Journal Notes

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

Republic Pictures was arguably the most important and influential studio in the history of the B movie. During the Golden Age of Hollywood, the studio flourished, and the low-budget commercial movies produced in mass made Republic a profitable concern. Herbert Yates enjoyed the financial reward for the B pictures his studio produced but lacked the respect studio heads like MGM’s David O’Selznick or Fox’s Darryl Zanuck had. It took a considerable amount of talent and innovation to make a B movie, and Yates employed an exceptional team of cinematographers, stuntmen and stuntwomen, and special effects artists to achieve the finished product. Despite the skill and invention needed to create the product, such films were generally considered inferior. Yates wanted to experience the admiration other film companies such as Paramount Pictures and United Artists received. It drove him to increase Republic’s feature film investments.

In the late 1930s, Yates decided to raise the status of the company. He wanted a better product coming out of the studio. He wanted to make an “A” picture. Yates needed a large budget, bankable stars, and a quality script to realize his vision. He believed he could begin gaining the respectability he longed for by developing a project entitled Man of Conquest. He poured considerable resources into the project. Man of Conquest, the fictionalized action biopic of Sam Houston, was Republic’s first A film.

Directed by George Nichols Jr. and starring Richard Dix and Joan Fontaine, the estimated budget for the movie was one million dollars. Man of Conquest was inspired by Marquis James’ Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Raven. New York film critics announced that Man of Conquest was a “thrilling drama skillfully splashed across a broad canvas.” The April 28, 1939, article found in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle praised the direction of the film noting that it “never loses track of its hero or allows its social message to become bigger than its story.” William Boehnel, film reviewer for the New York World Telegram, wrote that Man of Conquest was a “rousing, spectacular blend of Americanism and adventure which not only sounds the clarion call of freedom and democracy in high, resounding notes but related its message of liberty and the right of men to govern himself in a vigorous, colorful, thrilling manner.”

Herbert Yates was pleased Man of Conquest had done so well. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Sound Recording, and Best Original Score. The nominations were proof that Republic Pictures had what it took to develop a project to rival the bigger studios. Industry leaders acknowledged Yates’ effort, and he pledged to produce additional, bigger budget films. Those bigger films were to be done on a limited basis.

Yates was proud of the studio’s reputation for being a dominant force in serials. Not only was Republic good at it, but they also made a substantial amount of money, and financial success was even more important to Yates than respectability as an A movie studio.

Yates wanted to continue building the sales organization as well as creating bigger budget films. He believed a healthy balance of both would elevate the status of the company. In early 1939, he hired James Grainger, the former head of distribution for Fox and Universal Studios. Grainger immediately embarked on a series of meetings with theatrical distributors and exhibitors throughout the nation. He authorized the purchase of franchise distributors and established Republic’s own theatrical distribution system. Grainger was exceptional at his job. Within a year, he increased the number of exhibitors (theaters) to more than nine thousand. The number of theaters showing Republic Studios’ motion pictures grew even higher with each high-budget film and big-name cast member released. By the end of 1939, a mere four years after Herbert Yates founded the company, Republic was showing a profit of $4,742,175. Industry papers such as Variety and the Hollywood Reporter predicted the studio would “wind up a top flight major.”

To learn more about Republic Pictures read the

Will Rogers Medallion Award nominated book

Cowboys, Creatures and Classics.

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Colonel John Chivington and representatives of the First and Third Colorado Cavalry rode hard and fast from the sun-touched butte where they’d been waiting at the Indian encampment along Sand Creek. A bugler sounded the charge as the horses’ hooves drummed and the soldiers shouted, reins in their teeth and guns in their fists.  Members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes living in the path of the cavalry hurried from their lodges and frantically scattered in different directions. Mothers scooped young children into their arms and ushered elderly men and women to clusters of trees. Braves grabbed weapons in order to defend themselves from the surprise invasion.

Several of Chivington’s troops raced to the paddock where the Indians’ horses were corralled. Without the herd the Indians would be at a disadvantage, unable to pursue attackers or flee from the chaos. Just before the flood of soldiers arrived on the scene, Colonel Chivington urged his men to “recall the blood of wives and children spilled on the Platte and Arkansas Rivers.”

The full force of the cavalry’s strike yielded immediate devastation. Bullet-ridden children fell where they once played; mothers lay dying with their babies in their arms; elderly women and men collapsed from gunshot wounds in their backs. It was a killing frenzy. Some Indians managed to escape without injury and take refuge in thick brush and behind scattered rock outcroppings.

Black Kettle tried desperately to keep his people from panicking. He clung to the belief that the attack would cease when the soldiers noticed the American flag unfurled. He and Chief White Antelope huddled at the base of the flag post. They only ran for cover when they realized the soldiers were hell-bent on annihilating them.

Fearless Cheyenne women and braves stood their ground, refusing to leave without a fight. The men exchanged shots with the soldiers and the women fought using spears and knives, all of which gave members of the tribe a chance to retreat slowly up the dried streambed. Many Cheyenne and Arapaho were killed as they ran to hide in the banks of the Sand Creek.

Indian horses spooked by gunfire broke away from the soldiers trying to drive them from the encampment. Indian women who managed to capture and calm a horse long enough to climb onto its back were shot. Their lifeless bodies slid from the backs of the horses onto the hard earth. Braves on foot who dared charge the relentless soldiers were stopped in their tracks with a barrage of bullets. According to accounts from those who witnessed the battle, children who ventured out of hiding waving white flags and mothers who pleaded for their infants’ lives were beaten with the butt of the soldiers’ guns and then scalped.

Black Kettle stood watching the bloody event in disbelief. He made a white flag of truce and raised it under the American flag. It had no effect upon the soldiers. Chivington’s persistent orders to continue to pursue the enemy were strictly followed. Black Kettle grabbed his wife, and the two fled toward a creek bed. The bark of the rifles all around him was steady, and there seemed to be no escape for the Cheyenne leader. Black Kettle’s wife was struck by several bullets, and the concussion of the shots knocked her face first onto the ground. Black Kettle tried to get her onto her feet again, but her injuries were too serious. The cavalry was bearing down on him quickly and he was forced to leave his wife’s body behind. He continued running until he reached the sandy creek bed. He hid in the dry wash under a thick overgrowth of brush.

To learn more about the Sand Creek Massacre read

Mochi’s War:  The Tragedy of Sand Creek

I had the honor of being a part of the cast of performers for a the production Americana West.  The play premiered at Old Tucson, Arizona, and was presented as a part of the Western Writers of America convention.  The play was written by Red Shuttleworth, poet and playwright, Western Heritage Wrangler Award winner, and three time Spur Award winner.

It was an experience I’ll treasure always.

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The sun had not quite risen over the vast Kansas plains when John German heard a sound that tempted him from his work packing his family’s belongings into their wagon.  He surveyed the campsite with a careful eye.  His wife Lydia and their seven children were each going about their morning chores and preparing to continue their journey to Colorado.  The Germans were from the Blue Ridge region of Georgia and had spent the summer of 1874 traveling west.  They planned to reach their new home before winter.

John and Lydia’s oldest children, twenty-year-old Rebecca Jane and nineteen-year-old Stephen, were tending to the livestock in a field not far from the family campsite.  For a brief moment all seemed as it should be; then, suddenly, a small herd of antelope darted across the trail, panicked.  Several shots rang out, and the antelope scattered in different directions.  Another shot fired and a bullet smacked John in the chest, and he fell in a heap on the ground.  Lydia ran toward her husband.  Nineteen members of the Bowstring Society rode hard and fast into the German family’s camp, whooping and yelling.  Lydia continued running.  A Cheyenne Indian on horseback chased her down and thrust a tomahawk into her back.

Rebecca Jane grabbed a nearby ax and attempted to fight off the warrior as they rode toward her.  She managed to hit one of the attackers in the shoulder before she was knocked unconscious with the butt of a gun, raped, and killed.

To learn more about the German family and the tragedy that drove Cheyenne Indian warrior, Mochi, read Mochi’s War:  The Tragedy of Sand Creek

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Colorado Territory in 1864 wasn’t merely the wild west, it was a land in limbo while the Civil War raged in the east and politics swirled around its potential admission to the union. The territorial governor, John Evans, had ambitions on the national stage should statehood occur–and he was joined in those ambitions by a local pastor and erstwhile Colonel in the Colorado militia, John Chivington. The decision was made to take a hardline stance against any Native Americans who refused to settle on reservations–and in the fall of 1864, Chivington set his sights on a small band of Cheyenne under the chief Black Eagle, camped and preparing for the winter at Sand Creek.  When the order to fire on the camp came on November 28, one officer refused, other soldiers in Chivington’s force, however, immediately attacked the village, disregarding the American flag, and a white flag of surrender that was run up shortly after the soldiers commenced firing.

In the ensuing “battle” fifteen members of the assembled militias were killed and more than 50 wounded Between 150 and 200 of Black Kettle’s Cheyenne were estimated killed, nearly all elderly men, women and children.

As with many incidents in American history, the victors wrote the first version of history–turning the massacre into a heroic feat by the troops. Soon thereafter, however, Congress began an investigation into Chivington’s actions and he was roundly condemned. His name still rings with infamy in Colorado and American history. Mochi’s War explores this story and its repercussions into the last part of the nineteenth Century from the perspective of a Cheyenne woman whose determination swept her into some of the most dramatic and heartbreaking moments in the conflicts that grew through the West in the aftermath of Sand Creek.

To learn more about the tragic events at Sand Creek read Mochi’s War

Enter now to win a copy of the Will Rogers Medallion Award winning book Mochi’s War:  The Tragedy of Sand Creek

Colonel John Chivington and representatives of the First and Third Colorado Cavalry rode hard and fast from the sun-touched butte where they’d been waiting at the Indian encampment along Sand Creek. A bugler sounded the charge as the horses’ hooves drummed and the soldiers shouted, reins in their teeth and guns in their fists.  Members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes living in the path of the cavalry hurried from their lodges and frantically scattered in different directions. Mothers scooped young children into their arms and ushered elderly men and women to clusters of trees. Braves grabbed weapons in order to defend themselves from the surprise invasion.

Several of Chivington’s troops raced to the paddock where the Indians’ horses were corralled. Without the herd the Indians would be at a disadvantage, unable to pursue attackers or flee from the chaos. Just before the flood of soldiers arrived on the scene, Colonel Chivington urged his men to “recall the blood of wives and children spilled on the Platte and Arkansas [Rivers].”

The full force of the cavalry’s strike yielded immediate devastation. Bullet ridden children fell where they once played; mothers lay dying with their babies in their arms; elderly women and men collapsed from gunshot wounds in their backs. It was a killing frenzy. Some Indians managed to escape without injury and take refuge in thick brush and behind scattered rock outcroppings.

Black Kettle tried desperately to keep his people from panicking. He clung to the belief that the attack would cease when the soldiers noticed the American flag unfurled. He and Chief White Antelope huddled at the base of the flag post. They only ran for cover when they realized the soldiers were hell-bent on annihilating them.

Fearless Cheyenne women and braves stood their ground, refusing to leave without a fight. The men exchanged shots with the soldiers and the women fought using spears and knives, all of which gave members of the tribe a chance to retreat slowly up the dried streambed. Many Cheyenne and Arapaho were killed as they ran to hide in the banks of the Sand Creek.

To learn more about the tragedy at Sand Creek read Mochi’s War.

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Review of Mochi’s War from Library Journal

Historian Enss and Kanzanjian (coauthors, None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead) succeed in personalizing one of America’s most troubling memories, the brutal and unprovoked massacre of a sleeping village of Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples at Sand Creek (present-day Colorado) by troops of the Colorado Volunteers in November 1864. This still controversial military engagement (see Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre) sets the background in which Mochi, a Cheyenne woman, lost her entire family and barely survived herself, by killing a soldier and then fleeing her camp. She reinvented herself as a Dog Soldier and member of the Bowstring Society, one of the few females to claim association in these elite Cheyenne warrior groups. She remarried, to Medicine Water, himself a military leader, and they in turn brutally raided and avenged themselves on American soldiers and settlers alike for over a decade. The authors have again collaborated to write Western history in an accurate yet accessible manner for mainstream readers. They provide a graphic account of the Plains Indian Wars from 1864 to 1875. VERDICT Highly recommended for adult readers of Western and Native American history, this biographical account provides a counterpoint to the many works that have mythologized such women as Pocahontas and Sacajawea.

—Nathan Bender, Albany Cty. P.L., Laramie, WY

Read Mochi’s War: Tragedy of Sand Creek

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

Sarah Kirby threw down the newspaper and paced across the room, only to turn and race back to the crumpled pages. She picked them up, smoothed them out, and once again read the diatribe against her penned by John Hambleton. Sarah was stricken with grief at the suicide of Hambleton’s wife. That the actor should blame her for his wife’s untimely death and publish his accusations in the San Francisco newspapers increased her distress. Her fingers whitened, and the edges of the page crumpled as she saw herself likened to a snake squeezing the life from its victim. Hambleton wrote of his dead wife’s devotion:

“For six years of struggling hardship through poverty and sickness she was at my side night and day, with the same watchful attention as a mother to an infant, until, with the last two months a change had taken place, like a black cloud over shadowing the bright sun. She gradually lost all affection for me, riveting her attention on a female friend who, like a fascinating serpent, attracted her prey until within her coils. In silence I observed this at first, and deemed it trifling, until I saw the plot thicken.”

Sarah crushed the flimsy copy of the Evening Picayune again. She must counter this ugly story or lose her reputation in the city. Not for this had she struggled to attain a pinnacle of success as both an actress and a theater manager. As a manager of a company of actors—one of very few women managers—bad publicity could cost her everything.

A genuine pioneer of theater in California, Sarah Kirby had made her debut in Boston but arrived in the brawling new territory within a year of the first rush of Argonauts heading for the sparkling, gold-laced streams of the Sierra. Rowe’s Amphitheater in San Francisco saw her first performance as Pauline in The Lady of Lyons.

Two months later she appeared at the Tehama Theater, which she had opened and comanaged in Sacramento. By August 1850, she was a full-fledged manager, producing plays at a theater in Stockton, and in September she was back at the Tehama in Sacramento.

To learn more about how Sara Kirby Stark’s career began and about the other talented performers of the Old West read

Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

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Entertaining Women:  Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world-wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.

Ladies and gentlemen, the incomparable Charlotte Cushman.

It was a cold evening in the early spring of 1859 when the well-known actress Charlotte Cushman debuted in Shakespeare’s Hamlet at the Metropolitan Theatre in San Francisco. The city’s most wealthy and influential people arrived by carriage. Throngs of curious bystanders eager to see the aristocrat hovered around the walkway leading into the building. The fine, brick edifice rivaled the most notable on the East Coast.

Inside, the grand hall was fitted with the most ornate fixtures and could seat comfortably upwards to a thousand people. From the private boxes to the gallery, every part of the immense building was crowded to excess. Charlotte Cushman was recognized by theatre goers as the “greatest living tragic actress,” and everyone who was anyone wanted to see her perform. Several women had won fame with their impersonations of male characters in various dramas, but critics and fans alike regarded Charlotte as the best of them all.

In 1845, a theatrical reviewer in London had written about one of Charlotte’s performances in glowing terms. “Miss Cushman’s Hamlet must henceforth be ranked among her best performances. Every scene was warm and animated, and at once conveyed the impression of the character. There was no forced or elaborate attempt at feeling or expression. You were addressed by the whole mind; passion spoke in every feature, and the illusion was forcible and perfect.”

The audience that flocked to see the exceptionally talented Charlotte in California was not only treated to a “forcible and perfect” interpretation of Hamlet, but that evening they were also treated to a display of the actress’ temper.

To learn just what caused Charlotte’s temper to explode, how her acting career began, and about the other talented performers of the Old West read

Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West