Buffalo Bill and the Indians

 The following is part of the It Grew On Me blogathon hosted by 

Taking Up Room 

“How much time is left? (Pauses the DVR). An hour and twenty minutes?

“Kevin McCarthy’s wig looks like the Cowardly Lion’s mane. And is that Paul Newman’s real hair?

“Shelley Duvall? Oh, right, it’s a Robert Altman movie.

“Maybe a tumbleweed got stuck on Kevin McCarthy’s head.”

To say I was distracted the first time I watched Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976) is understating things.

But giving it another try, and overlooking all the superficial criticisms, it clicked.

There’s a first-rate – and the obligatory comment that must be made about a Robert Altman movie – ensemble cast: Newman, McCarthy, Joel Grey, Harvey Keitel, Burt Lancaster, Geraldine Chaplin, John Considine and Will Sampson.

Plus, there’s that Altman touch of dropping everyone into an isolated outpost, then moving back and forth between different plotlines. Here, the setting is Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West, a combination rodeo/historical re-enactment spectacular, all built around its namesake star attraction.

It’s 1885 and thanks to his Wild West show and dime novels, Buffalo Bill (Newman) is one of the most famous people in the world. But Cody’s reputation as scout, buffalo hunter and trailblazing plainsman is a manufactured image. His fabled long locks are a wig, and he finds it increasingly difficult to remember the details of his legendary exploits. The “historical” re-enactments featured in his shows portray Native Americans as either noble savages or murderers.

He’s also insulated from reality, an egotistical ass propped up by sycophants (Grey, McCarthy) and useless relatives (Keitel) and with a weakness for sopranos and booze. (Cody has one drink a day, but it comes in a mammoth chalice).

Grey, Keitel and Newman

Two new arrivals into this world crack Cody’s footing further. One is Ned Buntline (Lancaster), the writer who created the legend of Buffalo Bill and the single person, aside from Cody, who knows it’s buffalo bullshit. “No ordinary man would realize what tremendous profits could be made by telling a pack of lies in front of witnesses like it was the truth,” he says of Cody.

The second is Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts), who has been added to the show. The mute Bull is accompanied by fellow tribesman William Halsey (Sampson), and they unnerve Cody by refusing to participate in a re-enactment of Custer’s Last Stand, and by spookily disappearing, then reappearing, seemingly at will.

Bill and Bull

After Sitting Bull leaves the show, he is killed by U.S. Indian agents. One night soon afterwards, Cody confronts the chief’s spirit – and his own self-doubts – yelling and carrying on an imaginary (and one way) conversation, like a frontier MacBeth, with Bull’s ghost.

But with Sitting Bull dead, Cody is free to add a scripted showstopping duel to the death between Cody and the chief, how played by Halsey. Cody, of course, always comes out on top.

Paul Newman is terrific throughout, whether rakishly galloping around the arena to cheering crowds or ranting about the superiority of white people dressed in his nightclothes. Burt Lancaster is quietly charismatic with the marginal yet important role of Ned Buntline, the living embodiment of this famous line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

Harvey Keitel is studiously dimwitted as Cody’s nephew, and Geraldine Chaplin’s Annie Oakley, outside of Sitting Bull and Halsey, is the film’s most likeable character. For quirky casting, President and Mrs. Grover Cleveland are played by odd couple Pat McCormick and Shelley Duvall.

Released one week before the 1976 U.S. bicentennial celebration and under a heightened awareness of American Indian rights via the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island and Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973, Buffalo Bill and the Indians presents its case for the U.S. entertainment industry’s distortion of the truth about the relationship between whites and Native Americans.

Whitewashing U.S. history, we’re reminded, is a long-time tradition, one that continues today.

Buffalo Bill and the Indians can currently be found on the usual free platforms. Hopefully it will grow on you too, once you get past Kevin McCarthy’s wig.