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When I was a kid, my mother had a habit of playing Broadway
soundtracks when she ironed. It wasn't until much, much later that I realized the Brooklyn-born Merman, a brassy show biz dame with a voice as big as all outdoors, had very little in common with the slight young woman from Darke County, Ohio, born Phoebe Anne Moses, but later known to most of the world as Annie Oakley. But, that's, as another song says, "entertainment." This May, as part of their American Experience series, your local PBS station will be running a documentary on the real Oakley, produced and directed by Riva Friefeld. Friefeld has spent a dozen years on the project, and I think every woman gunowner should watch it, as Oakley is, a sort of spiritual ancestor to all women gunowners. Even the worst shot of us has probably been called "Annie Oakley," by someone in a joshing tone. And while this is rather like calling every guy playing pick-up basketball "Michael Jordan," it has an immediate resonance. For some, it might echo Merman, or Betty Hutton, Mary Martin, Bernadette Peters or Reba McEntire, all of whom have memorably played Oakley in Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical. For others it might be Barbara Stanwyck, who played Annie in a non-musical movie in 1935 or those who remember the 50s-era television series with Gail Davis. That's a lot of different women playing versions of the same woman: The tomboyish Martin and Davis, the petite and ladylike Stanwyck and Peters, the bombshell Hutton, the larger-than-life Merman and, by many people's reckoning, the most realistic Oakley, McEntire. And then there are the countless images of Oakley herself, captured in old photographs, and even on film by Thomas Edison. In almost any city today with any connection to the "Old West," you can find images of Oakley for sale on everything from postcards to dishware. It's interesting that a real woman with such a fascinating "real" life, could evoke so many different images, all variations on a theme. There is no equivalent in the world of male shooters, for although there are countless real life stars, most of the images that come instantly to mind are fictional from start to finish, a hundred different actors portraying everything from cowboys to cops. I think you could make a legitimate case that Oakley was the first real sports superstar-long before, say, Babe Ruth, hundreds of thousands of people, in the US and Europe, paid money to see Oakley-and other shooting stars-perform. Other famous people (including most of Europe's royalty) jockeyed to meet her when she was on tour. And while "performance" was key to popularity-the "Western" outfits, the trick shooting, the novelty of a "little lady" doing man's work-it was all always based on Oakley's phenomenal shooting ability. It was an ability that initially lifted her family out of poverty, made her a star, thrilled many and inspired many more. Oakley's real life, without the musical comedy score, had its share of tragedy, and it had some twists and turns even people who think they know about her might be surprised by. She was, for example, embroiled in a decade-long series of libel suits against newspapers who depicted her as destitute, in jail and a cocaine user. Although many papers retracted the initial reports (which were based on a Chicago burlesque performer who used the name "Any Oakley"), Oakley sued for libel, testified at trials around the country and won judgments or settlements in 54 or 55 suits. Oakley, as those only casually familiar with her name might not know, was a Quaker and fore-square against women's suffrage. I have (in addition to my Annie Oakley scarf) a collection of newspaper and magazine clippings from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the topic of women gunowners really got a going over in the national and local media. A lot of them have the headline, "Annie (or in one case "Granny") Get Your Gun," another tribute to the legend and the legacy of Annie Oakley, an instant shorthand with meaning for nearly everyone. It's nice then to see the "real" Annie Oakley come to the forefront again, to take another bow, to thrill another generation-and to inspire more women gunowners.
Photo © Copyright 1998 Nancy Floyd, used with permission. |
By
Peggy Tartaro,
