Structural Elements of Westerns

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

An analysis of Western films discloses the use of a number of specific types of scenic elements that tend to recur frequently in such movies. The order in which these scenic elements occurs may differ, and not all may be present in a film, although, typically, many, if not all, do tend to appear. In addition, each scenic element can be shown by itself or in combination with another (for example, an offer of a bounty may be accepted or rejected, earned or lost). Scenic elements that occur in all the movies analyzed below are indicated by bold font.

 

In Tombstone (1993), these scenic elements occur in this order:

Despicable deed: An action, usually criminal, that is beyond the pale, even for outlaws

Relocation

Reunion

Health problem

Character flaw

Stake: A source of income, often temporary

Murder

Arrest

Law enforcement

Gunfight

Ambush

Retaliation

Refuge: a place of safety

Challenge

Substitution: the replacement of an expected or intended character or object with an unexpected replacement

Showdown

Vendetta: protracted revenge against several parties

Marriage

 

In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), these scenic elements occur in this order:

Interrogation: formal or informal, legal or otherwise

Murder

Surrender to authorities: of oneself or one's prisoner

Rescue

Abandonment

Revenge

Duplicity: often as a means of double-dealing or double-crossing

Reunion

Capture

Escape

Sabotage

Intelligence: information gained through personal observation, primary sources, or secondary sources

Robbery

Rescue

In The War Wagon (1967), these scenic elements occur in this order:

Relocation

Revenge

Intelligence

Hiring of expert(s)

Robbery

Rescue

Offer of bounty

Drunkenness

Negotiation

Intervention

Diversion

Theft

Forced detour

Division of forces

Drunkenness

Ambush

Murder

Crash

 

In True Grit (1969), these scenic elements occur in this order:

Murder

Robbery

Hiring of expert(s)

Pursuit

Tracking of fugitive(s)

Partnership

Attempted abandonment

Discovery: information gained through a character's own action, rather than those of another party or from a primary or secondary source

Capture

Interrogation

Defiance

Attempted ambush

Feint

Gunfight

Death: loss of life due to a natural cause or a justified killing, as opposed to murder

Escape

Pursuit

Wounding

Kidnapping

Ultimatum

Attack

Injury

Snakebite

Commandeering of civilian vehicle

Payment

Promise

Wager

As this partial analysis of the recurring types of scenic elements common to Western films shows, such movies frequently use the same scenic elements, despite the dramatic details of their plots. A writer who is interested in writing a Western novel or screenplay can use these same scenic elements to construct a plot based on a structure that has stood the test of time.

Tombstone Entertainment: The Birdcage Theater

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

One of the challenges faced by Billy Hutchinson and his wife Lottie, the owners of The Birdcage Theater in nineteenth-century Tombstone, Arizona, was how to make their business appealing to their customers, the region's miners, cowboys, and ranchers.
 

In 1881, before wedding Lottie, Billy had spent considerable money—$600—to build the theater. Now, he had to offer incentives to customers to keep them coming back for more. Fortunately, Billy had worked in show business, and he had the answer: “entertaining shows, refreshing drinks, games of chance, dancing, private conversation[,] and adult comfort.”

The eclectic “entertainment” offered by the theater wasn't exclusively theatrical. Prostitutes, who worked behind the drawn curtains of the “elevated boxes” suspended from the ceiling, also kept the establishment's patrons entertained at $25 per night. (Private rooms in the basement went for $40 per night.) 

Uncle Tom's Cabin was performed at The Birdcage in June 1882. Not all of the action went as written in the script:

Chaos occurred when little Eliza was being pursued by Simon Legree and his bloodhound while crossing the icy river. An inebriated cowboy, caught up in the drama, pulled his sixgun and plugged the dog. The audience was outraged and pounced on the clueless cowboy who was finally rescued by a peace officer and hauled off to jail. The next day the cowboy, now sober and repentant, offered his horse to the troupe as recompense for the dog.

In addition, The Birdcage Theater featured wrestling matches, one of which, between Peter Schumacher and Professor Dan Milo, occurred on February 6, 1886, each party receiving $100. Admission to the floor was 50 cents; for reserved seats, a dollar. The match was advertised in the town's famous newspaper, The Tombstone Epitaph, two days before the event took place.

The variety of entertainment that The Birdcage featured virtually guaranteed there was something for everyone, “including leg shows, bawdy humorists, and fast-paced variety acts.” The variety acts featured such performers as The Happy Hottentots and their “Grotesque Dancing, Leg Mania, and Contortion Feats”; Mademoiselle De Granville, “The Female Hercules,” who claimed to have “an iron jaw” and picked “up heavy objects with her teeth”; comedians, including “the Irish comic duo of John H. Burns and Matthew Trayers, the comic singer Irene Baker,” and comedienne Nola Forest; “a serious opera singer” Carrie Delmar; acrobats and trapeze artists; Ella Richter, aka Mademoiselle Zazel, “the Human Cannonball”; masquerade balls attended by transvestite entertainers David Walters and Will Curlew; and “The Flying Nymph,” who “flew” across the theater “on a rope.” 

The Human Fly was certainly “one of the most unusual” performances:

. . . women (dressed in the usual theatrical tights and abbreviated costumes) walked upside-down on the ceiling over the stage. It was not an illusion—they actually were suspended above the stage . . . . The trick was that their shoes had special clamps on them that fitted into holes bored into the ceiling to support them . . . . In another version “the human fly” women wore suction cups on their feet as they walked up and down on a platform high above the stage.

As one might suppose, such acts were dangerous. In both versions, one or more of “the human fly” performers died when equipment failed.

Among the other unusual entertainments the theater boasted was a 24-hour poker game that continued non-stop for eight years, five months, and three days, during which $10 million were bet. To be admitted to the game, a player had to be willing to spend at least $1,000. Those who tried their hands at the game include Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Diamond Jim Brady, and George Hearst. The house took 10 percent of the winnings, so, over the years that the game lasted, The Birdcage received a whopping $1 million! 

Eddie Foy, Sr.

Lotta Crabtree

Among other entertainers who performed at The Birdcage were Eddie Foy, Sr., Lotta Crabtree, Lily Langtree, and Lola Montez. However, despite the entertainment the theater offered, the frequent shootings and low company prevented many women from patronizing the establishment, and, despite the weekly Ladies' Nights on which women were admitted free of charge, “respectable ladies in Tombstone never went near the Bird Cage.”

Lillie Langtree

 

Lola Montez

The Birdcage Theater is something of a time capsule. Located at the corner of Allen Street and Sixth Street, it survived the devastating fire that swept through Tombstone in the early 1880s because it was built entirely of concrete, and, “when it closed its doors in 1889, everything inside was left in place”; in 1934, when the doors were opened again, “Tombstone found itself with a perfect window into its past.”

 

AUTHENTICATED: New Tintype of Morgan Earp, Louisa Earp, Doc Holliday, and Mary Katherine Horony

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Seated, second row, second to left, Morgan Earp; beside him, to his left, Louisa Earp; to Louisa's left, "Big Nose Kate"; to her left, Doc Holliday. Souce: Bidsquare.

Click the image to enlarge it.

The recent authentication of an April 24, 1881, tintype showing Morgan Seth Earp (1851-1882), Morgan's wife Louisa Alice Houston (1855-1894), Doc Holliday (1851-1887), and Doc's common-law wife Mary Katherine (“Big Nose Kate”) Horony (1850-1940) has excited Western historian, novelists, and fans. The tintype may have been taken on Morgan's thirtieth birthday.

The rare tintype, measuring 4.875 inches long by 3.375 inches wide, was authenticated by forensic expert Kent Gibson of Los Angeles, California, using facial-recognition software.

Gibson has also authenticated images of other figures of the Old West, including those of Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley, Pat Garrett, Jesse James, Frank James, Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid, Doc Holliday, John Wilkes Booth, Fred Waite, Fred Noonan, Bat Masterson.

Morgan Earp. Source: Find-a-Grave.

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Six months after the tintype was taken, the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral occurred, on October 26, 1881, at 2:30 PM. Morgan and Doc fought alongside Morgan's brothers, Wyatt and Tombstone marshal Virgil, against Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, and Billy Clanton. The next year, on March 18, Morgan was assassinated in Campbell & Hatch's saloon and billiard parlor, an incident that precipitated Wyatt Earp's and Doc Holliday's vendetta ride.

Soiled Doves of the American West, Part II

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Two of the Earp brothers' common-law wives were once prostitutes; one returned to the profession after giving it up when she elected to settle down with her man—after he left her for another woman. Nellie Bartlett “Bessie” Catchim was James Earp's wife; Celia Ann "Mattie" Blaylock was Wyatt's spouse. In addition, their friend, Doc Holliday, had a common-law wife known as “Big Nose Kate,” who also worked as a prostitute.

Nellie Earp

Nellie Earp

Born in New York City, Nellie (“Bessie”) Catchim (or Ketchum) (1840-1887) married James (1841-1926) in Illinois on April 18, 1873, and remained wed to him until her death in California, in 1887.

Before marrying James, she'd been a single mother, having had a son named Frank by her first husband, William Calhoun Land (1835-1916). Nellie also had a daughter, Harriet B. Catchim Land (1863-1934). Her son was killed by Apaches, but her daughter married a wealthy and influential cattle baron, William Land, of Douglas Arizona.

As a madam, Nellie operated a brothel in Wichita, Kansas, before she and James relocated to Tombstone, Arizona, where the Earps shot it out with Billy Clanton (1862-1881), Frank McLaury (1849-1881), and Tom McLaury (1853-1881) on October 26, 1881, at the OK Corral.

James Earp

In 1882, she and her sisters-in-law left Tombstone for California, the state in which Nellie lived out the remainder of her days with her husband, whose pet name for her was the “beautiful brunette.”

The wives accompanied their husbands, James and Virgil Earp, as they escorted the body of their slain brother Morgan home to the men's parents for burial after he was assassinated following the shootout in which Morgan, Virgil, Wyatt, and their friend Doc Holliday had participated.

Mattie Earp

Mattie Earp

Wyatt's wife, Celia Ann (“Mattie”) Blaylock (1850-1888), was born in Monroe Township, Iowa. She took up prostitution after she ran away from home at age sixteen with her younger sister Sarah, who returned home before the year was up.

Although Mattie was a seamstress, she soon discovered that the Western frontier didn't offer many opportunities for work for most women. In 1872, in Fort Scott, Kansas, she became a prostitute, a profession she continued later in Dodge City, even after she and Wyatt became a couple in 1873. Later, she and Wyatt moved to Tombstone.

Wyatt Earp

She accompanied the other Earp wives to California, waiting, in Colton, for a telegram from Wyatt, instructing her as to where to meet him, but the message never came. Wyatt had left her for Josephine (“Sadie”) Marcus, Tombstone lawman Johnny Behan's former common-law wife, with whom Wyatt now lived in San Francisco.

Remembering that Pinal City (Globe), Arizona Territory, had been a boom town when she had visited the place with Wyatt (1848-1929) in 1879, Mattie moved there. She took up prostitution again briefly, but died of an overdose of laudanum, and the coroner, Thomas H. Kennaird M.D, ruled her death a “suicide by opium poisoning.”

Big Nose Kate

"Big Nose" Kate Horony
 

Mária Izabella Magdolna Horony (“Big Nose Kate”) (1850-1940) was the common-law wife of Wyatt's friend, John Henry (“Doc”) Holliday (1851-1887).

She was born in Érsekújvár, Hungary, the eldest daughter of a physician and a teacher. In 1860, her father, his children, and his second wife traveled to New York aboard the German ship Bremen.

At age seventeen, Kate ran away from home to start her life anew “as a dance hall girl and a prostitute” after discovering that, for women, opportunities to earn a livelihood on their own were restricted to working at such occupations as the ones she chose or to those of “domestic servant, dressmaker, laundress, milliner . . . seamstress, teacher,” or waitress.

She probably met Holliday in 1877, in Fort Griffin, Texas. According to John Jacobs, one of her acquaintances at the time, Kate was a “notoriously lewd character” who, in a fight with Lottie Deno, a rival for Holliday's affection, pulled a gun on her when Deno first pulled a firearm on her, calling Kate a “low-down, slinkin' slut” and telling her that she would not condescend to wipe her foot on “that bastard” Holliday, should she (Deno) “step in soft cow manure.” According to Jacobs, Holliday saved the day by stepping between the two armed women.

Doc Holliday

Author Ben T. Traywick recounts how Kate rescued Holliday after he'd been arrested for drinking while gambling in a Fort Griffin saloon in which these two activities, performed together, were illegal. After his arrest, Traywick says, Kate lit a fire in town, as a diversion, and she and Holliday escaped together, defying her arrest on a complaint of arson, for which a warrant was issued following the incident.

Dodge City, Kansas

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From there, they traveled to Dodge City, Kansas, where Kate used “a meat cleaver to fend off some bothersome men.” Next, the traveling couple showed up in Tombstone, Arizona.

Tombstone, Arizona

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After she and Holliday separated, toward the end of her days as a prostitute (she remained one, even after becoming Holliday's common-law wife), rather than committing suicide as Mattie had done and as was common among such women when they'd come to the end of their careers, Kate married a blacksmith; as his wife for eleven years, she worked as a cook and a shop owner.

Arizona Pioneers Home, Prescott, Arizona

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Afterward, she earned her keep as a cleaning woman, before petitioning for, and winning, a place as a resident in the newly opened Arizona Pioneers Home, where she “lived out her days “in relative comfort,” “a ward of the state.”

How did she acquire the nickname “Big Nose Kate”? Patrick A. Bowmaster explains, in “A Fresh Look at 'Big Nose Kate,'” an article that appeared in Quarterly of the National Association for Outlaw and Lawmen History, Inc: “Her nose was . . . not that much larger than the norm,” but it “started very high on her face and therefore was enormous in 'height' rather than in length.”