Jesse and the Bandit Queen is an intriguing, many sided saga about the stormy relationship between Jesse James and Belle Starr. Interwoven into the play are tales of their outlaw contemporaries and of the people close to Jesse and Belle friends, foes, family and lovers. The two actors switch in and out of various roles to present a sweeping spectrum of the American West legend, myth and reality.
Who was Belle Starr? What was she that so many myths surround her? Born in Carthage, Missouri, in 1848, the daughter of a well-to-do hotel owner, she died forty-one years later, gunned down near her cabin in the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. After her death she was called “a bandit queen,” “a female Jesse James,” “the Petticoat Terror of the Plains.” Fantastic legends proliferated about her. In this book Glenn Shirley sifts through those myths and unearths the facts. In a highly readable and informative style Shirley presents a complex and intriguing portrait. Belle Starr loved horses, music, the outdoors-and outlaws. Familiar with some of the worst bad men of her day, she was, however, convicted of no crime worse than horse thievery. Shirley also describes the historical context in which Belles Starr lived. After knowing the violence of the Civil War as a child in the Ozarks, She moves to Dallas in the 1860s and married a former Confederate guerilla who specialized in armed robbery. After he was killed, she found a home among renegade Cherokees in the Indian Territory, on her second husband’s allotment. She traveled as far west as Los Angeles to escape the law and as far north as Detroit to go to jail. She married three times and had two children, whom she idolized and tormented. Ironically she was shot when she had decided to go straight, probably murdered by a neighbor who feared that she would turn him in to the police. This book will find a wide readership among western-history and outlaw buffs, folklorists, sociologists, and regional historians. Shirley’s summary of the literature about Belle Starr is as interesting as the true story of Belle herself, who has become the West’s best-known woman outlaw.
New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.
"Each player is discussed in a brief biography, followed by a complete list of every play and character they performed in New York. Also included are plays and musicals that were heading to New York but closed before opening. Cast replacements are indicated as well as Tony nominations and awards. Within Enter the Players, each actor comes alive as his or her career is revealed step-by-step, role-by-role. This book is an invaluable reference work and provides hours of fascinating browsing for anyone who loves theatre."--BOOK JACKET.
Legendary comrade and consort to train robbers, bootleggers, stagecoach robbers, bushwhackers, bank robbers, horse thieves, cattle thieves, and outlaws of all stripes, Belle Star (1848?89) was born in Missouri and emigrated with her family to Texas in 1863. Myth made her a dancehall entertainer, faro dealer, expert horsewoman, crack shot, and adopted member of the Cherokee Nation. Was her first love Cole Younger, a cousin and associate of Jesse James, and did she bear his child in 1869? And when she settled at Younger?s Bend on the Canadian River in Indian Territory, did she really establish a haven for desperadoes, mastermind a string of criminal enterprises, and entertain a series of lovers, all of whom met with violent ends? Did the dime novelists invent her flamboyant dress, musical abilities, literary tastes, colorful language, and determined refusal to occupy ?a woman?s place?? Or was she an original free spirit whose force of personality and violation of all normal standards of conduct made her the perfect antiheroine of the Western frontier? Burton Rascoe?s classic biography separates the facts from the folklore and traces the sources and afterlives of the fictional accounts published after her mysterious and unsolved murder. Glenda Riley?s introduction adds new evidence to help get behind the layers of oral history, hyperbole, and outright lies.
From High Noon to Unforgiven, the "A" Western represents the pinnacle of Western filmmaking. More intellectual, ambitious, and time-consuming than the readily produced "B" or serial Westerns, these films rely on hundreds of talented artists. This comprehensive reference work provides biographies and Western filmographies for nearly 1,000 men and women who have contributed to at least three "A" Westerns. These contributors are arranged by their role in film production. Cinematographers, composers, actors, actresses, and directors receive complete biographical treatment; writers whose work was used in at least two Westerns are also featured. An appendix lists well-known actors who have appeared in either one or two "A" Westerns, as specified.
A powerful novel of the infamous Western outlaw and his killer: “The best blend of fiction and history I’ve read in a long while” (John Irving). By age thirty-four, Jesse James was already one of the most notorious and admired men in America. Bank robber, train bandit, gang leader, killer, and beloved son of Missouri— James’s many epithets live on in newspapers and novels alike. As his celebrity was reaching its apex, James met Robert Ford, the brother of a James gang member—an awkward, antihero-worshipping twenty-year-old with stars in his eyes. The young man’s fascination with the legend borders on jealous obsession: While Ford wants to ride alongside James as his most-trusted confidant, sharing his spotlight is not enough. As a bond forms between the two men, Ford realizes that the only way he’ll ever be as powerful as his idol is to become him; he must kill James and take his mantle. In the striking novel that inspired the film of the same name starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, bestselling author Ron Hansen retells a classic Wild West story that has long captured the nation’s imagination, and breathes new life into the final days and ignoble death of an iconic American man.
Citing the adage that "those who do not study history are condemned to get it from Hollywood," popular historian Mona Sizer profiles a dozen notorious Texas outlaws and how they have been portrayed on the Silver Screen. From Pancho Villa - who was paid $25,000 by the Mutual Film Company to portray himself - to Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (portrayed by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty), Sizer separates fact from fancy in a fun, rollicking look at the bad guys of Texas Westerns. Sidebars ("How to Rob a Train," "How to Hold Up a Stagecoach," and "The Hollywood Posse") round out this delightful homage to actual and movie bandits alike.
