revealed about perceptions of British national identity from their reception. The chapter then looks at the resonances that the Wild West could be made to have for a number of domestic concerns—about mass culture, about gender, and, above all, about Britain's position as a world power. What, however, may we learn of the responses of the Wild West Indians themselves to their experiences? Frustratingly, not as much as one would hope. If the Show Indians were angry about their treatment—whether at the hands of Buffalo Bill or the American government back home—there is no prominent record of it.

Taming and Reframing Buffalo Bill

This chapter studies Ted Wharton's final film for Essanay: a historical epic, originally titled The Indian Wars (1914) and later released under various other titles. That film, one of the first to be made with historical preservation in mind, would reenact some of the major Indian battles. Few other producers were capable of managing such a massive and challenging project. Ted, however, had already demonstrated his ability to recreate a similar large-scale “splendid Historical Pageant.” The Indian Wars promised to be even more spectacular. The film was largely the creation of the legendary William Cody, a colorful and iconic figure known worldwide by his public persona of “Buffalo Bill.” Recognizing the broad impact of film, Cody determined to use the new medium as a vehicle for writing—or, in some cases, rewriting—his own history and shaping his legacy.